easter weekend

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.

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carnival weekend

Except the boyfriend and I don’t do carnival and chose to hunker down at home for the long weekend instead. Fine with the cats too.

The boyfriend got a new stereo system this week and I’ve been playing my old records on it (I did insist he get one where the record player can be plugged in. Apparently most new stereos don’t have that plug anymore! Seriously, people don’t know what they’re missing). My taste in music seems to be pretty far off the beaten track though…I tried to find a youtube video to share my current favorite, “Winds of the Old Days” by Joan Baez, but there isn’t one.
You can listen to a preview on Amazon though (Song 9).
Apart from that, a little sewing, a photoshoot and a new shelf in our southfacing window (yes, I do know the window needs cleaning desperately).

The seed starting box came out this weekend and got cleaned and set up. The first seeds for the garden are in their little starting pots and waiting to sprout.
By the way, I updated my Blog Roll after planning to do so for about a year so have a look to the right 🙂

random weekend shots

I post random weekend shots so often, I should make it a regular feature…
Beautiful sunrise (I’m a morning person, I get to see sunrises on weekends):

Spending some time at the barn, rescuing toads who have got lost on their way to the pond. They make the journey once a year to mate and then our lanes at the barn are full of toads. Later, when the baby toads have outgrown the pond, they will do the journey likewise, going back into the woods, in millions.

Harvesting the first fresh greens off my balcony. These are my salad thinnings, but they made for a whole bowl of delicious salad.

Still haven’t gotten around to doing the plaid scarf tutorial I promised. Time just flies between work, and sleep, and spending some time with the pony. Maybe this weekend. I hope.

twilight

The days are getting longer of course. I now get to the barn with the last bit of light of the day.

My mood is lifting which might be definitely is related to the fact that we have had full sunshine for two days in a row and I got to soak it up for a whole hour yesterday at work.

Here’s to a sunny weekend with lots of resting and planting and welcoming spring.

quiet weekend

I love doing things, being out and about, seeing new stuff, learning new techniques. But especially in winter I also love, and need, quiet weekends at home.
Sewing kitchen towels (need to take proper pictures soon) and baking bread

Putting the first seeds in the ground and preparing the first of many containers (I have a pretty chaotic excel sheet that combines my research on what goes with what and when each should be planted, I will spare you the sight). Saving space is definitely an issue with all I’m wanting to plant this year so each container will hold 2-3 plants that go well together. First out in soil this weekend were fava beans. I felt mean putting the seeds out in the cold but the package specifically says to put them in the ground mid February, so I guess they can take it. No pictures of that, I figured a container full of soil isn’t very interesting to look at.
We made progress on the lid of our seed starting light box (which may or may not work, it’s definitely an experiment).

A colleague of my boyfriend’s is going to solder the led-lights in and I hope to get started with starting next weekend 🙂
Other than that, a movie, lots of hot tea, some knitting, some online shopping (a vintage map and fabrics for a new dress project, to be shared soon) and some more taking it easy.

On sunday, a long and relaxed ride out with the ponies.


And topping that off, a fun and cozy dinner out with family.
Perfect and needed and too short.

same procedure

as every sunday.

And I still love every minute of it.

friday evening

Getting ready for the weekend. I can never get enough of these photos, or these moments for that matter.

Sorry, I’ll try to take some other nice shots today to bring a bit of variety in here 🙂 Right now it’s still dark outside and raining like mad.
I have a million plans for the weekend, as always. I never manage to get it all done and every weekend I have to deliberately stop myself from thinking in that “to-do list” way. I like having plans and making lists but they also make me feel pressured in a “it’s on the list, it has to be done” kind of way. I need to remind myself time and again that I am the one making the lists and that the things on it should be fun, not an obligation (things like building a lightbox for starting seeds and cleaning, but also things like finishing a knitting project, sewing something, baking cookies etc.).
I am learning to get as much done as I really feel like doing and saving other ideas for another day, or another weekend really. The stitching on my new quilt is about a third done. It would only take a couple of hours to finish it, but I haven’t touched it in weeks and that’s fine. I know I’ll get back to it when I really feel like stitching.
Bottom line from all this rambling: It’s not about how much we get done, but instead about how much we enjoy the process of doing the things we get done instead of just crossing them off a list.
I’m still learning.

And I should stop trying to put my thoughts into words. Even I have troubling reading what I’ve just written, though I know what I mean in my head 🙂

weekend trips

Now that I am working full time as well (I was pretty much the last one of my friends to join the club), weekends are all the more important and valued and anticipated.
How are there never enough hours to the day to do all the things jumbled together in my head?

Trips to the thrift store are becoming a regular weekend feature and while our boyfriends/husbands are still asleep, my friend and I set out early for a day of shopping and visiting and discovering.

This weekend’s trip was a great success again but that deserves its own post and so I’ll keep you waiting a little longer to show off my purchases.
We went by some friends who I’ve photographed before and who have recently gotten an adorable and tiny little kitty. Meet Lilli:

I couldn’t believe how much their puppy had grown in a few short weeks! But dog and kitty get on extremely well, even sharing a basket to sleep in!

travel diary: amsterdam 2

On to our last day in Amsterdam. We got up early on Sunday and packed up, because we wanted to leave right after a last visit to the city center, to get home reasonably early.
Amsterdam on a Sunday morning at 8.30am is a sight to see…it’s funny to see this vibrant city completely empty and asleep.



We’d passed the Anne Frank House Museum two days before and I really wanted to visit it, though I am not usually into museums much. It opens at 9am each day and who would believe it but there’s a line even sunday mornings at 8.45am!
I’d read the diary of Anne Frank as a teenager and of course everyone knows about her story (at least here in Germany) but still nothing can prepare you for visiting the very rooms in which she and her family were hiding during the Nazi regime. My friend and I were very much affected by the visit…it was a good thing we had nothing else planned that day except wander around the city for a bit. We didn’t talk to the other visitors (from the UK and Italy and Spain) but I believe it might be a little different for us Germans, because added to the incredible sadness and madness of it all there is also a feeling of shame, knowing that our very grandparents participated, knowingly or not, in that darkest part of german history.

That was it for our short trip to Amsterdam! We had lots of fun getting by on our tiny budget and are already planning our next adventure 🙂

patterndrafting adventures

Wow, has the weekend flown by! Can’t believe it’s already over again. I had planned to finally tackle Cal Patch’s wonderful book “Design-it-yourself-clothes” and make a top pattern for a dress. For one I am totally in love with the gorgeous dress Anna did based on that book and also I need a paririe dress for a charity event which is planned at the barn in June (1880’s country fair). I haven’t got any fabric for it yet but figured I could already draft the pattern and make a muslin on Saturday morning.

Two days and three handbasted muslins later (thank goodness for all of those old Ikea pillow cases, or I wouldn’t have had enough cheap fabric!) I was getting pretty frustrated because it just wouldn’t fit and the armhole was making me cry. My boyfriend said ‘Well, you didn’t think it was going to be easy, did you? Why did you think nobody does it anymore these days?’ to which I stammered ‘I thought people were just being lazy’.
Fast forward to a fourth draft and muslin and things are looking a whole lot better. Still not super duper perfect but good enough to be a satisfying finish to the weekend.

Totally unrelated but we’ve also been having a terrible storm today and all the way to the barn the streets were littered with branches and leaves. I took the highway on the way back but even there it was pretty scary with the sudden strong gusts of wind…I was glad to be home again and watch the rest of the storm from my cozy living room!