A flower for your mood

To wish you a great last day of 2009 and an ever better start of 2010 I would like to give you your own personal flower.

When visiting Readmymood.com you will get to see a flower that fits your mood. Readmymood.com analyzed my blog and sent me the above pretty flower, a grape hyacinth: Blue grape hyacinths for the blues and red anemones for heartache. Shed a tear for romance's bitter sweetness, but don't get all melancholy. A little floral consolation is always welcome.

Not sure why they think I have a heartache as the other day we celebrated our 8th year together, but I love the flower. Always one of the first signs of spring time.

Have a great party tonight! See you in 2010!

Root chakra

While normally I teach how to draw a mandala, I am now following a course myself. The 7 chakra's in a mandala. This is the first chakra, the root chakra. It symbols how you stand in life. It is located at the base of the spine and is associated with grounding, survival, and beginnings. How good you take care of yourself, your self esteem. You connecting to your right to be here and to live the life that you choose.

The drawing is on 50x50cm paper and one drawing takes 1 month. During this month I play the music that comes with the chakra. The root chakra introduced me to the music of the Spirit of the Redman.


The base drum activates this lower chakra and brings you in your own energy.

If you would like to make your own root chakra mandala, please see here the base of the mandala and draw the rest to your own likings and insights. The number that has the root chakra energy is four. That is why there are 4 times 4 circles.

Mandala coloring page

For a friend I made this mandala the other day. I connected with her energy and within 2 hours the mandala was born.

I found it very cute. Normally I draw on A3 size paper, but due to the lack of time, this one was done on A4. And that my blog friends, made it easy for me to turn it into a coloring page for you.
When you click the above image, you will go to the printing page. You will notice the lines are blue. This is because blue lines tend to disappear when you use color pencils. And to my opinion that is a big plus when coloring a mandala.

Biscuit tin on Etsy's front page!

My vintage Biscuit rusk tin made it to the front page at Etsy! Thanks bunches to Martice for the treasury that made it to the front page!

Sweet chocolate gift

Last week we celebrated Saint Nicolas in the Netherlands. One of the traditions of this holiday is chocolate letters. Normally you receive the first letter of your name, but some companies give away the first letter of their company name or just the S for Saint Nicolas.

Juri and I received a total of 8 letters. Most J's and K's, but not all. Imagine having to eat all of them! By the time the chocolate easter eggs come around we still would have Saint Nicolas letters.

Then, I ran accross the blog of Marta, who had a tutorial on making chocolate milk sticks. I heard the 'ping' and saw a light bulb hanging above my head. This was going to be my Christmas gift for the course members of my mandala courses.
I melted the 'Z' and put the chocolate in a small cupcake form. How to do all this is written very clear in Marta's tutorial. I also found a snowman shaped silicon form. (Cute) result:

Now, what do you need to make the chocolate gift as in the first picture of this post.
scissors, glue, perforator, adhesive tape, ribbon and transparent wrapping foil.
Cut square pieces of foil and put the chocolate stick on top.
Make sure you have a piece of tape ready. Once the chocolate is wrapped proparly, put the tape around it.
Free printables! How I love them. This tag I found at Cottage industrialist. For her blogiversary she designed various ones. The free pdf file allows you to type whatever text you like. Even two different sides like I did. Her post where you can download the free printable is here.

To put the tag around to stick, I have put glue on half of the backside.
The left side had glue, the right side does not. Make sure the wrapping foil lays on some of the glue as well. If not, the tag comes down when you pick up the chocoloate stick. Then carefully close.
The next great free printable! You simply can not not love this card.
The blog by Whisker graphics gives it to you as a free printable. Yep, another free printable. So far not an expensive gift, is it?
For the inside I printed a text that xplains how to use the chocolate sticks during the stressful pre-holiday work where there is no time to relax drawing a mandala.
Punch a hole in the card with the perforator.
Keep calm. Now get out the ribbon of your choice. Mine is from IKEA.
Take as much as you need or more.
Now first wrap it around the hocolate stick. No need to tie it up yet, just put it around. Then though the hole in the Keep calm card. And that's when you could be done. This makes a perfect little gift. But for my course members I added something extra. I had these beautiful 2010 calender posters printed.
I rolled them up. Tied the ribbon with the card and chocolate stick around it.
Et voila. Custom made perfect little holiday gift for the cold winter days.

What I did not do yet, is try out the chocolate stick. So if you'll excuse me...

2009 Angel card project

Today the website of Angel Card Project was pointed out to me. It is a volunteer project by Mark from Mississippi USA. Every year he collects a list of addresses from people who can use some cheering up during the holidays. You can sign up to send cards to these people by sending an e-mail to Mark latest December 7.
Scutterbear@aol.com and use as subject "Sign Me Up To Be A Card Angel 2009"

That's it! Next week you will then receive a link to the list of addresses from which you can choose as many as you like to send a card to. You can send it as you or with Santa being the sender, or an angel if you wish to do anonymously. The point is that people will be warmed by the cards. You will definitely touch peoples hearts.

So, will you sign up at http://www.countrychurchcrafts.com/2009angelcardproject too?

Easy to make, easy to play

I came up with this game while watching a Dutch TV show called 'I love Holland'. My parents celebrated their 35th anniversary and took the whole family to a rented bungalow in the Dutch woods. Personally I am not a big fan of board games, so I thought this would be a great alternative. It turned out to be hilarious! And as it is so simple to make, I decided to share it with all of you.

For the Dutchies, my Dutch version of this is explained on my Dutch blog here.

What you need is a bunch of cards, a pen and a lot of celebrities names. I came of with 60 and that was a fun guarantee for 30 minutes with 8 people. Think of musicians, sports people, politicians, tv personalities etc. Make sure there's easy and difficult ones mixed. Then you write the names on the cards.

Since you came up with the names, you are the game leader. Make teams. We made two teams (girls against boys of course!) The teams take turns in sending someone to the front where you sit. That person gets one card at a time and need to describe the name and/or the person on the card without mentioning words that are in the name. They get 2 minutes and their team needs to get as many names possible correct. When the 2 minutes are up, the other team sends someone forward. Make stacks of correct guessed names per team.

When you run out of cards, you count the cards on the stack per team. The one with the most cards wins!

We had SO much fun playing this simple game that I recommend you use the bathroom before you start. I am positive it's fun to play at Christmas with the whole family.