My first hour baskets

Oh my goodness! If you haven't made one (or more) of these hour baskets yet, go get the pattern, and make some!!

The pattern has directions for fabric handles, but I have some leather, and I really like how that looks. So I substituted...also, it's a lot quicker :-)

My kids like to get their own snacks in between meals, and they really should be able to, but we have just never has a space designated to "snacks it's ok to eat" - i.e. not sugary candylike stuff..

So I desided to make an hourbasket, and put the granola bars, the crackers and the other goodies in that - put it right there on the kitchen counter, so it would be easy for them to choose something healthy. 

But then....who can make just one? There's a pattern, Friends of the Hour Basket, that'll give you lots of different sizes, can't wait to try some of them out!

This one, in the pretty Kaffe Fassett print, will be for bread, breadsticks, tortillas etc.

I love these.... they are so fun to make.

Maybe I should make one for potatoes...onions.......anything, really.

My daugther has asked for some to organize her toys and her markers. So I am sure I get to make many more of these :-)

Getting Ready for Easter

I try to hang seasonal wreaths on our door, but since we don't have anything other than a Christmas wreath, we always have to make the wreaths for the specific season. And....well...let's just say, that doesn't always happen.

Today I bought 65m/71yards of ribbon, and Ask and I cut it into pieces and tied it to a metal ring.

Then I glued the little chickens onto it with some very strong and smelling glue. My fingers got stuck to the container, the ribbon, the chickens, the table....evrything I touched. Now I am wondering, when I will ever get the rest of the dry glue off my fingers again.. 

Anyway, we are quite pleased with our new Easter wreath. I doubt we'll be able to save it - after it has been out in all kinds of weather! But it's cute for now :)

New Crafty Storage

Living in a small apartment in downtown Copenhagen with my 2 kids does mean, that we don't have a lot of room. Needless to say, I don't have a craft room, and I need to be a little creative when figuring out how to store things.

I found these pretty round boxes the other day:

The bigger one is perfect for my growing pile of hexies

One of the smaller ones holds my small solids scraps. It's nice to have them handy when working on Splendid Sampler blocks

Much better than having everything laying around in piles all over the living room :)

I bought (!) a quilt...

I saw this quilt at a store for app USD 50. I would not be able to buy the materials needed for that amount of money. So I bought one. I have wanted a solid color quilt for my bed for a while, so now I have one

So...the bed is made, and it looks a lot calmer than the patchwork quilts I usually use. I'll want one of those back in a couple of weeks, but it's nice to be able to alternate :)

I have also decided, that Easter is close enough for decorations to come out 

I also need a new wreath for the front door......must put the kids to work!

TGIF!!!

I have been looking forward to Friday most of this week. Not because I didn't want to go to work - I did. But because we have been making progress on some home-improvement projects that have been put off for way too long.
Remember this post about curtains? I finally did it!!

I chose a fabric (IKEA) that Charles and I would both like, and then I was able to finish this whole project in an afternoon!

I am sorry this second picture is a bit blurry, but you can still sort of see what the curtains look like. I am very happy with them :) -oh, and please excuse the messes in the pictures. I have so much cleaning up to do, it's not even funny!

I am also hoping to find time to take the kids out for a snowball-fight tomorrow. We have a lot of snow here at the moment, and they have to be given the time to enjoy it while it's here :D

Clean-up job!

My coworkers and I were invited to dinner at the Raddisson in Copenhagen. The fod was delicious, and take a look at the view!! Wow, right?!

I love this city :)

Speaking of things I love - or don't love.... I used to have shelves above my sewing table, to hold fabrics....but one day, one of the shelves broke!!! What a mess. Lucky for me, it was not taken as a sign that I have too much fabric, but just that I needed different storage :)
So off to IKEA we went, and I chose these:

They are really kitchen cabinets, but I like them so much as fabric-storage! I am loving this, and I have even managed to keep my sewing area cleaned up since we put these up...how amazing is that?!

I am working on my doll quilt for DQS9, and I will post pictures once it is closer to being done. That should be very soon now!

I'll just leave you with this bit of trivia:


Did you know?? I didn't!

Home Life :)

It's still nice and quiet here, and we spend a lot of time inside...
The kids do love the snow, but they also like being inside. Miss V and I have started reading a longer book, and she is enjoying it so much. I like it too, the special reading time. Little A hates it. He's too young for it still....poor little A.
And, looking at this picture, you could argue that I should spend some time cleaning instead of reading silly stories and spending way to much time on the computer.

I did a little sewing. This is my January block for SC2, it's for Beth. Those fabrics are so pretty, I would never have picked them out myself (not before seeing them IRL anyway) but I just love them!
That's one of the things I like about Quilting Bees. Working with many kinds of prints and colors.

Speaking of colors.....I am in a group on Flickr called Self Portrait Friday. The idea is to take a picture of yourself every friday and post it in the group pool. That's 52 pictures in 2010. Of me. The thought is, that by the end of 2010, we should be more comfortable taking (and posting/seeing) pictures of ourselves.
I am not sure it will work. We'll have to wait and see. This is my picture for last week. I love my hair, but...I wish it would just be either blond or red. What would you call this??

Slow days

There has been a lot of indoor activities at my house lately...
Miss V loves her Hello Kitty MuffinsGame. It's amazing to see just how much more fun a board game is, if it features your favourite character :)
I wonder if that would be true for chess as well??

We have made some homemade pizza. My kids like olives - and lots of them. When thinking of how many they ate while putting toppings on the pizza, I am amazed that there are any olives on the pizza at all!
I have been spending a lot of time resting, due to some health issues, and sitting at my sewing machine has been to tiring. So I have started knitting... I think this will be a scarf for my dad, maybe for Christmas?!
How is that for an early start on Christmas presents. Lol!

I have done a little sewing. I am in a quilting bee on Flickr, called Row 10.
10 of us are making a row (instead of a block) each month, and the recipient will join her rows to make a row quilt :)
This is my block for Sarah. She requested red/lime as the dominant colors - green/pink/white as less dominant. She is going to make a Christmas quilt and I think it will be gorgeous! You can see the other rows on Flickr.

The plain spoken is all ready to sew....I just need a little more energy, then I'll get to it ;)
I love these colors. Maybe I'm procrastinating so I'll get to keep it myself?

Welcome to the kids' new room!

Ohhh...this used to be my bedroom, but Violas room was just too small for both kids, so something had to be done :) Viols has been asking for bunkbeds for awhile...she really wants to tell her friends, that she sleeps in the top bunk.

But...let's go in. That huge white thing there is a closet. Gigantic, but we need the storage :) I put some stickers on it to make it a little more appealing to the kids.
Beneath the bed are some drawers one with LEGOs and one with FlexiTrax (Asks new favourite toy!)
This dresser holds their sheets....and the big white thing is Asks changing table, it opens up, and it has little shelves to hold wipes and diapers and stuff. Handy when you have a bathroom that's smaller than your bed -which is what we have. Lol! Again the stickers are there to help me not feel so bad about this taking up room in here ;)
This is also new. The red and blue buckets hold everything from Little People to trainsets. Very easy for the kids to get to their toys, and really easy to put everything away..
The black round thing behind it is a gigantig swing :)

This is their new window. They spend a lot of time looking out at the cars in the tiny parking lot next door! The mattresses are not supposed to be there, they are from the old beds. But I am hanging on to them for a while. Putting them at the bottomof the bed every night...just in case someone should fall out of bed :/


...oh, and I have 21 days of crazy stress left, and then my paper will (hopefully) be all done!

Getting ready for Christmas

Viola and I went out today and bought an advent candle, a pointsetta, and an advent calendar for Ask, one for Charles and one for Viola :)It all made our home look much more ready for Christmas...Speaking of ready...I am getting some sewing done in the evenings. I have sewn and handquilted these 2 lilypads for Violas lilypad-toss, I have 3 more cut and ready to sew. Then I need to make some kind of bag to keep it all in.....I am thinking a box-bag of some kind would be good.

Charles and I tested the game last night, and it was fun :) I had planned to make some lilies to sew onto tha lilypads, but that won't work! They would be squashed by the frogs during the first game. So....less work for me. Maybe I can make one and sew it onto the bag. That would (hopefully) look pretty.

On a different note....Charles hung these storage units for me today. They are from Ikea, and they are meant for shoes. I use them for extra gloves, mittens, hats, sweaters, scarves....you know, all the stuff that is left all over the place once the kiddos are home from daycare. I put the large Barbapapa stickers on for the kids. Viola chose the orange barbapapa, so that's where her stuff goes. Ask chose the airplane -very much helped by Viola in making his decision. LOL!I love these already! There is no more clutter in our hallway! Yipee!

-oh....you can see the kids' calendars on top of the storage units. Violas is the one with the princesses (obviously) and Ask's is Winnie the Pooh.

This and that.....

Starting a new semester has been a lot of work. We all have to adjust to it, I don't have as much time to do stuff around the house as I have been used to this summer. But I just need to be a little more efficient ;-)
Viola loves her princess-gown, and wears it any chance she gets!
And she is epecially happy with how it matches her new wool unicorn-slippers.
She loves the "diamonds" on these.

Ask has a cold, a very bad one. He doesn't sleep well at night at all -so neither do I!
He stayed home today, hopefully he'll be feeling better soon. Chocolate always makes me feel a little better.....it seemed to cheer him up too. I'm not too sure that's a good thing to learn at such an early age. LOL!
I'm trying NOT to eat chocolate, so to cheer me up (I get grumpy when I don't get the 5 hours of interrupted sleep I'm used to), Charles and Viola bought me these flowers.
Surprisingly, they do the job just as well as chocolate would have! Now that's a good lesson to learn at any age!

I have not been able to get to my machine in a while, which almost always means I come up with a lot of idea for quilts to sew! I have figured out what to do to solve the size-problem with Charles' quilt....I will let you know soon ;-)
Thanks to Lisa and Tia I have fabrics and plans for no less than 2 quilts for Ask! YAY! A pirate-quilt for his bed and a a rocket napping-size quilt. I'm so excited about that!

And....I have always wanted to make a Christmas-quilt. I don't see this wish coming true this year, but maybe next year?!
Is it just me? I love these seasonal quilts...

Dyeing the sofacover

The all-white sofa-cover was looking really dirty after less than 24 hours. LOL! And I just couldn't find a way to make it work. Nomatter what I did, I thought the whole room was pale and sorry-looking :-(

So this morning I went out to get some purple dye. But purple was sold out everywhere!! I went all over Copenhagen trying to find it, but it turns out the company has not been delivering purple to the stores for a while, so they are all out.

Instead, I bought turquoise...
I thought about hot pink for a while, but thought Charles probably wouldn't be too happy with that. While I waited for the machine to do all the work for me, I finished most of the binding on Violas I SPY...
Now all I had to do was wait for it to dry.... It is looking good to me!
I finally finished the binding! Hooray! You must all be happy not to have to hear about this project again. It seems like it has taken forever!
Here is the sofa, new and improved. I like it so much better than the white!And here is the finished I SPY! Viola was so excited when I showed her, and started spying things right away. Oh was I ever pleased about that :-)
I made mitered corners using this tutorial! It was not as hard as I thought it would be, I'll be using this method in future projects!
I also got some fabrics -a lot of the stores I went to in search of dye had fabric too- but I'll show you that next time!

For a great giveaway, go visit Crafty Giveaways. This weeks giveaway is a started quilt!!

New bulletin-board

This white and BORING wall in my kitchen has bothered me for some time now... I couldn't quite decide what to do, but finally made up my mind.
I made a bulletin board, and my sweetie put it up today -with a lot of help from Viola ;-)

And here is the finished result. I am so pleased with it!