The Big Draw Maastricht

In less than a month Maastricht will join in the world's largest drawing festival: The Big Draw.
One of the activities I particularly look forward to is the Big Window Walk where artists will draw on windows throughout the city center, creating a wonderful week-long exhibition.
My friend Sophie is one of the organisers of this wonderful festival and on the weekend we set out to decorate her window as a small preview of what's to come. Have a look below to see what we came up with, and make sure to check the little videos we made too; they are available on the Big Draw Maastricht facebook page.

Salem, Gloucester & Rockport, Massachusetts

A few weeks ago I was lucky to go to Boston, Massachusetts with two of my colleagues to attend the annual NAFSA conference which brought together more than 11'000 professionals from the field of International Education. It was a super fun adventure and while we did do lots of work, we also got to go and explore a little bit of the Massachusetts coast on one of our days off. 

We drove to Salem and then on to Gloucester and Rockport; it was Memorial day and all of the towns we crossed, with their patriotic decorations, looked absolutely charming. Also, I have a particular soft spot for maritime scenery so this was right up my alley.

Visiting Rome's finest treasures with the best guide in town

On our last day in Rome we met up with one of Mart's childhood friends, Marco, who gave us the absolute best tour of Rome we could ever have dreamed of. 
He took us to countless incredible spots, told us fantastic stories, got us to eat the most amazing specialties... and he made sure we had the real Rome experience by showing off his driving skills in the busy afternoon traffic; it was terrific!

Himmeli wreath

My friend Claire had her birthday a few weeks ago and I sent her a golden himmeli wreath I made following this tutorial by Vintage Revival.


I had tried making an exact same wreath about a year ago just by looking at a picture I had found online. It had taken me the biggest part of a day and while I had eventually managed to recreate the whole thing out of plastic straws and string, there was no way I was going to ever make another one; it was just too. darn. time. consuming. And brain numbing.
But then my mum pointed out there were tutorials out there (I have no idea why that thought didn't even cross my mind in the first place) and after just seconds of looking at Mandi's perfect description I understood there was a much simpler way to do it. 
Cue wire and modules.

This wreath is seriously so easy to make, it's amazing. The only slightly hard part was finding cocktails straws here in Europe. The rest was a piece of cake.

Aaand... it's pretty addictive! I might have made several for Christmas presents this year. 

Podgórze

One of the reasons we fell in love with Krakow was because of all the amazing spots our friends took us to during our few days together. Not only did they introduce us to super cool places to eat and drink, they also showed us around their neck of the woods, Podgórze, and allowed us to discover absolutely stunning places off the usual tourist track.