What I have been up to...

After a little blog-silence here I am to tell you what I have been up to recently. Go and get a cuppa, it may be a long one...

The spring holidays made me think a lot. I felt upset a lot of the times that I couldn't take my daughter to some interesting place, because I don't have a car and we only went out a couple of times when our friends took us out (we are lucky girls), but it would be so nice to just go down, sit in the car and go. I would like to be free. I have been planning to learn how to drive for years now, but there was always some reason (mostly financial) that I couldn't start. Now I'm not going to let it go. I will start it no matter what. I have got the theory dvd from my little sister, so that's a good starting point, then I will magically get some money for the driving as well... I so want to do this for my little girl. I feel horrible sometimes when I'm taking her to school in the rain, or dragging her shopping and all those kind of things... Please send me some positive energy to be able to start it, I would so appreciate it!

My living room colour scheme make-over went on really well in the holidays. I did some surprisingly good changes and I think they look awesome. Let me show you some examples:

This was a jar (spaghetti bolognese from the polish shop, yes, I'm not kidding), I painted the inside with acrylic paint mixed with a little water, without using any brush, just moving the paint-water mixture in the inside of the jar, then removed the excess. Once dried I decorated it a little lace and that's it, a pretty new vase. Made some more of this, will need to get some more flowers : )

This clock was once lime green, and after a little nail polish, it looks like new and matches my new colour scheme a lot better : )

I love this photo of us, but hated the golden frame it was in until I changed it : ) Don't forget to take off the photo in case you do this project! I first applied a thick layer of white gesso to cover all the gold and to create a nice tooth for the acrylic paint. I intentionally left some of the white show, I think it looks a lot better this way, than if I created a solid red colour. And we got a new frame!

Then there was an other thing that made me pretty nervous these days. My daughter had baptism today and I was stressing over the cake quite a bit. I have to admit that I only made one cake before that was covered with icing. (before I always made chocolate covered ones) And my friends say it was quite good, I was very worried about this one. What if the icing gets wrinkles or tears, what if I can't write on it properly, what if the flowers turn out ugly... loads of scary things for an amateur. Have a look at the preparation:

I made 80 little flowers, used 75 at the end, so it was quite a good guess. : )

Got this kit to help me form the letters. I slightly pressed each word into the cake, then used the icing bag with a tiny hole on the end to write... with very shaky hand... Note to self: next time practice it more before you write wriggly letters on the cake! : )

I thought icing was my enemy, but we are getting closer now, next time I'm only going to worry about the letters, the icing actually went pretty well.

This is the result : ) What do you think? (I do take constructive criticism, it was only my second iced cake, I know I need to practice this a lot more and I would be very happy to learn)

And here is my pretty girl, she was so happy to dress up like this, and that I let her hair down. She is a real girl : )  I realized this in the spring holiday too (I told you I was thinking a lot), that whatever I do it's because I want to make her happy. I started my business because of her, I want to drive because of her, I got baptized because of her (I never mentioned that here, but now you know) and I want my business to get successful, because I want to show her that you can achieve your dreams if you really work hard. She is my best supporter and the best daughter I could have wished for. Ok, I'm getting sentimental now, better stop it here : )

Now that the cake making is not in the way anymore, next week I'll have a lot of work to do. Have some almost ready paintings to finish and some serious projects in the works, I hope not to disappear for this long again. See you soon! : )