Happy Holidays!

My holiday has begun...Yay!

We will be on our way to Sydney tomorrow and spend a few days in this beautifull city.

Then we will slowly make our way back to Melbourne.

But we will go back to basics first and enjoy some (hopefully) magnificent camping along the coast.

I wish you all Happy Holidays and a sparkling New Year!

I will be back in January....

Finished!

This is the last Christmas present that I finished this week.

It's a little crochet cosy for a friend.

...and another one!

I finished another bag tonight! I probably will be making more as last minute Christmas presents this week...

Sunday Sewing!

I wanted to sew something easy today. I found the pattern for these

little bags in one of the Tilda books.

So simple and easy. Great for your make up or as a travel sewing kit.
And as they say here in Australia:

'They make great pressies for Chrissie!'

Uttemetut

Yahoo... my sister started her own blog as well!

Have a look on http://uttemetut.blogspot.com/!
She already has her first follower...Me! Or should I say stalker (I might be a bit over-enthusiastic!)

Good luck Sis!

Work in progress: finished!!!

I finished the name plaques that I was working on!

I love to make a customized product. The theme for these name plaques was 'Australia'. And this is what I came up with!

One of the name plaques is going to the UK and the other one to Hong Kong. How exciting!

Mon Cherry is going International...hehe!

Have a great weekend!

Ten things about me...

I received an 'honest blog award' from Sue from I Purr-Furr to Craft. I'm very honored.
Now that means that I have to tell you 10 random things about myself. Oh dear.... here we go:

1. I am addicted to Nivea hand creme.


2. I love Sushi and that's probably one of the main reasons that I love living in Melbourne so much. It's Sushi paradise!


3. I have a Dutch mom and a German dad (I miss you both)


4. Okay...this is probably the most embarrassing one..... I'm afraid of thunder!!! If I'm home alone I actually hide myself under a blanket with my Ipod till it's over....hehehe.


5. My plan for next year is to do more sports. Not difficult as I'm not doing anything at the moment.


6. I actually studied Social Work but I have not been working in that field for several years now.


7. Me and my sister (and occasionally some girlfriends) have watched 'Dirty Dancing' more then 40 times together.


8. I'm going to buy myself a new sewing machine soon and any advice on what brand and type of machine is welcome!


9. Like most women I have a shoe addiction. But the funny thing is that I never wore high heels until I was 28!


10. And number 10 brings me back to this award that I received. I'm supposed to forward it to ten other bloggers that I think deserve this award. And if I'm completely honest I don't like doing this. Not that I can't think of any honest bloggers. There are so many lovely blogs out there. This whole award thing is just not my cup of tea. Nice comments or a new follower make me just as happy! And that's enough for me.

And therefor I want to thank two ladies especially. And that would be Sue from I Purr-Furr to Craft who send me this award and Anna from http://annarosadesigns.blogspot.com/ who became my first follower. Both very creative ladies themselves! Just wanted to thank you for receiving all those nice comments from both of you since I started a few months ago. Thank you so much!

Work in progress part 2

I'm still working on the name plaques. I finished the borring part (sawing).

Now let the decorating begin! Yay!

Frog on my blog!

After a weekend full of parties (a High Tea Party and a Venetian Ball! How Cinderella-ish is that!)

it's now back to reality. Tomorrow family from the Netherlands arrives...yay!

We are looking forward to that but unfortunately it means that you will not find me at my blog a lot in the next few days. So sorry for that! For now I will leave you with two of my frogy paintings.

For some strange reason I love painting frogs?!?!

I'll be back in a few days!

Work in progress

I don't like to show crafty things that I'm working on. What I mean by that is that I don't want others to see my ideas until I'm finished with them. Even when I was a little girl I hated it when teachers or family looked over my shoulder and tried to catch a glimpse of my creative activities.

I think it must definitely have something to do with me being a perfectionist. Good is never good enough for me when it comes to crafting.

Does this sound recognisable or is it just me being silly?

Anyway.... I decided to give you a little sneak preview this time. It's just two sketches for two customized name plaques. The theme is Australia as you can see...

I'll keep you updated on my progress.

Soooooo busy!

No, our computer still works, so does Internet, I have not been ill and I have not been on a relaxing holiday! It's just the time of the year that I'm sooooooo busy and I don't find the time to update my blog.

At some point this week I thought that it might be a good idea to ring my parents back home to insure them that everything is still alright and we're still up and running! I managed to drag myself out of bed early one of these mornings to ring them.

It was 10.30 pm in the Netherlands and not a common time for me to call them.

So the first thing my mum asked when she picked up...'Oh Monique, what a surprise, what is the good news!?!?!!!!'

(And we all know what mums wanna hear when they ask this question!!!. But unfortunately for her...)

'....Ehm, NO mum, I'm not pregnant and NO, we are not getting married... I just have a spare minute, that's it..!'

Anyway, no time to craft either. Therefor I thought I'll show you a few of the very nice Christmas decorations I bought in our shop the other day.

Simple but gorgeous!

Oh wow, look at this little skirt. I love it!
My sister bought a new sewing machine a few weeks ago. Now she is taking some sewing lessons. Looks like she is getting the hang of it because she made this cute skirt for her oldest daughter. The grey fabric is actually an old trouser from our granddad!

Love the embellishment!

Can I order one as well sis?!

Then there was light!

I bought a simple table light at IKEA and painted Jip and Janneke

(famous from Dutch children books) on it with black acrylic paint. This is the result...

And this is what it looks like with the light on!

Getting comfy on the sofa...

I noticed that crochet is actually relaxing for me. Life is busy at the moment and when I come home at night I just don't feel like getting crafty. But it's so nice to get comfy on the sofa and crochet away.

And that's what I've been doing the last couple of nights. Being me I just can't be bothered to figure out a crochet book and its (sometimes) unreadable instructions. So what I do is just experiment myself. And I'm getting there with my own designs.....

....look at the little strawberry and the cute Babushka doll!

Just a funny painting!

Little rascal!

I heard my little nephew feels really neglected by his aunty.

She posts all these pictures of her nieces on the blog, but there is non of him.

Oh no... and he is such a cute, little rascal!

This is Ties last year during a cold Dutch winter.

Cute!

Santa is coming to town...

The shape of this doll is based on the 'angel' dolls from the Tilda books.

But as you can see I gave this one my own twist and turned it into a funny, little Santa.

I even sewed him some tiny, leather boots!

It's a bugs life...

During one of our camp trips we came across this colorful
little creature.

Mon Crochet!

I think I mentioned before that I have participated a crochet workshop with a friend. And we are both literally hooked since then. Although the workshop has been a few weeks ago I didn't show any of my crochet attempts on my blog since then. I actually just experimented so far, doing the well known granny squares and some easy to make flowers.

But then I discovered the book' 100 flowers to knit and crochet' by Lesley Stanfield. Wow, very inspiring!

And now I can't wait to show you my first finished project (although I really should be in bed right now)....

...but here it is....A Mon Cherry Key Hanger!!!!

Goodnight!

The 'Silly Season' is coming!

I have been making some Christmas decorations.

Yep, the 'Silly Season' is coming and I love it!

I cut the shapes out of Fimo Clay with a bit of help from my cookie cutters.

The relief in the clay is made with stamps.

Happy Patchwork Painting

This happy little patchwork is painted on a canvas.

It was not an easy job.

I had to keep taping around the single squares to decorate them separately without ruining the others.

But I'm very pleased with the result!

We love Aprons!

I made my nieces these little Oil Cloth Aprons

(great for painting and baking by the way).

Apparently they love them and refuse to take them off ever since they arrived.

And they shouldn't I think....they look so cute!

Meet My Craft Room!

You must be wondering what I have been up to lately, as I haven't been around much! Sorry for that, but I haven't been crafting much lately. Fact is that all my spare time goes into 'The Big Spring Cleaning' at the moment.

I just finished reorganizing and cleaning my entire craft room. (Yes I have a whole room to myself...lucky me!!!)

Meet my craft room.....