Wednesday 31 May 2017

Garden party

Last week we had a big garden party with all our friends, our neighbors and my parents (the rest of the family is too far away, but my parents insisted in coming to my birthday - why? 40 is a number like all the others ;-)Fortunately we had great warm and sunny weather!
For decorating the garden I made some new fabric garlands. Normally I do the buntings by sewing together the triangles from the left side, cutting back the seam allowance, turning, ironing, assembling all buntings .... way too much work if you want to make a garland of 15 or more meters. So this time I it's less precise, but will hold anyway for a while I hope. I just surrounded the buntings with the overlock and after I pulled a cord through.
Our garden is on a slope and it's impossible to put a table in it. For our guests we had tables and chairs on our terrace behind the house and on the tarmacked front yard and some benches and camping chairs around the fire-place. But I found a great idea on pinterest that I had to try: I put three wooden pallets for tables on the grass, covered them with white sheets (big fight with some spots later, but okay) and around I arranged all picnic blankets, an old rug and all the cushions available to have a cosy hangout. 
On all tables we had bottles with some flowers from the roadside and the meadows that my mom put together.
When it became night, the picnic area transformed to a children campsite ...
There had been plenty children at the party and kids are not made for hanging around like the adults only chatting-drinking-eating. To get them busy and distract their mind from too much nonsense I prepared a photo-tour. They formed little groups of 3 to 5 kids, took a camera or a smart-phone and had to take photos of 10 motifs that I chose.
When the children returned with their 10 photos, they got a little box full of cap bombs, with which they made nonsense for the rest of the evening :-) But fun!

A bientôt,
Jane 

Friday 19 May 2017

Floating wood garlands

Lately I went with younger son down to the river and collected little pieces of floating wood and pebbles (those for a later project). In front of our house we are having a balcony under which we like to sit when the sun is too hot for terrasse, balcony or garden. My wooden birds are flying there all the year except for Christmas and wintertime. Early in spring, when I let them out, there had been also giant pin cones, but those are not really summer decoration, so I made some garlands with the floating wood and some other pieces I found in my stack.
The first garland is with red perls and twig balls. 

The next only with twig balls
And the last is very basic with only branches.
My husband says it's looking like pirates decoration. He says it's looking like bones on strings! I replied that I will make a bones garland for him for Halloween :-)
But if the wood are looking like bones, what is this looking like? A hanging man?
 

A bientôt,
Jane