Sunburst Granny Square Tutorial

Just a quick reminder that this blog is now closed and I have started a new blog called Nittybits. I dedicated one of my first posts to the very beloved Sunburst Granny Square Blanket I made a while back. You can find information about the pattern and joining of the squares here.

You can follow Nittybits through blogger, bloglovin' and facebook!

The Big Goodbye: Making a new start

First of all: happy new year everyone!!! 2013 is going to bring a wedding, and hopefully more wisdom, more love, more colour and more joy. And with that, it is time for some change...

One of the things I gave a lot of thought to this past year was this blog. For seven years I've been writing about my life, and oh how it has changed. When I started this blog I was a student, still living with her parents, dreaming of writing short stories and books. 'The Writing Tree' was meant to be a writing diary, containing inspiration for stories and funny anecdotes about my life. Then I graduated, got a job, lost the energy and time to write, and eventually got a new hobby: crafting. I started to write in English so I would be able to communicate with more people in Blogland, I taught myself to crochet, knit, sew and carving out stamps, photography became a big part of my life and graphic, interior and product design became new passions.

New year, new start, new blog
I've been wanting to make a fresh start for some time now, which is exciting, refreshing, exhilarating... and scary as hell!!! This blog contains seven years of stories, videos, photographs, comments, followers. Seven years of my life!!

But the time is right, and I am starting a new blog. To all of you who have been visiting this blog over the years: thank you for all the sweet comments and e-mails!!! And to all 98 of you (!) who are following this blog: from now on you can find me here:

http://nittybits.blogspot.com

Hope to see you there!! I'd love to hear what you think about my new blog :)

Love,
Jenny

Goodbye 2012!!

Oh 2012!! What a year you were :)

After happily leaving 2011 behind (it was not the greatest year of my life...) 2012 brought joy, pain, heartache, laughter and love. We had to say goodbye to the last of our little pet rats Polleke (the end of an era!!), there was crafting, followed by lots of pain from crafting, campfires, soaking up sunshine, redecorating parts of our home and holidays with friends.

But most of all, 2012 was the year where I learned a lot about myself and about life. I'm not done yet - who ever is? - but I'm sooooo ready for 2013!!

New year.
New start.
New adventures.

Bring it on!!! :)

Four simple goals: challenge completed!

Hey Blogland! I hope everyone had a great, cozy Christmas with lots of friends and family? I sure did! :) And with Christmas gone, I can't believe this year is almost over! Time to see if I've achieved my goals ;)

Last September I set four simple goals to achieve before the end of the year, and I am very pleased to report that I achieved them all :) These were my goals:

1. Practice my Photoshop skills

Check! :) I learned about layers, adjusting brightness, contrast and colour balance, I played around with different fonts and I even made my own actions. It was so much fun, and there is SO MUCH MORE to learn!!! I'm definitely going to keep working with Photoshop in 2013.

2. Sign up for a web design course

Again: check! ;) I signed up for a web design course where we learned to work with Adobe Dreamweaver. And although it was fun to built a website, I realized I was much more interested in the graphic and creative side of things. Colours, fonts, layout: it's all so much more fun and inspiring to me than the technical aspect of building a website. So even though actual technical web design isn't something I'm likely to pursue, this course did teach what I should invest more time in. Which is a good thing :)

3. Paint our kitchen

It took me a few full days, but our kitchen is now partly yellow. And yellow is ALWAYS good ;)

4. Finish my crochet pillow case!

This is probably the one I'm happiest with: I actually finished another crochet project :D And I am soooo very happy with the result!!

So that's it for my four simple goals of 2012! I really like the concept though, and am planning to do the same thing for 2013 :)

I wouldn't necessarily describe myself as a gloomy person or a pessimist, but I do tend to over-think things. And especially in the darkness of winter it's sometimes hard to focus on the good stuff.

So in a very 'when life gives you lemons' kind of way I try to make the best of these colds, rainy months. Like, when it just keeps raining, and raining, and raining? I buy the best rain boots EVER :)

I'm soooo happy with my brand new Hunter boots :) They look amazing, plus I forgot how much fun it is to jump in rain puddles! :D

And, of course, it can't rain forever. So when it stops...

... there's always a chance of rainbows :)

A perfect way...

... to spend a cold and wintery day :)

Next tuesday J & I will go to a midnight viewing of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which of course means I have to re-read the book so I can compare book and movie every step of the way :) So Middle Earth & coffee it is for this very cold friday!!!

Winter Blues

I don't know if it's the short grey days or the crappy weather, but I have been suffering from a little Winter Blues lately. (...) And with Winter Blues I mean I've been CRANKY AS HELL!!! ;)

This is the blanket I was working on a few weeks ago. And of course, I was SOOOOO excited about the result, and about the fact that I was crafting again, I took it too far (once again...). So (once again....) no more crafting for me :( 

(This is beginning to be a lot like Groundhog Day... -_- )

Meanwhile, our home is a mess while we wait for a new sofa and chairs, the holidays are around the corner for which I am neither prepared nor in the mood, and the weather is absolutely horrible with loads of rain, rain, rain.

In short: I want to go to bed with a good book and a hot cup of tea and stay there 'till April ;)

So... I'll check back soon when I've found my happy mood, and am sitting on a brand new sofa admiring a very merry christmas tree. 

And if not: see you in April ;)

Finished project: crochet pillowcase

Remember when I started working on a crochet pillowcase last June and ended up in pain (again) due to crafting overload? And remember one of my four simple goals was to finish that pillowcase before the end of the year?

Well, people, I am very VERY pleased to say that taking baby steps with crafting FINALLY PAID OFF!!! :)

After 'training' with granny squares I was finally ready to get back to crochet, get out my sewing gear...

... choose some buttons...

... and FINISH THE VERY COLORFUL CROCHET PILLOWCASE!!!! :D

I am SO happy with the result :) But even more so with the fact I actually was able to finish another project :)

YES I CAN!!!!! :)

Paperchase

I discovered a Paperchase store at Utrecht Central Station the other day, and of course I couldn't resist :)

So much pretty stuff! :) Will be back for sure!

Happy Monday Everyone!!!

And to celebrate this glorious (read: rainy, grey and cold) first day of the week, here's a cute little bunny I made a while back for a friend. Love the pink scarf! At least one of us is ready for winter ;)

But the best bit?

The little bunny tail!! :)

A little kitchen makeover

What a fun, colorful week it has been!! :) We've been living in our apartment for over three years now, and for the past few weeks we've suddenly been in need of some change. Not the 'let's move' kind of change, but the 'let's upgrade' kind of change. 

So I painted the wooden doorposts in our kitchen yellow and did some redecorating!

I absolutely LOVE all these beautiful, pastel colors. Combined with the warm yellow it makes our kitchen a pretty happy place to be right now :)

Next stop: turning a plain old door into a ginourmous magnetic blackboard!!!

Trees in the mist

Autumn bliss

Every year when summer is about to end, I shudder at the idea of autumn. I don't want the days to get shorter! I don't want it to get colder! I don't want to wear a coat!

Then the leaves change color, I get to wear my snug caps and scarves, and inside the house it's warm and cosy.

It's autumn, baby!!! :)

Let's enjoy it while it lasts :)

Baby steps

What a fun week I've had!! It was filled with cycling trips, shopping sprees and little celebrations (which included the most delicious pie EVER!! :)

And because I even went to the gym this week - and not just once, but TWICE!!! - I decided I deserved a little treat this weekend. 

Yes, dear friends: I was allowed to crochet :)

If you visited this blog before you might remember me mentioning the problems I've had with my neck/shoulders for about 1,5 years now. It has prevented me from crafting, and every time I try to make something I take it too far and end up having pain for weeks... 

But today I took baby steps, and made this :) 

It was soooo hard to stop!! I actually caved and made a second one... but I resisted the urge to make 15 more, so I guess that's progress :)

Plus: no pain!! Which means I can probably make some more this week! YAY!!!! :D

(...)

But not too much of course :S Baby steps. BABY STEPS...

The Notebook Makeover

When I saw these cute little house stamps on A Beautiful Mess I couldn't resist! I love little houses, and they make such great stamps :) And the notebook makeover was so cute - I just had to try it myself!

So I took a boring, black notebook...

... and added the cute little houses :) Tah-daaaah!!!!

Love it!! :) Even though I was in pain for over a week after carving out the stamps... :S But maybe that's because I carved out five stamps in two days...

When it comes down to crafting, I just don't know when to stop ;)

Goodbye September... Hello October!

So... I took a little time-out and when I snapped out of it, it was October!!

Not sure what happened to September... I guess I was busy... not updating my blog and stuff ;)

But it's October now. And I'm back!! :)

PS. To all the people with a spider phobia: sorry for the ginormous spider pic! ;)

Four simple goals

One of my favorite blogs - A Beautiful Mess - posted a very fun challenge last week: share four simple goals you want to achieve before 2013.

So here we go...

1. Practice my Photoshop skills
I've never really been an avid user of Photoshop. I certainly realize you can do amazing things with it - I just never bothered to find out how. To me, the challenge of photography has always been to create an image as beautiful as I can make it right then and there, using only the settings on my camera and the world around me. Then, when something like this rolls out of my camera, without any editing whatsoever, I feel like I've actually created something.

And yet, I have realized that taking photographs and publishing photographs on a blog are two very different things. Instead of just posting photographs, it is so much more fun to make the photograph a part of the post. My blog has always been a bit all over the place, which was fine by me, but lately I've been more and more longing for some... harmony. A calm and light atmosphere instead of chaos ;) Understanding and using Photoshop is my first step in that process.

The second step is to...

2. Sign up for a web design course
Another thing I would LOVE to learn more about. I've been using blogger ever since I started blogging in 2005, but lately I'm getting a bit sick of simple templates and just feel a very strong need for change. Maybe even leave this blog behind and start over fresh? Who knows. Hopefully signing up for a web design course can help and motive me with finding my blogger identity.

3. Paint our kitchen
The paint and brushes are all here. Now all I have to do is start painting :)

4. Finish my crochet pillow case!
So this past year hasn't exactly been an easy one for me. And the fact that my back pain was preventing me from doing one of the things I love most - crafting - didn't help either... At all...

But I'm not giving up! I will get back to crafting! And I will finish my colorful crochet pillowcase I started earlier this year!!! :)

Of course I can! ;)

***

Update 29/12/2012: I achieved my goals!! :)