Be My Valentine ?

What a long day.
I had to travel a whole lot alone today. It was a bit warmer than a couple of days ago (That is if you consider 2 Degrees Celsius warm).

And I was looking for something special to make my husband for Valentine's day.
I wanted to give him something special, something that represents us, and we can do together. I am going to take him out for Sushi (our favorite) and a Muppet movie.
On the way back home I thought I would make him happy, and since his biggest hobby is video games, I got him a video game magazine , which he of course Loved.

When I came home, he gave me the most beautiful card which said to my wife, and my best friend on the envelope.
The card is personal, but I think it was one of the most beautiful and special ones he ever gave me. It's like every word in it was so intense.

Thank you sweet angel of mine, for allowing me to be your friend. I love you.

Later in the evening I came up with a sort of a different valentine's day card.
Since I am very much into Scrapbooking, I have been browsing the internet for a long time now, inhaling ideas and inspiration. Who is better to share it with than my best friend, and so, I decided to create a scrap valentine's day.

And here it is, dedicated to my best friend, My husband:

My first Scrap Page.

Since I don't have a lot of Material and almost no budget, I had to be creative.

I used a ribbon to create small roses 

And using a pencil I made a background

for the writing : Love is sleeping on your lover's

Shoulder every night

Do you remember my second hand Stamps? 

I used a blue pencil to write inside them

I love you

And I also circled the outer corners

I made tags from scrap paper and tide a knot from

Yarn on them, ontop I cut of an old dictionary the 

definition of love and glued it to the tag.

With the rest of the paper I wrote with a fine liner : 

Love is marrying your best friend 

and our wedding date

I cut of some fonts from the paper and I also 

found this love bird cute, so now he sings in hearts

I did the same tag, but this time with the

definition of the word friendship

And that was it.
My Man really loved it! He put it on display and is very careful not to smear the ink.
I love him so much.
Happy valentine's day angel, for many more to come.
your wife, the mad scientist.

One big crafty mess

Sometimes If I see a big mess I get the urge to tidy everything. It is the nicest thing in the world to see how neat and organized your home after all that effort you put in. 

So this morning, after my man washed a pile of dishes, and did all the vacuuming, 

(kudos for him) , I started organizing my closets. 

It used to look like this , so it wasn't quite the order I like 

And now, it looks like this:

Then, I went upstairs , and find out this is how my hall closet looked like:

And this is how it looked like after me charging it:

During my cleaning I found out this scarf that I knitted last winter as a gift to my man. What do you think?

 

Then I took over my man's closet too, and this is what it looks like now:

 Since I was in a creative mood and I saw this empty shoe box

And since I had this beautiful wrapping paper with Dutch old commercials from the 50's:

I thought I would make something useful, a craft box , and so it was:

And this is how it looks from the inside :

Then I could just let my crafting material just rest neatly in their new house ;)

And here it is on it's new place, by my window:

Then, being still creative, I remembered, I still have 3 packages of Mushroom from my Market visit 2 days ago. 

That is so me sometimes (Btw this is a wonderful postcard my friend gave me from England, and it is so true)

So, I just made a mushroom pie, and since I was so blonde, I forgot to take pictures and so I could only take one, of what was left as half a Mushroom pie, so next time I make it I'll post pictures and the recipe, since it was self made and Delicious...

Off to study for my Dutch lessons... The mad scientist :) 

Where is Elvis and the Bookfair

Do you have a feeling like sometimes life creates things you wished for ?

Well, it happened to me today.
Lately I was very much interested in scrap booking.  It is a sort of an art to create your own photo album, with your own message.

So as it goes, today, Instead of being lazy on Sunday morning, Me, my man and our friends went to a really cool book-fair in Ahoy Rotterdam. It was a very big yearly fair with a ton of really cheap books in Dutch and in English, and it had lots of other surprises, which I will show you later. I felt so happy due to this fair. It made me ecstatic.

Here we are in front of the Ahoy concert hall/ event hall, just to show you
how big this hall is. I believe there were around 1000 people their today.

When we entered I immediately saw the nice stalls with all kind of wonderful books, in every possible subject:
Romance novels:

Children books , including toy books, which were neatly organized in nice boxes
Everything was so nicely organized:

Well, maybe not everything ;)

I have a thing with Sesame Street, and I just found this Elmo coloring workbook so adorable:

Science Fiction and Thriller books, this was my man's section

It was such a relaxing experience to walk around so much books, to look, to feel the books, to enjoy that cultural experience and atmosphere...

And here is my man enjoying his Sunday too:

I must say that the books were extremely cheap, some for as low as 60 cents, and the new ones were around 2-3 Euro's, when in the store they can reach an average price of 15 Euros. What a great cultural bargain.

I have seen some books which I couldn't afford, and I would love to have. I would definitely come back next year to get these books:

The Little Prince, it was the beautiful purple version , which was quite big, but contained a few more beautiful stories

Nursery Stitch, was a sweet book about creating dolls for small children, which I thought was very cute

And some design books: Beautiful walls and organized storage solutions, which as you probably know right now, I love

I continued strolling and  got to 2 very funny books, one of them is called "Where is Elvis and many others" in which you have to find Elvis. Sort of "Where is Wallie" , but more music stars version

Following him, was , what else but Where's Michael and many others. These were Hillarious and managed to put a smile on my and my man's face.

As I continued to enjoy the book fair, I was delighted to see this sign:

Since it was followed by heavenly filled boxes like these with crafting materials, and of course Scrap Booking materials. It is very hard to get cheap materials for scrap booking here in Holland, so you can only imagine how delighted I was to see all of this

What a nice feeling digging in those boxes, and finding things you just LOVE.
And here are some beautiful wrapping papers. Don't you think the mix of colors is just great?

I love crafts and crafting, everything creative does it to me. Any form of expression of creativity is always welcomed by me, and so I managed to get a few gems in this book fair , which will give me a lot of creative times:

*Simple City's How to use a sewing machine, in English. Which was something I wanted for a long time now. All I have to do now, is get a sewing machine, and start sewing... my head is exploding with ideas. I can't wait to use that...

  * Scrapbook tips and techniques , which is over 700 pages of scrapbook pages & Tips

And lot more amazing surprises. Well here is my loot: A few cooking books, scrap booking books, the Simpson's book (That was a really cool one), a few nice reading books, and lots of craft material, I am so excited about this...

Here is my man's Loot:

And here is what a great few hours with great friends ended up with :

Later we had a nice dinner with our friends, which ended yet another happy Sunday.
What a great way to start the week. I am defiantly coming back next year.
Signing off, the crafty Mad scientist.

Finding Treasures

Dear Readers,

Today was a very happy day at the mad's scientists side of the world. I spent some quality time with my man doing some treasure hunting in a second hand store in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

We have a chain of second hand stores who are called Kringloop Winkel. There are a couple in every city, and they sell practically everything from a button to a couch. some of the things are very cheap and some of them are more expensive, but let's just say it goes between 0.10 Euros to 300 Euros.

There are a lot of vintage items there. I just love the boxes they have, since they are really crafts, I use them for everything, from storing cookies, buttons, pens etc. and they all have such wonderful printing on them.

I got two: one with a print of Albert Heijn (which is practically the godfather of supermarkets in Holland), and the other is a really nice one, of a printout of an old dutch house , like those you see in Amsterdam, and it fits 1 packet of flour, to start my bakery laboratory again hehe :)

On top of that I got 3 cooking books: a eastern dutch one with Indonesian recipes for all the sauces we make for stir fry and, one grandma's cooking dutch book, with all kind of vintage recipes, the other one is a calories guide in Dutch, for all the dutch foods.

I love Sesame street (well who doesn't) and I am especially crazy about Elmo. And so I was so happy to find this box in the store, I am already thinking about what to put in it, any ideas?

Yesterday i opened a "Crafty Tula" page on Facebook, with all kind of organizing tips, please like my page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Crafty-Tula/224832560925642?sk=wall

and here is the first tip of the day from the page, I will post some from time to time here too, and refer my Facebook readers to my blog as well. If you guys have any organizing tips, please do share/ comment below.

Tip of the day : 

How to organize your sheets so you can easily find one whole set:

If you don't want to to search so hard after those hiding sheets, just put all the sheets you are folding into one pillow case, that way you wouldn't have to think hard when you are trying to match your sheets to your pillow cases, and while you arrange them in your closet, it also looks neat.


Later on I realized I have 2 chicken breasts in the fridge which I have to make, so what is better than to make oatmeal schnitzels.
They are always crispy, very healthy and very tasty, or as my man said after eating it : Did you buy this or make this ? (what a nice compliment, I guess he liked 'em).

For all of you who want to know how to make them, here is the recipe, unfortunately I couldn't take a picture of the final schnitzels, since my man ate them all too fast , Enjoy :)

Oatmeal Covered Schnitzels:


Ingredients:
2 Chicken Breasts
1 Egg
Chicken Soup Powder
Oatmeal
Sunflower Oil

Preparation:
1) Cut the chicken breasts into thin slices.
2) Put some oatmeal in a deep bowl
3) Mix the Egg with the chicken soup powder, than add a bit water and mix it all together. Add the chicken slices to the bowl and let it marinade for 2 hours.

4) after 2 hours in the fridge, warm a pan with some sunflower.

5) Put the chicken slices in the oatmeal and use it to cover them completely.
6) fry the schnitzels.
7) Serve with some white rice or with fries.
Bon Appetite...