I thought I try explain where in Düsseldorf we live. Düsseldorf is the second largest city in the  federal state North Rhein-Westphalia after Cologne ( Köln) And Sevenths largest city in Germany.  With around 600 000 inhabitants. The city lies mainly on the east side of river Rhine. (Rhine begins in the southeast Swiss Alps and flows through the German Rhineland and ends out in the North sea from Nederlands.) Düsseldorf is close to Duisburg, Dortmund, Essen, Wuppertal, Cologne and also Venlo in Nederlands.  The city is divided in to 10 districts and we live in district 5 which is up north close to the 8 on the map below.  We live in Wittlaer a very cute and pretty fancy suburban area which is more like a village that have most things. It has shops, banks, pharmacy, a few restaurants, school, kinder-garten etc but also very much a feeling of that you are in the country-side. I often walk down to the river bank of Rhine and a lot of beautiful walking and bikin...

This is Mila 6 year old illustration I made for her birthday invitations this year or actually last year as she is born in December. We left for Christmas break in Sweden early December and mid November I realized that we should organize a birthday party here with her new friends in Germany. She has managed well in only four month that we have been living in Düsseldorf to find good friends to play with and feel more and more comfortable with. Other half Swedish kids living here that I have found from a Swedes in Düsseldorf page on Facebook and also a friends from Kita.  Also I have realized with all my movings that pretty soon you belong in the new environment more in away then the place and the environment you just left. Close friends will always or hopefully be there but the everyday social circle is in the new place and no longer in the old place.  She really wanted her party in one of those big indoor playgrounds. I know they are a lot of fun but no not this ...

I always have one or two sketchbooks ongoing that I am drawing and writing in. Sometimes one in one format and one in an other format. But I can't have more then two books as I want to have a chronological order in my sketchbooks. These sketchbooks I am mainly using to draw memories from my life and Team Nikolovski´s adventures like I have always done and what this blog is based on. I also like the process of creating the illustrations and then write a short text here on the blog explaining the picture. Lately (a couple of years maybe more) I have not managed to update here that much. Why? Well that is a good question. 1. First of all I would say Instagram as it is a forum which is quicker to publish - but there I am only writing a shorter text to the pictures as my idea has always been to keep the stories here but then not got around to write more here as it feels like I have already used the picture...  2. An other thing is that I have been writing more and more in Swe...

Happy new year 2019 ! Always exciting to welcome a new year and look forward to all what the new year has to offer, bring and what to make of the new year. Team Nikolovski are very happy to leave colds and ear-infections behind and to look forward and wish for health and happiness in the new year. We have just got back to Düsseldorf from a long christmas break in Sweden. This illustration is the family portrait I made for our christmas cards which I actually managed to send to some of our friends and family around the globe. 

 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...