Back to bed

Well...here I am, sitting on the sofa in my panda suit with a box of tissues to my right and some honey tea to my left. Looks like the Belgian super virus got the best of me. That's right bunnies, I'm officially off work for 3 whole days! A first for me!! And although I'm extremely tired, I have to admit I am a bit excited at the idea of spending the next 4 days doing nothing but sitting around and watching intellectually challenging documentaries, the occasional episode of Modern Family, browsing Pinterest and/or buying stuff online. 

It helps that Boyfriend is taking his role as a nurse extremely seriously and cooking delicious meals that don't hurt my very very sore throat.  

Right, I'm off, time for my second nap of the day. Typing is exhausting...

Don't worry though, more posts are on their way! And for the sake of unbelievable cuteness, here is a little preview of a whole other type of sausage:

The Sophie moo-cow bouncy roll. Best enjoyed straight out of bed for a fun start to the day.

Holding strong

My dear little blooms are lasting really well:

These pics are from last week. We're in Brussels until tomorow morning, spending time with my brother, sister-in-law and sweet little Sophie. Today, Boyfriend and I are her official VIP babysitters. When she wakes up from her nap we'll be off to the park and the ice cream parlor! Pictures coming soon. Get ready for some serious cuteness.

Dream a random little dream

I had the funniest dream last night that I just can't resist sharing:

I was looking into buying a pair of trainers (I've been getting quite a lot of exercise lately and I just had to throw my 12-year old Nikes away after they fell apart when I washed them at 40°) and my Mama was showing me a pair kind of like this on Skype:

Then all of a sudden she was showing me a lamp and saying "it's got yellow on it too, so it might be more useful than trainers!". 

Yeah, right...

Needless to say I wasn't convinced. But my Mama kept on insisting and I didn't really know what to say...awkward!

Also, that lamp was ugly. So ugly that I looked all over the interwebs and couldn't find anything like it. Try to picture something like this:

But with a smaller shade, and covered in fabric kind of like this with green swirls added in the mix: 

Mind you, this IS the sort of random thing my Mama would do. Maybe it wasn't a dream after all. Or maybe it was, and my subconscious is telling me it's time to buy an ugly yellow lamp. Or that it's time for a Pinterest detox...

Now I regret getting rid of that dictionary of dreams that I bought when I was a sentimental little teenager. Not that it was of much use. I've only ever had one dream about loosing my teeth and at the time I found out that it can mean about a million different things.

So what could this dream mean? Any ideas?

Pining for...symmetry

 

I also wish I had some of these cute flashcards to hand out to my friends and co-workers each time they are good.

Weekend snapshots

This is what the tails of the trains looked like on Sunday morning when we headed out. 

This is what our goodbye brunch looked like with friends who are moving to China, stopping in New Zealand for a 3-month road trip. I'm so jealous. And so excited for them. If you are too (you weird person, you don't even know them!), and if you speak French, you can stalk them here on their baby blog.

This is what outside looked like: not very inviting. Luckily we managed to get back home without too much trouble.

And THIS is what my Christmas present looked like before I unwrapped it!

I'm getting ready to show you what it is but it involves some prep work. Hint: you'll be green with envy!

Like a 5-year old

Finally! It's snowing! it's snowing it's snowing it's snowing!!!!!

As I speak, the teeniest snowflakes are dancing around outside and I don't know if we'll be able to make it to our brunch with friends as the trains to Paris aren't running properly...

But I'm not complaining, it's snowing!!!!

Here are some pics we took of our various views on friday night

Funny how even the most depressing picture becomes festive if it incudes snow.

More pictures to come, if we ever make it out of the suburb and into the city...

Pining for experiments

Now that I've been back at work for a couple of weeks, my precious feeling of endless possibilities is slowly fading. All day long I say to myself: "right, tonight I'm baking that cake, tonight I'm cleaning the bathroom"... then I leave work and get on a train and then on another train and then I'm home and the evening is gone in a flash and I've done nothing. How do you do it?

Anyway, this is what I'd rather be doing with my time. Food experiments!!

Learning how to use my camera instead of just pointing and hoping for the best with random settings

But thanks to a very drafty flat, chances are I'm going to be spending many more evenings doing this

I've been waiting...

...and waiting and waiting for days!

                                                 Where is this snow I've been hearing about??

Pick me up

This past week has been a bit horrid (understatement). And the next few weeks are looking pretty bleak too, so after an early morning and a dental appointment on Saturday I decided I needed a treat. 

This is the first time I've bought myself flowers. I always thought it would be a bit awkward but it was really nice to be able to choose the ones I liked and watch a beautiful bouquet come to life. I've been going on about for Eucalyptus and Ranunculus for ages and I think now Boyfriend has seen them he'll remember that flowers from an actual florist are more expensive than supermarket flowers for several reasons: 

- they are gorgeous

- they smell amazing

- they come beautifully wrapped

- you get to have a friendly chat with another human being while supporting their small business (and a very cute one at that. The shop is teeny but so full of smells and colours and overall very calming)

So there you have it. I'm not going to make a habit of it because I know there's nothing eco-friendly about the flower trade, but desperate situations call for drastic pick-me-ups.

   
It's certainly working. Well, that and the 2 hours of warm wooly sweater shopping we did afterwards.

I placed a few twigs of eucalyptus on my bedside table. I keep sniffing them all the time. I can see where koalas get their zen from.

Now you know I spent hours trying to get some artistic close-ups don't you? Here are some of the less out-of-focus ones.

I could just curl up and hibernate inside those soft white folds. 

Guest post: squiggles and swirls

Hello everyone! It's Boyfriend here. Bunnies and Stripes has invited me back to talk about some of my creative work.
 

I've put away my gloves, plastic goggles and sword (see this post)! This time I'm here to talk about my text ornaments. Because although you probably thought my daily tasks involved slaying dragons and wooing damsels in distress, I'm actually a freelance publisher and proofreader (this is my website: www.lecaractereimaginaire.com) and I like to create all the little squiggles and swirls that you see in books, specially old ones. I have to admit I'm kind of addicted to Photoshop and find this whole process oddly calming. Hopefully you won't find this post so calming that you fall asleep while reading it. Ready?

This is a screenshot of my website for those of you who didn't click on the link, just to give you an idea of some of the ornaments I've made. Do you recognise some of the locations from Carrot's previous posts? Yeah, I tend to tag along when she goes on wild adventures in case there's some Banana bread beer to be had.
 

Rightn let's start with the creation process. First, you walk around the streets of Rio (or any other ancient medieval city) and you see this:

Then your artistic streak wakes up and tells you that you could make something pretty using those shapes! So your lovely girlfriend waits patiently for hours and hours until you've taken pics of every last balcony in Santa Teresa while the sun beats down like there's no tomorrow.

This is when things get complicated. Using Photoshop, start by cleaning up the picture while salvaging the lines you want to keep. Then you can ink the image.

After that, you need to zoom all the way in and spot the devious little pixels that were too pale to be spotted before and delete them.

Ta-daaa! Your ornament is ready to be vectorized and used for a million different purposes! 

Just switch it around a bit and you end up with a pretty rose window (photo 12), and a medallion (photo 13).

So this is my little tutorial for creating lots of ornaments and textures using anything and everything that looks interesting (graffiti, church tiles, wrought iron balconies, etc.).

You can use these ornaments in texts, but they could also be used for cool tattoos or t shirts, stickers, greeting cards, or blog and website decor! 

If you want to see more of what I do you can visit my website and go to the "Ornements" page (I promise to translate my site into English one day soon!)

See ya bunnies!

(This is the t shirt I had made for Carrot so she can show off when she goes to her yoga classes)