Happy Caturday :-)

Hey there!

Happy what? I know. I had never heard about it either, until Becky over at Bthrifty pointed it out to me. Apparently, cat-obsessed people like me (which I'm only slightly, just for the record, post pictures of their cats on their blogs every Saturday and then call it 'Caturday'. I know! Brilliant, right?

So here's Meneertje, letting it all hang out on the weekend!


And while we're on the topic: what are you doing this weekend?

I'll be taking the train to Holland in a minute to celebrate Valérie's birthday (woop! congrats!) and tomorrow I'll be checking out the Utrechtse Fabriek craft fair with my mom, plus, we'll be visiting the Inez van Lamsweerde exhibition in the Amsterdam museum of photography Foam! Busy busy!

I'll be back on Monday! Have a wonderful Caturday (or weekend, if you're not the kitty kind)!

PS: Check out Gemma Correll's kitty blog! A-dorable!

© Gemma Correll | www.gemmacorrell.com

Kendi Everyday

As my older (Dutch) readers will probably remember, Jessica Schroeder of What I Wore has been my personal style guru for a while now. However, every girl needs a change every now and then, and currently I'm in luurrrve with Kendi Lea from Kendi Everyday.


Kendi is a 'small town girl' who after she got married, resisted that terrible terrible urge to get started on a bunch of kids and a dog and started a blog instead! And although I'm sure she'd be a lovely mom, I'm very glad she got a baby blog instead because her sense of style (and humor) is amazing.


I love how Kendi combines casual clothes like tank tops, cardigans and jeans with more businessy and chic items. I usually look for outfits that work for a range of different occasions and Kendi is a true inspiration. All of her outfits would work equally well for work, a dinner with friends, or a relaxed Saturday-afternoon coffee in town!




If, like me, you want to make your fall comeback to the office a fashionable one, check out her blog over at kendieveryday.blogspot.com.

Decompressing...

The Versatile Blogger Award

I LOVE receiving emails, and yesterday I got a particularly fun email from reader and blogger Anna-Maria of The Shopping Sherpa. She awarded me the Versatile Blogger Award! Yay! Thank you!

Now the next step is for me to pass this award on to 5 more awesome bloggers, along with posting 7 things about myself. I'm passing the award onto:

Kendi Everyday - because I'm in love with her sense of style and humor.
Harika - because Samantha Zaza is one of the most talented people out there, she's an inspiration on so many levels.
Benconservato - because I love how Emma shows her readers her fantastic free-spirited creative process.
San Smith - because she has pink hair. Duh. I think people with pink hair should get awards, like, every day.
iHanna - because iHanna does it all and more, and with such positive energy. She's having fun!

And here's the 7 random things about me:
1. I have had a website since I was like, fifteen. My brother and I set up a Fortunecity homepage where we put up all kinds of random information about ourselves I would never (ever) put online today. Ah, the sweet, innocent beginning of the internet.

2. I used to want to become a heart surgeon (because it seemed like the most ambitious thing you could pick), right up until I found out that includes a lot of math. Ewwww. Math.

3. I often hold up my pee way too long for the sole reason of being to lazy to get off my chair and walk to the bathroom (too much information? sorry!).

4. Every day I save my leftovers from dinner, thinking I will eat them tomorrow, but I've never, ever actually ate them. (Yes. I do feel guilty towards all the little hungry children in Africa.)

5. When we were 8 yrs old, a friend of mine drew christmas cards to sell for money for baby monkeys in god-knows-where. We were doing really great, right up until a nosy neighbor called the police on us because we didn't have a permit. I don't think I knew what a permit was.

6. I'm mildly addicted to coffee. If I don't drink enough coffee, my head will explode. It's true. It's happened before. It was a mess.

7. I didn't draw in my journal this week and I feel superguilty about it, but I've decided to let it go. Perhaps I'll make it up next week, when I'll be chilling in the Provence in France with five girlfriends.


And that's that! Have a wonderful Friday / International Mustache Day!

A very good night

Yesterday evening was a special evening here at the Meneertje Mansion (where our cat Meneertje fortunately allows us to pay the rent and occasionally have people over). Not only is Danielle staying at our place in preparation for our French holiday appropriately titled 'Project Provence' (think: six girls, one car, two tents), but she and I had the honor of being the recipients of Nuria's 100th 'What I Ate' meal! Nuria prepared a lovely pasta dish with fresh almond pesto and an amazing desert. Here, see for yourself:


I'm pretty sure my body is in total carb-shock right now, but fortunately I didn't care too much, since I made some white wine with peaches to accompany Nuria's awesome cooking. It's something I drank in Italy and have just completely fallen in love with. I used a fresh Chardonnay from Carmel, California and (organic) ripe peaches from the grocery store across the street (which has a pretty nice selection of fruits and vegetables).

Hooray for good friends with very fortunate hobbies, for good friends who remain very good friends even if they do live so so far away, and for good conversations and for Chardonnay. And peaches. And pesto. Of course.

(Check out Nuria's blog and her mad cooking skilzzz over on: nuriamariarosa.blogspot.com.)

Inspirational journals: Chris Buchholz

Hopefully, by now I am on a boat, eating tons of pasta, and getting loaded on limoncello (that's the plan at least). And of course, creating all kinds of wonderful travel journal pages. Before I left, I visited my favorite artists on Flickr to have a peek at their travel journals, and I remembered how much I adore Chris Buchholz work. See why:





Click here to see more of Chris's work!

Color Scheme Designer!

Just found out about this awesome website called Color Scheme Designer 3 through Ez's Creature Comforts blog! I am LOVING it! This will be such a nice addition to the Kuler website I've been using to choose color schemes for my journal pages (check out the tutorial on color schemes here).



You start out by selecting the color you want to start with, then you click on 'Adjust Scheme' to get the hue just right. If you're completely satisfied with the base color, you can play around with the various options available. It'll give you complimenting colors, contrasting colors, or 'accented analogic', which is my favorite in this case. If you're completely lost on what colors to use and don't have so much as a base-color, try clicking the 'randomize color palette' button on the top right! :-)

Enjoy!

Years gone by

The fun thing of keeping a visual journal, and keeping a visual journal for a while, is being able to look back, literally, through time. Today I was looking back through all the scans on my Flickr account and I noticed I had some pretty exciting birthdays these past few years!

In 2010 I celebrated my birthday in London with my boyfriend! But, I also threw an afternoon birthday party in our new Brussels home, where I got spoiled rotten.



In 2009 I celebrated at home with my dad (where I then stayed) and boyfriend and I got a Nikon D60 for my birthday (awesomenessss). But, I also threw a Beards & Moustaches party for my friends at my mom's house.



In 2008 I kept it simple and celebrated my birthday in Paris! City of love! But, a girl can't go without celebrating and I went out on the town with my friends!



In 2007 I came to visit my boyfriend who was then studying in California. I got to celebrate my birthday three times that year. Once, on the airplane, once in California eating fancy desert with good friends and my boyfriend, and once together with my brother during a sunny outdoor picnic.



I love how you can truly see my style develop and change over these few short years. Yay! for keeping a visual journal (is the propaganda working yet? No? You should take my course this fall!).

Art Journal Courses this fall!

Thank you everyone for your sweet comments and well-wishes on the post about my grandpa. It seems to have worked, since my grandpa is (very) slowly recovering, although he'll probably never get back to where was (which wasn't a very good place to begin with). It's hard to see someone you care about suffer like that and most of all I wish him as little pain as possible.

I'm now back in Brussels and pleased to have some good news for you this time.

This fall I'll be teaching art journaling classes at the Turtlewings atelier in Brussels! YAAAYYYYY!!! I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am about this.

Art Journaling Course
I'll be teaching one full day course for adults on October 9th (10-16h). Think this tutorial but in real life + fun times + lunch + awesome supplies! I'll be explaining some of the different techniques out there, give you some tips and quick tricks to make your pages and layouts look good, we'll figure out what kind of journal you'd like to keep, and we'll all be working on journal pages together.

Art Journal DIT
Then, I'll also be teaching a 'do it together' art journaling course for parents and children (aged 8-14) together with Turtlewing's wonderful Julie Anne. This course will take place on four consecutive Saturday-mornings (10-12h) in November (term begins the 6th and ends the 27th) and we'll be exploring how keeping an art journal can enrich your child's and your own creative life and manner of communicating.

You can sign up through Turtlewings (click here for the form) and if you sign up before September 4th, you get an early bird discount (which means €126,- instead of €140,- for the adult course and €108,- instead of €120,- for the DIT course).

I can't wait! :-)

Look mama, I made something!

Many of you have heard me praise Uppercase Magazine before (in Dutch) and I'm therefore happy to help promote the latest issue that's come out: Issue 6! Buy it! (how's that for mad marketing skills, eh?)

And although I'm usually already pretty excited to hear another issue has come out, this time I'm even more thrilled, as there's a six page (!) article in there THAT I WROTE!!! (OMGOMGOMG) Oh, and yes, I took most of the pictures as well.

I know. I am pretty cool. *looks at nails*

Click on the image for a preview of the magazine (p.62-67 for the article about Nina)

Early last April I took the train from Brussels to Den Bosch (which is in the south of The Netherlands) to meet up with designer and artist Nina van de Goor, who goes by 'Nina in Vorm' and designs amazing ceramics and prints. I had a very lovely afternoon with her during which she was kind enough to show me around her beautifully decorated house and talk to me about her work and life.

I won't say anything else, because you'll have to check out the magazine yourself (you have to), but I'd definitely recommend checking out Nina's work over on her blog and Etsy store. She's madly talented.

Also, a big thanks to Janine Vangool, founder, publisher, editor and designer of Uppercase Magazine for taking a chance on me and my writing!

A picture I took in Nina's studio that I don't think was published.