Saturday 30 June 2012

A cross stitch finish

During my short break at the beach house I managed to almost finish one of the kits my dear friend Marabeth had sent me from the States. She always finds cross stitch things to send me from thrift stores like material or threads or kits and I love stitching them one by one.
Since I have decided not to buy anything till I finish all the kits I have you are bound to see old things from my stash.
Here is the progress of the stitching during the days we stayed at the summer house plus the finished picture.
Les Mouettes by Lanarte
Day 1
 Day 2
 Day 3
 Day 4
Day 5
 Day 6
 I decided not to backstitch the word Mouettes underneath as French is not a language I speak.
And here is how I framed it this morning with an IKEA frame I already had.
It was  a lovely quick thing to stitch and finish!
And I already started another picture from my stash.

Friday 29 June 2012

Five days at the beach house.

I really don't know how fast the days passed. How fast time flies! I think I will go to sleep and schools will be open again.
Anyway it was great at our summer/beach house. Mainly for two reasons. I didn't have chores to do and secondly because we were almost all alone as all of the rest of our neighbours except the pensioners are still working. That added to the silence and the relaxation of the place.
So here is what I did...
... I relaxed spotting angles to take interesting pictures...
(like this plant seen in a paddle of water on my just washed table)
(or this plant in a nearby field)
..... I found the right place for my sailing boat, a gift by a friend from the Drama club at my nameday party.

...I looked for insects and butterflies to take pictures of....



....I admired all the different colours of flowers that are around in the neighbourhood...


....I collected sea glass before and after swimming and was quite lucky this time as I found some beautiful pieces...
 (I love seeing feathers on the beach,too)
 (That was my best find for a long time and unfortunately all the photos I took do not do justice to its real colour)
 (The shells were fantastic too)
 (Plastic can also be very beautiful sometimes!)
 (I grabbed this little fellow alive and then released him, that reminded me of my childhood when we used to find so many crabs at the beach!)
 (nice lot after the night's storm!)
...The only chore I did was some ironing and I did it this way, isn't it the most enjoyable way to do the ironing?
....I admired the skies before and after the storm...


... I enjoyed my coffee while reading and finishing this book Jeffrey Archer's First among equals...It is a fantastic book. So there goes one down from the pile of seventeen books I brought to read at the beach house.
...I enjoyed the sunsets....

...I did some cross stitch which I will show you in the next blogpost and  last but not least I had this encounter....

 (She/He was sunbathing on my lawn and allowed me a couple of close ups!Isn't she/he gorgeous?)

Thursday 28 June 2012

A swan landed in my mail box!

Staying away from the computer and the Internet for a week was so good!
A couple of things that I wanted to tell you last week before leaving but did not have time then.
This was a surprise parcel from my dear sea glass friend Ian from England. He painted it himself and sent it to me. He knows me so well. I love swans and I really appreciate his thoughtfulness to send it to me.
This will be framed in the fall.

The sea glass on the corner is John and Juliana's from Scotland.
Something small I bought from a lady who came to sell her handmade jewelry at school a couple of days before we closed.

It is sitting on an otchipotchi lace stone.
Just before leaving I finished the part of my Balinese Dancer that I had aimed for. Now the whole head and flowers is finished. Isn't she gorgeous?
 I decided not to take this along to the summer house. It is too big and too complicated so I took along something smaller and summery! I will show you when it is finished.

These are the 17 books  I took with me. They are both in English and in Greek. Do you think I am too ambitious? Yes maybe I am. But I read really a lot in summer, in winter I stitch more!
The majority are from foreign authors and they were books I had in my library already, some I had bought at book bazaars and are second hand, very few are new purchases. I decided to take them all at the summer house to see how many I will manage to read. And I am going to read them in an alphabetical order of the author's surname. Some of them will be donated afterwards.
And here are the only two magazines I had bought this spring. My always favourite Marie Claire Idees which are the only affordable ones.
 Here are a couple of the ideas in them I liked. I admit I don't find them as interesting as I used to a couple of years ago. Maybe because the Internet gives you so many ideas that magazines haven't got much to add anymore.

I am now back from the summer house. I had a great time. You will see in the next post.Thank you for your summer wishes.

Saturday 23 June 2012

Enjoy summer!

I am leaving in a while for a week to my summer house so I will be away from the computer! I hope I will swim a lot, do cross stitch and read and hopefully write some snail mail letters!
I will return in the end of next week so I will catch up with every one, don't worry!
Thanks to hubby I now know how to make my photos look good even with fewer pixels.
So I am leaving you with a summery note!
Enjoy summer, the sun and the sea!
And for relatives and friends who are in winter I hope it is as mild as can be!

Friday 22 June 2012

School printing/engraving exhibition

One of the great aspects of this school year was that the Art teacher Alexander Dimitriades is a painter but has also majored in printing/engraving.
Hubby and I had visited his exhibition back in March.
Alexander did a great job with the children and in the end of the school year they presented their works of art all over the school like the picture below.
 I loved lots of the pictures like this zebra by one of my 6th graders Alex..
 This was my favourite and I admit I asked for it and my 4th grader Maxi gave it to me.
 This train was made by a fifth grader.
 This was in black by another of my fourth graders.
 I really loved this one too.
Alexander made this video of his students' work. I hope it will upload.

But what impressed me more in the end was that Alxander was very generous to give me a goodbye gift, his three watercolours of glass vases that were decorating his art classroom and which he had made some years ago. I had loved them the moment I laid eyes on them and he was so nice to give them to me. These will be beautifully framed in September and find their special room on my walls. Thank you Alexander!



Weekends

Dear friends,
thank you for reading along and for your comments. Today this is probably my preultimate post before my leaving for holidays so it is rather heavy in pictures.
Since April when at last the weather started getting better we have enjoyed our weekends a lot.
Here are a couple of photos from them...
a weekend at the beach in the end of April...
enjoying eating just the two of us...

and collecting some sea glass...

...an afternoon at Vafopouleion Institute to see a Karaghiozis Art Exhibition in May...


...and an art exhibition at the same building...



I loved those spring paintings.
... a Saturday morning at the antique market n June...



 I bought very cheap this cross stitch piece...
 and this old frame with a school prize from 1951. This I will donate to the Education Museum.
 And on the way back I found these crochet beauties on the sidewalk! Hubby was angry and felt embarassed because I collected them but wouldn't it be a pity to leave them there? They need better pictures I know.
...a Sunday morning walk at the sea front promenade where a book exhibition was taking place...


I didn't buy any books as I didn't find anything interesting apart from those glass Karaghiozis figures which we couldn't afford,
but I loved looking at the water lily pond...




and spotting this red dragonfly made me really happy!


 ...walking back home I loved that wall graffitti with the fish. I would love one like that on my summer house wall.


 ...and one more weekend at our summer house...
watching the sunrise early in the morning...

watching a little kid playing at the beach...
watching insects...


 looking at, touching, smelling, collecting, eating fruit from our trees...

...and a couple of days ago attending a shadow puppet performance by Giannis Chatzis, a very good local shadow pupeteer,at Kapantzi Villa. The play was about Las Incantadas, a collection of statues that were stolen from Thessaloniki and are in the Louvre now.





I know I could have made lots of different blogposts out of all these events I talked to you about but since I won't be blogging from now on and for a while due to holidays I wanted to tell you all about them now.I hope you too have enjoyed your weekends in spring and will continue in summer!