Secret Santa wants to know...

... what is something unique and awesome about you ...

I try to be fluffy all the time.

I have a 6th sense.

I'm a positive thinker.

I am told that I'm really funny...

I am really mundane.I always know how to get somewhere, even if I've never been there before.

I can make things out of nothing
Look at what is made with all the things below.

I can listenI can make things happen when I really want to.I was diagnosed with leukemia at 16 and had a bone marrow transplant at the time.
My sister was the donor and it was a perfect matc, luckily.
It's been almost 10 years since that time, and I feel very lucky to be here.

I speak with cats.

I smile a lot.

I live in a fairytale.

I can speak 5 languages.

I'm very patient.

I'm very tall.

I'm just perfect... :)

I do 10 things at one time.

I make the best pasta sauce ever...

I can raise one eyebrow.

I look and feel much younger as I am biologically

I'm fast...

All images found via Flickr or Google pictures

Secret Santa is a game played by the European Streetteam on Etsy. The idea behind the Secret Santa is that you make something for a teammember and also receive a gift yourself.
Since I try to organise the game for our team, I get a lovely reward: reading all the questionnaires and knowing all the teammember's secrets! :)
What I also know is that lots of people of the team would like to read them all too... That's why I share part of the answers on the questions in my blog. And even though it's anonymous, it's still fun to read what other people wrote... Hope you enjoyed to have a peek in our team.

My creative space

The kiln is firing away, finally. It took me ages to fill it up. Somehow I'm running behind on everything lately. Am I still in holiday mode? So much to catch up on but I'm procrastinating too much I'm afraid. I got some feedback on the secret project from my partner and today I'll work on that.
I'm also working on something new and cute, dangerous combination, for the holiday season. I have a sample in the kiln at the moment so I can't wait to see how it comes out! :)

Want to show your creative space? Hop over to Kootoyoo's to play! It's fun! :)

The secret project... work in progress

With Halloween around the corner, we thought it was a good idea to show you some fangs...

In the mean time, I have sent out all the samples out to my secret partner. She has been going through them and over the next few weeks will try out to combine her things with my things.
Not all of the samples I showed in my blog will be used as some were too fragile and arrived broken. But hey, they were fun to make! We will choose whatever will work best for both of us as that keeps it fun!

To know the idea behind the secret project, go read the first blogpost here or click on the label 'the secret project' to see all the posts about it.
Can't wait to receive your guesses but think about it carefully 'cause you can only guess once! :)
You can send your guess to mitsy@artmind.eu and can not change your guess so think about it carefully...

Flickr Favorites

1. Aggregate | 10.25.09, 2. smooth., 3. Untitled, 4. leftovers

If you know me a little bit, you know I'm in love with round and smooth shapes. But even though the paper-maché bowls are not really smooth, I'm deeply in love with them because of their simplicity. The slightly rough edge makes it so vulnerable.
Pretty papers make me kind of weak too - love to look & touch paper so when I saw that leftover picture, I was ready to eat it! :)
And while you're at it, you have to check out the photostream of Wild Goose. The leftovers picture above is just one of the many amazing images in her stream.

Please do check out my favorite mosaic from last week!

If you like to play this week, make your mosaic and add a link to your blogpost (NOT your blog please) or Flickr in Mister Linky (click on the button below and fill in your name with the link to your blogpost or Flickr picture).
I'll pop over to have a look at yours. Can't wait to see your creations and find new favorites! :)

Portugal Pictures

It took me some time to post some pictures of Portugal in my blog. Just been superduper busy the past week. Didn't take that many pictures either but here are some impressions...

Aveiro

Pottery shopping

Having coffee & pastry in Nariz under a clear blue sky.

The trainstation in Aveiro.

This picture is a bit blurry but I wanted to show you anyway.
We had a very fun evening playing with PlayDoh and the kids were
somehow inspired by Babuschka's... could it be my bad influence? :)

Kerrin's beautiful kiddies:
Gabriel

Inês

Simone

Oops, my beautiful new bag made by Heli got pooped on.
Right on the head of 'cute' *sigh* made for some good laughs though
and apparently it brings luck so I didn't mind too much...

Porto

Spend a little time jumping the waves on the beach.
Oops, everyone had soaking wet pants & dresses.
But it was so much fun! Loved it!

Loved spending time with Kerrin, her super duper sweet kiddies and meeting Nanouke. It was also a bit sad as Kerrin is relocating to New Zealand tommorrow, there was a lot of saying goodbye involved while being in Portugal. Never fun to say goodbye!
For us it wasn't too hard as we both knew we would only be a convo away...

How to make a crumble?

This has got to be one of my favorite desserts! My family loves it too and we mainly all have birthday's in fall/winter so when we have a little dinnerparty I am usually asked to make a crumble. With all these ingredients, this just makes for a lovely fall dessert!

Here is what you need:

apples, pears, raisins (golden & brown), dried apricots,
walnuts, almond slices, 75g sugar, 75g butter, 75g flour, baking dish
(the original recipe also adds grapes and dried prunes but
I didn't have 'em when I made this)
You can converse the metric here.

Poor some hot water over the raisins and let them
sit in the water for a while so that they can get soft.
Peel the apples and pears and chop 'em up in small pieces.
Put them in a baking dish.

Squeeze the water out of the raisins and put them on top of the apples/pears.

Cut the dried apricots in little pieces and add them to the dish.

Chop up some walnuts and add 80% of them to the dish and put 20% in bowl.

Chop up some almonds and add 80% of them to the dish and put 20% in bowl.

This is how it should look.

Mix all the fruit & nuts in the baking dish with a spoon.

Add the sugar to the chopped up nuts/almonds.

Add the flour to the chopped up nuts/almonds.

Add the melted butter to the chopped up nuts/almonds.

Mix it all up with a spoon or your hands. It should crumble a bit.
If it's too sticky, add a bit of flour until you can crumble the dough.

Crumble the dough over the dish with mixed up fruit.

It should look like this:

Put the crumble in a preheated oven for 40 à 45 minutes at 180°C.

Serve hot with icecream on the side.

D E L I C I O U S