The Easter Bunny's most sinful pleasure...

This is the third part of the series of questions I asked the European Streetteam Participants on the Secret Easter Bunny swap.
The question this time was: what is your most sinful pleasure?

This is the top 3:

1. Chocolate/ chocolate mousse / Double chocolate cake
2. shopping / buying too much clothing / expensive handbags / buying online
3. eating candy/ sweets / cookies and cream ice cream

Followed by:

• sleep until noon / just reading deco magazines, newspapers, a book, a movie and nothing else on Sundays/ lazy days / eating a big bag of crisps while surfing the net and not doing anything useful all day
• rich and wonderful food
  good alcohol
  red wine
  Eating more than I need
  Coca Cola
  drinking bubbles during daytime ;-)
  champagne
  Drinking a cold beer in the summer by the beach.

Some people questioned the question:

• Why pleasure is sinful?
• I never feel guilty or sinful about anything that gives me pleasure!
  

Some people have funny sinful pleasures - at least, they made me smile:

chick magazines

Sauna

I love raw meat - Boef á la Tartar

creeping into abandoned houses and photographing them

reading books about UFO's

not to be on a diet

I'm dull!

I have been tagged by CabbagesandKingsArt to post 7 random facts about me. I have done that before but I found it was time for some new facts even though I think I'm pretty dull! So here we go:

1. I was an au pair in Virginia at the age of 19 and took care of 3 lovely kids. We had so much fun together. It's a bit scary to know that they are now 22, 24 and 26. I'm getting old.
2. I eat my French fries with mayonaise, that's because I'm Belgian.
3. Ever since I have traveled to Spain, I wished I could dance Flamenco. I love the music, the passion and the vibes of Flamenco.
   
4. I’m really good at parallel parking. It’s not unusual for me to pass up a big parking spot for a smaller more challenging one.
5. I love wearing three-quarter length sleeve T-shirts.
6. I really enjoy quiet.
7. I'm a perfectionist learning to be less perfectionist. It's a difficult process.
   
   

If you like to share your random facts or habits, feel free to consider yourself tagged! Let me know in my comments and I'll hop over to your blog to read them.

Treasure on the attic

When I bought the house we live in, the people who sold it did not want to have anything that was still in the house. For a starter, that was some pretty good news for me as I didn't have to buy lots of things that involve 'dressing' a house. Even though it was not always what I would have chosen myself, I was happy that I didn't have to buy it all at once.
But the consequence of buying the house with everything in it was that there was still a lot of stuff I did not need or want so that went to the thriftstore. Some of it looked interesting and I put it in a box on the attic. The other day, I was clearing some room on one of my cupboard shelves to put more feelings to dry. Lots of things needed to go to the attic. There I found the box I put all the interesting stuff in when I moved in. Look what I found:I'll be using this set to number my feelings! I have been wanting to buy one of those for ages so now I only need the alphabet! YaY! :)

Work in progress

Favorite mini-feeling

Since I'm producing mini-feelings at the moment, I was wondering what your favorite mini-feeling is, that is if you have a favorite one of course.
So please, do me a favor and drop the name of the feeling you like most in the comments. Don't cheat, you can only pick one! :)
Click on one of the pictures below, that will bring you to the set '99 feelings' on Flickr so you can choose your favorite one!
That way I have some sort of clue what people like & it will help me to decide which ones to make first. :)
Next week around this time, I'll let the randomizer pick a comment and that person will receive a happy package from me! :)

Did you know that I have something with numbers?
I took a screenshot of the 999 views on my 99 feelings-set on Flickr! :)

Ravelry

When I started crocheting, I also signed up at Ravelry. This is a crochet and knitting community and it's a great source of inspiration. Up until now, I only browsed around for some patterns, didn't even get involved much and I'm already lost and addicted. Nowadays it seems that the crochet hook has become one of my vital bodyparts. Anyway, I found this lovely lariat pattern by creativeyarn. It seemed like a project I could handle as the stitches weren't difficult. Actually, by now I have learned all the basic abbreviations and when I don't know one, I contact my crochet teacher Tara from Mamachee & she's always willing to tell me how to do it! :)

What the Secret Easter Bunny wants to do before she dies...

This is the second part of the series of questions I asked the European Streetteam Participants on the Secret Easter Bunny swap.
Have you ever thought about what you still really want to do before you die?
One person had a very clever answer to that as she said:
'I don't postpone... so there are not so many things that wait for being done'
Perhaps we need to follow these very wise words...

Most of them seemed to have dreams to travel...

• visit all over Europe
• Go to Egypt
• go to Australia, New Zealand and Japan
• travel everywhere
• going to the beautiful place 'Tavira' in Portugal
• make a long trip with hubby and kids to farfar away..
• travel around the world without airplanes
• live in different places in the world
• visit at least one country in each of the five continents
• Long trip to India
• travel a lot continue travelling the world, re visiting countries i've been to that i loved, a road trip through the US .. travel travel travel travel travel ..
• make a world travel
• travel to USA
• go to Bali, Greece, Italy
• travel around the world, and live in another country where there is sunshine all year round...
• cross-America tour
• ski and visit Indonesia
• travel around the world

Some of them dream about making, having, raising a baby/children...

• have a baby
• To raise a child
• see my kids grow up happily
• lovingly raise my children

Some of them want to write/draw/publish a book...

• be a book illustrator
• write that book

Some of them dream about a house by the sea...

• live at the seaside :)
• buy a house by the sea

And here are some other answers...

• I’d like to learn more as much as I can and share it. I believe that Having, living with and spreading out useful knowledge is a way to lead me towards being a real human.
• I never tought to this...sorry...
• develop my mind/heart to become more compassionate and wise
• Live a happy life. If there is something I didn’t do before that then it wasn’t meant to be.
• Find a inner balance in myself
• Everything that I possibly can and then some more LOL! I want to be healthy and then just die from extreme old age!!!
• find time for myself,bring my etsy shop to really begin working!
• watch the aurora borealis in the sky above me
• make peace with myself
• make a living from art
• to be able to tell and show everyone I know that I love them and will do so even after I die.
• oh my, there are so many things I will do!
• to be immortal...hehe!!!

I think it's good to think about what you want to do before you die once in a while...
Life is often lived so fast and before you know it, you're growing grey hair, get wrinkles and suddenly you also start to schrink! Climb that mountain before that happens! ;)

Shop till you drop

Yesterday was a big day for me: we went to buy the kiln! :)
I had decided on the one I wanted some time ago but started to doubt the evening before we left and changed my mind completely when we saw a new model.
This is the one I'm going to get:The other pictures are from the ceramic supply shop Robbelien in Swalmen, Netherlands. It's like paradise for the crafter among us. They not only have ceramic supplies but lots of other goodies too. On the way home we also stopped in another place that also has ceramic supplies and there I bought the things that Robbelien didn't have. Want to see my loot?I think this will last me a while... although we will go back to pick up the kiln in about three weeks so I will be tempted again! :)

Oh, and if you care to see our kitchen where all these supplies are stalled out, it got featured in Star of The East's blog today. :)

Queen Anne Lace scarf

When I started to crochet, my friend Stephanie had good faith in me as she wondered if I could crochet this scarf for her that she has been wanting like forever. I looked at the pattern and tried a little swatch and it was really super easy.
Since she wanted a particular kind of yarn, she sent it to me. It arrived on tuesday and I finished the scarf on wednesday evening.
I loved making it and I hope she will love her scarf! :)If you want to make a scarf like this, please visit Khebin Gibbons' blog where she shares the great pattern! :)

When the postman rings...

... I know there is a box that doesn't fit in our mailbox!
I love it when that happens. It's like waking up to 'is it my birthday today?' :)
Anyway, a few weeks ago, I entered a blog give-away on the blog of Endless Whimsy.
A super cat lover with two very naughty but very cute cats.
Renovia has even more cats in her Etsy-shop. She has beautiful colored ones in polymer clay. She recently started using porcelain clay to make them and they are absolutely fantastic! They are superwhite and supernicely glazed. I love the one that she sent me! Thank you, Renovia! Please visit her Etsy shop for more designs.

What I found on the attic

Earlier this week, I went to the attic to get my box of samples and book of recipes I have made over the years. I loved the samples that I made in my first year of artschool. These look so organised as a sample. They are just simple engobes. They are brought onto the clay when it's almost dry but still feels a bit wet.
The other set of samples is from my last year in artschool. I made over 30 samples just to find the right glaze for my work. It took me ages but I finally found it!
It became this one. I just love the craquelé effect on it. It makes the work kind of vulnerable.If you want to see the whole work, you can visit this blogpost.

Varietist Muse Zine

A while ago, I was contacted by Cynjon Noah who had been following my work on Flickr. He wondered if I would be interested in being featured in his first varietist Muse Zine.
Here is what Cynjon Noah wrote: 'What's the idea? Basically there are a lot of people tired of seeing the same art/styles over and over again in a lot of the magazines out there....myself being one of them. To counter this monotony, and showcase a wider array of media/artists/etc, I've decided to put together a zine. What will be in it/welcome? Pretty much anything...assemblage, fabric art, street art, collage, comics, sculptural work, occasional tutorials/how-to's, artist interviews...you name it.'
So this is the first zine I'm featured in and I'm really proud as Cynjon made a little jewel out of it!
Click on the picture to see more information, to browse the first pages of the zine or to purchase it via Blurb.

Surprise gift

I made this for a happy little girl. It's a surprise and I hope she will like it.
The elephant is made from all reclaimed goods and the slippers are from the left over yarn from my first crocheted slippers ever! :)

Sand cookies

Last week around this time, I was making cookies to take to our little EST meeting the next day. As I made a small mistake, I didn't have time to blog the recipe so here goes...
This is what you need:

• 125g flour
• 80g butter
• 50g powdered sugar
• 10g vanilla sugar
• A pinch of salt
  
• 1 egg yolk (optional)
• Little bit of crystal sugar (optional)
  

Put the flour in a bowl, cut the butter in little pieces and add to the flour. Then add the powdered, vanilla sugar & a pinch of salt. Kneed it to a firm dough. It will need lots of kneeding so that it all sticks together.
Roll it, put it in plastic foil and put in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
Then unroll the dough. It needs to be plus minus a centimeter thick.
Press with cookie cutters some shapes out of the dough.
This is optional. It gives the cookies a nice brown, yummy crust but I found that it also deforms the shape of the cookies while baking.
Put the sides of the cookies into the egg yolk and then put it in the sugar.
Put all the cookies on a tray and make sure you leave enough room.
Put in a preheated oven for 15 minutes at 180 °C
Tada! :) Enjoy!

What the Secret Easter Bunny wants but will never buy for herself...

This will be the first of a series of questions I asked the European Streetteam participants of the Secret Easter bunny swap. Some of the answers were just hilarious and I want to share them with you so you can have some smiles, laughs and even chuckles! Enjoy! :) I asked the participants: 'Name something you want but will never buy for yourself' Some of them were really clever as they replied:

• not sure...like to pamper myself
• or 'oops, basically i buy if i want :)
• necklaces - because I make them myself!
• expensive things :)

Some people have a long list but didn't know what to answer at the moment of writing.
Some people have a list and are convinced they will buy it as soon as money rolls in.
Some people didn't have doubts and this is what they want: (most of these can be purchased at Etsy so click on the pictures to go to the listing!)

Expensive sunglasses

A bulldog! But I'll never pay for a dog, so many poor adorable creatures just waiting to be adopted, it's a sin to give that amount of money for a dog.

Please click on the picture for some FUN!














A cabriolet car! (I even don’t drive)
She will need a driver with that for sure... :)






















A jukebox

A short tank top & low cut trousers. I found this one on Etsy for you, don't you love it? :)



































Some day I'll book a luxurious spa/meditation retreat for myself .























An expensive ball gown.

A Porsche

Manolo Blahnik shoes

A kiln.I didn't know if it was meant to be a glass kiln or not, but this one looks like the one I'm going to get very soon! :)

A handmade shoulderbag

A ceramic mug

Very sexy underwear

IPhone

A tailoredsewn coat. Not sure if this was what you had in mind but I thought it looked pretty neat! :)

Subrosa's crocheted skirt. Don't know if you had this one in mind but I like it! :)

A piano. Very affordable at TheHouseOfMouse

Perfume. I don't think you quite mean this one, unless you want to smell like a horse! LOL :)



















A yacht.

A diamond marriage ring! :)

A beautiful necklace of Kjoo.

I love this poster! but I don't know if I will order it, I'm scared about the shipping and in what conditions it could be arrive....


































Mmm...someone does count too??? LOL...ok...George Clooney...

A printing press.

A Hermes bag or other designer bag.

A beautiful leather bag. Not sure if this is what you meant but the lock is so superunique! :)