Challenge virgin ;)

Hey everybody!
It’s me with a quickie post for today, wanting to show you the card I made for Kristina Werner’s Color Inspiration Challenge #50.

Yes, it’s true – I’ve never ever participated in a challenge before

Unexpectedly, I had a really great time today at the Monday Conference (whispered interpreting German into English at a guided tour in the State Horticultural College and Research Institute in Heidelberg, Germany) and so when I got home I was all cheered up and in the right mood to make my card as a contribution to the 50th CIC. I’ve seen all of her challenges so far and I’m constantly amazed by her talent and her willingness to share it with us, so:
Thank you Kristina, you’re the best!!

‘Nuff said, here’s what I made:

I decided to use Kristina’s “Retro Elephant” card as a guideline. I cut some Cosmo Cricket “Jacks World” paper with a hobby blade and Fiskars Scallop border punch. Before adhering it to the PTI Dark Chocolate Cardstock, I decided to embellish the yellow scallop strip with a small hole punch. I then drew some faux stitching with a Signo White Gel Pen, threaded SU!s retired (why???) twill ribbon in Chocolate Chip through the cute little felt star (Making Memories) and punched out the scallop circle from another sheet of CCs “Jacks World” paper (first a 1 3/8 inch circle then centered the scallop circle punch over it). I popped it up with cut up dimensionals and covered it in Glossy Accents. Done! [In case you were wondering, yes the blemishes on the Cosmo Paper have to be there. If you've ever had a close look at some Cosmo Paper, it's just how it looks like. Vintage and all ]

I really hope you like it – if you do, I’d really appreciate if you leave a comment!!
Thanks so much for stopping by!

Stempelmesse SÜD

Well I just got back from the stamp fair in Stuttgart, southern Germany – it was FANTABULOUS! Hee.
I went there with a friend in the wee hours of Saturday morning (I’m a student, so this will probably not even be very early for some of you ) and there were many stores, products, workshops and – most of all – people!

We met my SU! Demo Rita and did a Make ‘N’ Take on the SU! stage, which was really fast and really fun. We created this little mini album and the cute little gift tag with one of my favourite sets – Pocket Silhouettes.
This is Rita and me “on stage”

In a different workshop we made a felt mini album with the Big Shot, and the last workshop at 5 o’clock was the Adirondack Alcohol Inks workshop. This was amazing! It’s certainly nothing for the faint of heart and nothing I’d consider doing in my small flat, but if I had a hobby room (like Rita!) I totally would. Lookit what we did:

Ain’t that cool?!! I love it. The colours are prettier IRL, the paper is glossy and on the last pic I used some Stickles to accent the flowers.
We had lots of fun doing this class – “we” refers to Dani and me (Hey, we forgot to take a picture!!). We only knew each other from blogland, so it was really nice to meet up at the fair
Now of course I have to show you what I got, have you got your seat belts fastened?

In case you’re worried about my poor credit card: it has only been used slightly, yay for birthday money
Now as you can see in the picture (sorry for the bad lighting), I bought quite a lot of individual sheets of paper. This is because there weren’t many paper pads or paper crafting kits to buy. So instead I had to go for the single pages. Oh well.

There’s lots of Cosmo Cricket (would totally have bought more if there would have been more, I am SO in love ), Basic Grey (mostly Bittersweet and Wisteria), some SEI, October Afternoon, Little Yellow Bicycle (very cute Die Cut sheets), Making Memories, Crate Paper (love their Prudence Collection!) We R Memory Keepers, one sheet of MME and one of the cute “Hog Heaven” paper by Sassafrass Lass – it just makes you smile, doesn’t it?

I bought two stamps with German sentiments, one says “Thinking of you” (extremely versatile) and the other one was just too funny, it says:
“If you knew how long it took me to make this, you’d never throw it away”
Here’s another quote from a cute stamp I saw there (but didn’t buy):
“Born to stamp. Forced to work.”
Haha

Overall it was totally fun, but my legs are so damn sore now ;D
Well, gotta go look at some vocab for the next Monday conference, will be back in some days with my first ever entry at Kristina Werners 50th Colour Challenge

Have a great Sunday!

I’m a hybrid person

I just brought Buck to his, um “other residence” and as it is always the case, now I feel strange.

When he’s there I feel more or less like a parent, bearing responsibility and taking care for him. He was sick the last days (had to get an injection, antibiotics etc. because of a wound on his leg) and I was of course worried and also: angry.
He was with his “owner” when he got injured and I was – again – the one to worry and take him to the vet. These are things I’m never going to understand. And I’m just mad and also sorry for Buck, because he deserves better. He depends on us. It’s not okay to ignore this. I don’t expect him to cook for him or entertain the dog 24/7, but holy bejesus, it’s about his health-!

So now I left him “there” and tomorrow he has to go to the vet again to see if the antibiotics have worked and I expect to get some kind of report on how it went. I’m not really comfortable with knowing that a person who hasn’t proven reliable in the last time is in charge of something as important as the health of my dog…

So every time I leave Buck there, I feel like a hybrid person – half dog “mom”, half independent. It’s a strange feeling, every time I’m also relieved not to be in charge of him all of the time. But it’s still kinda hard to bring him there and go home alone.

Anyways, I didn’t want to bore you, I just wanted it off my mind, because I still have to learn and read quite a bit, because tomorrow is the first “Monday Conference” (Moko) for me EVER. And I sit in one of the booths and interpret the first half. Whew. Of course I won’t let you go without some eye candy. Enjoy!

Yep, I made that lollipop flower, cute ay

BTW the fabulous fabric is from Heather Bailey, check her collections out here.

23 yesterday

Hey peeps!

This is just a real quick post to tell all of you a BIG THANK YOU for all the warm words and hugs and presents – you’re the best!

I’m on the run because I’m driving home to my mom in three hours and until then I have to clean up the mess from yesterday’s party and pack my stuff. Plus I have to pop by at work, because I made two loafs of the famous cheese & onion bread and we only managed to eat one of them yesterday evening. So I thought I’d bring them the other loaf, hope they like it! They sang for me yesterday, it was too cute Yay for having the best colleagues!

Anyways, what I wanted to share just really quick is a picture that knocked me off my socks when I discovered it this morning (note: am still able to be overly excited about something even if I had a total 14 hours of sleep for three nights). A friend made this for me and sent me the link, check this out:

OH. MY. WORD.
So if by any chance you live in my hometown, you can go there and have a look. This is SO awesome! (the big letters say “all the best” and to the left it says “for Nina”)
I am so blessed to have all of these great people in my life, I truly am.
To finish, a quote by Cicero:
“Keine Schuld ist dringlicher, als die, Dank zu sagen.” (more or less: Nothing is of higher priority than to say thanks)

So again: Thanks everyone, I love you guys!

It’s not me, it’s you

I just had to bribe myself with a candy bar to get my lazy self to vacuum the ridiculous 29 square metres I call my flat. Pathetic
And doing that I realized that I have no clue how to change the bag… Umm, yeah.

Now I guess you haven’t been sitting on the edge of your seats to read about me and the Incredible Laziness that I call my own. Yeah you’re all waiting for the story with the Huge Monster Elephant Who Almost Killed Me. “All” refers to my two readers – Hi Thorsten and Heidi!.

Well okay, your wish is my command, here goes:

It was Saturday, aka the third to last day in South Africa, and we were doing a Safari Tour with our guide Brian. He brought us to the Fairy Glen Game Reserve where we had a great breakfast and then met our ranger and started to drive with one of those huge 4×4s.

First we saw some Rhinos, peacefully grazing. I started taking pictures and then… my SD card died. It may be April 1st today, but I’m not kidding. Here’s one of my last pics before the memory card collapsed:

Murphy’s Law, I’m tellin’ ya. Back in Cape Town, the people from the photo shop in the Clock Tower Mall fortunately managed to rescue the card so that the holiday photos I took before – over 400(!!) – weren’t lost.

Then we continued driving on the field road and our ranger spotted the heads of two elephants somewhere way back, so we drove near them, he switched off the engine and started telling us about those two young bulls.

Suddenly the one you see in front started coming towards us. And even though he didn’t walk fast at all, he continued approaching at a steady pace onto the field road. Apparently he had no intention to stop, so our ranger started the engine and wanted to turn, but behind us there was some kind of rock, so we couldn’t just back off.
At this point the elephant was just about one or two metres away from the vehicle. Which was REALLY scary. The whole 4×4 was screaming (or maybe just the women. I can’t remember whether I screamed, I think I didn’t. I think I was occupied with being petrified in horror. Which might have been because I was sitting far left in the front row.) and our ranger tried to shy the bull away by approaching just a bit and making lots of noise and dust.
The elephant actually took a step backwards, but then continued coming towards us. Eventually our ranger managed to turn the vehicle in what felt like 100 steps (with the elephant in about one metre distance) and drove further away where we would be safe.

Can you see the shadow right at the bottom of the picture? That’s the frame of the (missing) windscreen of our 4×4. Yep. That’s how close this freakishly huge animal was. Talk about adrenaline! I think my poor mom was fearing for her life and mine, and our sportive ranger was suddenly very quiet and busy cranking the steering wheel. One thing is for sure: this wasn’t planned. But we survived nonetheless. So on March 14 my mom and I will celebrate our “second birthday” from now on

The rest of our Safari trip went really nicely (apart from the fact that the lions are kept from killing the visitors by something that looks like soldering wire… ), we saw giraffes, zebras, antelopes (among them the national animal of South Africa, the Springbok, very beautiful maculation), gnus, ostriches… even a baby ostrich!! Too cute!

After the 3 hr game drive we had a nice lunch at the reserve, wrote into the guest book and I took a little swim in the pool (the upper one, not the lower one with crocodiles in it, as proposed by the ranger) there on this beautiful hot day. The pics with the red date on them were taken with Brians camera – Thanks Brian!

BTW this is… um… an unknown person, my mom and Brian