The Blues. . .

The children stared and stared and in their thoughts they called ; " KING OLLAMH " 

All of a sudden !!! The painting became blurry and look !

There he was ! Out of the blue ! He stepped right out of the painting and made a deep bow for Uncle Ukki and the children.

"Good afternoon King Ollamh, welcome in my house on behalf of the children and me." said Uncle Ukki in a very solemn voice.

"It is my pleasure Ukki, I heard the children have a lot of questions and I am here to answer them. " said the King with a smile.

"Come sit with me, can you take my cloak and wand Ukki? "

He sat down and the children gather round him.

"I will tell you who I am and what I do :

I am from a dynasty of blue-blooded gnomes and my task is to take away the blues from the people.

Little Barby, you want to know why the sky is blue ? 

Well, this is what happens. . . . 

Whenever someone is feeling blue I got a message from certain animals, mostly birds, and I will come in the night and take away those blues.

The blues goes into my bag and I will call a bird which has blue in it's feathers. It has to have some blue in it's feathers for camouflage, otherwise people would notice a bird flying around with a blue bag.

So, when ( for instance) a Blue Jay appears, I give it a most important assignment. 

It has to bring the Bag-of-Blues to Skugga !

Skugga is a Cloud Creature, he eats people's blues and after he eats it he lets out an enormous burp, blowing away the clouds and Voila ! the sky turned blue, the sun appears and people are feeling happy again.

Look up children ! Can you see him?

 "Oh, I don't see him King Ollamh. . ." said little Higgins
"Well, squint your eyes and look again " said the King

"Oooooh yes I can see him ! Oooh he looks very kind !"

"Indeed he is, he is here to help. He turns up every once in a Blue Moon and as we gnomes know that means once a month in human terms."

"But King Ollamh, there are many people who are feeling blue these days how can you help them all ?"

I can't little Ginny, that is why I leave a message with the people I've visited.

I tell them to focus on beauty and spread beauty and I leave a little note with a quote from a remarkable little girl :

“I don't think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.”
― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

Helen XXX 

Questions, questions, questions :-)

It was a beautiful day and the little ones were sitting in the kitchen while Uncle Ukki prepared lunch.

They were chit-chatting about all kind of stuff and admiring the new wall paper Uncle Ukki received from a gnome from the other side of ( this) world.

Uncle Ukki finally decided to put up a painting he had for a long time and he was in a very good mood.

Barby was reading quietly as usual when suddenly she asked: "Uncle Ukki, I've read the Gnome book from A to Z but there is something I cannot find . . . . ."

"What is it Barby dear ?" Uncle Ukki asks her.

"Well, I'm trying to find out why the sky is blue ! I did check your Great Book of Knowledge but there are missing pages and where the missing pages should be there was this very old photograph."

"Yes yes look Uncle Ukki ! This fell out of your book!"
 Arthur held up a very odd looking picture.

"Oh dear. . . ." Uncle Ukki replied and he paused for a minute.
He had a frown on his face as if he was thinking very hard.

"Children, the man on the photo and the man on the painting are one and the same man.

He is the Great King Ollamh and he is one of the few Gnomes who is responsible for feeding a creature called Skugga."

The little ones started talking all at once: who is Skugga ! what does he feed the Skugga ! what does that has anything to do with the blue sky!  why are the pages missing?!!!

Uncle Ukki raised his voice and told them to be quite.

"CHILDREN ! Our lunch is ready so first : lets eat ! "

 While we eat you take a close look at the painting of King Ollamh, it's a magical painting and if we call him with our thoughts he will hear us and come soon and tell you himself what 

his task is in this world."

Uncle Ukki has said enough, the little ones were quite as a mouse :-) and while enjoying their lunch they looked up at the painting and tried very hard to think about this Great King.

 To be continued. . . . .

We have a visitor. . . . . 

to be continued . . . . . .

The cutest Sloths !!!

It took some time to finish these two.

The real ones are so super cute, I felt like I could never get close to that adorableness.

But the last few days the sun was shining, it was so very nice outside and I was totally relaxed so I gave it another go.

That must have helped, everything looked much brighter and well, here they are :

Two playfully little Sloths !
Of course they had to bother Pinky 

 But Pinky didn't feel like playing so they climbed through the apple tree

 After a while they were tired and crawled inside their basket :-)

 It took just a minute to fall asleep . . . 

In my Etsy shop :-)

Helen XXX

Burrowing Owl Youth Gang :-)

I've been busy. . . .

I didn't want to post about this little gang until they were all  finished !

It took some time because the weather was so fine and I wanted to make my garden pretty again as well.In the meantime I played with them . . . . .

And here are the final mug shots :-)

They will be in my Etsy shop  :-)

Helen XXX

Germany house

This was our week in Germany, we worked !!!!, had lots of sunshine !!!, saw exiting animals !!!!!!, eat outside !!!!!!!

Excuse the exclamation marks but it was so so nice :-)

I started with painting the floor in the little entrance :

 I hung up some candle-holders I bought in a second hand shop for 3 Euro

And framed my Alice cards and well, this is the perfect place, next to my own home-made clock :-)
The cards are from Wonderland Shop : http://www.etsy.com/listing/67976617/alice-in-wonderland-wallets-curiouser

Erik and Arthur ( my son ) painted all of the window frames on the outside,

These are the front windows

And these are the bedroom windows, we put some iron fence in front to hang some flower boxes and to keep us from falling out of the window ( the windows are on the same level as the floor)

Pheeew, small break :-) the white ball is Pinky's little bum

After the break I went through my back !!! :-0

Maybe it was the beer :-(, I had just one but the bottles are muuuuch larger in Germany

I read about and bought  some Magnesium oil before we left and wonder oh wonder after rubbing it a couple of times on my back, next day it was gone.

 The weather was so delicious, we ate outside every night and this is what visited us the very first night : EMBRACE FOR IMPACT

Arthur filmed her !

I thought my heart would stop, I lived in the country-side for over ten years and just once caught a glimpse of a fox.

It was a female fox judging by her boobies and I gave her a little piece of raw leftover steak,  I threw it about a meter away from me ( if I want to throw something 3 meters to the left, it ends up a meter behind my back ) and thought she would never go up that close but yes, she took it and ran off .

This was something so magical, I could just shake my head, next morning I got up and shook my head, Erik asked what's the shaking and I could only say: fox. . . . . :-)

Next day I started with the shutters, they had to be restored and painted but it was a lot of work and I finished just one pair.

Here they are after repair. . . . ( I will take pics from the "before"next time )

And here they are ♫ Blue blue electric blue ♫ noooo they are a beautiful shade of pale blue and off white, I am sooo pleased !

Oh you can see the little pond beneath the window, watch this :

 A ZILLION  tadpoles !!!!

Pinky didn't see them I guess, she began slurping out of the pond and I never saw a Bull Terrier with eyes like dishes but that was the time ! She made strange gargle noises and shook her head and ran away! Poor tadpoles :-( there are now just a zillion minus 40.

In the meantime, while I was sawing, sanding ,sawing, sanding

Erik and Arthur and our friendly neighbour were cutting down some trees. 

They say these sandstone houses must breath and there were some trees suffocating  the house so the nasty job has to be done.

I thought there were maybe 3 trees ( they were standing so close together I had no idea ) and told Erik it would be nice if he cut the tree a meter above the ground so I could do something crafty with them.( put a gnome on it or . . .)

This is what happened :

AAAAAAH !!! Oh my I had no idea ! It looked like a battlefield !

Our neighbour thought I was really crazy he thought it was super ugly and so did I. . . 

He promised to cut them down :-)

But. . . it revealed the little attached house, the one who was suffocated and in need of lots of TLC. 

I hope Marcus isn't too sad when he sees this :-(

Quick snap of Pinky in the morning sun

 She was such a good, sweet honey. Forgot to mention, she was sitting on the terrace while the fox visited us, Erik hold her collar and except for some standing hairs on her back she didn't move a muscle :-)

 She also wasn't the least interested in this :

 Okay, don't be scared it was a Slow-worm !

It did resemble a snake and I at first thought it was a snake but Arthur knows a lot about snakes etc and he immediately recognized it.

You can't blame me if you see it's head:

( this photo is from Wikipedia, the above is made by Arthur)

A Slow-worm is a limbless reptile and a adult is about 50 centimetres long, so no worries.

So, that was about it and even tho we worked hard it didn't felt like working, it was more like giving someone you love love :-)

Helen XXX

What can I say.. . just love them

In my Etsy shop :-)

Apologies for my absence, I was in Germany and had a lovely time.

Pics will come soon :-)