tulips | little home by hand

I hope you all had a wonderful long weekend! All too quickly those four days have passed, between entertaining friends, giving the apartment a good spring clean, working on the balcony garden and just doing all those small chores and to do’s that fall by the wayside in busy days and pile up, staring at you accusingly from the to do lists and corners of your home. Maybe I should just not make lists. But then, I fear I would never get anything done.

Anyway, I have finally gotten the better of my spring tiredness. We had an Easter brunch with friends on our balcony, the strong spring sun burning my nose so badly that my face glowed all weekend. I made tasty spring lamb cakes from my mom’s vintage baking tins. Being a very bad blogger (but a better hostess for it), I completely forgot to take photos.

We dyed some eggs, trying to make patterns with rubber bands and found out it’s one of those things that looks a lot easier than it is. I vowed right after that next year I would put some thought and research into it and do a better job.

This time last year I was on a dutch island, going on long beach walks and watching the snow fall. A far cry from this year’s warmth and flowers.

My 8/52 photo, a sweet but totally crazy dog at our barn.

As you can see, still very much winter over here, snowy and grey. Frozen pipes at the barn.

I am so ready for spring, and sunshine, and color, and flowers. I’ve made my balcony garden plans and I’m itching to start my seeds and to give the balcony a good scrub and clean up.
Just a few more weeks now.
Until then, I’m making baby succulents (well, the plants are doing all the work really, I just give all the baby succulent shoots their own pots and water occasionally).

I was given some tulips at the farmer’s market last weekend as a thank you for giving one of the vendors an awesome pumpkin ginger soup recipe (do you want it? it’s super yummy and the vendor said it worked wonders for his date).

So good to have some color in the apartment! And speaking of color, I got some lovely summer fabrics in the mail and I’ve been dreaming up ways to use them for weeks. No actual sewing going on, I’m taking a little break after the red skirt and waiting for sun and motivation to show their faces around here.

There’s hope I’ll be getting some knitting finished though! And, saving the best for last, a sneak peek at some vintage patterns I scored on Etsy lately. I won’t be showing them in full because they’ll be presents for friends if/when I make them 🙂