Easter eggs

It's the custom to paint eggs red on this day.
So I woke up early to finish other things and then paint my eggs in my own way, quietly and hoping that they will look good.It always causes me stress if the red ones will be nice red ones and not too dark or with white spots.
Anyway I hang a red teatowel outside, that's a custom too, to show you are painting red eggs.

 First I slowly hard boiled my eggs.I let them cool.

 Then I dipped them into water,vinegar and red paint for Easter eggs for 5 minutes.

 Yes, they are ok!Great! Here they are inside my second ceramic bowl with Georgia Ahtida's egg in the middle.

And here's my bowl in the middle of the lovely fabric strip wreath Angeliki of Poco Loco made for me!

 And here's my minimalistic Easter decoration. My ceramic bowls, red eggs, Ahtida's egg, ceramic eggs (store bought years ago), a Hama bead butterfly (I will tell you about it in a future blogpost), and the little bunny I got from the Secret Bunny Exchange from Athena (organized by Zina).

I left a couple of eggs unpainted wanting to try some decoupage techniques I recently learnt at the Fiaxto workshop at IKEA.
I used an IKEA napkin, and white glue dilluted in water.

 I took off the white sheets from the napkin and was left with only the top sheet.I cut it in small pieces. I applied some glue on the eggs and stick the napkin and apply some more glue. Let dry well.

 The two eggs are covered in only one layer and therefore the colour of the eggs shows from underneath leaving a blue and beige colour combination. I also tried with more layers and had the blue and white  colour result but the texture of the egg surface isn't as good. Also I realised I should have cut the napkin in smaller pieces.

 Do you paint eggs for Easter?What kind did you do this year?

Watercolours, decoupage and pyrography!

After so many weekends of entertaining guests at home and going out a lot, last weekend I decided to relax, read a book and do some crafts.
On Friday I went to Ikea. I needed some frames to put in my triptych of jelly fish my friend Ian sent me from England.

I loved them on his blog and wanted one but he sent me all three as he is such a kind and generous person!

Look how beautiful they look in the frames which will decorate the beach house of course.

Another reason I went to Ikea for was because I had booked the Decoupage Workshop organized by Ikea and the ladies from Ftiaxto Elina and Valia.
I have done very little decoupage so far and really wanted to try.
Here is what we made under the instructions and supervision of Valia and Elina.

Ikea offered the items we decoupaged and the napkins.

All in all it was an interesting workshop. I plan to go to more in future if they organize some.

You can see how to make the clock here.

 And then on Saturday I decided to put in use a lovely tool we had bought in a very reasonable price from Lidl months ago. The pyrography tool was great and I loved what I made.
I used some leftovers pieces of wood from the new shadow puppet stage hubby made.
I sanded them a bit to have an even surface and then using the pyrography tool with all the different edges I burnt out the patterns.
I really loved the results and plan to make more.
I have always been inspired by Geninne's and Alisa Burke's pyrography beauties. So here are mine.
Empire State Building

 The little wooden huts in Turku Finland at the Craft Village.

The Dandelion

Greece in summer.

Feathers

The owl

If you don't feel like making any pyrography pieces I have a friend Dimitra who makes really beautiful ones on her Decorasylum etsy shop. Have a look!

(photo taken from Decorasylum etsy shop)
( I have in no way been compensated by the shops, firms, blogs mentioned in this blogpost.This is not an advertising blogpost.)

Birthday girl!

Have a great month everyone!
Last week on January 28th it was my birthday! My 50th!
As it was an important number hubby and I had decided to celebrate it on the next day at a tavern with some friends but then we both went down with a cold so we didn't arrange anything or invite anyone!
By Thursday, the birthday day, we were almost ok but it was too late for invitations!
I didn't miss a day of school inspite my cold and on Thursday morning I made key lime pie for my colleagues at school who really loved it.

Suddenly a big bouquet arrived with hubby behind it who surprised me pleasantly! He had done that once again many many years ago!

After the first shock my 1st graders and hubby sang "Happy Birthday" to me and then he took the flowers home as I had more hours on my timetable.

Barca was really hungrily happily looking at the flowers when I returned home!

I spent the rest of the day answering the hundreds of wishes that by e-mail and on facebook I received and which were very very sweet!
Thank you everyone who took the time to send me a message with wishes. I appreciate it so much!
This card was from Angela in Canada and there are so many more I can't possibly show all of them but they are on my page on facebook.

And I thought my birthday was over!
The next day Friday 29th was EGST pie cutting meeting at Dimiourgies cafe in Kalamaria.

 Vivika of The Wandering Deer had organized everything.We gathered about 15 people and exchanged ideas and good laughs. We also made a small woven pendant.The pie was delicious but I didn't win the coin! I was very lucky though because one of the fellow Etsy friends gave me a beautiful handmade piece of art. You can find Manos' popRenaissance shop on etsy and his work is highly artistic! Thank you Manos for the gift!

On Saturday morning I attended the "Fairy tales around the world" performance with narrative and music at the local children's library. Maria Gkogka my old friend from the camp was the narrator and and Anastasia Alexaki and Olga Zerva the musicians. It was  a really beautiful performance!

On Saturday evening we had one more InMyCloset workshop meeting this time not in Anna' cozy kitchen but at Koumbi coffee & crafts. We had booked our places in this workshop a long time ago but till the end we didn't know what we were going to make. Anna had said it was a surprise! And indeed it was.
When I arrived at 7, the time of the workshop, everyone was already there and I was impressed by everyone's punctuality as usually I go first!
And guess what! It was not a "real" workshop! It was  a surprise birthday party for me!!!!!!!
I was so so touched by all the girls' thoughtfulness!
There was a delicious chocolate cake,

that was served in beautiful "English" dishes with assorted napkins,

there was a beautiful handmade card made by Kikitsa Stav, with a beautiful window open out to sunshine.

I really loved the interpretation she gave why she made the card like that . You can read all about it in her blog here.
There was a gift which I will spend in no time soon at IKEA.The girls know me so well!

But most of all there was so much care and love and friendship that I was very very touched!

 We had coffee and drinks and played board games and had a good laugh and it was fun!

Thank you Anna for organising all this.
And thank you to each and every one of the girls Kikitsa, Katerina, Evangelia, Elsa, Sophie, Eleanna, Nefeli, Angeliki and Vangelitsa who were present and Demetra, Christina and Christina, Efi, Lina, Martha, Vasso and Lia who couldn't be there!

They had all been organising this "behind" my back over on facebook, by privately chatting and managed to keep it a secret! How sweet is that!
The next morning Sunday 31st, I had one more surprise a birthday cake for me after our shadow puppet performance at Koperti from hubby and our best man and best friend Tassos, the school owner.

The weekend ended with a gorgeous sunset, a gift from the sky!

It was a great birthday! It's such a great feeling to be loved! Thank you everyone!

New starts! A new kitchen!

Have a nice month everyone!
I can't believe time flew so fast that I couldn't even find time to blog.
There are so many things happening around here that I seem not to find time for the blog!
Of course schools started.
This year we have an empty classroom and I temporarily got it to have an English classroom. I am really happy about it. I bought cleaning things and went and cleaned it but haven't decorated it yet because I really don't know if it lasts.

At home our flat is a mess.
Long ago we had decided we wanted a new kitchen fitted and at last we found a handyman we could trust to make everything, plumbing, wires, the units.
From this which lasted 22 years....

 we got through this.....

to arrive to this....

and this...

and finally to this....

While the kitchen was covered with the IKEA safety wrap lots of people really liked it and told me I should keep it blue! We decided to paint one wall blue to keep the mood!
I will blog more about the kitchen in future with details.
So far we have been cleaning (and decluttering yeah!) for about 22 days now and we only managed to do the kitchen. The rest of the house is still a mess. Hopefully we will have been finished by....October?Christmas?

The second week of the Easter holidays.

As we were busy with the doctors' appointments all this week, we didn't have time for much else. Apart from doing house chores,
we walked the seafront promenade a lot, us and thousands of others, enjoying the magnificent views,

I made egg salad following a recipe I found in this blog.It is a good way to use up Easter eggs, Add boiled eggs, shredded carrots, red pepper, dill, green onions, mustard, mayonaise, salt and pepper, olive oil and apple vinegar.Delicious!

I prepared some mail to post next week,
I got prepared for school that starts tomorrow,
I put away the Easter decorations and decorated my big table for spring,

we went to IKEA for some frames we needed,one for this oil painting a friend of mine made for me,

 and one for the watercolour I bought from Dimitra of Decorasylum, and her etsy shop,

I made some soap following this recipe by Zina of Efzin Creations here,
I used olive oil soap base, lavender essential oil, lemon essential oil and yellow food colouring as well as a bit of lavender flowers from Portugal.

 I liquidized the soap base in the microwave, added the rest of the ingredients and poured into the soap molds.You have to do the pouring very quickly!

 Here they are, so easy, great looking, smelling wonderful!

We went to the beach house,

and had coffee with the family.

Whoever starts school tomorrow, have a great new start!