socks

Part of our advent calendar (late in the evening today I found another, green, sock I made for the calendar. I´ll add it tomorrow).
Marie in a new (old) dress. I would like a similar dress myself :).
M. got ill again, and I´m feeling kind of hopeless and anxious. I feel like being a mother is such a hard thing sometimes. I wish I knew what I was doing wrong and could fix it immediatelly. But maybe I´m too weak and lazy for that.

christmas baking

I made some great gingerbread cookies (they are so delicious and soft! much better than last year), and a great birthday cake for Marie, who turned four. We enjoyed our little celebration.
All the christmas presents are at home, mostly already wrapped up in fancy paper. My husband´s doing his favourite christmas jokes with presents: putting small items in big boxes so that they look big and expensive :). I kind of can´t wait, but the time is running so quickly. I know the waiting is the most beautiful part of all this. My friend Petra is incredible... I can´t imagine when´s she´s sewing, but she makes a tonne of all kinds of sewing projects. Plus she´s a great cook. And a skilled photographer.

ten years ago

Ten years ago today we got married. I promised to tell some funny stories (we had quite a crazy wedding), but I´m so so so tired now I almost can´t keep my eyes opened. Anyway, happy anniversary to us :).

the risk of buying presents

I bought these two handmade brooches - they were delivered today. I thought I´ll give them to somebody for christmas, but now when I see them in real life I love them so much I decided to keep them. So much for giving presents :). From this awesome seller.

snow everywhere

New "christmas" dress for Andulína, and new christmas ornaments for our tree. There is so much snow in our garden.

an interior for a change

After painting woods and houses, I wanted to do something different. This is me years ago in one of the many places we lived.

roes

Look what I got today! An early christmas present, perhaps :). I love roes. Everytime we´re on a walk I hope to see some. They are such cute animals, elegant, beautiful. Once we visited our friends (they live near a forest), and while standing on their garden, I noticed a little male roe lying in the corner of their garden. It was dying and weak. There was even a dog, and we all were standing and chatting quite long in the garden, but nobody saw it.

a year ago

A year ago at our friends´ house. Their place is one of the most beautiful homes I´ve ever seen. I loved this advent calendar they had in the kitchen and now I try to make a similar one too. I´m just sure I can´t make it equally beautiful :). I can´t believe Marie was so small, such a cutie.

christmas snowflakes

I made these colourful paper snowflakes for christmas decoration today. I love them, so simple, yet so beautiful.

hedgehogs II

I painted these white hedgehogs again, for our friends. The colours are a bit different in reality, today was such a dark day (it was almost impossible to take a photo). I like how simple it is. My mother in law gave me some of her old canvases today, and they are huge! It´s definitelly a challenge to paint on that thing.

beloved december is here!

I love december and I love waiting for christmas. I made this decoration for our front door yesterday. It´s made from fimo candle holder I made last year. It actually didn´t work for tall candles and was kind of weird and ugly, so I put some straw Ikea christmas ornaments on it. I love the goat! Well, probaby it´s not a goat, but I call it like that :). Also I dried some orange and lemon slices, but I don´t know how to use them yet. But dried citruses are a christmas must-have for me.

Another thing that happened: Marie is back in the bedroom, sleeping on the ground floor again. We figured it was too soon for her to sleep alone in the attic. It worked for almost half a year, but then she started to wake up during every night, sometimes two or more times during one night, crying... it was a nightmare. We made her a new bed - it´s very old, actually. Our friend gave us this old baroque bed, but there was nothing to put the mattress on. Also, the bed has quite unusual dimensions (it´s apparently a bed for adults, but people used to be smaller in the past, because it´s shorter and narrower than beds these days), so we had to built new planks and filling under the mattress. The mattress was too long: at first I thought I will cut it, but then I just bent it to fit in the bed. We are so proud to finish this! The bed´s parts were lying in the attic for one year before we managed to make it work. It´s much easier now when Marie´s sleeping there. On the other hand, Andulka is giving us hard time during the nights :). I hope it´s just the teeth causing her problems with sleeping. Oh well. Sleeping or not, we are ok.

p.s. Maybe I´ll buy (or at least try to buy) the Bartoň painting after all... I know I sound like a total idiot now :). I hate how indecisive person I sometimes am.

end of November

 I made these "drop scones" (???) today, not sure how to call them in English. It´s the type of dough with yeast in it, and when it rises up, it´s fried in oil in round shapes with a hole in one side. I hope this description makes sense a bit :). The result being these lovely yummy drop scones, that we ate with plum jam and sweetened sour cream. Delicious! The only negative thing is that you have to use huge amount of oil to make these.
Some of you maybe wondered if I bought the painting I talked about in previous post: I didn´t and don´t intend to. I was told something I don´t want to write about on this blog, but it prevents me from wanting the painting... and truth is, we have tons of original paintings at home (though mostly small ones, graphics and such). My husband studied history/theory of art, knows many artists, and they were always giving him (or us) their works, so we really have enough. Plus I can always paint one myself, right? :)

red and green cottage

These two belong together.

winter is coming!

Photos from our garden one misty morning.

paintings of David Bartoň

 I loved drawing and painting since I was a small child, but I really started to paint (more or less seriously) ten years ago, in 2002. In that time, I saw paintings made by David Bartoň, moravian painter, and I loved them immediatelly. At most I love what I call his "abstract landscapes", but he paints also fun portraits of his friends and people he saw in pub. The landscapes are so beautiful, bold colours, optimistic, energic paintings. There was a time (in 2002/2003) when I wanted to paint like him. I really tried, haha, but obviously I couldn´t achieve anything similar (maybe later I´ll show you some of my old paintings, so that you know how much I was inspired by him... I almost tried to copy his style :). I love the squares he usually paints the landscapes on, I love his colours, everything. For a long time I´ve kind of forgotten about him, and didn´t see his paintings anywhere... But recently I started to think about my own "painting journey", how I would like to write about my paintings from the beginning, who and what influenced and inspired me, and why did I paint in the first place. I just began to think about all this in my head and thought about writing a post about this on this blog, but I realize this would take me a long time and some research (and also the actual post would be quite long). It will maybe be a while before I manage to write this. But - today I started to make the research, and I found David Bartoň :). And I have to say, after years and years, and after my vision of what I would like to paint changed a lot, I still love his paintings. Today, as I was looking at his work I actually thought about buying one of them, but since I mostly love the big ones, it would be probably expensive :). I can already see the painting on our beautiful grey wall in the living room... Oh well. (My husband told me there is actually a chance it wouldn´t be so expensive, so... :)
Here you can see his other works, I highly recomment clicking through them.

christmas decorating

I wasn´t much into decorating for christmas and winter time in recent years... but this year I really want some decorations and ornaments around the house. (I know it´s probably too early for this :). I´d love the hang some dried oranges and lemons, some christmassy flowers maybe, straw ornaments, I would like to make some ornaments myself... maybe some birds? I´m also much happier now than I was at this time a year ago. I´m painting like a devil and it´s giving me some great energy :).

small canvases

Recently I had the idea to paint on small canvases and bought several of them. I really like this; painting details, small scenes... It takes a long to paint over big canvas, this is a bit quicker, which is also good. This is the first one (25x30cm), a painting of our last year trip to Italy. I made drawings along the way, inspired by our friend on the trip, who also made drawings of the things we saw during our way. The boys were sitting in the front, and we girls in the back, drawing. From the beginning I knew I wanted to make a painting (or more) with these drawings. That´s me and my friend in the picture.

I fell in love with another house...

...and I love it so much I can hardly stand it! :) Oh my, this building is so so so beautiful. I started to like it a long time ago, and made a painting of it already, but then I found out I didn´t take a good photo of the house - a huge part was missing on the photo. It´s almost impossilble to take a photo of this house, as it stands right next to the road (quite busy road), and there´s no place to park the car. But today, thanks to the internet and Google maps, I found great photos of the house. And I want to paint this house for the second time. Well, in fact, I would like to actually buy the whole house, but it´s practically a pallace, so I don´t think this is possible :). (Not that I have enought money for a small house, haha.) I just think it´s so gorgeous.

I love you, want you, need you, baby!

hotel Hrušov

Finally finished. For my friend who had a dream about a woman entering hotel Hrušov while sitting on a dog and lighting her way with a mushroom :). I changed the scene a bit and made a woman with a pram instead, because my friend is a new mother. I really liked the idea of the mushroom, so I kept that.
Another painting is almost finished and I have some exhibitions planned in January, so I have to try to be a bit quicker with my paintings. It makes me incredibly happy to do this.

larvas

Visited my friend - she has a baby girl one month older than Andulka. She took this cute photo of the kids. It´s so funny how the babies can´t move in their winter overalls. They look so helpless.
Beside A. my new bag! I love it. I didn´t make it... (but it´s handmade!). I kind of gave up at making bags.

Christmas just around the corner (well, almost), and I love that! I look forward to christmas sooooo much! I already bought some presents - I love them :). This year I´m going to give splendid presents to everybody! And in December we also have 10th anniversary of our wedding! Can you believe that? We got married 10years ago! I was such a young bride, you know. If you think of some great way to celebrate this, let me know. I was thinking about doing something crazy, but if not, drinking wine and eating chocolate while watching a good film is also ok. Anyway, our wedding story is an amusing one, I can tell you about that when time comes.

Before sun...

A while ago, I desparately wanted to see a good, romantic, positive, intelligent, interesting movie. I was thinking hard what to look for and then I remembered: Before sunrise/Before sunset could be the one! I´ve read about it few times but it took me long time to actually see it. We saw Before sunrise at first and it was good - an original love story that´s more about talking than about doing anything. Two strangers (played by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy) that meet, talk, walk, fall in love... for one night (in Wienna!).

And then we saw Before sunset, of course. The sequel takes place nine years later after the first one, when the characters meet again (in Paris!). Older, maybe more wise and honest... but definitely with a much better script :). We loved Before sunset, the film was breathtaking, so well made and written. Again, it´s talking, talking about love, life, sex, relationships... but in more dramatic and mature way. It´s all very natural and outstanding at the same time. After we watched it, I had immediate urge to watch it again. It also has a genius ending to it. Great film!

  And Julie Delpy had gorgeous clothes on in this film :). Don´t you love the cream jacket and the black blouse? I would wear both :).

kid´s room upgrades

I wrote it many times before: I love our kid´s (now Marie´s) room. I had big doubts (March this year) if it´s a good idea to move Marie to a separate room which is upstairs, if she´s old enough to handle this and to sleep there. It turned out it was a great idea - she loves the room,  although I have to admit sometimes it´s a hassle to go upstairs to her in the middle of the night when she accidently wakes up. Or when she doesen´t want to sleep in the evening and I have to come to her bed repeatedly (across our bedroom where Andulka sleeps or tries to fall asleep). I admit, it´s complicated sometimes, and not the best solution, but we love the room - for playing and for sleeping, too. It´s huge, cozy, quiet, it´s interesting with lots of nooks and corners.
I made this thing for Marie´s bed - I don´t know how to call it! She calls it a "giant snake" :). There is a gap on her bed between the mattres and the iron bed part (however it is called...), and this gap and the iron was causing several problems. I needed to hide the iron and fill the gap somehow - so I made this long cylinder filled with hollow fibre. Now the bed is comfy and safe. I´m very satisfied with this solution :).

And after I saw the new Ikea catalog I wanted to make an island for playing made from a pallet! With carpet on top. I was lucky, soon we happened to have two spare pallets in our house. We took it to the room, but I had to improvise with the covering, because I haven´t bought the right carpet yet. I used few old small carpets instead, but I plan to buy a new one later and improve the whole thing :).