Sunday, February 28, 2010

Ron Mueck

Today we've visited an exhibition of Ron Mueck here in Melbourne, and I can only say it was astonishing!
You might have never heard of him. I didn't, till about a year ago when I spotted a book about this artist. His work is just amazing!
Ron Mueck is an Australian hyperrealist sculptor working in the United Kingdom. Mueck's sculptures faithfully reproduce the minute detail of the human body, but play with scale to produce disconcertingly jarring visual images.
Here's a little impression. You will be amazed....

Saturday, February 27, 2010

And the winner is...

Thank you all for your nice comments! 40 responses, wow that's amazing! Unfortunately I can only pick one winner and in this case that's Judith from 'Made by Juultje' (a very nice blog by the way)!
Just email me your address Judith (moncherry@live.com.au) and I'll send it soon!
It has been very motivating to receive all your comments ladies! Thank you so much!

Friday, February 26, 2010

Groovy Plant Bags!

Are you running out of nice pots for your plants? ...No worries, it's really easy to make a few yourself from Oil Cloth. Here's two examples....

Have a great weekend and don't forget today is the last change to leave a comment for my blog give away!

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Just a few bags...



And to all of you that are curious if I already made a decision with regard to buying a new sewing/embroidery machine..... Yes I did! I will buy the Brother NS30. And also I'm buying an embroidery machine (Yay!!!). I think I'll wait for the new model of the Brother to come out here in Australia (one that takes a USB stick). Hopefully in April... fingers crossed!
For all of you that helped me answering my questions and giving me suggestions.... Thank you so much! You have been such great help to me. Nochmals vielen dank!!!

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Yuck!

Here's a funny story!

Living in Australia means living in a country with a few of the worlds most deadly animals. We often get asked if we are never scared as we go camping a lot. Till recently I hardly ever got scared. That's not because I'm very brave, but we hardly came in contact with any nasty bastards. We've seen a few spiders that made us feel a bit uncomfortable at camp spots. Even a snake crossed our path ones our twice. But we never felt threatened so far.

This was all before my panic attack. Hehe, and this is were I completely freaked out!

In Tasmania Sander and I wanted to go for a short walk to a waterfall. On the sign at the beginning of the walk we read the usual information about the highlights and the flora and fauna along the walk. All fine, till Sander read out loud; 'during moist weather, leeches may occur'. 'LEECHES'!!! I yelled... 'I'm not coming'! Ow, I hate leeches, ticks and everything else that likes digging holes in my skin! No way I was coming along.
But I could see Sander was a bit disappointed. And hey, there were other people coming back from the walk and they looked perfectly fine.
So I changed my shorts for a pair of jeans and my flip flops for my hiking boots. Ready to go (kind of...I guess).

It was a nice walk and I could hear we were getting close to the waterfall when Sander stopped to have a closer look at the little creek we were crossing. I waited patiently until....there it was!!! On my jeans, halfway up my leg I came eye in eye (well eye in non-existing eye) with my biggest fear.... 'LEECHES!!!' I screamed.
I flicked my finger to get the horrible, creepy creature of my leg and that's when it got stuck on my finger. 'IIIEEEE!! all I could see was that slimy worm hanging on to my finger whilst I was jumping and screaming, and smashing my arm up and down.
I think it didn't manage to hang on any longer ten a split second, but I couldn't stop jumping and screaming. Yuck!
Sander managed to calm me down for (I think) half a minute. That was the moment that I bend down to check my legs underneath my jeans. Guess what... an even bigger leech was making its way up my leg to find itself a good spot to settle down. This is were I completely freaked out! I managed to smack the filty bastard of my leg and I ran for my life! I ran, and ran and ran, meanwhile crying like a lunatic. I could hear Sander behind me 'Monique, calm down, wait a second...' But there was no way I was stopping.
Running like a Tasmanian devil and squeaking like an hyena I managed to reach the park spot were I forced Sander to check every inch of my legs, my trousers, and all my other clothes.
Afterwards I'm very glad we had the park spot to ourselves. Imagine what we looked like. Me in my undies, jeans on my heels, crying like crazy and Sander on his knees checking my legs. Hilarious!!!

Anyway, I guess I'm not really afraid (yet) of 'deadly' animals but there are definitely animals that scare me...hehe. I'm just hoping it won't affect me to much on future walks!

Something completely different now. I have been asked to make a name plaque again. Sanders cousin and his wife got a (apparently very cute and roguish) little boy called Ties (Yep, just like my nephew).
So I chose to make a name plaque for little Ties with a Dutch theme, and this is what I came up with! Sanders parents brought the present from Melbourne to The Netherlands themselves!


Congratulations from Sander and me!

Monday, February 22, 2010

Give Away!

I mentioned that I was thinking of a blog 'give away' just like my sister (http://www.uttemetut.blogspot.com/). Everybody who knows us can confirm that we love giving presents. We send each other a lot of little goodies monthly. But just like her I like to share some nice crafting goodies with one of you for a change!

All you have to do is leave me a comment and you could be the lucky winner of this lot:

Paper roses stickers, Sunny fabrics (50x50cm), 30 cute buttons, a fold out strawberry shopping bag/key hanger (sorry, I didn't make it myself, just think it's cute!) and some inspiring ribbons (1 metres)!

You can leave a comment till Friday 26th of February. I'll let you know who the lucky winner is on Saturday the 27th. I don't mind sending to where ever you life on this planet!

Oh and I just discovered Michaja from ma vie a Salon is having a give away as well. Great French magazines to win and a lovely blog to follow!

Sunday, February 21, 2010

A great idea!

This is an idea I spotted in an Australian magazine called 'Real Living'.
Pay attention mummies who don't know what to do anymore with all the beautiful drawings and paintings of your kids. You can't hang them all on your fridge or wall. But don't you think this is a great idea?!
Just collect some empty glass jars. Cut the drawings in the right size. Pop them in the jar and decorate with a ribbon or string and you can display the artworks on a shelf or table!
Or you tie a (metal) wire around the jars and hang them on a string or branch.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Pretty Pencil Cases

My sister asked me to make a pencil case for her oldest daughter Janne.
She's a very crafty girlie girl. Loves princesses, pink and glitter.
Well, thank you sis...I got so inspired that I made 5 cases in one afternoon!
And I probably will make more soon.
They make great presents!






And don't forget to have a look on my sisters blog http://www.uttemetut.blogspot.com/. She's having a 'blog giveaway'. And who knows, I might follow her example soon, to celebrate the fact that I have over 50 followers. So exciting! Thank you all. To be continued.....

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Bitterballen!

For some time now I was in the urgent need for a greasy snack. But not just a snack snack. No...it had to be 'bitterballen'! This is a snack that you can buy on every corner of the street in The Netherlands, but is nowhere to be found in Melbourne.

Well, that meant that I had to make them myself.
And believe me...I'm not that handy in a kitchen as I am with crafts. But I gave it a go.....

...chopping the ingredients...

...making beef stock with some veggies. Then making a roux.
And let it cool in the fridge for a while.
Rolling little balls of roux trough eggs and breadcrumbs and let them cool again.

And the last step is to fry them in a lot of oil. Tadaaa!
This is what mine looked like.

Alright, they don't look as nice and round as the ones beneath here. And they were a bit big. And I did use a bit to much Bouquet Garni.....
But it satisfied my needs.

As always after eating snack food I now feel like a giant elephant though...


No more jamming!

We have some small maintenance jobs going on in our home. This means that we have 'strange' man popping in and out of our house the last couple of days. Off course it's all for a good purpose. The lock of the balcony doors got fixed, which saves me half an hour daily jamming and banging like a lunatic. We can finally unwind the bedroom window again...fresh air!!! Our very, very old smoke detector got diagnosed with Alzheimer and can finally retire. And hopefully somewhere next week the oven door will be fixed and it will no longer suddenly drop open (and scare the 'beep' out of me) every time I turn my back!

In between answering the doorbell, opening the door, offering something to drink and having a polite chat, I managed to make this bird painting.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

New look!

My blog just needed a 'new look'. This is the sketch I drew for my 'header'.
And as you can see above...it looks pretty nice. Simple but nice.
What do you think?

During my absence I received a blog award from Michaja
Have a look on her blog. She's a very creative mummy living in France. Who wouldn't like to life in France?!
Thank you for your award.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Tassie...

No man needs a vacation so much as the person who has just had one.
~Elbert Hubbard
I think this sounds familiar to everybody struggling through the pile of laundry and sorting the stuff from a few weeks of summer vacation. ....And we don't even have kids!!!

But Tasmania has been great! What an amazing country.
Gorgeous beaches, magical forests and lovely country towns.
I hope this tiny photo impression shows a bit what variety Tassie has to offer!