Mariko Craft Cafe

Dear Readers,

How have you been doing?  Has Spring arrived yet in your country?  It's beautiful, isn't it?  Blossoms on every trees and green coming back to the landscape!

I have been busy working out 4 times a week and walking the 3 other days, taking care of myself as I promised to do.  I do feel my body is feeling better after weeks of this new lifestyle and I look forward to fully recover from my ailments.

But after my work day, I don't have much time for much else so blogging is impossible to add on top of my other tasks.  However, I have not forgotten my dolls.  I have been buying sporadically a few dolls here and there.  

I want to create a permanent display place for them instead of hiding them all the time in my cupboards.  I look sometimes on blogs and Flickr for inspiration and recently, I found out about a homemade dollhouse which I really like.

It's a very impressive dollhouse project by Laurence Damiani who was a winner of one of my past giveaway. 

MARIKO CRAFT CAFE is her new blog where she presents her dolls and the miniature  furniture she has created for her them!  She is very skilled and has a Youtube Channel where you can see her creations.

She is also a fan of Pullip and Dal dolls like me :D  After I looked at her website, I was very tempted to write more about my dollies as well!  This is why I love blog land: it's such a great place to rekindle your love for your hobbies!

I hope to come back to you soon with a glimpse of my dolls again!

Have a wonderful week everybody!

I was nominated for the Liebster Award!

Dear Readers,

I was nominated for the LIEBSTER AWARD by April from OF DOLLS blog!

Thank you so much April for thinking about me :)

The Liebster Award was created to promote blogs and have fun doing so.  It's like a chain letter where bloggers nominate 11 other bloggers with less than 200 readers.  "Liebster" is dearest in German and so it's like a Dearest Blog Award.  You can choose to play the game or ignore it. 

The rules are simple: you mention the person who has nominated you, answer the 11 questions asked by the person who nominated you, nominate 11 blogs, and ask them 11 questions.  

So here below are April's 11 questions for me:

1. Which doll in your collection have you owned the longest? - Pullip Paja  

2. Do you have a specific style/type of doll that you enjoy collecting most? - Licca 

3. If you could have any doll ever made, cost not an option, what would it be? - Lati Yellow Coco 

4. What is your favorite doll or toy that you have ever had? (I liked Steampunk Addie's question so much that I decided to reuse it.) - A plush chick!

5. Your favorite TV show (doesn't have to be currently on)? - Bizarre Food!

6. What are your hobbies, outside of dolls? - Dollhouses, Miniature, Books.

7. Where would you love to visit for your next vacation? - Hawaii

8. Do you speak any languages besides English? - French

9. What is your favorite food? - Coffee Ice Cream!

10. Who would you want to play you in a movie about you? - Lee Young Ae

11. Who is your favorite author? - JRR Tolkien 

And here are the blogs I would like to nominate for the Liebster Award!

1. Julia's Bookbag

2. Silver Shoes and Rabbit Holes

3. Mini Addictions

4. Mini Fanaticus

5. Vintage Books for the Very Young

6. SugarBush Valley : An Ideal Life

7. Aeternum Sumnium

8. Hannah's Miniatyrer

9. Suvenkorento

10. Pen Pals and Picture Books

11. Mon Amie Koumori

Should you accept your nomination, here are your 11 questions (cue Mission Impossible music):

1. What is your favorite Disney movie?
2. What is your favorite picture book?
3. What is your favorite novel?
4. What word do you use all the time?
5. What would you splurge on if you won $100,000?
6. What woud you never eat?
7. What name do you wish you had instead of your own?
8. What do you like to daydream about?
9. What is your phobia?
10. What do you want to be remembered for?
11. What do you wish upon a star?

Have fun :D


EDIT: You don't have to accept the award and continue the game!  It's just a game after all so don't feel pressured to do something you don't want to :)

Inspiration

Carpe Diem!

Hello Dear Readers,

 

I had a conversation with my sister-in-law the other day about internet blogs, especially mommy blogs and celebrity blogs.   She was telling me how unrealistic and picture perfect those blogs are and how she could not connect with them. 

 

Let me say first that blogging is an anomaly in my family.  Nobody blogs or reads internet blogs and they laugh at my hobby which I don't keep secret but which I don't really talk about with them either. 

 

But to me, reading blogs and then embarking in the world of blogging has changed me tremendously.  It helped me better myself, reminded me of being kind and patient with my kids, of being grateful for the things I have and above all, inspired me to beautify my life with the means I have.

 

I totally understand that the reality of other bloggers is not my reality as we all have a different life.  But I am INSPIRED by them.  I think we all feel drawn to perfection and beauty so it's natural to aim for these things!  Reading blogs makes me dream and wishful and it also makes me create and ultimately bring benefits to myself and my family.

 

My life is not perfect and has never been.  Far from it.

 

I grew up in a very poor family.  What you could call dirt poor.  We got even poorer when tragedy struck and we were left with nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, but the clothes we were wearing.  We spend months living in slums, with barely enough food to survive, with the fear of sickness and being killed.  But we made it out of there.  My parents worked so hard to get us back to a normal living. 

 

My home was ugly.   There were no such things you could call "pretty" because all we had came directly from the garbage cans or from donations. Our dinner ware was chipped and mismatched.   My clothes were either hand-made or donated and they were always frumpy or too big.  But we had plenty of love.  And my mom made everything as pretty as she could with the means she had.  And thanks to her, we forgot the holes in the walls and the leaking faucet, the old clothes and chipped plates.  We lived in a Home Sweet Home, as pretty and cozy as you could get.

 

 

She would always be an inspiration to me.  She created lampshades with papier mâché and tea cozy with bits of left over fabrics.  She invented recipes to work with the ingredients she could find and cooked delicious meals only mothers could cook!  She was always crafting or improvising with the little she had to transform our tiny flat into a comfortable haven.

 

 

Nowadays, I live in much better conditions, but my apartment is far from being pretty.  My neighborhood is not an upscale one and the buildings are all decrepit and old.  But some of my neighbors, they tend to their garden, they sweep daily the dead leaves and they decorate for each holiday!  They make and effort to beautify their living space and that makes a huge difference!  The neighborhood is transformed thanks to their willingness to change their environment.

 

 

In the same way, I try to make my home a better place to live and reading blogs inspire me to do so.  Little by little, gradually and within my means, I make it happen.  So I think blogging is really useful!  It depends on how you use the knowledge you are getting.  I say: make it a positive experience :)  Reach for higher!  Even in the most arid deserts, beautiful flowers can bloom :)

 

Cactus Flowers

 

P.S. All the pictures above are shots I took (with ONE hand while the other hand was holding baby) during my morning walk in my neighborhood each weekend (well except for the peonies which was taken in my home).  Baby's hand is actually shown in the first picture :)