Happy Halloween

For those of you that celebrate Halloween, have a great holiday. I bought this shirt 4 years ago in Scotland at GAP´s, but Ruben is the first that fits it on Halloween.
And the bat I got for a Halloween swap last year.

Halloween isn´t a big thing overhere, they are trying to make it a holiday, but they are the shops. It doesn´t live here, so only people with kids will buy some Halloween stuff.

Look what arrived!

Look what the mailman brought this morning... He was laughing because the package was addressed to Margy & boys, and he had never seen that.

The box was quickly opened and all the goodies where thoroughly checked out. The boys loved all the pirate stuff. Thanks for a great swap Jill.

But the big finale came with the hand made treasure map. They just love it. Peter went to bed with it instead of his bear. They just love the treasure map and it looks fabulous.

Fabric shopping

I was looking for some red/white polka dots fabric and my mum said she say some at the market. So yesterday I went to the market and had a look around and found what I was looking for at a stand that was manned by some old man. He had the most goregous fabrics and all sorts of vichy squares in all different colors, wow, I know where I have to be now.

And look what my eye caught... Pirate fabric. Since Nic loves anything pirate, I bought some fabrics and I will make him a pirate quilt.

I will have to look on the web for some ideas... but not now because this afternoon, a girl from Nic´s school is coming over to bake cookies. So I have to run to the store and buy some eggs so I can prepare the dough.

Photoshoot

A couple of weeks ago we had pictures taken of our family. I will provide you one glimps of the pictures. I think they turned out great, especially the ones of the kids.

They were made by Marline, Niels´s cousin, who is a freelance photographer, check out her website Rokki.

Autumn sunday

Yesterday we made an autumn walk through the forrest around the pet farm. They were baking bread, so we bought a fresh baked bread that was still warm to eat while we were walking.
We saw these black swans, as you can see, they were not afraid of humans, although I think it is a bit late to have babies... I wonder if they will survive the winter that is coming, I know black swans are from down under, so maybe they think it is spring :-)

The trees have amazing colors, I think we are fortunate to live in an area that has 4 seasons.

And this package is on its way to the States to meet a little gril. It is my package for the ´One good book swap'. I hope the little girl it is intended for likes what is inside. I will post pictures of the presents once I get notice that it arrived.

Jam and an award

Nic made this jam ´confituur in flemish' in school last friday. They are learning about fruits so the teacher learned them how to make jam. It is apple and strawberry jam. My dad said it tasted very good. Since Niels and I are on a low carb diet, we can´t tast it, but I trust my dad´s taste.

About the award, I placed it on the right site. No one is really sure where this started, there appears to be no rules except to pass it on to everyone that reads your blog and to link back to where you got it from… I got it from Missy @ Fairy Child Heirlooms . Thanks Missy!
It’s so fun having blogging friends all over the world! Let’s see just how far this award can go!
Leave me a comment to say “Hi!” and don’t forget to take your award!!!

More cupcakes

These are the cupcakes I made for Nic´s school to give to the children that came by bike to school this morning.
I packed them in a little clear plastic bag and school provided some labels to let the children know that they are doing a grat job.
Because they are not allowed candy and chocolate in school, I added just a little bit on teh cupcakes, just plain is not as tasty as a little icing, wouldn´t you agree?

WIP

This week I am crafting on some swap projects and on these little blue flowers. I will make a quilt out of these flowers with white in between them. I think it will give a nice contrast.

Some friendly ladies offered me some small blue fabrics to use in this quilt. Thank you very much, I really appreciate it.

On the cupcake note, I have made these spiderman inspired cupcakes for Nic. But funny as always, he didn´t eat one of them... I think the colors scared him off :-)

Tomorrow I will make some more for Nic´s school. They want to give a cupcake to every child that comes to school by bike, to stimulate biking to school. Great idea if you live near the school, otherwise,... I wouldn´t think of letting Nic ride his bike to school (at this point in time), there is no special path for bikers and everybody drives like maniacs over here. He also would have to cross a road were you are allowed 70 km/h ...

'Dutch' Cupboards

When I was decorating Ruben´s nursery, I asked my dad to make some 'dutch'themed cupboards. So we did some research, dissappered in his atelier and started working. This is my dad making a window for the cupboard.
And this is the result:
Three small cupboards in the shaped of old Dutch grain houses. I think they are wonderful and I can´t thank him enough. This will be something that will be treasured in our family.

RIP Camille

Unfortunetaly, Camille didn´t make it. Yesterday he was weak and didn´t want to eat so we saw it coming. We placed a warm water bottle with a tick layer of hay in a his box an dhe crawled on top of the warm water bottle and there he stayed all day. I tried to feed him some cat food but he didn´t want to eat, and as the day progressed he got weaker.
So last night we kept the heating on high so he was warm, we changed the bottle once more, but you could see that he was slipping away.
And this morning we found him in his box. I will bury him in the garden later this morning.

Camille... the story continues

This afternoon we set Camille free in our backyard. We made him a nice dry place between our firewood with leaves and hay.

Within an hour Nic came inside and said Camille was in the open yard, which sounded strange, but when I checked Nic was right. I picked him up and saw that there were a bunch of flies on his back, when I waved them away, I say that there were fly eggs on his back.

So I called a friend that is a vet but I couldn´t reach him, so his girlfriend told me to pick all the eggs off with a pincet. So I did, took me quite a while, and I also saw that there were two ticks on his back and I couldn´t find me thick 'remover' tool.

When the vet called back he told me I could come over and he would check if the hedgehog was healthy. So I went over and he praised my egg removal action because he could only find a few leftover eggs. He also had a very handy tool to remove ticks so I bought this from him, it looks like a small crowbar.

He told me to check everyday if there are leftover eggs and ticks and he sprayed Camille with a product to repells flies. He also told me that he is quite light so we will have to feed him so more to get him fattened up before winter.

Oh, and it is a boy, we checked...

Hedgehogs

I managed to order this little fellow from Blij als mij, a very cute webshop and this lady also has a great blog. I think this little hedgehog is adorable.

Yesterday when I drove back from vsting a friend, this little guy was sitting in the middel of a very busy stree eating on a bit of road kill. Since we are allowed to drive 70 km/h here in most streets... he didn´t have much of a change. We have a lot of hedgehogs killed on roads.
So I stopped the car on a safe space and got him of the street, brought him home to show the kids (they have never seen a live one up close). We fed him so catfood and water and he is now safe in a big box with a lot of leaves and straw.
We will feed him well and built him a nicehome in our garden and release him in our garden. I want to built him a good shelter beacuse there are a lot of cats and dogs around us and he read that they are an easy prey fro them, so I will have to built him something that keeps him safe this winter when he starts hibernating.
Nic is very proud of his hedgehog and wants to call him Camille... That is a dinosaur from a popular TV shop overhere...

Ruben´s quilt & weekend

Last weekend, we went to the zoo in Rotterdam, called Blijdorp, with Niel´s cousin and her family. She has two wonderful daughters. The first thing the kids could get into was a nest of a weaver bird...
And then some turtle eggs...
Blijdorp is a great zoo, it is quite large, for dutch and belgian standards, and they have a very big playground, so no complaints from our kids. However, they were exhausted and never noticed that we drove back home.

I also promised a pic of the quilt Imade for Ruben. I only have to make a label and then it will be officially finished, but you can get a tast of the 'dutch'theme of his room.
At the moment the weather is very chilly and wet. It rains and we have gusts of wind, not nice, good weather to craft indoors.