Hi!

Awww, thank you all so much for your warm welcome back! As you see, I intend to keep coming back for a while longer :o) I would have blogged earlier, if I hadn’t spent six days figuring out how to make these nifty picture collages without the help of Picnik.com. Unfortunately, being blonde and all, I couldn’t work out how to use the other available free programs on the internet, so you’ll just have to bear with me and wade through a couple of dozen pictures before you reach the end of this post. You know, if you care to stick around.
As promised, today I’m going to show you what on earth possessed me to decorate my house to resemble Dolores Umbridge’s office at Hogwarts. Well you see, I have this book.

I made it myself. It’s actually the first thing I ever did with a sewing machine, and it wasn’t as dangerous as I thought it would be (although the sewing machine wouldn’t agree, because it didn’t actually survive the exercise). I followed an online class for Mary Ann Moss’ Remains of the Day Journal. It wasn’t free, but I’ve never been so happy to part with my money, because it was worth every cent. Follow the link and feast your eyes on some of the other journals that have been made. If you're anything like me, you probably have bags and bags and boxes filled with pieces of paper, tickets, notes, letters, pictures, envelopes, stamps and other bits and snips that you've saved ever since you were, what, ten years old? and couldn't bear to part with, but you never knew what to do with them. Well, this is the perfect way to use them, save them, keep them, cherish them. A browse through a journal such as this makes you skip down Memory Lane...

I worked on putting together this journal after we’d learned that my father did not have long to live, which is probably what makes the book so special to me. My father could always take huge pleasure in little things, in daydreaming… building castles in the air, and I admired that in him. I wanted a place where I could go if I ever wanted to reminisce, daydream and build my own castles in the air, and that’s how this book came to be. It’s my Happy Days book, with room for positive, happy thoughts and memories, and most probably some horrible clichés about happiness and bliss, but every time I open this book, for a short while it transports me to my very favourite castle in the air. A couple of weeks ago, I found myself thinking with a wistful sigh: I wish I could live in this book.

And then I thought: well, why don’t I make it happen? Why don’t I recreate the feeling I get from this book in my very own living room? Throw together patterns I love and bits and bobs I adore and recreate something that I love deep inside, but am afraid to show because it might be seen as Over The Top! And so that's exactly what I did. Dolores would be jealous.

It’s not to everyone’s taste, I’m sure, but I LOVE it. And fortunately, my son is too young (or too sweet) to comment on all the pink flowery stuff happening. Surely you agree that in a room such as this, you need a LOT of crocheted blankets. And yes, some more samplers and other stitchy things. More of that…
…next time!

Yours tickled pinkly,

Annemarie.