Tutorial: How to fold a flat bottom paper bag.

In order to make giftbags for my daughter's birthday I folded flat bottomed paper bags. It's very easy to do and you can make such cute bags this way.
Here's how to do it:

1.)




First, you pick cute wrapping paper, a page from a book, a newspaper, anything goes! Anything that works for you; then cut rectangles out of it, one bag requires two rectangles.
The size depends on what you want with it, mine were slightly larger than a4 size.

2.)



Put the two rectangles together, wrong sides together, then fold the sides upwards and inwards. Glue, paste or tape the sides together.

3.)







Fold upwards again and fold inwards. Making nice sharp creases.
Repeat for the other side.

4.)


Fold the bottom upwards as pictured above.

5.)


Fold open and box it. This should go automatically once you place the flap upright, open it and gently push it down. You will see two triangles forming in the corners.

6.)


fold the sides inwards covering the triangles and flattening the box.

7.)


fold the far ends inwards, overlapping each other and closing the box. Glue, or tape this closed.

8.)


et voila, your very own DIY paper bag.

Curious?

I'm collecting bits and pieces to use during the "14 days of upcycling" I wrote about.
So far, this is what I have, along with an old bedsheet of our double-bed and some other things. Come and check back the 12th to see what I'll do with these during the project.

Birthday girl

So finally, it was time for her birthday bash.
We've had a blast, it was so much fun seeing everybody and talking to everybody, the kids were playing with each other and there was plenty of cake to eat from!

The weather was nasty, but it reminded me of 2 years ago 25th of august when she was born. In the delivery room I needed a focal point and found one in the ticking of the rain on the sunroof. So I quite like the sound of rain in august. It makes a good memory.

Anyways, enough with the reminiscing.
Pictures!

There was cake, made by my darling neighbour; my daughter's favourite book!







We had give-away giftbags to hand out to the other kids as a thank you for coming.







And ofcourse we had a very happy birthday-girl who was thrilled with all the gifts she received for her playkitchen. The shopping trolley she received from her aunt was an instant success!





We've enjoyed watching our little sunshine being the centre of attention so much. I'm still floating.

Recykleren // Upcycling

At Boomie's I read about upcycling, or Recykleren as she calls it. Very clever that word, it's a contraction of recycle and the Dutch word for clothes (kleren).
Anyways, since I have loads and loads of old t-shirts, pants, curtains, you name it, sitting around here, I'm very eager to participate.

She has organised an event "14 days of upcycling" which will start on September 12th. Giveaways, contests, inspiration. It sounds promissing and I'm very curious!

I already have a few things on my mind that I want to try and make then, including some newborn gifts. Hopefully it'll all turn out like the way I've pictured it in my head.

Do come and join!

Two...

She's two. 2. Twee.

A big girl, she'd been ready to be two for a while, and now's the day.
Happy birthday babygirl, we love you loads, forever and a bit.
Sunday's her big birthday bash, today we will just celebrate with the four of us.

Window sill upgrade!

So as I posted yesterday, the window sill could do with a little jazzing up. We went to Ikea to buy some basic stuffs, shelves to go on the wall later on and plastic flowers to go in the window sill.





We re-used some old pots that were sitting around empty.



Since I'm able to kill of even plastic plants I'm not allowed anywhere near them... the boyfriend started clipping and putting the lot together. I quite like the result. Simple, a little touch of colour and above all, cheap and allergen-free!



The pots are all different, I'm not made for symmetry.



Ideally I would have wanted five or six of these plants, and maybe two orchids as well, I love orchids! But yeah, sticking to the budget and all. So I went shopping in my own house, searching for decorative items that would go nicely with the flowers.
I came across some souvenirs that I brought home from a trip with my mum to Marrakech, Morocco a few years ago. A beautiful lamp and traditional tea-glasses.





I love this lamp, I really like how it's a bit crooked and I adore this shade of blue, so pretty when daylight shines thru it!

And my tiny tea-glasses, my little girl thinks they are so pretty, and well, I do too. If it weren't for her tiny greedy little hands they would be on my coffee table.



And the final result. I quite like it. It's not really that much of a change but it looks neat and decorated from the outside and it gives me a homy feel from the inside. And most of all, it's easy maintenance and just looks pretty.

Another forgotten FWF

Oh no! I forgot about Food Waste Friday again!
Or well, I didn't really forget about it, but I did forget to write about it. As said earlier, I've done a lot of cleaning this week, amongst other things I've cleaned the fridge, freezer and the pantry. Of course this resulted in an enourmous pile of food that was waaaay beyond it's expiration date (seriously?? 2005?? that means I simply packed it and moved it with me when I came to live here, how stupid is that?).
Well in my defence, most of the products that were way beyond their dates were herbs and spices, so for me at least that makes it less yuck.

I've had an enourmous fail defrosting the freezer though. We've been eating frozen foods all darn month to get the thing empty in order to waste as little as possible.
We managed to defrost the thing quite fast and the stuffs that we didn't eat yet were put back in, for future consumption.
And then...
I forgot to plug back in.
DOH!
Can you imagine? I felt so incredibly stupid the next day. Going through all that effort to clean the thing out as fast as possible before foods would be spoiled, and then forgetting to plug the thing back in. We had eaten most of the foods already so it wasn't that bad, but it still irritated me very much.

So yes, all in all, mainly due to my own stupidity, I've wasted quite some food. Food that was once perfectly fine but that I've lost track of; and ofcourse freezer-fail-food. I've also "Wasted" foods that were okay in itself, but due to my daughter's allergies I can't have them anyways. I've given these things away because it was a shame to bin these items.

In a nutshell, this is what I threw out after cleaning the fridge and the pantry:


On the bright side, and very positive for me! I managed not to waste any food that I had bought recently. Usually I'm a bit sloppy with things like that, throwing out that one last lonesome carrot or tomato that's about to go bad. But now I decided that it was a good reason for soup, even though I don't really like soup.

In the light of the Zero Waste lifestyle I had decided to use cloth diapers again for my youngest daughter, but her skin reacted badly to it. I guess I'll give them a special treatment clean before I use them again, stripping them of all detergents.

Midwife to be

School's about to start, only a week to go. A week! I thought I had two weeks left! So I'm frantically running about to arrange stuff, making calls to find babysitters and trying to imagine what my days would look like then.

Midwifery has always appealed to me, but I could never really say why. I was impressed by the pictures of the midwife who attended my birth as I realized that it were her hands that first touched me, weird realization I tell you!
But only when I gave birth to my first child the wish to become a midwife myself became very very clear. After a second child and long loooong contemplation and ofcourse discussions with my boyfriend I decided to go for it. But now that I've been admissioned to midwifery-school it all becomes very very real. Will I be able to do it, what will it really be like, can we manage as a family? There are so many insecurities, and I sincerely hope that we'll be able to pull through.

But the thought alone, of being a midwife, makes me so happy, that it's worth to at least try and give it a shot.
Think possible, not impossible!
(I have to keep saying that to myself ;) )

For you foreign readers, ofcourse Dutch ob/gyn or midwifery system is a bit different from the US (or global) version. If anything is ever unclear, or you're just curious about how things work around here, just ask!

Home improvement

Ah yes... Home Improvement. I love it! Specially thinking about how I would ideally want things and then knowing exactly what shades of jade-green would go perfect with what type of shutters etcetera, only to find out that ofcourse you're budget is Ikea. Or maybe not even that. Shoot!

Since I'll be starting classes in one week from now again I decided that the house needed a proper clean. You know a really really thorough one. This way I know for sure that I can be a lousy housekeeper for a few months without anybody noticing. The convenience! So I washed the curtains, cleaned the windows, did the entire kitchen, did the bathroom and tomorrow I'll work upstairs. Yay me for cleaning!

But anyways, we have a lot of these things sitting around here, that've been waiting to be fixed or tidied or who knows what, for ages; and all of a sudden it annoyed me like it had never done before. So I decided we need two or three extra bookshelves to go on the wall so that I can clean out the bookcases in the livingroom. Too much has been stacked in there over the years. And also, I need new shelving space for my new books!


See? Aaaah the chaos! The risk of everything falling out...


2 or 3 extra shelves here would make a nice fake bookcase.

And I also feel that we need some fake plants to go in our windowsill. Why fake and not real? Because I'm allergic to loads of plants, and besides I have a very special quality enabling me to kill off even cacti within a week. So real plants would really be plant-molesting, or something.

But what do you reckon, it needs some jazzing up, right?


Next up then would be the front garden, which makes me feel ashamed pretty much everytime I walk past it, but somehow it's always the very last thing on my priority list.


To be continued...

Food Waste Whut?

I totally forgot about food waste Friday! Oh my...
Anyways, I read about this overhere on The Frugal Girl, the idea is that basically you blog every Friday about all the food that you've wasted that week.
Ofcourse the plan is to be able to say that you didn't waste anything ;)
Actually at the moment I have a lot going on in my fridge that will definately be wasted. Such a shame really, I was planning on cleaning out the fridge yesterday but things came in between.

Anyways, my youngest daughter has quite some allergies (soy, eggs, milk-protein, fish, probably nuts/seeds) and since I'm still nursing her, I'm on a diet myself as well. We are doing very well on this diet, or at least, she is, I miss my peanutbutter sandwich ;) But this also means that there are quite some things in my fridge at the moment that I can't have. I'm planning on nursing at least untill her first birthday (hopefully) so there's not really any use for me to stick on to a lot of these products. I'll clean out the fridge first thing tomorrow, probably giving away tons of stuff to my brother who eats about anything, and binning the rest of it.

(how I manage to talk about throwing stuff out and mention the following in the same post is beyond me by the way...)
I'm very much inspired by these short clips about the Zero Waste Lifestyle. This family has online thrown away a handfull of trash in the last four months! A whole family! Can you imagine? Wow!



Both Food Waste Friday and the Zero Waste project got me thinking about how much we throw out that is either perfectly okay (clothes we don't like anymore, food, etc.) but also how much garbage we create by buying everything individually wrapped and not bringing our own bags to the store for example.
I doubt if I can and want to go as far as these ladies have done, but it is definately worth it to try and well, tone it down a little.

birthday preparations

I went shopping today... and totally forgot that today's Saturday. The stupidity, what was I thinking. I was just about ready to turn around and leave once I realised that but yea, this shopping was for my big girl's birthday so it had to be done since I don't really have much time going to town coming two weeks.

I bought loads of fun stuff for a relatively small price since they are downpricing the mid-season sale items everywhere. I bought some cute packing paper, some coloured crêpe paper for decoration later on, balloons and the usual birthday stuff. Even clear plastic cups were on sale. Why? Are they totally out of fashion next season? Is their expiry date coming up? Who knows... In these cases, I don't ask questions, I just fill up my cart and go ;)
Also bought some very cute wooden bookmarks that were on sale, only 40 cts each! They will be for the kids-gift bags that will be given after the party. I adore those gift bags. What woman doesn't like a goody bag! Even as a kid I think the handing out of these gift bags was my favourite part of the whole day. So I'm thrilled to be making some of my own now for my birthday-girl. (despite the fact that she's only turning two and she won't really miss them if we didn't hand anything out...)

Aaaaah I'm so much looking forward to this day! Much more so than a year ago, I was really dreading her first birthday, my little baby turning one. But now, she's seriously ready to be a 2-year-old and I think I'm ready too.

Grandma's skirt turned to pants!

My mum handed me a pile of old wrap-around skirts a few months ago, she thought it was a waste of good fabric to throw them out, but on the other hand she didn't really know what to do with them either. They are 100 percent linen, two in black, one in brown, one in sand and one in a pretty minty shade of green.
I love those fabrics! And I love my mum for thinking of me and bringing them along with her. They make a great basis for skirts, pants and dresses for my girls and are easy to be jazzed up a little by adding nice bits of pretty fabrics.

Well since a month or so my nearly-2-year-old decided she didn't need a diaper anymore. I'm proud as I can be, but it also posed me a new problem. All those nice pants I had for her! They don't fit anymore... She has now loads of room on the back. She used to be in size 86 (I think that's 18 months?) but she's now back to size 80, still leaving ample room on her behind.

I decided to track one of her pants that has the best fit for her now and make my own pattern from it. I choose the black linen from one of my mum's skirts and I added some colourful fabric for pockets. I'm not sure on those fake buttons though, I'm undecided yet of where I want them and how many I want on there. The ones in the picture are attached with pins.
So far, we're done, waiting for the final fit tomorrow. We did fit in between, but we have to finish it off now by adding elastic and by deciding on the hems (will it be a pair of pants for now or should I leave it longer so she can wear it in some time?)

It's probably a teeny bit too tight since stupid me forgot to add seam allowances on the front pieces of the pattern.
However it was a lot easier to make than I initially thought it would be and I expect a lot more of those to come. Still have loads of old (ancient if you will) jeans lying around the house that need a new destiny...

oh yea... pictures ;) there you go.





There's much room for improvement, and lots of tiny mistakes in there, but I'm not quite the trained seamstress so forgive me ^_~

What I did do this week

My dearest babygirl turns two end of this month. Time has gone by so quickly... I've been doing some preps for her birthday-bash. Invites have gone out to the neighbours and I've made her a birthday-crown.
I have a whole list of other stuff to handle for her birthday comes around, but this I can tick of my list. Yay me!





the crown looked a lot better after I ironed it, but ofcourse I forgot to take pictures of it then and just stored it. Ah well, you'll have to wait for the birthday pictures then.






Just for a quick fit, and it looks fine!



Other than that I've made a shirt for my daughter out of a dress of mine. It looked a lot better on the fitting doll then it did on me, but the fabric was too nice to just throw it out. Throwing out good fabric is always a waste so I kept it. I did make it in a larger size, since we have a serious overkill in sizes 86 and 92, so I decided to make her a 98.
I used Dana's great tutorial for the 90 minute shirt to make this shirt.






bots for girls! <3

I love the red-and-white stripes and the black biais. Together with her curls it makes her look like a very cute pirate-girl.


And last but not least, something for myself. A keychain. I should try and get my hands on some of that band and some hooks and loops because I think these make great gifts!



The title implies that I should've done other stuff instead of sewing and making things. I can't say much about it, but believe you me, I'm a procrastinator pur sang. Whish I wasn't but it always makes for good sewing in the end.