Merry Christmas - frohe Weihnachten - yoyeux noël

I wish you a very happy Christmas and some relaxing and merry festive days!

This is the last page in my this years self drawed calendar:

Je vous souhaite un yoxeux noël et quelques jours festives et heureux,
Jane

Winter Villages

Seeing several of my decoration crafting of the last years, it is clear that I like wonky houses! You can see for example my dwarf village or the old livingroom wall deco houses.

When cutting out the wooden stars, I kept a lot of scrap wood pieces: triangles and wonky squares. I saw immediately houses! Lots of them! 

For test I build a little village and added some pin trees the type I used for the Advent decoration and voilà: my winter village!

As the charm of those houses is the asymmetry, it is perfect for kids. I invited some friends of my sons and we had the nicest crafting party!

I prepared the trees and the wood pieces, but the kids did the assembly of the houses and the painting as well as the layout of their little villages.

All very different, but each child loved his or her village and we had a fun afternoon together. It makes me happy to do crafting when the kids are so enthusiastic!

A bientôt,
Jane

Reindeers in the garden

Look who moved-in in our garden this afternoon!

Fun construction of my boys and me!

Bonne soiree et a bientôt,

Jane

Christmas Cards

My this years Christmas cards theme is cold! As it is outside. But here it is more foggy and icy and no snow. 

I made a bunch of them Monday and again stamping is so much fun! Only carving the little tree stamp has been a bit fiddly and I needed three attempts. But now I love the result!

If you want to see other Christmas Cards I made the last years, have a look:

Reindeer 2015

Houses 2014 

Birds 2014

Candles

Maybe that gives you some inspiration for your cards?

A bientôt,
Jane

Playing card holder

My grandma who is 101 years old, loves to play cards and she meets every second week with some other old ladies to play Canasta together. She recently broke her hand and even everything healed well, she is still a bit week with that hand and holding a hand of cards for one afternoon isn't working any more. She told me, that she now puts her cards sorted in little stacks backside up on the table when it isn't her turn, but that sounds a bit laborious to me. So I made her a card holder. Outside fabric and inside cardstock:

The holder is 22cm long. When making it, I thought that is long, but as you can see there is not much space for many cards and everyone who plays Canasta knows that you sometimes have 20 to 30 cards on your hand. So I made a second one.

When not playing you can fold the holder flat, so it is easy to store them away. 

Hopefully my grandma will find them usable when she gets them for Christmas.

A bientôt,
Jane

Transformation art at the wall

Since we moved in (7 years ago) I have been only temporarily satisfied with the living room decoration. For two years I had those deco-houses (look up here) and then disliked them again. Now I have two narrow shelfs to put framed pictures and/or deco objects on them. For now I really like it :-)

(Ah yes: since the houses deco, we also changed the orientation of the sofa and got rid of some furniture)

Already with Christmas decoration, but also permanent pieces like the clock and the two framed pictures. See beside the Advent calendar of my sons.

The newest addition to the wall is a wooden magnetic jigsaw. I bought it on the Christmas market of a very likable lady who had the stand beside me. She runs a web-shop for baby equipment and very nice toys. We have been chatting all day and I bought this chameleon:

Originally it comes with a metallic box and you can do and undo the little magnetic pieces inside. Very clever if you take it for kids on a car ride. But as I wanted it as a picture, the box had been too small and from the distance the dark background reduced the brightness of the colors. So I asked my husband to cut me a metallic board 35x35cm and I painted it white from one side and black from the other. For now we only used the white side and transformed the chameleon into the nicest animals. 

The picture changes every two or three days! Little son seems to have a passion for birds. The last two creation are his.

For now I am happy with my living room style. Let's see how long it last this time!

A bientôt,
Jane

Star addicted

I have a problem: A star-problem! 

Not what you think! I didn't got famous over night! 

I just got addicted to cutting out stars. I don't want to do anything else!

So much fun! My darling bought in summer a very old band-saw. It's heavy and takes a lot of space in the work shop, but it cut's literally everything! I saw my husband working with it, but only now I tried - and yes, now I am addicted. I stop cutting fabrics for cutting wood!

I promised to support the schools Christmas market and therefor I made big stars that are on metal rods and can be planted outside. For decoration in the front yard or in a pot in front of the door for example. 

The first I cut out from nice pine boards that we still had in the basement. They had a clean smooth surface and were easy to paint white and later I and a friend put some golden paint on them too.

Then my friend gave me a plank with a rough surface. I already got splints in my hand when carrying it home. I wasn't delighted by the thought of smoothing the whole surface, when I had the idea to burn the splints of. So I cut out the stars and then I took a blowtorch to burn the surface and sides. It worked great! The splitters where gone and the texture of the wood became very nicely visible. Later we painted only small white stars for decoration in the middle. 

Of course all the big stars left a big amount of scrap wood. I cut out smaller stars. After smoothing, they are very pleasant and soft to touch. I like them best without paint and simple wooden. I sold some of those on the annual private Christmas market and they are around here for decoration too.

My final and biggest star is cut out from a roof beam that another friend of mine had left over from construction of their house. It is 10cm thick, but the saw had no problems cutting. The cut is very straight and clean. 

On this picture you can see also the band saw! (And all the dust it makes)

Have a very lovely second Advent weekend!

A bientôt,
Jane

Calendar page for November 2016

Last day to show you the November calendar page I made for my 2016 drawings calendar!

A bientôt,
Jane

Official beginning of Christmas time 2016

Hello there and happy first advent Sunday!

Did you light your first candle today? We did at breakfast and just now for tea! The cosy time of year started officially! Drink a tea, burn candles, eat lots of biscuits and don't mind bad weather outside, because you are warm and homely inside - what could be better?

Despite the Children birthday party and the Christmas markets, I made a very nice arrangement for our advent candles. The last year I had them on the sideboard (have a look) but this year I wanted them on the table and I used the box I made for the easter table, filled it with moss and four supports for candles and added some deco. I takes not much place, so it is not bothering. I only have to remove it for hot meals.

I found the idea for this lovely little pin trees on Pinterest and I think they are very pretty. You will see them again in a crafting project I have in mind for kids in December!

I hope you had a nice weekend too! And don't let the Christmas stress get you! There are so much more important things than getting presents!

A bientôt,
Jane

A dark fortress with dark gardians

Oh no! Already one month since I wrote the last time. Actually exactly one month! 

I didn't planned like this, but there has been so much going on lately. Unfortunately not only creative stuff, so I can't even drown you in interesting projects now :-( 

But I did anyway some things and I will show them after surviving this week, that has the 10th birthday of my eldest son and two Christmas markets, in which I am involved (stupid me - why can't I say no?).

10 years he has already, my first born! I can't believe it! It had only been yesterday him learning to walk and talk, hadn't it? Ok, probably not! 

You remember the ninja from last year? He still loves ninjas and for his l.e.g.o adventures he build a base and a whole world to play inside (during summer the l.e.g.o ninjas lived in the terrasse flower bed). The only thing he misses are gardians for his base, while the ninjas are absent. He decided on some figures he would like to have and it took me a lot of energy to buy them single (and not hilariously overpriced).

I told my son I where too busy to make an advanced cake for his birthday table, but today I spontaneously decided to cut a brownie-cake in pieces and build a fortress for those gardians:

It's not so easy to cover the sides when you cut a cake. As there is no crust but a larged-pored surface, it is impossible to spread the chocolate evenly. Fortunately a fortress wall isn't smooth :-)

Happy birthday to you, my dear!

A bientôt,
Jane

Calendar page October

October is the mushroom month for me, because my 101 year old grandma likes them a lot and we try always to dig some out and plant them in a bowl for her birthday table decoration! This is why the birthday month October has a mushroom drawing in my self made calendar for 2016.

A bientôt,
Jane

Mushroom deco

My kids found the box with my fall decorations in the basement and decorated our main rooms. I especially like this corner on our sideboard:

A nice arrangement. They are having talent :-)

Those fly agarics I made already last year. The bottom of the stem is filled with lead cord, so they are more heavy on the base and they don't tip over. Very stable decoration!

A bientôt,
Jane

Simple fleece blanket

We don't need necessarily another blanket, but it used up a piece of fleece I have since years. I bought it initially to make a big crocodile for elder son, but never started. Now I found a matching cotton fabric and made a wide border of 8cm all around.

One side of the fleece is light green the other moss green. The border is a green in-between the two colors, but the two fleece greens are in those multi-color dots.

The whole blanket is about 1,60m by 1,25m. It might be usable for outside, when it is not so warm any more to just sit like this on the balcony for a cup of tea or in the summer when it gets chilly in the evenings.

A bientôt,
Jane

Crowns for fall decoration

Since a week it is getting colder outside and it is always grey. No glorious Indian summer at all. 

So I felt like I needed some autumn decoration around the house. In the hedges of some back roads I cut different branches with berries and wound some quick crowns.

Number one is very loosely wound and is hanging on the garage port.

Number two is hanging in front of our dining room window. It is turning in the wind and it is nice to see that one also from the inside. I made it friday and it already gets a bit dry. I guess also the birds found out about it, but I don't mind, if they eat it up.

The last one is hanging beside our main door.

When standing in front of our entrance I made also a photo of little dwarfs village, that has an autumn touch too:

Do you remember "lutin-village"? Have a look for my last years deco project here.

I hope the sun comes back for some more lovely days. I even had to light up the fireplace to get the house warm. This comes a bit sudden after a very hot summer and a warm September.

A bientôt,
Jane

want to see some more fall crowns? Here are those I made in 2014. They have been even more pretty I think.