My birthday...

...was on the 28th January!
My 6th Graders surprised me on the last hour of school with a birthday cake and a gift and a party, yes a party! No lesson, balloons and pop corn and music and fun! It was good that it was the last hour and some parents, members of the Parents' Association helped in the organising of the party. The music teacher brought the other 6th grade class too and we had fun!
Here is my gift from them, a shirt and lovely long brown jacket. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me so no more photos! It has been years that students had surprised me like that and I really enjoyed it!

At home as soon as the hour struck twelve hubby decided to give me his gift. He put the happy birthday song on his laptop and then gave me his gift!! About this later in the year!

Here I should add that a day before my birthday I received a little parcel from another sea glass friend Terry or Watercolorsky! She has a lovely shop too.

She sent me a lovely pair of earrings!

Then the next day which was my birth day my mum brought me a lovely bouquet of flowers.

I received lots of phone calls from friends and relatives too and a sweet kiss from my son!.
Then in the evening we went to the cutting of the New Year's pie with the Drama club. There we had sweets with my colleagues and friends and they gave me this lovely pair of earrings.

Don't they look great on Paula's otchipotchi stones?

What the mail brought

I love it when I receive lots of mail together. I don't open it at once, I give it time.
I have lunch, relax and spend an hour opening everything, reading it, taking pictures.
Here is the mail of a very special day in the beginning of January just after the holidays (when the post office was closed).

The long round parcel was Andria's sea glass calendar I told you about in Calendars and Diaries post a couple of days ago.
The brown parcel in front is from my dear friend Marabeth whose parcels arrived filled to the rim with beautiful things and I will share in a separate post.
Don't you love that beautiful blue flower Marimekko envelope? Of course it is from Finland and it included a lovely sea glass Christmas card from my dear sea glass friend Tua.

There was a lovely parcel from Sharon whose blog , TaylorsNana, I recently started following. I was a RAK receiver. And if you like me don't know what that means, it means Random Act of Kindness!!!! She was so generous to send me a packet of erasable pens to use on my cross stitch patterns along with some threads and some patterns. I don't get Prairie Schooler here and they are fantastic, as well as a whole kit of Shakespeare's Pendler. It is lovely!

On the same day I received two handmade bags from GreenBagLady whose giveaway I won through Sewmamasew. They are bags to use while shopping instead of paper and plastic ones.These will be great for the beach house shopping!

Then there was a long letter and Christmas card from my pen pal Annette in Australia,

and the Spoonful zine I get four times a year from Australia too. This time I was fast to order it and got this collibri print by Kareena Zerefos as a gift.Bytheway Anthea of the Spoonful team recently got married so here's a chance to wish her all the best!

Then a couple of days later I received  this little pin cushion I had ordered from Sonia of Cozymemories.

I also received another giveaway ( I have really been lucky with giveaways recently) that I won from Arounna at Bookhou. I was afraid this would arrive broken but Arounna did her best to seal it perfectly!It is  abeautiful mug for my morning drink but I would say I could also use it as a little vase!

Finally a set of crocheted snowflakes I had ordered from Elina in Eljuks on etsy of course. I love crocheted snowflakes. I think it is the main reason why I want to learn to crochet.

Well I had great mailing days during the last month but I too sent lots of letters, cards and parcels around the world. My only disappointment is that I have realised that two of my parcels one to New York to my Christmas ornament giveaway winner and one to California to Edgar did not arrive to their recipients. The strange thing is that both these parcels contained cross stitched Christmas ornaments so I am afraid someone really liked my cross stitch and kept them!

Theo Angelopoulos

The only way to endure the world is its poetic version....
When all of a sudden yesterday we heard on the news that Theo Angelopoulos died in a road accident during the shooting of his latest film I was in awe.
Such a talented person to die just like that in minutes because he wanted to have a better look of the angle of his camera!
You can read about him here and on his official site here.

It was many years ago while walking at the city sea front I saw a huge hand suspending from a helicopter and a crew shooting a film. It was Theo Angelopoulos shooting  Eternity and a day.Unforgettable scene.

You can watch this little tribute to his filmography here.

Calendars and diaries.

I have been keeping a diary for ages. When I was younger I used to read back my diaries and then as I found some things really silly I tore them apart and threw them away. But the last ten years or so I have been writing a diary regularly and keeping it. I am not going back to read it but I enjoy having them and being able to look up in them dates of events I have forgotten.
I also have calendars all around the house to see dates. I don't cross out days as they pass. I just look at them to find important dates like when is the next loan payment or a bill unfortunately or the next holiday fortunately!
Last Christmas I had received lots of calendars from friends and pen pals and sea glass friends and a Flower Fairies diary from my dear hubby.
This year I decided it was high time I used a perpetual diary that I had kept for ages. It was a gift given by Susanna, a cross stitch magazine, years ago and as it was so beautiful and contained cross stitch patterns I did not want to use it. But I think the economy made me to give in and use it instead of buying a new one. Anyway I am getting old why should I keep it unwritten for future generations?LOL!
So here it is....

 It has beautiful paintings.....

 and recipes(in Italian unfortunately)....

 and cross stitch patterns.....

And here are my calendars this year. Just two.
One from Andria my sea glass friend from the States....

 I love it!

And one with monthly cards with quilts from my dear pen pal Cathy from England who is a magnificent quilter.

Colourful buttons

The weekend was sunny but so cold and having no outside chores to do I stayed in the whole of it. I really needed that as I felt really exhausted.
I spent most of my Saturday answering e-mails. It is amazing how many e-mails I had to answer and although I managed to lower my inbox level I still have  a lot. Sorry if someone expects an answer I will do my best soon.
I also stitched a lot (no photos they are gifts!)
We savoured some nice fried bread slices with maple syrup that arrived from the States. I had never tried maple syrup and was thankful that again Marabeth gave me this chance!

 I finished blogging about Maija who is leaving for her next hostess in Scotland....

And arranged some buttons I recently bought. Just a little box of 100 small buttons for crafts.
Aren't they so sweet in their colourful galore?

A concert

In December I won two tickets for a concert in the Concert Hall of Thessaloniki.
It was funny to enter the Cityportal giveaway and win among 4437 entries!
The concert was fantastic! It was dedicated to the poet Nikos Gatsos and sang Maria Farantouri and Alkinoos Ioannidis.

Here you can here my favourite Nikos Gatsos song with music by Manos Hatjidakis. Kemal.
 I am adding the song in English. It was first performed by Manos Hatjidakis and New York Rock and Roll Ensemble in New York. Here it is performed by Raining Pleasure group.

Gifts from Canada

My dear Canadian sea glass friend Angela and her " daugher " Zoe, my niece, her sweetest puppy, sent me this lovely parcel with treasures from Canada and Prince Edwrad Island.

I loved the little fatty mermaid!

And the beautiful card Angela made with sea glass!

She also made wine tags.

I loved all those shells from her island.

Sha painted a stone for me!

And made me jewelry!

And of course added some chocolate!

Thank you my dear!