Update - A

A as away

I haven't been posting much recently mainly because we were so occupied with the renovation works still going on in our house. We've got a new roof, we've spent endless hours waterproofing the terrace and ... we actually managed to squeeze in some vacation!

We've had our share of bad weather - just like everyone else being in Europe this summer. But we also had a bit of sun:

Farewell

A friend of mine passed away and today was her funeral...
About fourty years too soon...

On days like this one starts thinking about life, the universe and everything. About what is and what is not. About what matters and what doesn't. And you realise that pretty much nothing matters but a very few very precious "things": your family and your friends. The rest you can easily live without. Without them, you can't. And probably don't even want.

A very popular saying goes that you should live each day as if it were your last. Sorry, Marcus Aurelius, you got it all wrong. Last days usually suck. You should live each day as if it were your first!

Everyone should discover, observe, learn and love as you would on the first day! Well, maybe not on the very first day of your life but you know what I mean. Enjoy it while it lasts - one day it will all be over.

This one is for you, Renata, wherever you are!

Sour cherries

I haven't been posting that much recently - but that doesn't mean I'm not doing much. Au contraire.

Among other things, I'm doing some gardening. For the first time in my life, I've seen an aubergine or a watermelon blossom! And the sour cherry was ridiculously full so that gave us all a lot of work.

I'm so looking forward to a winter full of sour-cherry cakes, brownies, muffins, scones ...

Family history, again

My mother-in-law decided to publish a book on the history of her village and the people who lived there in the past century or two. And I offered help, as an editor and page designer. Of course there is much much more work needed than I imagined so this is basically what I've been doing the last couple of weeks.

Here is just a photograph of a house from the neighbouring village. Unfortunately, the house is now in ruins, overgrown with ivy ...

Beach tote, part two

Yes, my kids have a lot of teachers. So I made three more bags, these were all for teachers of MiniMojcek Nr.1.

The first one is for probably the best teacher in the world.

I just looove the fabric.
I also like the fabric that I used for the other two bags:

Not a perfectly matching pattern but good enough...

The teachers loved them!

Beach tote, part one

As usual, I'm in charge of the presents for the teachers. This year I decided to make them beach tote bags! And although I browsed through dozens of bag patterns, I didn't find a suitable one. So there I was, improvising without a pattern. Sounds familiar?
 
The first two were made for the kindergarten teachers - one girly and one bold. They had pockets both on the outside and the inside. I was just too lazy to add the zippers. Oh, well...

The first one is for a teacher, who loves butterflies. And pink. So pink butterflies she got :-)

Unfortunately, I don't know the second teacher that well, so I went for a generic striped funky pattern:

I think they liked them!

Things

This is going to be an extraordinary post. A post not about my actions or creations but a post about my thoughts. And things. Lots of things. All sorts of things. Things. Things that we own. Things that own us.

In the past weeks, months, even years, I've been going through ... things. My things, my parents' things, my great-grandparents' things, my great-aunt's things... lots of things! I've literally been enslaved by them. I needed to sort them, to decide what to do with them, whether to keep them, and where to put them. And I've thought a lot ... about things.

And I've come to the conclusion that we live in a way too material world. We work hard so that we can buy things and then we buy large houses to keep all the things and we have room for more so we buy more ... We feel bad throwing them away because someone obviously paid for them and we keep it just because maybe one day someone might need them...

I really want to break this cycle.

So I've decided to sort the things by three criteria:
1) do I need the thing?
2) do I want the thing?
3) it is valuable (material or emotional value)?

If a thing fails the test, I get rid of it. Sell it, donate it or throw it away. But I do not keep it - why would I keep something I neither need nor want?!?

I must say it really clicked in my head when I came to this conclusion. I feel like I own things and not vice versa. I feel liberated.

Now I just have to raise my kids in the same manner :-)