My creative room is a room with a view.. At the top floor with a big balcony - three floors up is my room. As my dad told Loren it is so many stairs to walk up that the coffee will be cold by the time you get there... Maybe not really but it is good to remember to bring what you need from first floor not having to run up and down. We had a great creative room in Moscow but I think this one is better - and with a great view over a small park.

Debatable success rate in parenthood when your 5 year old daughter is asking whether you are bribing or threatening her to do something.....

I have many different plans all the time what I want to do now and what to do in the future when it comes to carrier and work life. I have the opportunity while we are here in Düsseldorf to go back to my creative projects and work more in both fields of illustrating and sewing. It is no secret that my dream is to create a children's book of my illustrations.  To reach this dream it does take a lot of hard work and dedication. I have to admit it is much easier to be employed and have someone who puts deadline on your work and where you know what to do and that you have to do it.  Being free working for yourself is great but I can also choose to do other things during the day which is not leading me towards my goal. Also the feeling of being needed is easier to reach if you have a job to go to. It is a mind setting if I see what I am working with at home worth something or not and it is defiantly a privilege to be able to try to make my dream come true.  Still my plan...

We moved to Düsseldorf in August. New house, new area, new city and new country. New supermarkets, new flavors, new brand of the raspberry jam, new kindergarten or actually it is called kita here in Germany strange enough I thought kindergarten was a German word that we borrow to the English vocabulary and then it turns out it is not even used here ?! Being new is challenging, but that is not what I am going to write about in this post. No this post is about Macbeth and my English studies. So in all this new things on top of new things I had the plan to go back to studying at a Swedish University on-line. Actually my plan still is to add to my MBA pedagogic and didactic in order to be certified high school teacher in business and economics but I thought that maybe it would be good to also be English teacher and needed to add a few courses of English. And so I got accepted to study English B - basically continue my literature and sociolinguistic studies of English that I started su...

Schooling in can be a walk in the park But it can also be a little painful and stressful  And maybe the mother would doubt if it was a good idea to let kids start in kindergarten where they don't know the language...  A couple of weeks later and the kids are super happy going to their German kita even though I guess they still don't really understand the lingo but I am sure they soon will.. And surely they are gonna thank us later for the chance of learning a new language (?!) 

Me and the kids went with my mother on vacction to Spain end of August. We had a great stay and enjoyed squeezing the last bit out of this long warm summer vacation of 2018. We had a set-up with one activity per day and the rest of the time hanging or floating in the pool home. One great trip was to Bena Havis where you can follow the mountain streams along although we mainly stayed at one place swimming in the cold fresh mountain water. We also had a good day down by the ocean and swimming in the waves, rolling in the sand and after eating seafood on a beach restaurant. I loved all of it apart from the sand going everywhere.  Another new tradition I have started although a little scared calling it a tradition as it might become pressure, is my colorful portraits in acrylic. Last year I was inspired by my mothers paintings copying Picasso - with a lot of vibrant colors. My style is very much my style. Not perfect or portrait like more kind of comic picture with a lot of pa...

We went on a trip to Leiden in The Netherlands last week. We have friends from Prague who has lived there for a year and so we took the opportunity to meet up with them before they move back to Prague end of this month. Düsseldorf is close to the dutch boarder and to Leiden only 2,5 hours. Of course we stop on the road at a real dutch pancake place, Pannenkoekhuis Den Strooper in Arnhem. And also first day in I think 3 months we needed to put on a hoody and finally a real heavy rain fell. We had booked a room at the Holiday inn - family friendly it said on the webpage... Ohhh my God, yes family friendly indeed like a charter or Finland boat ( if you have been you know what I mean) Buffet, play-rooms with ball pool, bouncy castle and also swimming pool. Euphoria for kids! And nightmare for me ( I am sure many adults loves this kind of set up also me not included though..) I made an illustration on the theme... Clearly different emotions for a ball pool... I can't help myself thin...

As I have not been blogging for some time I have not had the chance to go through my humble 2018 New Year wishes in text - so now having already past half of the year let me do a revision of my wishes. - A constant wish for good health and happiness not only for this year but years to follow... - Having fun with my team on our new adventure and challenges - when I made this illustration I knew that later this year we would move again and this time to Germany although I hadn't shared it with that many people around me. Of course mixed feeling leaving our newly bought home in Örebro after only a year, but the experience of one more adventure abroad before kids are ready for school and we want to stay longterm in one place weighed up. Today I am sitting in Düsseldorf and it has been little bit more then a week here and from experience it does take some time to adjust. We have a great house, area and plans for our stay here. I know that it will be good and the feeling of belongin...

I am back writing in the blog... And Team Nikolovski are away on new adventures again as we just moved to Dusseldorf in Germany from Sweden. I have updated "This is team Nikolovski" a short introduction of who are and what we do. Cecilia Book Nikolovski  is me and together with my husband Loren Nikolovski, Mila 5 years old and Filip 3 years old we are  Team Nikolovski . This might sound like a small team but be sure it is a strong team! We are a mix of European northern and southern spices with me from Sweden and Loren from Macedonia & Mila born in Prague & Filip born in Örebro.  Beautiful  Prague  was our home-ground for three years 2011-2014. Working for Swedish international company and enjoying great network of other internationals/expats in Prague. After Prague we moved to  Moscow  a huge city with a wide mix between the past and the modern Russia with a population of 12 millon people. We lived in an apartment down-town, Shabolovka wi...