Congratulations

Today it feels like a great day to hear a YES!

Enjoy to the full, it is your big day! 

And now ...

And now ... we can finally present you the homemade gifts for the cousins!

The three sons of my youngest sister received a jumper; we adapted the pattern of the hoody from the book Stof-voor-durf-het-zelvers and made a hoodie without a hood!

Her eldest son, cousin J, got a Viking jumper, Louka poses with a jumper just a little too small for her, but perfect for her 7 year old cousin. As I am the godmother of cousin J, he also got another gift which we will show later.

Her second son, cousin L, got a jumper with elephants. According to Omar the jumper fits like a glove! He actually wants to keep it for himself!

The third son in the row, cousin A, got a dragon-jumper! Jade shows off a jumper that fits her perfectly; nevertheless the jumper is on the short side for her cousin. A cousin who is 18 months younger than her! He is about to turn 4 but looks like a 6 year old!

The eldest son of my elder sister also got a jumper. Cousin O got an elephant jumper in a different color combination than cousin L.

Luckily we more or less have at least one child to pose with every jumper that was made!

Pattern: The hoodie pattern from Stof-voor-Durf-het-Zelvers.

Fabric: The elephant fabric is from Nosh Organics bought @ Roos en Violet. The dragon fabric is from Znok and the Vikings are from Bora for Lillestof, both bought @ Bambiblauw.

Santa

Our globetrotter left with a suitcase filled with presents for under the Christmas tree. 

The making of the presents was on the to-do-list for a while and as usual we put it on a back burner. So the past week we worked late nights, but we are happy we finished everything and even had some time left to take pictures before wrapping it all up.

We will unveil what is in the presents later when the lucky ones had occasion to open their presents till that time enjoy the look of our tree,

In the meantime we wish you a merry Xmas and a happy NewYear. 

Globetrotter

Since she was 6 years old she wants to travel independantly to Belgium to visit her family during the Christmas holidays. We tried to postpone it a little but meanwhile Louka is 9 (just not 10 years old) and she flew all alone from Abu Dhabi to Brussels this week.

As proud as punch she arrived with a suitcase filled with homemade present at her grandparents place.

Her hand luggage was stuffed in a newly made backpack. 

She herself choose the fabrics and we brainstormed together about the pattern. She picked ‘toile cirée’ from Petit Pan in various colors.

We decided to make a backpack with a single shoulder/waist strap.

Inside there is place for her passport, some reading books/magazines, the official-flight-paperwork can be stowed away seperatly, her home keys are on a sling inside the bag, and there is a small zippered pouch to store some money.

The Ipod Touch, her early Christmas present, can be stowed away in a tiny little pouch on the front side of the shoulder strap.

For the occasion she borrows my headphones.

A bottle of water is within arm’s reach and there is some storage space in the front flap as well.

She is well armed against the cold, as ‘Sinterklaas’ brought a lovely thick jumper earlier this month. Hopefully it doesn’t rain too much as we didn’t buy a raincoat.

The journey passed off quietly. No tears, at least not from Louka, all the more from her brothers who were scared something would happen to their sister.

How cute is that?!

Enjoy yourself and see you soon big sister!

Eco-le

‘Mon Eco-le’, the nursery of our youngest, gave all the parents a Xmas present; a coconut shell with chive planted by our own kids.

His favorite sister can show his creation as he does not like to pose today.

Xmas tree

I choose only my preferred Xmas tree decorations to be taken out of the storage. The boys smartly found a way to get to the bling bling stuff they love.

We never thought they would be able to reach the boxes with hidden treasures, till their 5 year old sister walks down the stairs with a hidden gem. We rush upstairs and this is how we found the boys!

Elias told us how he got up: “We used a little table, put a metal box on the table and on top of the box a little chair, and then mum, well I used my muscles!”

They are not the only monkeys in the family.

Wrapping

The last couple of days lots of presents have been snapped up. Since the mailman dropped a box of Petit Pan fabric and paper our gift wraps look like this nowadays!

I love Petit Pan!

Happily EVER AFTER

A couple we are friends with, are soon to be married. I wisely refused to make the wedding dress and left that to an expert, but there are plenty of other things to be sewn for the big day.

As a keepsake for their marriage, they will give a CD to their guests. Inspired by her work with paper from a world atlas, we made the CD covers.

She is Australian, he is Romanian and they got to know each other in the United Arab Emirates. Thus the corresponding pages were ripped out the world atlas and sewn together with some brown recycled paper.

The paper was plasticized on the inside to prolong the lifespan of the covers.

The ‘newlyweds to be’ are in charge of making the CD, I am curious to hear their choice of music.

Back to basics!

Yesterday the UAE got selected as organizer of the WorldExpo 2020. It was hard not to get tempted; I almost blinded you again with pictures of the fireworks and sound fragments of the honking cars following the announcement. Or I could have written a lament about the fact that at 10pm we got a message that the school would close the following today to celebrate winning the election. But no, I will not get myself seduced to write about any of this, after all I have the next 7 years to write about the upcoming WorldExpo.

I promised this post would not cover the weather, wouldn’t be showing holiday pictures nor rugby reports, but it would be about sewing! And I keep my promise.

I present you my new shoulder bag!

I made the webbing as I described here, but this time I did not stitch symmetrical lines.

I made the big version of the bag mentioned in the book, as after all I still have one child in diapers and also the treasures the other kids find all over town sometimes need some storage.

Although the choice of fabrics is exactly as I pictured I am not completely happy with its size. The bag is rather big. I could do with a smaller version!

Pattern: The pattern is recipe 27 from the book Zo Geknipt.

Fabric: The fabric is a combination of Flight Dusk and Poppies Mineral from The Grove collection of Birch Organic Fabric. The fabric was bought oversea @ Fabricworm.

Playtime

Eventually I did rain, a day later than initially announced.

Luckily it was Friday, so there was no school and the kids did not have to get evacuated again. They enjoyed playing outside and getting completely soaked.

As expected some roads got badly flooded but nothing that can’t be managed.

Evacuation

The last couple of days there was unstable weather, and intermittent sand storms.

Today we even had a little bit of rain. Nothing exceptional I hear you think, except when you live out here, as rain IS exceptional in the United Arab Emirates. As it is not very common the house and road infrastructure are not adjusted to these weather conditions. Even with the slightest bit of rain, the electricity breaks down, the rain’s coming in through the roof and the roads are flooding. I am talking about a normal shower of rain and not a tropical downpour.

Today when the first drops fell down, we got the following mail from our children’s school:

‘BREAKING NEWS: En raison des orages et selon l'ordre du KHDA, l'établissement va fermer ses portes au plus vite possible. Le Lycée est en train de contacter les familles pour organiser le départ des élèves.’

All schools were evacuated today, and another couple of drops of rain later the kids were dropped at my doorsteps by the school bus.

I took them to Satwa fabric area, we spotted some nice fabrics at Tahir, unluckily enough they were being used as doormat to avoid wet shoes inside the shop. 

For a fabric-shopping-addict as myself it doesn’t feel right to use fabric as a doormat!

Next post we are back to business!

Flamingo

A last non-DIY blogpost.

As it is perfect weather at the moment, sunny with a light breeze, we have lots of visitors this time of the year. Consequently we spend more time visiting the town then we spend time behind the sewing machine.

Yesterday, we went to watch the birds at the RasAlKhor bird sanctuary and reserve; a peaceful place in the middle of the city.

I only brought my cell phone and the birds were too far to take decent pictures; so I placed my cell phone in front of the binoculars and took these cute snaps.

A tiny bit of nature in the middle of a lot of concrete constructions.