Weekly update 7/52 School-break for Karneval

February means ski-break for most of the students and schools in Europe but not for the Germans school or at least not here in Düsseldorf, Nordrhein-Westfalen (here instead schools have two weeks off for Easter and two for Autumn-break)
But we do have a couple of February days off to celebrate Karneval.
Karneval is a big deal! I have lived here for five years but still karneval is something special to experience and impressive to see how germans old and young likes dressing up to this level.
This year we did the Rosen Montag Karnevalzug in Wittlaer instead of the big parade down-town.

And instead of doing Karneval all weekend - me and the kids had planned a trip with friends to Lille in France. We left on Friday which was a day off and it is cool to live here in the heart of Europe and in 3 hours drive through 4 countries, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium and France.
Lille was very cute french town and we do have a soft spot for cute French towns so this fitted us perfect. We enjoyed croissants for breakfast, cheese shop, walking through the beautiful city center and kids had a lot of fun in a small amusement park and zoo. We had a great time and Filip has already planned next trip there for May.

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Weekly Update 24/52 Making leaving gifts and wine ladies

During week 24 I have been working on preparing thank you gifts for kids teachers and friends. I like to give something symbolic which also can be useful. This year I decided to buy water bottles for the teachers and to make them personalized writing their name and some flowers on them. I bought plain smaller bottles at IKEA. With my Cricut i designed and cut it out of permanent vinyl. With adding vinyl on the bottles, they can only be hand-washed otherwise the vinyl will come off. After five years in Germany I have gotten so use to saying Frau Janssen rather then using her first name. So I decided that I will use the last name because that is the only name the kids use. Funny how you get use to something that I from the beginning thought was so stupid and old fashion. When I was playing around with my Cricut I also figured out how to transfer my wine ladies into svg file which is needed so the machine can cut out my illustrations. I did a test with iron on transfer vinyl. I made the

Weekly update 23/52 Düsseldorf Art journals, Tonhalle and pool season

End of May beginning of June this wonderful time of the year and it is starting to be more and more emotional and real that we soon will be packing up and leaving. After this very cold spring it is nice to finally warm up and that the pool season has started. Here in Wittlaer Düsseldorf we have a local pool in Kaiserwerth Freibad Flossenweg where we go to swim. On a normal school day in the afternoon it is not too bad with people but on a hot hot weekend it is very crowded. It is kind of funny living in a place where you meet parents from school and neighbors first fully dressed and then undressed in the pool. One amazing experience was seeing Düsseldorf Tonhalle from inside where Mila and her school together with four other schools in Düsseldorf had a Sing Pause concert. It was magical to hear them all sing in this old planetarium which has been changed into a concert hall. My Creative work has been focusing on personalizing Art journals. I bought plain brown paper art journals to t

Weekly update 40/52 Autumn colors and cinnamon buns

Welcome October the most colorful month of the year. Yes we are going full steam towards the darker and colder part of the year, but I have to admit it is cosy and pretty with all the colorful leaves. I don't know if it is a new thing to have theme days where a dish or something is being celebrated. I am guessing it is a capitalistic marketing great idea so companies can make more money like Valentine day. One of those days in Sweden is 4 of October when our national bakery Cinnamon bun is being honored. I got inspired! Some time ago I bought nice linnen tea-towels which I was planning to make some print/design on and when I got inspired by cinnamon bun I knew exactly what to make. I started scribbling and drawing buns on a big sheet. When I had one or two which I thought looked ok I transfered my bun drawing to my Cricut and had it cut out on iron-on vinyl. My mum is a master in baking buns and so I made a tea-towel/baking-towel in honor of not only cinnamon buns but of my mother

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