this neck of the woods

Phew – what a week! I’ve been madly making garlands all week long and have managed to send out the first few orders.. exciting! My routine this week has been something like this:
- get up
- stop by post office on way to work
- have 20 minute lesson in the art of communication with post office lady (much hand-actioning included)
- work
- come home and start garland
- eat dinner (which Dave cooked)
- continue garland
- wrap finished garland, write card, find buyer address
- put everything at front door so I can grab it on the way out next day
- fall into bed.

So it’s been busy.. but fun! I’ve glued my fingers together far too many times to count – not to mention gluing ribbon to pants and losing a gazillion little beads all over the house :D

This photo is in no way related, but I thought it was lovely. It was one of the flowers we picked a couple of weeks ago (same as the last flower post), but this one had a double centre.. pretty!

I have some exciting news! As some of you may know, Etsy has a blog site called The Storque, and on it they feature all sorts of cool things. Today there was post about all the really great new shops on Etsy.. and guess who was one of the featured!?! ME! I’m so excited! And, thanks to the lovely Storque people – I’ve made some sales :D

Clearly this has made my day. Now please excuse me – I have some garlands to make!

You may have noticed something different about the blog in the last couple of days.. and if you haven’t – it’s the addition of that big blue button over there to the right.

I’ve finally taken the plunge and opened an etsy shop.. eep! If you click on the blue button it will take you straight there :)

For the moment I’ve just listed garlands (more every day), and next week hope to also list some of those seed packets.. so keep checking!

According to the calendar, it’s most of the way through spring here.. not that you can tell though – it’s been raining for the past 2 weeks solid, and freezing cold again. We’re so over it! I guess I shouldn’t complain.. everything’s finally green and the flowers are blooming which is lovely. We just can’t be outside enjoying it! We did brave the weather on friday to go and pick some flowers from one of our favourite flower fields (so many f’s!).. we came home with the bunch below and some pretty muddy shoes, but it’s worth it because they’re doing a great job of brightening up our apartment on these gloomy days (the flowers, not our shoes!). Bring on the sun I say!!

We had an interesting glow coming from our study for most of today..

And here’s the reason for the glow…

And here’s the result of the glow…

If someone out there reading this happens to be good with light tents – please don’t judge us.. we’re learning as we go  :D

I saw a glimps of these little houses whilst flicking past the etsy front page today, and was compelled to go in for a closer look. At first I thought they were ceramic, but upon closer inspection they’re actually wooden, and absolutely gorgeous!

I want them all!

3 new garlands I’ve been working on over the weekend.

We went for a walk in the forest yesterday with some friends that were staying with us. It’s beautiful to see the first signs of spring.. I never thought I’d get so excited about a season change, and yet, here I am.. jumping-up-and-down-excited! (Be sure to find the little mouse in the third last photo)

One thing we love about our apartment is that if you lean over our balcony, look to the right and squint a little bit – we have a pretty nice view of Basel. The other day, whilst in the middle of taking a photo of said view, I realised that we’ve actually taken quite a few photos of it over our time here.. so I went hunting. And now I’m sharing. So – here is our Basel view, from the balcony on various days over the last 1.5 years.

Some photos from our ceramic course :)