The paint arrived today and look ....

... what I already have done with it!

Well, I just painted the front with red and I also did a part of the right wall. Everything that is not painted red will be painted white. I want to make it look like the Swedish houses on the picture in my previous post!

That paint is really fabulous to work with. It's thin and it smells lovely! You can still see all the lines of the wood through the paint!!

Our garden house is ready to be painted!!!

This morning the guys from the company where I bought the garden house finished the building job!

They started on Monday but couldn't finish it in one day. Yesterday they had to go to somebody else first, so they came this morning.

Yesterday I ordered the paint for the outside and inside of the garden house at Moose Farg in Schagen. They sell the original Swedish paint for wooden houses. Zander and I chose the famous red color. There will also be a touch of white on the windows and doors. And the walls inside will also be painted white.

I took a lot of picture during the building proces but just show you a couple of them here on my blog. The pictures with the painted houses are from the Moose Farg website.

My back yard is a mess right now, but I hope that it will look fabulous in a month or so!

Workshop Jenni Bowlin by Jo-Anne

Just finished the project I started last Saturday in Ede at the Jenni Bowlin workshop given by Jo-Anne. What a sweet girl!!!

I have learned a couple of new techniques that I'm so glad with! Especially the technique how to glue pages of a book together in an easy way. I will show you this technique later when I can make pictures of it while I'll be making a new altered book.

It was hard working all day, so there wasn't much time to get to know the other girls.

For me it was a long day!!

I woke up at 6 a.m. and left my house at 7.15 a.m.. I drove to Heidi's home, where I left my dad's car and Heidi and I drove off in her car around 8 a.m..

We arrived in Ede around 9.30 a.m. and just made a quick shopping tour in Scrappen doe je zo. It's such a shame that the store has to close because of health problems of the owner! It's not only the shop that is great but they also have this huge space for workshops and crops. Because the store is closing we only had to pay 50% on everything!!!

I bought lots of stuff: from Jenni Bowlin but also stamps from Jim Holtz and some minis from PaperArtsy which I think are very cool. Didn't buy much paper because I have loads of it and I really want and have to use them.

In our lunch break we shopped again and after we said goodbye to Jo-Anne we returned for the last time to the store.

We left Ede around 5.30 p.m. and were at Heidi's place around 7 p.m.. I was home a little over 7.30 p.m.. Feeling really tired, too tired to scrap!!

I felt better yesterday and worked really hard to finish the book and this morning I took the pictures outside in our back yard on the terrace.

I just show some of the pages of the mini book I've made! The mini book is made with fabric and paper. I have stiffened the fabric using gel medium. In that way you can also stamp on the fabric as I have done.

I'm SOOO lucky .....

..... I won a Jenni Bowlin workshop at SIS tv given by Jo-Anne in Ede at Scrappen doe je zo!!! Heidi also won, so tomorrow we're both going to Ede.

But first I have to pay a visit to the local recycle store where they sell old books for almost nothing, because we all have to bring a thick (8 cm) book and a very sharp crafts knife!

On the pictures above you can see some sneaks from the workshop. The pictures are made by Jo-Anne.

K&Company layout

Edited: I discovered that I forgot to place a dot on the i in Birdcatcher. Added a new picture of the layout.

Today I made this layout of Misty with K&Company paper: Urban Rhapsody.

I also used some tulle for the flowers. The buttons are from Foof-a-la, except the brown one (private collection). The chipboard swirl I got for free (?) and the sticker letters are from Imaginations (Sonnets by Sharon Soneff).

Layout of the day!!

I have just found out that my layout of Innocence is the layout of the day at SIS tv!!! I'm so proud!! But I surely couldn't have made it without the inspiration of the talented Ashley Calder from Canada. Her book Scraptastic is really fantastic and an important source of inspiration to me! For the Dutch readers: you can order the book through bol.com!

Birthday card Esther

Made a birthday card for my neighbour and friend Esther this morning. It's almost the same as the one I made for our cousin a few weeks ago. I love that cup cake paper!

This evening my parents came over for dinner! Well, we ordered out at a chinese wok restaurant. They have this monthly menu for just 17,50 Euros with different kinds of food every month. It's enough for at least 5 or maybe even 6 persons. So it's very cheap! It was yummie!! Because Zander doesn't like chinese food he went to the 'snackbar' for french fries and minced-meat ball (frikadel). So, there's a lot of chinese food left, enough for 2 days just for me!

Mothersday and BBQ

Made a card for my mother this afternoon before I went to visit her and my dad early this evening. She loved the card and the hanging plant I bought for her for Mothersday.

I also got a present from Zander this morning. I knew he bought something a couple of days ago, with one of the people who work with him after school. She already told me that I have a very practical son.

When he got downstairs (late this morning, so no breakfast on bed for me anymore :( ) and saw me preparing my supplies for my mothers card he asked me what I was doing and so I told him. He then went upstairs again to get his present for me. He gave it to me saying: "Well, here." He's not much of a talker in these kind of situations.

He bought me a sort out box for my scrapbooking supplies and some scrapbooking adhesives!

I told him it was really nice of him and that I really could use a sort out box! I could see he was pleased too!

Because the weather is still very warm over here, I decided to have a BBQ with our new cute BBQ that I bought yesterday. I love having a BBQ!! The skewer in the middle is with turkey meat. That one was for me. The hamburgers and meat balls were for Zander. I also had 2 small steaks. It seems it's good when you have a very low blood pressure like I have. We also had 2 salads, home baked bread and some sauces.

Other frog pictures and border of foundation in place.

Took some other pictures of the frogs in my small pond. They were together this time. Took out the tripod in a hurry, but this time the light wasn't as good as yesterday. I like the picture where the frog opened his bec.

This morning my dad and Roel finished the border and put in all of the white sand in the middle. Now I have to water the sand every day for a couple of days so that it becomes a real good and solid foundation for the concrete tiles.

And this afternoon I made some flower petals and some cirkels of small pieces of transparancies. Outside in the sun like Petra suggested because it stinks when you heat the transparancy. It's the technique from the video number 67 at SIStv.

Instead of using Hambly transparancies I used some leftover pieces of packings for scrapbookstuff and dyed them with alcohol ink. I wasn't sure if this would be safe (because of the alcohol), but if you keep the side where you have put the ink on top, it is totally safe.

I'm going to try and make a card with the petals and cirkels tonight.

Latest pictures.

Took some pictures today of a frog that was sitting near my little pond. It stayed there for a very long time and I took about 50 pictures. A lot of the pictures were a bit blurred because I had to use the zoom and when you use the zoom without a tripod - like i did - it makes the camera somewhat unstable. These were the best pictures!!

And last week I took the pictures of the flowers. It was just before I had to move them from the backyard to the garden in front of the house and they looked wonderful.
With the warm and sunny weather we have over here at the moment, they don't look so beautiful anymore. I hope they will survive! At least I give them lots of water every evening.

Today my dad and the husband of a cousin started to make the foundation for the garden house. They will continue tomorrow and hopefully they can finish the job.

Ofcourse I couldn't resist helping them a bit, moving sand with the wheelbarrow, but I shouldn't have done it because my muscles are aching a lot more now!

May 4th.

Today was commemoration of the dead over here in the Netherlands. It means that we remember all the victims of World War 2.

So every year at 8 p.m. there is a moment of silence at gatherings all over the country near war monuments. The queen and our future king lay a wreath (garland) in front of the war monument in Amsterdam, together with a lot of other officials. After the ceremony everybody can lay down flowers near the monument.

A lot of people have the flag half-mast. We had it too. I think it's important to do so. To stand still and think about all the victims whom have died, and still die, during wartime! War is so stupid and absurd. It's all about ego, power and - nowadays - also about money, oil, diamonds etc. etc.. Hate it!!!!

Yesterday was clean up garden day!!

Yesterday was clean up garden day!! So, no National Scrapbookday challenges for me! :(

The people that are normally working with my son came over to help me. Even Zander helped out a bit because his friend Manuel also came over to help.

I forgot to take pictures while they were all working and I also don't have pictures of the garden before the clean up, but this is how it looks today.

In about 2 weeks the people from the company where I bought the garden house, will come over to install it in the back of the yard. Just in front of all that piled up wood, roof tiles and bricks you can see on the picture. I want to use that stuff to build a small shed behind the garden house to put all the garden furniture in during winter.

But first we have to get rid of that pile of wood and other stuff on the left of the picture.

The large circle of dirt you see in the middle (where the chicken is) was a big hole where used to be the trampoline. Because Zander didn't use it anymore and I almost peed my pants every time I used it (seriously!!), I sold it.

I'm not sure yet what I want to do with the rest of the garden except for building a large wooden terrace in front of the garden house and making a small path from our house to the garden house. There are a lot of large trees on the left side of our house and they block the sun, so there isn't much sun coming into our garden and that means that the grass and the flowers aren't growing that well. Oh well, we'll see!!

Newest layout.

Started and finished another layout today. Again I was inspired by a layout in Scraptastic from Ashley Calder (p. 30).

The picture is from Zander when he was 2 years old. I love how he looks on this picture with his big innocent eyes.

Some really 'old' paintings on my new painted bedroom wall.

Just want to show you some of the paintings I made about 18 years ago. Is it really that long?!!

I used NeoColor oil crayons and terpentine. The big painting in the middle is ofcourse a copy of one of Vincent van Goghs paintings! The one on the left is a copy of a Cezanne.

The one at the top on the right I made lying on a beach near Tossa de Mar (Spain) and the one at the bottom I made from a picture I took in Switzerland near the lake of Neuchatel.

I also altered the frames. First painted them dark blue and then painted them gold and while the paint was still wet whiped away some of the paint. If you click on the picture you can see better.

I love the new color on the wall of my bedroom. I had just let it paint on one wall, the other walls are painted cream.