I got a new drawing pad from my uncle for my birthday in August with high quality papers and I got inspired to really work with colors in more layers and fill the whole page with details.  Also I came up with an idea to make illustrations based on seasons and traditions. Traditions which we are celebrating for long but also new traditions which we have picked up from our different destinations where we have lived and from here in Germany.  So far I have made October - Halloween a tradition which is pretty new to us - I remember reading about Halloween with trick or treat as an American tradition in one of my first textbooks in English when I was ten years old. Here in Kaiserswerth, Düsseldorf it is celebrated big time in the international neighborhood and so we have started to dress up and join the fun. November we are celebrating St Martin here in Germany ( will write a separate post about whom that was, how we celebrate and show the illustration) December - I have so ...

Last Monday( 25 of March) was the yearly Waffle day in Sweden - not sure if it is an international waffle day, from what I can read has a special waffle day spread to other countries but not necessarily on the same day as in Sweden. In Team Nikolovski household we eat waffles now and then all year around. Sometimes and lately pretty often for breakfast or after kindergarten snack with raspberry jam and whipped cream.  A few years ago when we lived in Prague - I got a question from an international cooking magazine based in Prague, chefparade.cz, if I could prepare a Swedish Easter breakfast. Hmmm Swedish Easter breakfast more then just painted eggs and Kalles kaviar and I thought that the traditional Swedish herring and potatoes felt too much for breakfast. After some thinking I came up with waffles with typical Easter topping such as smoked salmon, shrimps, egg, red onions and sour cream. No maybe it is not something every Swede makes for Easter breakfast but i thought it was ...

Team Nikolovski is packing.  We are heading to Sweden tomorrow to celebrate Swedish midsummer We will head to Lundsätter to stay with my dad and to breath some quit forest air.  Midsummer eve ( always third Friday in June) we are heading to my mothers summer place where preparations for midsummer started half a year ago.  We are a pretty big gang and we have already received roles, responsibilities and a detailed schedule for the day. This is a summary of how our day will look like! Collect flowers for the maypole, make the maypole, Eat herring lunch & strawberry cake and sing snaps songs and drink snaps. Dance around the maypole, Midsummer Olympics with 6 different competitions, BBQ, Campfire, sauna and swim in freezing lake & at midnight hotdogs. After this we will sleep very very well I am sure!! If you want to know more about Swedish midsummer here is a fun video for dummies!!   Swedish Midsummer for Dummies    And why ...

Easter traditions vary quit a bit depending where in the world you come from. Team Nikolovski experienced a very nice Easter brunch at friends yesterday with a great mix of traditions, cultures and nationalities. Great tastes from South Africa, Romania, France, Japan, Czech, Macedonia & Sweden. A wild mix of many different flavors that normally wouldn't be combined and everything tasted divine. Swedish Janssons frestelser without company of sill and eggs but in new exciting company of a spring chicken stew, tuna cakes and sushi mix.  Thanks family Murer for arranging this great great Easter brunch ( your nice brunches by the way should change name as they tend to last way longer then for brunch, more like a lunch, snack and dinner all in one..) lets make it a tradition. I like getting an insight of other traditions and it also gets me to think more about our Swedish traditions and what part I want Mila to inherit. Swedish Easter as Easter in many other countries focus less and...

Happy Easter / Glad Påsk / Veselé Velikonce ( If you ask me how you pronounce Czech Veselé Velikonce I would tell you "your guess is as good as mine!!") I think that Easter is one of the best holidays for the simple reason that all the decoration is colorful in a nice pastel way. I have decorated the balcony with colorful eggs. In Sweden the tradition is to decorate branches with colorful feathers but I couldn't find it here in Prague and maybe better as who knows where the feathers come from and how much the poor chicken has suffered. So styrofoam eggs in different colors are perfect. I have also painted a whole bunch of ceramic eggs with focus on pastel blue, pastel green, turcois and white. I can't stop buying more and more eggs and love to try different combinations. I Send one tray as Easter present with my mother who was here last week.  In my new favorite shop, a shop full of cheap less necessary things with potential to make it cute with a lot...

I had the ambition to create a cute little gingerbread house with icing and colorful sweets as decorations. But I didn't. I as you can see above also had the ambition to at least draw one, but not even that I managed to finalize. Oh well the great thing is that the same traditions comes back next year and the year after that so lets aim for another year...