「Crochet」Baby Birthday Dress

Our little girl is 1 year young today, and I handmade her a special birthday dress!
Technically she is now a toddler and not a baby anymore. However, she’ll always be MY baby, I took the liberty to title this blog post Baby Birthday Dress.

It’s not my own creation though, I rather followed the instruction of this neat post at craftideas.us. For the colour combination I chose a yarn with different shades of green and for the lower part of the dress I used leftover yarn in this beautiful vibrant pink/purple/white^^^

Smash*Book「Pretty Pink」Update #3

 This double page is very special to me: it’s about my baby daughter!

I picked this double page to be all about my daughter, because it has the calendar on the bottom of the right page saying “A DAY TO REMEMBER”, so I circled her birthday with a heart.
In addition to that I used adhesive letters to add the birth-month (spelled in the german version with an “i” in the end) and her name, as well as “My Girl” and the meaning of her Japanese name (kanji 七海), “7 seas”

I took polaroids of her, as well as me with her & my husband with her to fill out the page on the left with that. I really like the little frames for the polaroids that I got from a friend. On the page to the right I only added a palm print of hers and will use the empty space to fill it with all the funny, witty, interesting things she’ll say once she can talk (more).

In the middle I attached a little wooden ’ema’ keychain I bought at a Japanese shrine that sort of specialises on wishes & prayers for a good upbringing and education of children.
Something I added in the middle to the “rings” of my smash book are little ‘song cards’ as I like to call them. Basically I got a little crafty and made cards that on the front are decorated according to the theme of the lullaby/children’s song, and have the song lyrics written on the back. They are all  in Japanese lullabies (except for the one on the bottom left which is just the Japanese version of “twinkle twinkle little star”).

I can’t wait to fill the page on the right with quotes of all the things she says that I want to remember!

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See all my Smash*Book updates HERE

Smash*Book「Pretty Pink」Update #2

I filled another double-page in my Smash*Book!

This time I wanted all my favourite perfumes in one place. So I cut out the packaging of each perfume and used washi tape to put them on the pages in a way, so you can “unfold” the packaging (as youc an see on the two photos on the botom). Often the design of the packaging itself is so nice and goes all the way around, I just wanted to keep all that.

I added a quote by Jean-Paul Guerlain: “Perfume is the most intense form of memory”

I left a bit of space at the top because, I don’t know ….I might find another perfume I really really like in the future, and then I can stick the packaging there!

 

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See all my Smash*Book updates HERE

 

Smash*Book「Pretty Pink」Update #1

Recently I was bitten by the ‘smash book bug’ 🙂
I’ve seen so many people make or start one, it seems to be a real hype. And while I’m not one to just join any hype for the sake of it, the fact that you get to be creative and can turn a smash book-base into your very own uniquely styled piece intruiged me very much.

I chose to buy a Smash*Book by K&Company (they have many different ones): it’s the ‘Pretty Pink’ version!  I want to share some pictures of what I’ve done with my Smash Book so far – getting into my creative flow if you will.

FRONT COVER
Each version of the K&Company Smash Books comes in a differently coloured binding and with a different front cover pattern. This version had flowers and I chose to make them *POP* a little more by simply colouring them the way I liked.

「handmade」Advent Calendar – Christmas Winter Owls

This year I ordered some material to get crafty and make a special Advent Calendar with Christmas Winter owls & their houses in festive, seasonal decoration (^_^)
We hung it up in the baby room, but of course, our four and a half months young daughter is still too young to understand the concept of an advent calendar. Thus, I will “test” it this year and my husband filled it with sweets for me. From next year on, we will fill it for our sweet little girl.
Basically it was a set with all the motives printed on cardboard, but how you put the pieces together was totally up to me, so it’s a one-of-a-kind calendar which you can fill with whatever you like 🙂
Are those owls just super cute or are they super cute???
If you look closely you can see that the decorative pieces such as the present boxes are layered – it’s a sort of 3D effect. The set also included some little plastic rhinestone bling-bling which one can add in whatever way you like.
On the front and back you have peep-holes which feeds the curious soul!
On the side there is a little door to open and fill or take out sweets (or whatever you like) of each owl house

I think it’s just such an adorable winter-advent calendar idea – and of course very fitting with the owl theme of our baby room.

Today is the 1st Sunday in Advent!! Hope you all spend the day comfortably 🙂

「handmade」Pink Snowflake Mittens (knitted)

Winter is coming!
So I took out my knitting needles and made these pink-white snowflake mittens 🙂

The wrist area is done in a ‘one knit, one purl…etc’ pattern but the hand and finger part is simply stockinette stitch with changing colours to white in the middle to create the snowflake!

 

「handmade」Litte Romper

I love getting “handmade” inspirations off the internet and then trying to make my own version of something. Naturally most of my projects are for my little baby girl – she has a whole handmade collection by now *laugh*.

The knitting pattern for this cute little (rhino) romper can be found here on ravelry and you may have seen it already in this blogtober2014 post of mine.

I used my much loved colour speckled white wool for this romper, but took some bright yellow soft wool for the edging/borders.

Digging through my box of buttons I found these nice little blue ones with tiny flowers on them and thought they’d go well with the bright yellow edging in the front

 

Leaving and opening between the legs is very practical for a baby romper as you need to frequently change diapers, so just place some buttons there for easy access. For this area I used some sheer off white buttons as it’s not really something that needs to stand out or catch the eye.

 

^^Here you can see how it looks opened up!^^ We used this romper so much, it was also perfectly at night during warmer days in summer. It seems to regulate the body temperature quite well, no over-heating or rashes or anything on baby’s skin. Since our little girl already outgrew this romper, I made a second, larger one with longer arms and legs for the winter time coming 🙂

Fall Fashion – the simple, comfy kind『blogtober 2014』

Day 16 of blogtober2014 is dedicated to the fashion of this season.

Fall Fashion
I have to admit that I’m not a real fashion-addict, who enjoys posting “Outfit of the day” updates. I don’t go shopping every week, not even every month, but I wear the clothes I buy for years mostly (of course adding something new when I feel like it). It’s not even so much a money issue as it is the fact that I just really like the clothes I buy and then want to wear the pieces for a long time.
This is what I like to wear in autumn. It’s a 3-4 year old photo taken of me in Yamashita Park (Yokohama, Japan). BUT I still wear those same clothes on an autumn day this year. Just a comfy pair of jeans, my well loved dark petrol knitted long-shirt, a jacket and a dark blue scarf. It’s really simple and not “high-fashion” at all, but I rather enjoy the colourful autumn scenery instead of pondering too much over what to wear these days 😉

To add some color, I love to wear handwarmers as autumn  days can get quite chilly sometimes.

I crochet these myself, you can find other creations looking through my handmade category 😉

Of course cardigans are also a big thing during fall season. I have several to just put over a thinner shirt to get that extra bit of cozy comfort. And since I’m a mum, I also crochet a ‘fall fashion cadigan’ for my daughter

You can click here and see my blog post about this cardigan ^^with close up pictures of the details 🙂

The blogger in me『blogtober 2014』

It’s day 10 of blogtober 2014 !

I never thought blogging would….
…be something for me.

I do keep an online journal which is heavily locked to myself and a few friends (all of whom I know in real life) only. Other than that I never really thought of myself as the “blogging type” of person.

It’s the crafty side of me that got me into using this blog more and more. I posted a bunch of the handmade stuff on here (just browse through the handmade category if interested) and I have still a few pieces yet to be posted.

However, I really do enjoy writing a bit more now, and that is something I never thought I would 🙂

When I started blogging…『blogtober 2014』

Here we go with day 6 of the blogtober 2014 event.

10 Things you’d tell yourself when you started blogging
As stated in yesterdays blog post, I’m not one to make a list of things I want to accomplish in a certain time span. Hence I couldn’t give you a list of 10 things that I told myself when I started this blog. I don’t even think I really did tell myself something back then.

I started this blog as a place to post random musings, to ramble on about various thoughts running through my mind. Back then I was dealing with Endometriosis based infertility and our IVF-journey. It was a really difficult time, where I myself realized I was on the verge of not being able to cope with it all that well. Luckily, our second IVF cycle (the first frozen transfer attempt) our little snowflake decided to stick with us and is smiling at me now in her sleep as I type this 🙂

During that difficult time and the pregnancy that followed I did a bunch of crafty things: crochet, knitting, cross stitch. (You can see all my posts in the handmade category here). So my blog became more of a crafty picture type of thing.
And now I want to get back into writing a bit more in my entries, which is why I participate in this blogtober14 event.