Password: Stoffmarkt Overload

Wow! What an experience that was! My shoulders are still aching from that heavy backpack! Seriously.

Oh! And I haven’t even said “Hi” yet. So… Hi! How are you doing? I hope you have been having a great week. Our week has been extremely busy, settling into school routines and extra-curricular activities all over again. Life with 3 certainly keeps me on my toes. If you have any kids, be it 1, 5 or 12, you can surely picture exactly what I mean!

And while this week’s *secret password* is “Stoffmarkt Overload” I am not referring to the fully loaded family schedule I have been presiding over. No, I am speaking about the (felt like) tons of goodies I brought home with me after a shopping spree this weekend.

So, what were those goodies you ask?!?

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Back to School Time

Here we go for another round of Everything’s Famtastic, with your happy host, Jenny!! How were things in your part of the world this past week?

We’re doing OK here. School holidays finished. Early school mornings have started again. It’s going to take some getting used to. We need some time to find our “groove” again. It was only a 3-day school week to start the school year off with. You know, the type that everyone likes, where you don’t have to face a full 5-day uphill battle of re-resetting your circadian rhythms after a 6-week hiatus 😉.

But seriously, these past few days of school and kindergarten [preschool] actually flowed surprisingly well. Not once did the kids complain about being woken up. No grumbling during breakfast time. No grouchy faces when it came time to walk out the door. Even no protesting when it was homework time in the afternoon.

**High fives all round dear family!**

What happened to my kids?!?

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Sewing + Upcycling = Win

sewing, sewing projects, diy, diy sewing, upcycling

Yo, hello! I hope you have all been having a Famtastic week! Here it was the last full week of summer school holidays. Just a couple of days left and then we are thrown back into the (so very, very early, every morning) school schedule.

I truly imagined having some time to pursue my own hobbies these holidays. Yes, snigger at me, if you wish. But I really had fantasised about getting some sewing done. Leggings for the girls, a shirt for me, perhaps a shirt for Master 5. Let us take a moment to contemplate whether I did any of those things…

**3 milliseconds later**

Alas, NO. I did not. Is this how it is for you during school holidays too? Imagine squeezing in some Mama time and end up with perhaps a microscopic amount of Mama time?!?

Anyway, I did, however, repair a stack of holes in children’s clothes. “Wow!” I hear you say. Yes, I find that neither fun nor satisfying. What I DO enjoy is creating handmade clothes and other goodies. Like shirts and leggings and skirts.

What I have been experimenting with more recently though is UPCYCLING in my sewing projects.

So what is upcycling anyway? And why would anyone want to do it? Hint: Upcycling does not mean riding a bike up a steep hill 😉.

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Cool Weather, Hot Look- How to Sew a Loop Scarf

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You can learn all about how to make an Infinity Loop Scarf here!

What’s So Great About Photos?

Halli Hallo! Here we go again, another round of Everything’s Famtastic to enthral and delight you. Last week’s post about dealing with grief was kinda heavy and not my usual thing. But then again, the passing away of so many friends and family in such a short time is also not “my usual thing”. But nobody is ever alone in their grief. I just hope that my post reached the right person at precisely the time when they needed some reassurance, comfort and strength after losing someone special.

One of my “usual things” however, is photographs. I take a LOT of photos. Just ask my Hubby. Or my kids. Or pretty much anyone who has known me for a while 😉. I take photos with my mobile phone. I take photos with my big fancy-pants SLR camera.

I not only take a lot of photos, oh no. I collect photos from my Hubby’s mobile too. And when we get together for special occasions with friends or family, I like to check out what photos anyone else took too. Which means that I have a fairly large collection of photographs.

Ahem. *clears throat* I don’t think that I have been quite clear enough. I have a REALLY LARGE collection of photos. I haven’t done a hard-core sorting and cleaning out of photos from my laptop in years. Since approximately 2014 to be precise *buries face in hands in shame*.

Ok confession time. I take a LOT of photos. I have more than 40,000 photos stored on my laptop dated from 2014 to present. I am a photography addict.

There is just so much to do with all those photos… *wails*

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5 Ways to Help Cope With Grief

grief, coping with grief, pinterest, pin

A big hello to my fantastic Famtastic fans! Wherever you are in the world, I hope that you have had a good week. We are well and truly back to everyday life after our brilliant adventures in Croatia. Our holiday was certainly memorable and like I said last week, all 5 of us remained sane along the way. (Read here for my tips on packing for a long road trip with kids!!) It’s nice to just be around home again after such a long road trip.

Nevertheless, this week I have found myself in a real funk. And no, I don’t mean funk and jive and groovy ‘60s music. I mean, I’m in a lousy mood. And I am not here to bring you all down with me. But I gotta speak what’s on my mind. Saddened, flat, down and grieving.

In the last weeks, within our wider circle of family and friends there have been not 1, not 2, but 3 members pass away. Three! Old, young, sick, healthy, foreseeable, shocking. Whatever. All of the above. And each one has been so intensely sad in their own way. In the same time period there has been some major setbacks for a number of other family and friends with life-threatening health conditions. In addition, several of these people live back in Australia, so it’s impossible for me to attend funerals or speak with loved ones face-to-face. All of which makes it even harder for this grieving expat to work through her feelings.

Really, it’s all just a bit too much. ☹ How does one even begin to deal with so much grief?

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6 Must-Haves for Road Trips with Kids (and How to Survive Them)

Hellooooo! It’s me! I am back in the land of Everything’s Famtastic after being AWOL these past 2 weeks. I do have a perfectly valid excuse: we were on our family summer holiday!

As alluded to a few weeks back in my list of super summer activities and “Bring on Summer Holidays!” I said that we were planning our summer holidays trip. We had such a famtastic time in Croatia! I can HIGHLY recommend a visit. All of the people we encountered were lovely, friendly, helpful… we had a new language to try out (“hvala!”)… the weather was sunny and hot… views are stunning… gorgeous beaches… icecream every day… What more could you want for a summer holiday?!?

Hubby and I knew that we had to prepare well for the trip. Nobody wants to have 3 kids whining “Are we there yet?” 30 minutes into the drive, right? Am I the only one who has ever fantasised about having one of those glass partitions installed in the family car? You know what I mean? Between the driver and the backseat passengers. Like, in fancy-pants limousines and such. After a few rounds of “Are we there yet?”, just press the magic button and the upwards gliding of a pane of soundproof glass is the last thing you’ll hear for the next hours 😉.

Oh OK, of course we would never actually DO that. But don’t pop my daydream bubble, alright?!?

tips, how-to, roadtrip, parenting, road trip with kids

So, big trips with children call for military-precision planning. And plan is what we did. Today I’m here to help you out by sharing with you the items we packed for the kids (and us grown-ups) to make the journey as bearable, er, entertaining as possible.

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Bring on Summer Holidays

Another week complete. Another week closer to Christmas. Hey, wait! What?!? Christmas? It’s true, at last one of my children have already asked me how long until Christmas (“About another 5 ½ months, sweetie!”). But they seemed to have missed the big fun right in their face: summer school holidays!!!

School’s Out For…

… well you know the song title. My kids have been requesting to hear it a lot lately!

This week marked the end of the school year for our 2 girls. Both brought home outstanding report cards over which they- and we parents- are extremely proud. Apparently both of our girls are class leaders in the amount of books they devoured, er, read. And both have loved their teachers. Which makes it plain easier for everyone involved, right?

For one of them though, not only was this week the last before summer, but also the end of an era: Miss 10 has just completed primary school *sniff* “I think I have something in my eye” *dabs eye*. 😉 I will confess, there were more than a couple of tears shed. In fact, I think I was weepier than Miss 10, who informed me very matter-of-factly that “just because I am sad doesn’t mean that I must cry”. Oh man. I would like to point out that I was not the only mother with watery eyes on the final day of primary school. However I of course will not be naming names 😉.

Primary school here in Germany is over and done with after 4th grade and high school lasts from 5th to 13th grade! Which as an Australian, is something I am not used to. So off onto the next big adventure for her. (And for me, as I have ZERO experience with the high school system here. Looks like we will be learning together).

But before the next big school adventure comes a summer break FULL of new adventures. Hurrah! Like going away on holidays! We are all so excited and desperately looking forward to going on a big trip somewhere totally new. And this year it’s Croatia!

Big family holidays require big plans. Like: What to pack? What not to pack? What’s the weather likely to be? (Sunny and hot apparently!). Suffice to say that there are scraps of paper all over the place here with list after list of what to buy, what to organise, and what to do with our pet bunnies.

And that’s where I am going to sign off for this week. Because we are exhausted from the final weeks of school and everything that gets celebrated, signed and tidied during that time. If you have school-age kids, you know exactly what I am talking about. And now because we are busy prepping for our holiday.

So, Auf Wiedersehen, vidimo se kasnije and see you later! Have a great week, and if you have school holidays too, enjoy every minute!

How are you spending your summer? Got any grand plans? If you have kids, what are they hoping to do in the coming weeks? f

The Half-Year Growth Check-Up

Hey everybody! There is an electricity in the air around here. Can you feel it too? No, we don’t live underneath one of those really tall, high-voltage transmission towers 😉. I’m talking about the summer school holidays countdown! Have the school hols already kicked off where you are? We have 5 school days left and counting…

Did you see the long list full of FAMtastic ideas for the summer holidays I posted last week? Have you tried any of them yet? Or have you made your own “To Do List” for holiday fun?

I need to sit down with our 3 kiddos and make up our own personalised “bucket list” for these school holidays. Because I can tell you now, as much as I am looking forward to having lots of fun times with the kids, we will NOT be ticking off ALL of the 61 suggestions from last week’s list! We have however, already started experimenting with making ice cream 😉 based on a Donna Hay recipe. Oh my, how my children are currently infatuated with our @donna.hay cookbook…

Coconut, raspberry, choc chip ice cream. Delish!

I don’t know whether you remember, but at the start of the year I wrote about setting goals for GROWTH for myself for this year. Not drunken New Year’s resolutions, but real goals that I plan to achieve by year’s end. And given that the year is already half done with, I thought it was about time I gave myself a review. If you set yourself some goals for this year too, I hope that you are straight up rocking them! Me? Hmm…

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Mega List of 61 Super Summer Boredom Busters for Kids

school holidays, summer holidays, tips, parenting, kids, boredome busters

Woo hoo! Summer has really been showing off this past week in Germany (and much of Europe, actually)! We’ve had temps up in the high 30s (around 100F). Reminds me of being back in an Australian summer. How’s the weather been in your part of the world?

I am constantly being asked how I feel about the hot weather here, while many of my compatriots (well, not really, because I am not a German citizen so that word is technically not correct. But I can’t think of a better one… “fellow inhabitants of Germany” isn’t quite as catchy 😉). Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, I am constantly being asked how I am coping with the weather while many of those around me seem to be flustered, sweaty and melting. FYI- I’m all good 😉.

These past weeks I have been celebrating some of the exciting things I love about spring and summer; like strawberry season and enjoying the outdoors. And yes, we are still eating our boundless strawberry products. Can’t get enough! *nom nom*.

Since summer holidays are a HUGE deal for kids at this time of year, what a great idea it would be if only there was a long list of fantastic things to do during the school holidays. No more “Mamaaaaa I’m so boooooooored!”. Right?!? Well, drumroll please…

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