Look who I found in my garden today :-)

Do you know him?








It's "My neighbour Totoro" - one of my favourite figures of the Studio Ghibli films. He's so cute and calm and slow and cozy...
So I decided to make a Totoro music box for the baby. Who wouldn't be calm and balanced with a music box like that? :-)

I ordered a special baby music box - one that you can wash (The melody is "Somewhere over the rainbow" by the way). And then I made the stuffed Totoro all around it.

It took me some weals on my fingers and a lot of time, but I'm really proud of the result. I could keep cuddling him all the time :-)

Here are some more pics. For the last ones I turned him around, so you can see his back, too.

Advent's here!

Hey there!

Today started the advent season. It's a wonderful time in Germany. Everywhere you can see the christmas lights, folks are baking christmas cookies with many different spices, there are christmas markets with spiced hot wine and everyone is decorating his home.
Traditionally we arrange an advent wreath with four candles on it - for each advent sunday one. But lately there are many variations of it.

Below you'll see some of my advent decorations. I tried to keep it natural and simple this year. I hope you like it.

But before I wanna show you a pincushion that I made for my niece yesterday. She turned eight and got a kids sewing machine from her grandma, so I made a sewing accessories package for her and the pincushion was a part of it.




And here are the advent decorations:

Do you remember...

... the basket with the knitted squares?






All summer long I was knitting and knitting not sure if I would ever finish the baby blanket. I must admit that I´m not the greatest knitter and so the patchwork pieces became very irregular at the edges. This made it really hard for me to sew the squares together because I got ugly uneven seams.

... So... what was I supposed to do?

Well... I asked my mummy for help :-)
... and although she swore a little while she was sewing (Literally she said: " If it wasn´t for the love you made the squares with I would throw it all away!" :-) ) she finally did it ! Yeay!
And after sewing she made a nice crocheted border.

Here´s the result. I would say it was totally worth the effort.
And there is a first baby blanket fan, too. :-)

Making a Baby mobile !

Maybe you were wondering what I've been up to... ? Well, I was sewing little animals and plants for the baby room. I wanna make some baby mobiles and wanted to have some figures done before I show you. So, here are the first ones. I hope to make some more and show you the completed mobiles when they're finished. I have no idea how many of them I'll make but I think at least two or three... maybe I make some garland, too. We'll see.

Here are the little fellows :-) Hope you like them.

Hmmmm...... Yummy!

Today I transformed our kitchen in a temporary bakery and made some cookies for my birthday coffee party.

The pistachio-cookies are fun and have a nice look (oh boy... even my cookies are green!), but I have to say that the taste is a little disappointing - it tastes only sweet... what a pitty with all the pistachios in it. Next time I have to pimp the recipe ... hmm... perhaps with some liquor :-) ... ok... some spice will also do.




After that I made some shortbread. Im my opinion shortbread is always great - for breakfast, at tea-time, after dinner... I love it. (The recipe is from Martha Stewart again - you´ll find the recipe link in an older post - I think it was in april)






Tomorrow I will bake some peanut-butter-cupcakes and a damson-plum-cake. I hope to have some time soon to post the recipes so you can try these delicious treats yourself.

Birthday invitation printing

Hey there again!

Yesterday I spend the afternoon printing some birthday invitations. Next week I'll throw a little coffee party and therefore I wanted to make some personal cards. For the design I carved two different rubber stamps: a positive and a negative one. Like this I could print different fronts and backs that match perfectly. Do you like the result?

Maternity Project #5

After the pillow cover for my friend's nursing pillow I started my own.
First I made the cushion and filled it with styrofoam pearls . After that I sewed the cover.
This time I have no catastrophes to tell you about. Everything went quite well. But I made such a mess filling the cushion with the pearls. I should have thought a little longer before starting. Learning by doing meant in this case to spread the pearls all over the floor. :-)