tine sparkles

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idea sketch for a dollWeek 30!!! Ten more weekends to get ready and prepare. Since we get things mainly done on the weekends it doesn't sounds like a lot of time.

We made a great start on baby's room last weekend which was our office room, got tables moved and the Mac as well ( my poor husband had to lift and shift things all by himself). My scanner still needs hooking up and things sit well in their new locations. There is still a lot of sorting through things to be done though and all the clutter seems to spill into the other rooms somehow... uff!

... not quite but I sure look like I did. Week 29 only 11 more to go! I still feel absolutely wonderful and little one is quite active which always feels funny. We registered for the prenatal classes and the hospital tour is booked, too... it will be interesting to see where it will all take place in the maternity unit.

Spring is having us wait these days, cold days here still with snow last week which was most unusual for this region. Hopefully soon it'll get warmer so that not all the fruit trees are ruined across the North West and the Okanagan. I can't eat enougth fruits these days, I love it and am wishing for a rich fruit season... yummy!

Not much new to write about. My days are filled with projects I intend to finish before little one's arrival, getting baby's room ready and then finally set up - which I am most impatient about but for now it's still Spring cleaning for us, getting rid of things in order to make more space which is very liberating actually.

I have been absent for quite a while now I notice, time is flying! little one and I are continuing to be healthy, fit and strong (yippee!) and feeling wonderful. Week 25 now. Prenatal yoga classes start next week (hooray!). Life has been extremely chaotic around us lately but we try as good as we can to remain the calm center and eye of the tornado.

My blog has been on the back burner because I am also a busy bee not only nesting but painting, painting, painting, while working on my bigger plans and projects as well (the urge to get things done and accomplished before little one's birth). It feels wonderful and is so much fun! So much so that I actually forgot about my blog I must admit. But then such is life with priorities and it's the first time that I've realized the importance of it and the stick-to-it-ness which comes all by itself and with ease when things are in alignment.

These past three years with Studio Friday have been so much fun and every Friday has always been a highlight to me filled with anticipation: what are people showing and writing about this topic, who will participate, what topic will we be having next... Now with so many things changing in my life the space and time for SF became less and less and so the time had come to say farewell. There are so many fond memories and so much fun to remember that we all had which is simply amazing!!

A gigantic 'Thank you' to all of you who stopped by to participate, suggest a topic or just to read and take it all in!!!

TINE

click to enlargeIt has taken me 4 months to get back into the saddle with my oil pastels (thank you for all your helpful suggestions!!) and it feels wonderful! I have some ideas swirling around for some cheerful bright new works for the nursery we have to yet set up. Time seems to be flying by and today it is a gorgeous day out with the sun shining again, hooray! I may even get a little early spring cleaning done. Funny how the sun shining seems to help with that.

click to enlargeI changed the wallpaper of my blog again. All that blue was too overpowering somehow and the font was too small to read. Changes galore these days! My bump is growing beautifully and I feel wonderful and little one and I are healthy and in best shape! My energy for arty things is still centered around sewing these days and now that the wall hanging is finished I find time here and there to finish some smaller pieces I had begun last year like this little piece you see above. My oil pastels I haven't touched still, not sure if they are toxic during pregnancy in any way but if in doubt, don't. So I will wait... sigh, but there are a gazillion other things to be done anyway in getting the house in order and ready before our little one arrives. At the end of this month we will also finally find out little one's gender, oh I am so excited!!

click to enlargeA tricky topic I came up with there, sigh! Legacy is a scary word. Over the past years I had a vision for my legacy in "world terms" but I think it was more of a delusion (not to mention my Ego that went flying and eventually crashed down, very much to my relief!) so I bid it farewell and am so happy that I did! Creating from the heart (and not the Ego) is all that matters to me, it's who I am.

So in "family terms" my legacy and masterpiece (our little one) is in the works in my belly. My artsy energy has slowly returned this week (huge thanks goes to the weather as well, as we were spoiled by a week of sunshine here finally, hooray!) and I managed to continue sewing baby's wall hanging I started back in June and yesterday I finally finished it! The square with the zebras took me forever to stitch with all those stripes but they turned out cute and I am very happy with them. The wall hanging will go above baby's crib (I will show a photo as soon as we set things up down the road). I am excited to see what beauty the future holds!

Anke gave me this wonderful Award to my surprise! Thank you Anke! You made my day!! Here is the description that goes along with this award:

Give the award to up to 10 people whose blogs bring you happiness and inspiration and make you feel so happy about blogland! Let them know by posting a comment on their blog so that they can pass it on. Beware! You may get the award several times!

My turn now to pass this little beauty on to up to 10 fellow bloggers who make my day. So in a random order I pass this award on to:

* Robyn
* Marianne
* Diane
* Sandrine
* Isay
* Alex
* Naomi
* Poemfish
* Uschi
* Misti
* Anette
* Nancy
* Hanna
* Ascender
* Cookie Sunshine 

You all have made my days after I returned from my blogging break leaving me all your wonderful comments!! Thank you!!! 

While my husband and I were browsing around last weekend throughout all kinds of baby stores checking things out and comparing we looked at the strollers.
There was one stroller that had made it into our top 2 but we were still a bit undecided. While  desperately trying to figure out how to collapse this one stroller we looked around for some working staff and there was not a single staff person in sight, the only two staff members were at the cash stands in the front.
Frustrated about this we continued on fiddling around with the stroller and I said that I had read online that it should be a one-hand-collapsable stroller so it should be fairly straight forward.
"Oh, I can show you how to do this" said a voice suddenly and another customer, took the stroller and demonstrated it to us and the stroller was collapsed in 2 seconds. She said she had that one at home and absolutely loved it. The way the stroller collapsed so easily was the wow-factor for us and made the little difference that helped us make our decision.
No two minutes later after we had tried it out for ourselves the infant car seat occurred to us and we wanted to ask the woman about it. We looked around in the whole store and she was gone, vanished, nowhere to be found. "Now that was quite an angel we got sent there", my husband said. Indeed she was. A little bit of help for us just at the right moment when we needed it.

The view from my dusty desk that sits right in front of our large window is not very nice at all these days. Not much of a view since we have rain non stop here on the North West coast and one best leaves the blinds closed. Rain day in and out and it gets dark pretty early, mind you it never really brightens up in the first place since the sky is so grey. Not nice, so I'll spare you a picture of it. The higher elevations up in the mountains that surround us here have had their share of snow but none for us down here in the valley.
You can see a photo from my desk here from over a year ago and ironically enough even in that one it was raining! Ha!

Instead of taking a photo of the misery outside I decided to have some fun with my weblog templates here and change your view when visiting. Time for a bit more brightness and a cheerful orange and a cute bird (which was drawn by the template creator).  

...is slowly growing." - Uschi.

Indeed Uschi, it is and it is my masterpiece. What you said made me think about how I am so impatient all too often and have been in the past. Things and events couldn't happen fast enough. What was the mad rush all about I wonder now? There has been quite the shift for me internally already.
With my growing belly my usually speedier pace of walking has turned down to turtle speed funnily enough and I love it. Even if I wanted to I wouldn't have the energy to walk much faster. All energy goes to my bump.
Shopping and browsing around for baby's furniture and accessories is all too exciting and such cute-overload with all the gorgeous things!! It makes me quite impatient. So I am doing my best, being in the Now, enjoying every day while preparing for the future. Exciting!

...
P.S.: I am so thrilled to see that I have some readers left! Thank you everyone for stopping by! Hopefully I will put up some photos again soon. A post without a photo is rather dry.

A new year! Hooray! And it is a big one for me and my husband with a whole ton of newness along the way. I am looking forward to it and can't wait!
Last year had a very bad start hitting the bottom right in the beginning and it stayed an extremely bumpy ride with dead ends all over the place no matter what I tried which was extremely frustrating. And then things took an extremely positive turn towards the end of the year resulting in a miracle that continues to grow inside my belly.

These days everything is and feels new on my brand new journey to motherhood. It is also brand new that my arty energies came to a full standstill and my desk is collecting dust because I haven't used it in months now. It's something that hasn't happened to me like this before ever. The landscape in our condo will change over the next months since our place here is small and my desk will become the office/Mac desk (not sure yet how much space will be left for my oil pastels).
It is also new for me that I don't even think of anything art related at all. Usually I'd always have all kinds of ideas swirling through my head, thinking about art but not these days, even that has come to a standstill which I find quite fascinating. It feels quite bizarre really because I couldn't care less about it. Are there any mothers out there who experienced the same thing I wonder? So there is no photo of anything new artsy to show to you unfortunately. Even the wall hanging squares...I'm still dragging my feet to pick up thread and needle.

And all those things that were so bugging and frustrating the heck out of me last year, all those bumps in the road, seem very unimportant by now. The horizon is widening slowly as I travel through my pregnancy which is going extremely well!! 

Our tree this year...to all of you!!!

I am still here!  My husband and I got the most special gift for Christmas this year in form of my pregnancy!! I am in the 12th week this week, at the end of the first trimester and we can finally tell our friends and family! Exciting times lie ahead!

My artsy energy may return some time later during my pregnancy, for now all artsy 
Click on the image, it's here just doesn't display it, no idea why not...aah, technology... things have come to a complete standstill (my blogger's block was part of it although back then I had no idea that I was already pregnant) which is normal I suppose. I am using all my creative energy for creating a new little life! In the wall hanging I had started a few months ago are still 2 squares unfinished and then it can finally go into the nursery above baby's crib as I had planned it to. At the moment I don't feel like sewing though but then there is still some time. So much fun!!

I'm off now to celebrate Christmas!  Froehliche Weihnachten!

I have been dragging my feet now for quite a while when it comes to blogging and my own journal here. No idea what to write about anymore at all, it seems like my well for writing something intelligent to an invisible audience has dried up for the moment and I simply don't know what to say/write anymore. It dawned on me today that it must be something like Bloggers block - if that exists.

I am in need for a bit of time out. I'll still be here, no worries (I'm paying for this space every month after all), drop me a line if you like and I'll send you one or two back ;-) I'll do some research here on this and will be back soon I'm sure.