Sunday Scribbling #27 - Skin/ Collage # 6

I love the feeling of sun and water on my skin. I love to wear soft, flowing fabrics and feel them caress my skin when I move. But what I like to feel most of all on my skin are Erich´s hands.

Collage # 5

I had fun watching these cups and saucers come together and while I was cutting and glueing I thought about how different and at the same time how similar WE all are. Every person has their own taste, their own style and their own way of expressing themselves but we are all people with minds and bodies and ambitions, we all dream and we all hurt sometimes too. I love the similarities we all share but most of all I love how unique we all are. Like cups that have been gathered - together they form a beautiful set. Which one are you?

Collage # 4

Collage # 3

Taking time today to organise my laundry, my drawers, my shoes, my home.

Collage # 2

LOVE

A heart for each of the men in my life and a circle for all the other things I love.

A week of collages!

FLY

Today I am having trouble flying...I can´t seem to get active or get into any projects so I am stopping to listen and rest. I will make a collage a day this week to celebrate the beginning of a new season and to give me time to organise my Etsy shop. My fabric labels have arrived and now I have no more excuses. There´ll be bags and pillows for sale on the 1st October.

The autumn market was yesterday and 2 of my bags plus a lot of tissue holders have new owners. People there seemed more eager to buy food and my cakes and muffins were gone in no time. The market was in the gardens of an old castle right by a lake, so beautiful! I took a couple of pictures which you can see over at Flickr.

Sunday Scribbling #26 - Instructions

I love to cook and bake, especially in a clean and organised kitchen with great music playing and a plan in my head. I had home economics in high school for 2 years and my mother taught me quite a bit about cooking, although she never really left me to cook alone so everything ended up tasting just as it would have if she´d cooked it. When I lived with my mother in law for a year while my children were young, I learnt how to cook traditional Austrian food on a wood burning stove for a really big farming family and I really enjoyed it but the thing that got to me was how fussy the men were and how compliant the other women were.
Now when I work in the kitchen I have a view over the Lavant Valley. I see right down to the main road where I often catch a glimpse of the school bus bringing Stefan and Markus home and I can also watch the train that Daniel comes home from school on.
Here are the instructions for one of our favourite meals, One Pot Chicken;
I use a glass baking dish with a lid for this. Sprinkle a whole chicken inside and out with a paprika based chicken seasoning and place in the baking dish, put the lid on, place in the oven and turn oven on (180° celsius). After 30 minutes, add 10 medium sized peeled potatoes, carrot and pumpkin pieces to pan and bake for a further 60 minutes. Then take the lid off the pan and bake for a further 15 minutes. Veges should be tender and lightly browned, chicken should be crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. Place veges on a serving platter, cut chicken into pieces and place around the veges. Add 150mls of thin cream to the pan juices to make a sauce. Serve with white bread and green salad. MAHLZEIT!

12 down, 2 to go!

Thanks for the advice on yesterday´s post - I feel less like I´ve failed the aim I had in mind when I put that point on my list and now I know better how to handle the situation.
As for my bag challenge, I´m almost done with only 2 bags to go, I´ve finished some cushions and I´ve used up a pile of fabric scraps to make tissue holders. The autumn fair on Sunday is being organised by a group called "Talente Tausch" which means talent swap. No money is exchanged within this group - you put a points price on whatever you´re offering and then use your points to purchase anything from organic produce, yoga classes, massages or holiday appartment rentals. We already have quite a number of points as I´ve done some translating work within the group and Erich has restored some furniture but it´s the first time I´ll have my own market table with my handmade items so I´m a bit nervous. I noticed that one of the group´s members has a house on the Ligurian Coast in Italy so I hope we can get enough points together to spend some time there next summer. Wish me luck!

PARTY!

Number 53 on my list of 101 things in 1001 days is : Have a party for my 40th Birthday and invite only people I like. Well I only partly succeeded in this as I had the party last Saturday and a great time and great food was had by all BUT I didn´t succeed in inviting only people I like.
One of my best friends has a boyfriend who is a complete ego-maniac and if they weren´t together I wouldn´t even give him the time of day...but I somehow couldn´t get past inviting him. And there´s another person who I used to get along great with but just don´t want to spend time with lately because of her "well-meaning" criticism and life tips that show me she has no idea who I am. She is part of the group of people I sing with and generally hang around with so I didn´t have the courage not to invite her for fear of the can of worms that this would open.
I´d really like to be courageous and honest and tell people what I think and that I don´t like being used or told what to do by people who can´t get their own lives in order but I just can´t seem to without feeling like a complete bitch. Is there a way to move on from friendships that just don´t fit anymore without having to explain? Is it my responsibility to tell my friend that her boyfriend is a jerk and that she deserves better or is it none of my business?

Moving along!

Bags 5, 6, 7 & 8.

A Tribute

On September 11, 2006, 2,996 volunteer bloggers join together for a tribute to the victims of 9/11.

5 years have passed since the day that Rose Mary Riso died while at work in New York´s twin towers. I have read a lot about her, she was a very warm hearted and generous person who put other people´s safety before her own on this day, saving 39 lives before losing her own.
I remember turning on the TV to watch the news on CNN 5 years ago and sitting down in shock from what I was witnessing on live television. I remember thinking "this may be the end of the world as we know it" and it was. Since then war, terror and loss of lives have become regulars on the daily news and there´s no sign of it stopping. I often feel a frustration that comes from not being able to do anything to stop what is so obviously wrong in the world. I hear many voices that are against war and sending young men to fight battles for the cowardly heads of state or terrorist leaders but the killing goes on. Today I ask you all to do what you can to influence your own little world by being kind, compassionate and tolerant towards each other in rememberance of all those who died on the 11th of September, 2001.


Today my children and I will plant this rose bush in our garden in rememberance of Rose Mary Riso.

Read about other victims of 9/11 here.

Challenges!

Above you can see the new colour of my kitchen wall which I was about to paint a cream colour when I read this and decided on aqua instead. The colour is called "sea breeze" and together with the yellow feature wall it really does remind me of the ocean. It´s a bit brighter than it looks on the photo and I finished it just in time for my 40th Birthday Party...more about that next time. In the other photo you can see bags Nr. 2, 3 &4 in my 14 day bag challenge. There´s a small shoulder bag, a cell-phone bag and an ipod bag.

A bag a day!

I will be making a bag a day for the next 14 days to sell at a fair I´ve been asked to take part in on the 24th of September. I want to make quite a few other things aswell like some coasters, place mats, table runners, pin cushions and bigger cushions but I will let the daily bag be my inspiration for the other items. I have also ordered some "Chest of Drawers" woven name tags and as soon as they arrive I will get my etsy shop up and running.

Seeya mate!

Sept. 4, 2006 — Steve Irwin, the hugely popular Australian television personality and conservationist known as the "Crocodile Hunter," was killed Monday by a stingray while filming off the Great Barrier Reef. He was 44 and leaves behind a wife, a daughter aged 8 and a son aged 2.

#23 - Fortune Cookie

This week´s Sunday Scribble prompt is Fortune Cookie.
I think a lot of pressure comes with opening a fortune cookie because we are waiting for that AHA moment, some sort of sign to tell us which road will lead us to our happiness. Some of us read the horoscope pages and some of us go out looking for that special book or object which will make it all clear. We all seem to be looking for something - something which is just out of our grasp, always one step ahead of us. There is an Austrian folk song I know and the lyrics go something like this "we are always running after our happiness, trying to catch it but maybe, just maybe, it´s trying to catch us but we´re running too fast".
We are often pushed and moulded by other people´s expectations of us, by money or lack of it, by advertising and trends and pressure from parents, bosses and other people we depend upon. Many days we don´t have the time to think about what we need, it´s just a matter of getting through the day. We forget that we have the right to put ourselves first, to take time for family and love and our bodies and homes. But if we don´t have the time to stop and listen, won´t life just pass us by? Why do we wait until illness or a bad experience clears the fog and makes us realise what´s important to us and what we can do without.
A fortune cookie will not tell us how to be happy, a book or material things may help us on the way but ultimately, I believe we all know what truly makes us happy, we just have to stop long enough to listen to our inner voice, recognise what we TRULY need and be open for it.