Can you imagine that this picture was taken 49 years ago on my first schoolday? And I still do not like ironing.......LOL
At Sunday it was my birthday and at breakfast my DH suprised me with presents and cards from quiltfriends, he had collected them until my birthday. Than we visited an exhibition where we bought a lovely painting of the harbor at Honfleur, France and in the afternoon my mother and MIL and my friends Karin and John came to visit at teatime. In the afternoon DH, me and my son had a nice dinner at a restaurant here in Oosterbeek. In July DH and I will celebrate our birthdays together with a big gardenparty. These lovely flowers I got from Karin and John.

Here you see the blocks from the "Under the sea"
blockswap embellished by Hideko from Japan and Maureen from Australia. These blocks have seen more of the world than I have, that is for sure.
Wish I could have travelled with them, it would have been great to meet all these Crazy Quiltfriends!
Hideko added some beads from Venetian glass to make the starfish and ain't the little seahorse cute? I also love how she made the movement in the block.
Maureen added an oya made by our friend Rengin from Turkey, it looks like a real sea urchin! I love the coral made from double cast-ons at the dolphins tail and how she made the other sea urchin I can only admire........
The last picture is of the fabric page I received in this months fabric page swap from Mieke in the Netherlands. Love the "tournesol" and the Provence fabric in this page, looks really French like I wanted!

My "Under the sea" DYB blocks are back home again and they are GORGEOUS!!!!

The first one is embellished by Helina from Finland, I love the corals she did and the seaweeds with real shells!

The next one is done by Margreet from the Netherlands, look how she turned the sweet little fishes into little piranha's.....LOL and the beautiful starfishes.

The last one is done by Ati in Norway, I love the jellyfish in the middle and the sea anemone and the coral which she made of an old collar!

Tomorrow I'll show you the blocks done by Hideko and Maureen.

Now I have to embellish the last block by myself and then sew the blocks together and add a border. I did already buy a beautiful cobaltblue piece of silk, I hope it colores with the blocks.

FIRST PAINTING FINISHED
Some time ago I started with painting lessons in acrylic. Today I want to show you the first painting I finished (except for the varnish...).
I haven't been painting for at least 10 years and am enjoying it very much again. I used to paint with watercolors and wanted to learn to work more free and bigger, that is why I choose to work with acrylic paint. The start was difficult, but I think I am happy with the result. The painting of the little raven measures 50 x 60 cm.

FABRIC PAGE FINISHED

This is the first 6" fabric page I finished for the swap in the Fibre-fever group. It is for Margreet in Holland. She asked for
"with a song in my heart". I did a litteral translation...

Yesterday morning we found this little lamb on the road in front of our home. It came from the pasture
and crawled throught the fence, the poor thing. The mother was having
twins and didn't even miss the
little one...... Fortunatelly we found it in time and we just had a look at her and she is doing fine now!

BACK FROM FLORIDA
where we had a great time. The temperatures were nice, around 70oF/22oC.
We have been to the Mardi Gras festivities at Universal Studios, lovely costumes and music.I especialy loved the Shrek 4D movie and the concerts of the Blues Brothers.
Also we have been to Disney's Magic Kingdom, which was a bit of a disappointment. It was way to busy this Monday, we only visited 3 attractions, waiting times were 60-70 minutes!! We waited until we had seen the parade and went home.

On Thursday we made a trip to Daytona, where the Bikeweek was starting. We visited the biggest Harley Davidson dealer over there, awesome to see a whole department store filled with 1.350 Harley's! My DH loved this bike.

I also drove at the beach in Daytona with our rented Chevrolet Impala, which was great fun.

We also drove around in Celebration, the town build by Disney and saw our dreamhouse......LOL

And for the rest we did a lot of shopping in all kind of Superstores (JoAnn's, Walmart, Target etc.)
and visited the Outlet in Orlando where we supported the American economy by buying 6 pair of Nikes, 8 pair of jeans (here in Holland 3 x more expensive!) and a lot of summerclothes and of course we needed a new suitcase also! The last night we had dinner in the House of Blues at Downtown Disney, which was real good. Our son, who had never been to the USA before, also enjoyed the trip very much, he is already thinking of emigrating.........The second night he has been DJ in the hotel we stayed and could let hear some of his own made music, people were really enthusiastic!

Now it is back to cold, rainy and misty weather, piles of work and wintercoats and start saving for our next trip to la Belle South!