Life & All that Jazz

I’ve been silent awhile; sometimes I just need a change of pace from daily writing, and blogging, to retank creative energy.  Life has been full in that time, so it’s not as if I’ve been sitting around in a toga eating grapes and reading a book… the whole time.  I’ve been doing crafts; I do a lot of all kinds of crafts, and my craft room has a bit of a reputation – it’s packed neatly with more supplies than any craft store I know of in Switzerland, literally.  People come to me when they need things repaired, or when they don’t know how to make something, or when e.g. their school class needs party decorations on a large scale, or large paper maché stage props. Here’s a small corner of my craft room… (just click on any of the images below to enlarge and have a snoop!) – everything you see is practical; the bear on the shelf is a ratchet screwdriver with 6 heads tucked into the belly; the grass blades are pens; the wooden bowls are great for sorting bits & bobs… you get the idea!

And here’s our front door sign; the sign itself is decoupaged with the inside of security envelopes, and the large beads are made of paper.  This is our current sign, though the straps and dangles are interchangeable, as I have several sets (dangling from the metal ring in the photo above), depending on the season and my mood.

I do a lot of practical crafts for our home – from coasters to tea caddies to curtains; here are a few images of things I’ve made from paper and cardboard:

The colourful doors are on my craft room book shelf; each cubby holds a world of crafts supplies! The giant electrical plug & socket are stage props for an upcoming musical production based on my husband’s first CD; that week, I’ll be busy as well, vocal coaching the soloists as well as the choir.  On the final evening, the plug will reveal that it is actually a piñata, stuffed with bags of toys and chocolates. Peeking out from behind the socket is the neck of a paper maché ukelele case I made and then doodled, as well as a bouquet of paper rolls ready for another project similar to the library’s round window shade…

Besides crafts, we’ve had a party and a few evenings with guests; the party was for part of my husband’s work gang and their partners, and I made a Mexican fiesta (here’s my menu, for those interested).

This magnetic sign is now on my stove; I found it in a quaint little vintage café in Bremgarten, when my husband took me out for a day of surprises for our 25th wedding anniversary!  He’s good at keeping secrets… he’d invited two couples to celebrate with us: One for lunch in Bremgarten in a restaurant along the river, and one for dinner, at the Wörth Schlössli Restaurant at the base of Rhein Falls. We had a great day together, as always! In between, we went to downtown Zürich to spend a gift certificate I’d received from friends on my birthday; it was, of course, in an art shop!

So, that’s just a glimpse of some of the things I’ve been doing (when not in my toga eating grapes and reading).  Now that my mini hiatus is over, I’m tucking back into writing and all the bits and bobs that turn “writing” into novels!