At least that’s what my kids wanted to be for this year’s Carnival in school. The decision didn’t surprise me as we started to read from the Harry Potter books before going to bed a few weeks back. There is a Harry Potter fever in our house! And for you who know me; I really don’t mind that. I’m a mega-Harry Potter- nerd 😉 I knitted the scarfs, I made the robes based on the pattern below (found on Kostuum.com), but the Hogwarts badge, I ordered online (on eBay) as well as the ties. The wands are plain chop-sticks. I also thought that Harry needed his owl Hedwig, so we bought her as well. The cage is from the famous Belgian flee market: Jeu de Balle. 
Barbie house rehab!
We have a beautiful wooden Barbie house, but they kids never played with it. The house had painted furnitures on the wall and my kids didn’t like that. They said they wished it had wall paper like in real rooms instead. We decided to do a mega clean up of the house we had instead of giving it away. First, we through away half of the dolls. Plus a lot of the half-broken plastic furnitures that came with it. All the small things that comes with a Barbie house; clothes, bags, food, glasses, make-up etc, was thrown into a big box next to the house where they had been long-gone forgotten. My philosophy when it comes to toys is: the less they have, the more they play with it! Therefore, they got to keep 6 of their favourite Barbie dolls, two boys and two girls, plus 2 small Barbie kids. The box went away. Anything they wanted had to fit into the house, if it didn’t we threw it away. I took down my old dollhouse furnitures and small things from the attic instead (I made lots of miniature things in my late teens) and we got to work on our new house. We found some pretty printed Japanese rice paper in DIY shop which we mod-podged to the walls. We added drawer lining to the floors, apart from the bathroom, which we painted. We also painted the outside walls in plain white. The plants are painted and cut masking tape glued to metal wire, put into a flower pot made of clay before drying. The closet of the balcony is made from a BBQ stick, attached to the ceiling with looped screws. The hangers are metal paper clips that we re-shaped. The shoes and bags are stored in a storage furniture for my old dollhouse. The result is an original and pretty Barbie house that they finally play with a lot. It feels like a real house now! 
Lovely vintage toys…
Look at these plastic fantastic old figurines! I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting older or if I’m just a very nostalgic woman, but seriously: wasn’t toys back then so much prettier and better made than nowadays? The simpler, the better in my taste. And since plastic will inevitably stay around for long until after we are gone, we might as well stop supporting new production of plastic crap that are meant to break anyway, and spend way less money on cute vintage toys like these 😉 Be the change!
Emil’s new sweater
Look, what I just made for my wild little boy. Luckily, he loves it too 😉
How to make a fringe (on a knit / crochet project)
Here is a little no-word description about how to make those gorgeous fringes on your knitted or crochet project. I made these particular Gryffindor scarfs to my kids when they were dressed up as Harry Potter and Hermoine Granger in school for Carnival.
DIY – Candy Cane Carpet
It’s the first time I’m using spaghetti yarn for a crochet or knitting project. I love the way this project is turning out, it’s going to be a bedside carpet for my kids’ room. It’s very soft to walk on and the neon pink is really popping out, it will fit the style of their room very well. The yarn reminds me of Candy Cane Sweets… Anyway, spaghetti yarn was so much easier to work with than what people told me. I have already bought 8 rolls of black and white of which I will make a carpet for our kitchen. Spaghetti yarn is very easy to make by yourself too: get a hold of a couple of old and worn out t-shirts and follow this really easy tutorial on Craft Passion. 
Cardboard TV – why not?
We cancelled our TV subscription a few years ago. We we’re just fed up with the constant stream of never-ending advertising and brainless TV-shows, so we stopped. Especially concerning our kids: when a movie is finished you can turn it off and do something else, but on a tv-channel, there are no breaks. Ever. We thought we would miss having a TV, but weirdly enough, we don’t. Instead of watching TV at night, we found ourselves with a lot of free time to do what we love, create. And the kids use their imagination much more.
However, we are still really in to video games and movies, so the TV stayed on for that reason. We always wanted to do something fun and creative to our old TV-set, so last week, my clever husband finally figured out what to do with it. The result is an original TV made out of cardboard, with matching cardboard speakers. I love the way it looks!
