To me, I thought our second CNY here is waaaayyy more festive than our first one here. We actually did the spring cleaning, prepped CNY food stuff, decorated our pad with DIY CNY decor, and cooked ourselves a feast fit for four persons on the eve. :) I'd say it was a success in bringing CNY to Flekkefjord :) Thus, you could imagine that we've been keeping ourselves busy for at least a couple of weeks. Assembling food ingredients from places near and far, researching for recipes, making the paper decorations, whilst cleaning the apartment from top to bottom. All in all, it was fun :)
Another thing that I've dipped my tiny toe in is quilling (have a look at what wiki has to say) The D on left is my first ever quilled monogram, :) Not great, I know, but it was fulfilling. I liked how it turned out and I liked how you don't have to get different tools and ingredients to do this. It does, however, hone one's patience :p It took me awhile to get the paper to just CURL >.<... after that, it was playtime :) Now, for this, have a look at this .. I dare say, she's like Beyonce in quilling, she is out-of-this-world good in quilling - Yulia Brodskaya .. And then, check out this site - allthingspaper, these talented folks just goes to prove that even on or with paper, sky is the limit! :)
There is one thing that always crops up in our conversations (between mister & I) - the time that we have here after work, is priceless. We would have taken a much longer time to learn and do all these things back at home, where work would have been the core focus and where the main chunk of our energy & effort would have been spent on. Like today, after work, we grocery-shopped, cooked & had our dinner, he did his exercises & chilled out and I went on to do laundry, made a jar of body lotion & diy lavender jelly as dessert for tomorrow. ^.^ And... I got to blog... will be diving back to my latest book before tucking in way before 11pm (Btw, it is the Icefire trilogy, it is quite a read, if you are a fiction/fantasy fan, check it out)
It's hard to explain to people sometimes that.. yes, I am busy at home too... Whether you want to call this being self-indulgent or constantly learning new things, I am just happy to have this chance to do so. And for you, who may be thinking of making a life-changing move from a cosmopolitan city to a tiny town, hopefully this post is more of a pro for you :)
Can't wait to taste the jelly!
ABE