I threw a bit of a party this past weekend. A birthday one. One for myself. 

It seems I have no say whatsoever in universal time management and the years just keep creeping up on me. And I only get older and older.

In general I don't mind. In my mind I am nowhere near the age that my official papers claim I am. But somehow I managed to get old. Sure I no longer feel like I'm 20 but in all this time since those golden days I never felt that I got older as one year flowed into the next. And still by now... I must admit that in that space of time I did get older. It's an unrealistic feeling but none the less one that is backed up with evidence. Such as?

Well, staying up till midnight by now has become a bit of an achievement. Anything that doesn't appear on my grocery list will not be brought home. And even if it is mentionned on that list, it might not even make it home with me! 

The years are claiming my elasticity. The elasticity of my memory, my ratio sleep-wake time, my muscles and last but not least .... my skin! 

Oh and before you worry... no I have no trouble getting old. I'm planning to get to a 100... graciously mind you. But now and again the surreal feeling of reality clashing with the inner workings of one's mind just hits home. Particularly around birthdays.

But I'll raise my glass to myself anyway and wish myself a Happy Birthday ( and not too many extra wrinkles) today!

I seem to be the favorite person on the internet of brands such as Prada, Burburry, Louis Vuiton, Gucci and Hermes... or at least their fake counterparts.  They keep spamming me to death thinking it will make me buy a handbag.

And so the husband installed an aggressive spam filter. But when it is experiencing a spam wave it sometimes goes into overdrive and also puts some genuine comments in the trash. 

Having deleted several hundreds of these spam things earlier tonight, I came across some lovely comments of dear readers who are in no way trying to make me buy bags I would never buy in the first place. 

So should you leave a comment and not see it published any time soon, feel free to mail me so that I can check up on my spam filter and give your comment the place it deserves. 

And then a little parcel warmed up my letter box...

Glorious hand knit socks! Knit for me by the adorable Severien. Just because. 

And there is something special in sending off two balls of yarn -Koigu KPPPM- and getting some real socks in return!

From the bottom of my heart and my happy warm feet, Thank You Severien!

Were was I?

Well, mainly here. In my garden. In between the copious rain. Enjoying such beauties as these camelias. 

But I did promise a further look at what I had been up to. So here it is. A pretty pile of towels. 

The bathroom was in need of some new additions. Now I'm no great fan of prints on towels. Nor of bold colors. They are too much of a sore sight to my weary eyes in the morning. So I went for crisp white ones. Big and fluffy. And with the help of some cotton and a crochet hook, now with a softly colored frill at both ends. 

And as a way to use up some leftover fabric scraps and label scraps, I made small labels to go with the color of the crochet edgings.

This is one of those projects that will be repeated in the future as more towels need replacing. Elegant, soft and luxurious looking towels. Man, it just about turns my humble bathroom in a true spa!

And then there were small left overs of plain white drawing paper. And a need for some new bookmarks to take to school. No more needed to be said. Here you go.

We opened up Photoshop and created black frames, bookmark size, in which we typed 'Shhtt, be quiet. X (name of child) is reading a book.' We left enough room to make a drawing and printed that out on the left over paper.

Then it was time to get the favorite book out. One about a clever dog and his illiterate nephew the wolf. 

We searched for our favorite illustrations and set to draw them ourselves on the empty space on the bookmark. Some aquarel, for mum, and some felt tip coloring pencils, for the girl, later we decided to back them with a lovely patterned paper before finally laminating them. Personalized bookmarks really are the best!

How cool are these? Marije Tolman did the original illustrations and these are our personal interpretations. They look really similar I think!

And does anybody else agree with me that these drawings made by my 6 year old are really fab? Cause I think so. But then according to me I have the best kids in the world. Apparently that's being bias. Pfff...

This past Easter holiday the weather has been stormy as my daughters put it. The weatherman prefers boisterous, it being spring and all. Anyhow, pouring showers, hail, thunder, blustering wind and cold temperatures kept us mainly indoors. And there I began the great task of sorting through my stuff and chucking lots of it out. You can't be too careful in trying not to fall into the pitfalls of hoarding.

So when my eye spotted a big pile of crafty magazines, beautiful magazines but all read and just sitting there, I called upon my girls and we tore the lot to pieces. Fun pages and pictures were put in a box for future projects, the remains went to the recycling bins. 

And this is what one can do with pretty pages.....

The start of a collection of wonderful handmade envelopes! 

And all those cardboard monochrome pages that were scattered throughout the magazines? They became ,with the help of a  punch and a blistered and battered thumb, little jars filled with paper confetti...

So not only did I get rid of this big pile of untouched magazines, I also gained, neatly in a box and some jars, ready to use stationary and craft supplies. How often does that happen?

Spring holidays have started. And with it, spring more or less disappeared. Hmmm. Where last week we were enjoying total sun bliss and temperatures over 20°C, that's now been halved. Morning frost returned and so did the clouds. 

So to give spring a little boost not to linger any longer, I set to work on a spring crown.

Seriously though, this year we are celebrating that spring has arrived in the life of my oldest daughter. For those who are religious this is celebrated in a church celebration. Others hold a spring celebration. For all it is a special moment marking little children growing up... too fast and too furious but still.... growing up. 

And for the official pictures that will be taken to mark the occasion, we needed a spring prop. Hence this delicate spring crown. It will sit on the precious head of my precious girl turning her into a genuine spring fairy for a day. 

A small bunch of fake flowers, including orchids, tulips, roses and unidentified blossoms, some eggs and a delicate bird and most of all a hot glue gun to glue it all onto a wire frame that was first covered in ribbon. A bow at the back to finish it off and hey presto, spring has arrived! 

A delicate little crown with a phenomenal impact! 

A bunch of spring flowers to kick of a weekend of lazy and sunny celebrations. And amidst all that lazying about I actually finished hand sewing the binding on that little lap quilt. Weekend intentions? Check!

All that remains to do is to put in the washing so that it crinkles up nicely...

Nothing beats the feeling of a finishing a lingering project. Now, which one should I tend to next? Hmm, perhaps I'll first just lazy about a bit more. That sounds like an excellent plan!

The innocent hand looked something like this:

The names of all those who entered the givaway looked something like this:

And then the innocent hand picked out this little name:

Yay, our winner is 'Cindy'! Congratulations. And for all those who entered 'Thank you very much for playing along'.

So Cindy, send me a quick email (through the contact form in the sidebar on your right) with your address and I'll ship the little parcel off as soon as possible. 

Soon spring will officially arrive. And in its trail, so will my birthday. That just keeps happening every year. And although it's always nice to throw a party and open up gifts, I'm not so keen on celebrating the addition of another year to my increasing age. Man oh man, I'm really starting to look old on paper. The gap between how old I officially am and how old I actually feel seems to be exponentially increasing. Funny that is.

But we're regressing. I said party. And gifts. And as we are on the subject of gifts, I have a little one for one of you. Because it's my birthday soon. And spring. Hence a combination of handmade and supplies in daffodil colors.... spring in gift wrapping if you like.

I will send the lucky one a set of 6 spring fabrics (all circa 34 by 39 cms), some 'nature' sewing ribbon, two lilac bunny buttons, a felt fancy heart, a handmade 'himiko' birthday card with matching envelope and a needle book with 4 felt pages inside.

Now all you need to do is leave a comment to this post and on March 21st when spring is officially in the air, I'll draw a lucky winner.

There are no requirements. You may have a blog or not, it doesn't matter. You may post about this givaway on your blog or Facebook, or not, it doesn't matter. And you don't need to live anywhere specific. I'll send the gift worldwide. Easy peasy I think. 

So go hit that comment button folks...

NOTE March 21st: The givaway is now closed hence it is no longer possible to enter the givaway. Later tonight a winner will be picked at random and will be announced. Good luck everyone!