Vacation time!

This afternoon I'll be leaving for a weeks vacation.
Since we're not having wireless internet there I'll probably be offline until saturday may 5th.
Hope you all have a wonderful week and may the weather be just as beautiful as it is here now!
Feels like summer!
We couldn't have wished for a better start of our holiday!
See you!
Birgit

we have a winner and baby goats

In this challenge only 7 people participated. Guess the beautiful weather of the last two weeks made everybody go outside and enjoy their gardens, make bike tours, go walking... No time for scrapbooking. Ah well... it did not make the choice easier for me! All 7 entries were wonderful. All very different and special. But there can only be one winner and since the journaling was meant to be the most important this time the winner had to be Judith. The simplicity of Judith's design focusses on the stunning picture and her touching story. Congratulations Judith, please e-mail me your addy!



The journaling is in dutch. I copied her english translation from her blog, it says:
"Today we are visiting the township Langa with a local guide. What we see here, is beyond believe! As we leave the clean city behind, we soon see the wooden houses of Langa. The first stop is the local cafe. A little bit insecure, we walk through the door. Inside it is dark, the only light is the light through a little window and a hole in the wall. In the middle there is a barrel on the fire... The ladies are brewing beer in this barrel, and of course we can taste it! Then we visit Vickey's B&B, you can sleep in a clean room in the middle of the township. Very impressive, while she also takes care of many children...Next door is a little kindergarten. When I show the children a picture of a lion in our travelguide, they are running towards us! Before we know it, we are in the middle of a circle of children, singing and clapping hands together. The kids are so sweet and beautiful, there is laughter everywhere! It is amazing how much love, laughter and hospitality there is here! That evening while driving back to Cape Town, Ralph and I realize that we will keep this experience in our hearts. The children have reached out and touched our hearts forever!!"

Isolde Pinket

This is only one page of the minibook Irma Peredne made. To see it all you can click here!

Kelly Deriemaeker

Danielle Muit

Monique Helfrich

Mandy

Thanks girls for your gorgeous entries, hope you had fun and you play along again next time!

We spend the afternoon at my sister and BIL who have a farm. Their goat gave birth to 3 little baby goats friday evening. We went over then but they were only an hour old and we were not allowed to touch them. Today we went again and we could hold them. Marlijn and Lennart just loved them. Unfortunatly one of the babies didn't make it but the other 2 are doing well, altough they are very small.

We sat in the garden while the kids played. The weather was beautiful and we enjoyed the quietness and all the space. Don't you wish you had a garden like this???

If it wasn't as much work as I know it is, I would! :) For now I think my garden is big enough! But it is a pleasure to walk through my sisters and make pictures!

Hope you all have a wonderful week ahead!

Birgit

dutch dare #12

Dutch dare #12 is dutch dare #1 for me. I've never done one before, but this one I really liked and I had a little spare time :) so I gave it a try.

This is what it says on the DD-blog: "The dare is simple: do NOT use patterned paper and do NOT use pre-fab embellishments, just make it yourself. Get a piece of cardstock and draw, paint, stamp, emboss or doodle! Do it yourself!"

And that's what I did. I used for this LO only cardstock, paint and a black pen. The florals are Stamps from making Memories, all the rest is my own doodling. Loved doing this. Normaly I use quite some embellishements so this took some creativity from me but it was fun and I'm quite pleased with the result.

Ok, my DD Anne has been reading my blog and according to her I need to edit my first weird thing... She says it's not that I talk to myself while scrapping.... she says I talk to myself ALL THE TIME and it's mega-irritating. And she also says that there is a weird thing number 10 and 11 and 12... Not all I want to share but according to her number 10 is that I seem to be the only one laughing about my own jokes, ok, now you know... I'm a very weird mother in the eyes of a 12 year old!!

Did some updating on my photoblog, some older prompt and a few of the latest.

Have a nice sunday!

Birgit

Tagged!

I was tagged by Kerry (Curly Girl)… actually, it was last week already but then I had the workshop weekend and after the weekend I was sick… well, you understand… I forgot about the tag. But suddenly it came to my mind again and I remembered what I was supposed to do.
Share 10 weird things about myself. Gosh... I like to see myself as pretty normal but maybe the things I do sound weird to other people so let me think...

1. I talk to myself when I’m scrapping (even when there are other people around)
2. When I’m very concentrated my tongue peeks out of my mouth (just a little and just very rarely!)
3. I’m still pre-heating my bed, even though it’s not exactly freezing outside anymore...
4. I only listen to the radio when I’m in the car. I like it to be quiet in the house.
5. I grind my teeth when sleeping.
6. I love potato chips so much I could eat them for breakfast.
7. When doing the grocceries I always forget something, even when I made a list and actually brought it to the supermarket.
8. My nose and bottom are always cold, oh and my feet too, even in summer...
9. I don’t like to chitchat on the phone. It’s handy we have them when needed but not for fun!
10. I can’t think of any more weird things (that I feel like sharing that is :))

OK, that’s it... but now I have to tag 10 other bloggers to do the same, so here we go:
Anita
Christiane
Lee
Danielle
Brigitta
Rianne
Mandy
Fauve
Jana
Andrea

Good luck girls, can’t wait to read all about your weird things :)
Have a nice day!
Birgit
BTW: TOMORROW IS THE LAST DAY YOU CAN SEND IN YOUR LO FOR THE CHALLENGE!

Thanks for all your get well wishes, they helped :)
Luckely I'm feeling better today so here a quick update.
First of all a little impression fo the workshop last weekend.

We had such beautiful wheather that it was almost a shame we had to sit inside. Of course we took our lunch outside to enjoy the warm sun!








There where 2 great groups of women and we had a lot of fun!

Also I had to catch up a lot for her space: my space.
If you're curious what I did with the prompts of the last few days visit my photoblog!

That's it for now! I'm of to bed, try to get some sleep!
Birgit

I'm sick...

promissed some people I'd post about the workshops this weekend but just don't feel like it right now...maybe tomorrow.
Guess my body doesn't like the sudden change of wheather :(
Birgit

She arrived...

Milly that is!

Today Anita stopped by and brought her to me!

And she is soooo gorgeous, the sneak peek promissed that she would be but she's even more beautiful than I expected!

What can I say... every girl that respects herself needs a bag like this *lol*

I gave her a prominent place in my livingroom and now I'm watching her waiting for the moment I can take her out and show her!

I've got a birthday party tomorrow evening and I'm sure all the girls will be jealous :)

You want one too? For more information about prices or to order such a unique handmade bag you can e-mail Anita at bagsofpersonality@hotmail.com.

And remember, not one bag will be the same, every single one has it's own personality which will be printed on the inside of the bag.

Milly's says: Milly is fun loving and excitable. She is a little daring but always fun to be around.



Have a nice weekend!
Birgit xxx

Not much to share today

My DH is leaving tomorrow morning for a weekend away with the guys from his indoor soccer team. My oldest 2 kids are invited together with there cousins by their grandparents to come and spend the weekend with them in Slagharen (an amusement parc, and they love it!) and the youngest one is staying with her other grandparents. That means I have the house for myself and I thought that this would be a good weekend for some workshops. So I'll be teaching a day workshop both on saturday and sunday without bothering any of my family members. Great huh?


So most of the day was spend preparing for the weekend. Washing clothes and filling suitecases, cutting paper and making shopping lists.


Somewhere during the day I managed to make the her space: my space picture, for wich the prompt was "corner" today!








Finally a little reminder... there's a new challenge up! You've got until next saturday (april 21) to enter and maybe you're the lucky winner of a nice RAK!

See you!
Birgit

time to move on...

As some of you might have noticed already I decided yesterday to quit the Scrap-Club DT.
I feel a little sad, because I’ve been with scrap-club a long, long time and I’ve always loved working with the gorgeous kits. But I’ve come to a point where the amount of work I had to do just got to much for me. There’s so much going on right now and new opportunities ahead that I feel I should try and take, which I just can’t if I stay..
I sure will miss it, but I know new challenges will come my way and it’s time to move on. The DT-call on scrap-club seemed a good time for me to stop and give others the opportunity to get a spot on a great DT! So if you’re looking for a great challenge, go check it out!

Today Marlijn got a new bike. She has really outgrown her little one. She didn’t know and when Erik came home with it she was soooo excited! She just loved it, and so do I.

Don’t you just love these colors??? They totally inspire me to do some scrapbooking *lol*!

Talking about scrapbooking… here are a few sneak peeks of the workshop I’ll be teaching at Tiny’s in Kortrijk (Belgium) on Friday may 11th.
More information about it you can find on their website http://www.hobbyselect.be/ Look under "cursussen".

Finally her space: my space! Prompts for yesterday and today were “spiky” and “daisy”. Here are my takes at it:

Thanks again for looking,
Have a nice evening!
Birgit

A new challenge!

Last night, on our way home from a lovely and sunny day at the campingplace with the whole family, we had to stop at a gasstation where I made this picture:



The view made me dream about summer vacation. Not that we go on vacation by plane... (since we have kids we go camping, take our caravan to France or Italy and have the best times of our live) but it's easy to imagine... people on those planes going to exotic places, to meet other cultures, eat different food, see gorgeous landscapes... and make great memories!
And isn't that the most important? That you make great memories? Whether you spend your vacation all the way down in Australia or you drive only 30miles and have a wonderful time at the campingplace where you go every year is not important at all. It's the things that make your vacation special, the things that are worth to remember, that count!

And that brings me to my next challenge for you!
Make a layout about your most precious vacation memory! and I don't mean a layout with pictures of a beautiful landscape and journaling saying: "this was the best vacation we ever had!" I want to know WHY this was a vacation you'll never forget. What or who made it special? I want touching, funny, sweet or strange stories!

So you'll understand that the journaling is quite important. To join the contest you can do your journaling in dutch, german or english or you'll have to ad a translation if you use any other language.
The rest is up to you, size, techniques, number of photo's, what ever you like!
You have to send your LO before saturday, april 21, midnight (dutch time) to scrappen@birgitkoopsen.nl
Please ad your journaling to the e-mail for easier reading.

The winner will get a nice RAK and of course the LO will be shown on my blog :)
Hope you all feel inspired by this challenge and join in!

Can't wait to see all your beautiful work!
Birgit

I finished my first LO for Corinne's workshop "Finding YOU!" The first round was about being positive about yourself. I was planning on doing this workshop on 9x9 but I came across this gorgeous AAM album that is 6x6, so 6x6 it is. Well 6x12 most of the time probably...

Today Marlijn decorated some easter eggs and had a lot of fun.

Her space: my space prompt for today was " Pure"

Thanks for looking, have a wonderful easter sunday!!!

Birgit

I didn't have the intention of buying Marlijn new clothes... and certainly not THIS MUCH!!
But hey, what can I say.... I just loved it all :) this new collections with all the fresh colors gave me a real summery feel. That, and the nice sunny weather, did it I guess.
Anyway.. if it really gets 20*C over Easter, Marlijn has something to wear :)



The shoes I DID plan to buy! I think they're just adorable. My little girl will look so pretty when we go over to grandma to celebrate her birthday on Sunday!



I thought we needed a sandbox in our backyard. Even though we have a big playground behind our house it feels better to keep Marlijn in our own safe garden for a little longer in stead of letting her go to the playground on her own all the time. Next thing on our garden agenda will be a swing.

Finally the her space:my space pictures of today and yesterday:

TFL! and have a wonderful Easter weekend!!!

Birgit

snapshots

Not a very long post ... just some snapshots of things I did today.Started with a crop this morning, nothing I can show though....

Bought new boots for Marlijn since she told me (when we were doing grocceries this afternoon) that she couldn't walk so fast because her toes where folded in her old ones... oooopsss :)



Marlijn and I finally decorated the easter tree. We're very late with that this year, don't know why, just doesn't feel like it's almost Easter.. the eggs are all painted by Anne and Lennart years ago, love those bright colors!



Went to the skating place were all the kids hang out nowadays. Straigth after school Lennart is going there to meet all his class mates and have a lot of fun. Thought I'd make some cool pictures for him!

And I did the picture for her space:my space. Todays word was candle.

That's it for now, thanks for popping by, have a nice evening!

Birgit