Flotsam & Jetsam

Last month Stacey and yours truly agreed to have a personal vintage Christmas swap. Stacey is the lovely writer of the blog 'Flotsam & Jetsam' a title I had to search in my dictionary. As I understand Stacey and I both are collectors of 'flotsam and jetsam', little thingies, right? and ephemera. Mmm, vintage Christmas could be a problem to me, because our country hasn't got a great Christmas tradition, but Stacey told me that every day vintage (probably and hopefully she meant flotsam and jetsam) was quite well too, as, in her words,'every day is a holiday'!

A swap is always fun! The gathering, the crafting and then the moment you receive your box:

Look at this!
This box is filled with layers and layers of white tissue paper, this beautiful paper, the scrap pictures and the card in Stacey's beautiful handwriting on top and between the layers presents!


Layer 1:
vintage millinery violets (good research Stacey!) and a lovely glass glitter anchor.

Layer 2: vintage Christmas decoration! I love it! Already some feeling of panic: Ohh what did I sent? This is sooo good!


We both are button floozies!


Another layer...


A vintage brooch that is already clipped on my favorite vest. I wear it every day.

You have already seen these small (2") bottle brush trees in my previous post!
These Christmas trees will stay in my cupboard all year!

And so layer upon layer was unfolded with the most lovely presents! You'll see a photo of the whole loot at the end of the post. In the process of getting to know each other better I managed to squeeze in a large wish list...:$}
I am fond of the Somerset publications, so could we please trade a magazine? Stacey promised me immediately to send me one, but she said she didn't want one herself.



And she didn't send me one, but three of the finest magazines. They are all very good, though Somerset life is simply the best. I wish I could buy it here too.

As I told you before: we both collect ephimera. Look at this!

And we promised to craft something for each other and these lovelies were made by Stacey, can you believe that?

I made her this:

A personalized portfolio, her blog banner was my inspiration. Check Stacey's blog to see what I have sent her! Or check my Flick'r album for more detailed photos of what I received and what I sent. 

And I had another wish; I was so curious to taste the famous american candy corn every one was writing about and decorating with during Halloween. So Stacey managed to get a lot of candy corns even though Halloween was already over. And I wanted a cup cake ballerina
badly. I have seen them in so many blogs, but cannot find them here.
So Stacey, like the fairy grandmother of Cinderella, just send everything I wished to me!



On the bottom of the box, just when I thought this cannot be better, Stacey managed to fulfill my last wish; an original Ledger!! Aaaa awesome:







Look at the inside; written with real ink in the 30ties, I love it!


The loot, but I bet you cannot see anything on this photo :-(
But you can click to enlarge the photo of course and then wonder; was this all in one swap?
Yes it was!

This swap was so much fun and the perfect beginning of Christmas 2008 to me.
I hope you have enjoyed it too and I want to thank Stacey for all her lovely gifts and for being such a nice person and blog friend, hugs LiLi.

Pretty little Christmas at LiLi's!

Thanks for all your good wishes for my daughter who turned 15, which we celebrated big last weekend. We cannot begin decorating for Christmas before December 5th, so there is really not much Christmas decoration at my place. With a little pain in my heart I told Heather, of Pretty Petals, that I couldn't join her party. The truth is that there is a little Christmas party at my place. Come on I'll show you:

In my antique doll's room, which is in my December banner, it is always Christmas...The little stable in a wallnut is standing under the Christmas tree, where red parcels are waiting to be unpacked.

In my cupboard



there is a little antique angel orchestra playing. The light is bad, but these are the dark days before Christmas, you know. With the little stable there are three mini bottle brush trees, which I received from Stacey in a swap package. This package was soooo beautiful, I'll post about it when she received mine too. Which is any moment now, I hope.


A closer look.

In another cupboard which really is too dark, there is a little childrens' prayer book with a small angel,

So I took it out of the cupboard to make a photo for you!

Now that you are here and I am here too, why not cheat a little and take a look at some photo's of previous Christmas in the digital era;

In our 19th century town house we have two large windows at the front, which I try to decorate in a different way each year. 2005 was a year of white and peacock feathers.

2004 big wreaths (somebody will hate me...but I think he is so cute this way)

Last year I hung up white branches.

Some details.




Under the branches there were birdhouses and bird candles.






We have a huge tree every year. I never had a fake tree in my entire life though there is some discussion about a real tree this size, because (as we live in a city with lots of environmental regulations) it has to be shredded to be removed. The one who shreds wants an open discussion about a fake tree. But the smell of a real tree...ahh!

The mantle is decorated in another way every year too. With that large mirror it is always good to have candles, the more the merrier!

Or bling and candles, the mirror seem to double the bling, cannot be enough for this girl.
Hope you enjoyed my little Christmas party. Stay tuned for the decorations of 2008. There are a lot of pretty Christmas parties going on, so don't forget to join them. You'll find a list here. Thank you so much Heather for hosting this party. Have a lovely Christmas everybody!

Presents!

Thanks to all your warm wishes, my foot is really getting better. Perhaps taking a rest and shopping on Crocs did help too. Did I really do that? Yesss but I wore extra long trousers ;-)

Time flies when you are having fun and we sure did. Now the Holy Saint is probably sailing to Spain again. He spoiled us:

All white papers are rhymes. My kids check first; short rhyme, long, extreme long...



And this is what our dinner room looked like when we were finished reading rhymes and unpacking everything. I love it! In the upper left corner you can see some of my presents: magazines, crafting books; learning how to crochet for cool girls. I want to learn this in 2009.

So now I could be preparing for Christmas, but I am not. First the 15th birthday of our princess next Friday December 12th.



She is wearing one of the embellishments of the Sinterklaas parcels. She was already doing such things when she was a very little girl; coming into the room wearing a funny hat, dressing up in doll clothes etc. etc. Her brother used to wear a fruit bowl as a helmet, I guess this runs in the family.

And some sneak peeks of projects:


This is a peek of the personal swap I did with Stacey.
More about this in my next post.


and this is part of the October (do I really have to write October? oh my what am I doing all the time?) price, won by Elly. I'll try to mail the parcel tomorrow, mmm I better promise as soon as possible.

Some generous bloggers have spoiled me too:
I won a price at Linnea Maria's blog; Linnea på Landet.

Linnea has made these little spoons with crystals. This photo simply doesn't do the artwork justice, but it was such a dark day that I had to use my flashlight. I will make a photo when it is in use as Christmas decoration again. Maybe you can check her Etsy. She has send all the goodies too. Thank you so much Linnea Maria!


And another lovely lady from blogland Marianne send me this art tag and the magazine 'Artful blogging'. Thank you so much Marianne, I sure can use some inspiration and some time too, but alas you didn't sent the latter. I don't want to be ungrateful, because Marianne is one of the nicest bloggers around. She has recently refurbished her entire blog AND described how she did that in her blog. Chapeau! Just check how the Songbird was nesting!

Have a nice week, enjoy your Christmas preparations or whatever you are up to. Hope to write soon again,
hugs LiLi M.

He's here!

Our Sint (=Saint) Nicolaas aka Sinterklaas arrived last Saturday. It's the most wonderful but busiest time of the year! Our Santa always arrives on his steamship, he comes from Spain to celebrate his birthday the 5th of December here. During his stay in the Netherlands he lives in my town. Yes!

Here in the Nieuwstraat is 'het Sinterklaashuis', (click to see the digital Sinterklaas house) the house of Sinterklaas. I went there this week to take some pictures of the inside for you, but there were already about 60 kids quieing up. So I just took pictures of the 'Zwarte Pieten' = the black Peters, helpers of the Saint.


The three Peters are posing at a chimney with presents, which they actually will take with them through the chimney. That's why they are so black. Though their color is controversial nowadays, one of the popular songs explains; Piet is as black as soot. The presents aren't black as they are put in the sack. Nowadays the sack is a present carrier, but when I was young (would anyone believe that I lost my faith in Santa more than 40 years ago? I cannot!) the sack was meant for bad children too. Bad children were put in the bag and would travel back to Spain with Santa to get reeducated. Our parents all had easy jobs during the last weeks of November and the first of December.


This was me back then. I wear my self made necklace, I like that. If you look carefully you see that I have something in my hand, a sweet, as I was actually too little to join the Saints' party at my fathers office, I got a little sweet, probably a chocolate, which I never ate. I saved it for months and months as it was a precious gift given by the Saint. But it could have been one of these too:

These are sugar animals, I don't see them anymore, probably because of too much chemical colors which drive a lot of kids nuts. If I had one of these then it's no wonder I didn't eat it, I didn't have a sweet tooth as a kid at all. It's strange that some things just disappear.


Another page of the old Sinterklaas book I bought a couple of weeks ago. Under the rack you see a bunch of twigs which every Zwarte Piet carried with him in the sixties, but has fallen into disgrace for obvious reasons. Not only we were threatened to be taken to Spain, but for lesser crimes we could be spanked with the rod (we call that bunch of twigs a 'roe').
Every night I was allowed to put my shoe in front of the chimney. I would sing a couple of songs, put some sugar lumps in my shoe for Santa's horse. Of course the old Saint doesn't walk on the roofs anymore. His horse climbs on the roof duhhh! And of course he has his helpers. December the 5th is the climax; we are having an evening full of packages from the Saint then. And not just packages. There are rhymes too, with funny or educational contents. Some people even have their gifts disguised as what we call 'surprises' (pronounced as the french surprises). For example if you always like to craft your present is disguised as a giant glue stick. At my home we celebrate 'Sinterklaas' with packages, no surprises but every package has a rhyme.

And we like a lot of packages!!
So it's quite busy at the moment.
Next Monday we will be having a Sinterklaas diner here with my husbands colleagues, so I'm decorating already. I have a string inflation in my foot :-( it hurts, rest is best the doctor says, but there is no time at this moment, sorry, too busy. That might explain why I haven't answered your email yet, or didn't comment on your blog (yet). Sorry about that!
After December 5th the Sint just disappears. As a child I thought that was so unfriendly. First welcome the man with a lot of people, then take all the presents and then he had to sail out on his own. Why were they no children to wave him goodbye? I just couldn't understand.

Aan de Nederlandse dames hoef ik natuurlijk weinig over Sinterklaas uit te leggen. Maar misschien weten jullie ook niet dat de Sint tijdens zijn verblijf in Nederland in de Nieuwstraat in Dordrecht in het Sinterklaashuis (aanklikken voor digitaal Sinterklaashuis) verblijft. Ik was er heen gegaan om wat foto's te nemen, maar het was al te druk om binnen te komen. Ongelooflijk dat ik 40 jaar geleden mijn geloof verloor, ayyyxxx ik kan het zelf nauwelijks geloven. Op de zwart wit foto was ik nog heel erg gelovig, het snoepgoed dat ik in mijn hand had werd niet opgegeten maar maanden bewaard, of was het een suikerbeest? Die lustte ik niet, nu zie ik ze nooit meer. Ook uitgestorven dieren? Als laatste een foto van Sinterklaas avond het afgelopen jaar. Het eerste jaar dat iedereen ingewijd is in het grote geheim. Wij doen nooit surprises maar wel heeft elk pakje een gedicht. Maandag hebben we hier Sinterklaas diner met de collega's van mijn man, druk, druk, druk dus. En dan heb ik nu net een peesontsteking in mijn voet :-( Dat verklaart wellicht waarom ik nog niet op jouw blog gereageerd heb of waarom ik je mailtje nog niet beantwoord heb.

Verwonderden jullie je er ook altijd zo over dat de Sint met zo'n stille trom vertrok? Waarom konden we de boot niet uitzwaaien en Sint nog eens bedanken, ik begreep er niets van als kind.

Voor iedereen een heel fijn weekend, hopelijk schrijf ik hier snel weer, maar nogmaals het is loeidruk hier, dus het kan even duren,

xoxo LiLi M.

Findings of the week

Hello!

I was a little overwhelmed by all your enthusiastic comments on my last post. Thank you so much. It almost created a crafting block lol, no just kidding! This week I have been creative, but those are all presents, so no photo's :-(.

What a week that first November week, we all have experienced history with the elections of the new President of the United States. Barack if you are reading this; congrats on your election!

I still have to tell you who the winner is of my October giveaway; It's nr. 23 out of 266

it's miss Elly!!

Whow, I'm thrilled myself, because Elly is one of the most friendly and talented bloggers in blogland. Her blog My everyday things is such a fresh and crispy blog. I'm not sure what you have won Elly, you will see that in due time. But I promise that it will be your cup of tea!

Thinking of Elly I decided to join Elly's 'Findings of the week' and to share some other photo's I still wanted to show you.

Every Sunday Elly shares her findings from the antique market or the thrifstore with us. I haven't joined her because I'm afraid that I will have to shop antiques even more than I do now. Yesterday when I discovered a new thriftstore, well actually it was the man who previously sold flowers at the market selling his collections in his warehouse now. And I found these:

A few postcards! As he was a collector himself he didn't sell bargains, but I thought it was worthwhile.
Let's take a closer look: Most of these cards are early 20th century, embossed and dutch, which I like, as I usually find french cards, sometimes with dutch texts stamped on them. These are obvious more luxurious cards than those photo cards.

Hartelijk Gefeliciteerd met de geboorte van uw dochtertje!
Congratulations (hartelijk means from the heart; well meant) with the birth of your little daughter).
Take a look in the pram; how cute


Two celluloid cards:

Both in perfect condition, both with 'heartly' congratulations

Those are embossed cards, the one on top has silk roses and even tarnished glitter.


Congratulations in honour of your Silver anniversary, could well be a wedding anniversary but I'm not sure.

and a few of these 'telegrammes' to congratulate. Those are nice, but more common than the ones I showed you before.
And:

I bought this childrens book, I think it dates from the 1920-30ties. It's all about Sinterklaas (our and the one and only genuine Santa) who will arrive here in the Netherlands next Saturday, so be prepared! Mmm you don't know how? I will update you soon!

Well Elly, do you consider these as finds of the week too? I found them in my own dustbin, after I was away for the weekend. Hubby was decluttering his own stuff and he threw these 3 cute guys from the 80ties away. What do you think? They still make music!

Or this one, found at the garden wall, I like these surprises too!
Talking about post cards, look what the lovely Z. gave my as a birthday present:

A postcard of our street, and our houses, the white 'ensemble' of 7 houses on the left is our block. The text tickles the imagination:
Dordrecht, Januari 11th 1903
Hartelijk gegroet van degene, die u gezien heeft Maandagmiddag om half 4 en tien minuten voor vier. Translation: Kind (we say from the heart; heartly) regards from the person that saw you Monday afternoon at half past 3 and at ten to four.
The address side:

Ooh that handwriting! A man that writes this way should immediately capture her heart, don't you think?
Translation: to: Miss (of course) van Alkemade
{the friend of Miss J. van Namen)
Dordrecht
Vrieseweg 10 (which is right around our corner).

Wish they never invented cell phones...

Have a great week!
hugs LiLi M.

Een korte nederlandse vertaling:
Wat een week die eerste week van november. De verkiezingen in de verenigde staten met een uitkomst van historisch belang, geweldig! Felicitaties voor Barack Obama!
Ik moet nog de winnaar van de oktober give away bekend maken; nr. 23 van 266 dat is Elly !
Elly van My every day things is 1 van de aardigste bloggers die ik ken en ze heeft ook nog een hele verfrissende en leuke blog. De prijs is je van harte gegund Elly, al weet ik zelf nog niet wat het gaat worden, ik verzeker je dat het in je straatje zal zijn, nog even geduld dus.
Als je het over Elly hebt moet je natuurlijk al snel denken aan haar 'findings of the week'. Omdat ik dit keer geen foto's kan plaatsen van creatieve uitspattingen (allemaal cadeautjes gemaakt) lijkt het me leuk om ook eens mee te doen. Gisteren ontdekte ik dat de bloemenman van de markt ineens met zijn eigen verzamelingen in zijn pakhuis zat. Naar binnen dus. En ik vond er een stapeltje briefkaarten en een oud Sinterklaas boekje. Ik vind het vooral leuk dat de kaarten Nederlands zijn! En dan vond ik ook nog 3 apen in mijn eigen prullenbak, nadat ik het weekend weggeweest was....Hubbie was zijn eigen spulletjes maar eens gaan opruimen. Wat vinden jullie daar nu van? O ja en ik vond ook nog een bosviooltje in de tuin, schattig niet?
De onderste kaarten, die ik ook in mijn nieuwe November banner gebruikt heb, zijn afkomstig van de lieftallige Z. Het is een ansichtkaart van onze straat. Let vooral ook op de tekst en het handschrift. Om van te kwijlen!
Allemaal nog bedankt voor jullie leuke en enthousiaste reacties op mijn Halloween versieringen. Een fijne week en groetjes van LiLi M.