I have been nominated......

... for the Leibster Award!
Woohoo!
Thank you Fabienne from Snail mail Love.

So here we go!

The Rules 

1. Mention the person who nominated you on your own blog and link them.
2. Answer the 11 questions chosen by the person who nominated you

3. Nominate 5 to 11 more blogs you like who have less than 200 followers.

4. Create your 11 questions

5. Let your nominees know!

1* What is your Favorite and Least Favorite part of having a blog?

My favorite part would have to be the responses I get to a post. It's such a nice feeling when you hear that something I have worked hard on does something to someone.

The part I struggle with sometimes is the pressure to post regularly. Obviously that is something I pressure myself to do.
 But I always find it a shame when I really like a blog but the person only posts about once a year. I don't want to become that person. But combined with all my other obligations , writing a blogpost sometimes falls inbetween the cracks. And I can feel really guilty about that.

2* What are some of your sources of inspiration?

This is a tough one.. I love browsing Pintrest. For blog -inspiration I love reading other people's blogs. See what they are writing about.

3* If you where given $100 to spend on yourself , what would you buy first?

A new pair of runningshoes.
I started running a while back but had to stop due to the fact that my old shoes where making an existing foot-injury worse. So on the advice of my physical therapist I'm holding off on running until I have some new shoes.
And since money doesn't grow on trees I need to save up some money first.

For the record; I've always hated running.. until now. I actually miss it...

4*Do you have any guilty pleasures?

You mean aside form the small bowl of Doritos and the can of Monster I have here?

I think going to bed early would classify. I love that, when I'm home alone, I can just go to bed at 21.30 if I feel like it. Also, taking a nap. Fabulous!

5* What's your favorite word in a foreign language?
That has to be the German "wettervorhersage" It means "weatherforecast".
I've always liked it. 
** we used to watch a lot of german tv at home..

6* What's the story behind a random object in your room?
With a whole house filled with random objects .. what to choose?
Well we have a spray bottle on our diningroom table. You know, what you usually use to spray your plants with. We use ours to correct Abby. Since she is deaf we can't use verbal commands. And when she is naughty we spray her. These days just showing the bottle is enough warning. The rule is that she has to sit on her bed while we eat. And we use the spray to "enforce" it.

7* What is your most bought stationery intem?
It's a toss between notebooks and pens. 
I have a huge stack of unused notebooks. *blush* So at the moment I'm on a notebook-buying-ban.
Second most bought are pens. Nothing expensive; just random cute ballpoints and gellpens.

8* How do you take your tea/coffee?
Tea: just the tea please. Preferably some "weird" flavor
Coffee: either as strong as possible; black. Or with lots of milk and sugar. And at a coffeeshop I usually go for the most extravagant combination. Cause I can drink regular coffee at home.

9* Do you have any craft-related favorite books?
I'm not shure if it's craft-related but I love " Groots &Meeslepend Leven" from Lou Niestadt.
It is only in Dutch but talkes about how to make an ordinary life grand. And also about art-journaling. I went to one of her workshops last year and it inspired me to draw more in my journal. 

10* What's something about you that would be impossible to assume?
Ehm.. well.. I'm actually very much an open book.
Maybe the fact that I have 3 tattoo's?

11* Do you collect anything?
apart from craft-materials? ;)
I have a small selection of fountainpens.. and some on my whishlist still.
I also have a small collection of glass presse-papiers. But , aside going to Venice and buying some, they are hard to find. So the collection isn't growing very fast.
Other than that I am currently trying to own less "stuff".
So I am currently getting rid of lots of things I have been hanging on to for far too long and without a good reason.

Thank You Fabienne for all of these Lovely questions! 

Now I have to nominate a few blogs.
I nominate Petra from "de witte Lanteern", Gittepetit , Jessica from "The Paper Trail Diary", and Sara from "Sincerely Sara"

Excuse me if you do have more than 200 Followers and I nominated you. ;)

Your Questions are:
1. Why you choose this name for your Blog?
2. If you had a whole afternoon to yourself, to spend however you want without any obligations. What would you do?
3. What's in your bag at the moment?
4. What is your most treasured posession?
5. Is there someting you would still like to learn?
6. What would be your most ideal vacation?
7. What is the best advice you have ever been given?
8. Summer or Winter?
9. What do you miss most about being a child?
10. What is on your playlist right now?
11. Why did you start blogging?

I hope you all want to play along. But no hard feelings if you don't.
If you do play along; please leave a link in the comments below so I can read your awnsers.
If haven't ben tagged but still want to play along; go for it!

Where the "magic" happens..

but also where the bills are paid, paperwork is filed, ratties are loved and many more things take place..

Today I am taking you on a small tour of my craft room.
Which doubles as our home-office, book-room and rat-room.

In our old house my room literally was the boilerroom. It was a 1 bedroom appartment and the boilerroom was the only spare space for all on my crafty bits and pieces when I moved in with Nico.
When we bought this house I immediately claimed this room for my "junk" ** as Nico calles it.. lovingly... I think..

The bright mint color on the wall was a leftover from my apartment in Haarlem. I had my whole bathroom in this color. Almost all of the furniture also came with me from Haarlem.
The desk is made of 2 Ikea tables and gives me enough room for the laptop and printer.
As well as leaving me some room to work. And store some essentials on-hand.
The windowsil is covered with little knicknacks and rocks I've collected on our vacations.

Above the desk there are some narrow shevels ( again Ikea) to show of some prints, bits and pieces.
The cardrack (Hema) was a christmas gift 2 years ago. It mostly holds my most recent Postcrossing cards and some inspirational quotes.

On the opposite wall is the bookcase. Well 3 of them actually.
We both love reading and together have quite a number of books. However we both don't like how a stuffed bookcase looks in the livingroom. So the books ended up here.
I'm thinking about moving some books to the bookcase in the guestroom because it's getting very full in here. 

Aside from books there are my photoalbums, Nico's buisness paperwork, our pritavte paperwork, a collection of inks, my Project Life stuff and small bits and pieces.

The mint-colored trolley in front came from my parents house. They bought it ( at Ikea) when they first got married.. a long long time ago. My borther had it at his house for a while and when he moved it ended up in my mom's shed. So I claimed it and asked my father-in-law to paint it.
It houses my binding machine, some empty snailmail boxes, 2 boxes of stamps, the rat-carrier and other little rat-related bits and our printerpaper.

See? It is full of all sorts of stuff...

In the small nook behind the door we've put up some shelving
(which was quite a project and resulted in pieces falling out of the wall on the other side.. =( )
Stuffed on there is a wide varity of "stuff".
Mostly craft-related. Drawing and painting stuff, old journals, my sewing machine and typewriter, snail-mail stuff and a huge stack of "not-yet-used" notebooks. On the top shelf there is more paperwork and a pile of boxes from mobile phones and such.
Sometimes I get really overwhelmed by the amount of stuff I feel I need to keep. I've tried editing these shelves a few times but have not been succesful in getting rid of stuff...

Still working on that..

As said;this is also where the rats live. I bought this cage on Marktplaats ( a kind of Dutch Craigslist) when we moved here and I still love how practical it is. And the rats love all the space they have!
(I believe it's a "Critter Nation" and is also available as a 2-level cage). 

So this is my room.

It is the place whee I go to dabble a bit with this and that..