Woohooo for Secret Santa!!!

The European Street Team had a secret santa game which was organised by the brilliantly creative ArtMind. The gist of the game is that we are all matched with another european seller and have to make something for that person based on the information from their questionnaire that they completed. This year my secret santa came all the way from Barcelona in Spain ...

Fantastically she was able to send the package to me in our new home right here in Christchurch, New Zealand ... THANK YOU so much PALEOLOCHIC!!!!

The delightfully creative Moira a.k.a PALEOLOCHIC made me a superbly stylish set of Lavendar hangings and also sent me a seriously beautiful magnet for my fridge! Thank you so much :D I've hung the lavendar sachets throughout the house .. wonderfully fragrant!

It's been such an honor to have been part of this majestically warm and wonderful team. I miss 'the girls' and I certainly miss europe.

A special thanks to you Mitsy, everyone appreciates all of your hard work in putting the Secret santa together .. you are one in a million girl :D

Holland trip and mini EST meeting

Recently I had the supreme good fortune to travel to Holland for 10 days to stay with my best buddy Vanessa (fellow kiwi lass living with a dutchman there) ... it was much needed time out!! I want to share with you my meetings of some very special ladies from the EST (europeanstreetteam on Etsy) .. 10 days wasn't long enough in the end and I missed the chance of meeting more, but maybe we'll have a EST convention after all this year, who knows!

First of all Vanessa and I travelled to the city of Schiedam (near Rotterdam) to meet up with Liz of AgapeBridal. Liz is a super gorgeous Singaporean lady (and she is just as lovely and sweet as she appears on the thread!) married to a dutchman. Liz's husband stayed up the night before to make chocolate muffins, especially for our visit .. how sweet is that?! Dear Liz made us the yummiest shepherds pie for lunch too!

I had recently (before going) purchased a few gorgeous items from Liz's etsy shop (AgapeBridal) and I asked her to wait and give them to me on this day!! We had the honour of seeing Liz's wedding album (which is in the form of an amazing hardcover book) ... extremely beautiful photo's with touching words throughout. I'm not at all ashamed to share with you that both Vanessa and I cried over one part of the album, it was breathtaking.

This is a photo of Liz and I .. you know, I actually felt short over in Holland but I was feeling kind of tall that day when I met Liz ;)

A few days later we travelled to the city of Eindhoven to meet up with Mitsy from Artmind and and Myrte from Mirthquake and MirthQuakeClothing. Goodness me, I don't think Eindhoven has heard such laughter from a group of girls for a long time! Seriously, we met, me sat, we talked and talked and laughed and talked and giggled and talked and laughed some more!! It was the best time i'd had in such a long time ... our jaws were hurting from all the laughter! They'd (the cafe/restaurant) NEVER have believed us if we told them it was our first time meeting each other. Myrte gave us all gorgeous buttons from her shop and Mitsy had baked very special biscuits for us all .. totally yummy! Two more truly awesome, sweet, lovely and gorgeous girls from the EST team!!

These are photo's from that day .. I must just point out that in the first one I am wearing my jewellery purchases from dear nanouke. Stylish and funky stuff eh what!!

I came back feeling refreshed and was immediately swept up in masses of hugs and kisses from the kids .. nice to know I was missed!!