every day is a new day

december 2023 - january 2024

from the bottom up:

Last day of the year. Reading to Liam in the attic from Minne & Pippa's children's books (i know them by heart).

And also on the very last evening of 2023, browsing through our amazing photo yearbook together. 🍀 A year full of beautiful moments, travels, highlights, love and precious memories.

More grateful than ever, we can live in freedom, in a lovely house, close to our children and grandson, we can make plans for the new year and have dreams.
Wishing everyone the very best for 2024. Enjoy life even more! above all the little things, not tomorrow but now.

On new years day we went to Amsterdam to celebrate my friend Ank's birthday party.

Today on my day off I took a long bath. The lemon tree is wintering in the bathroom and is in full bloom, so while bathing i was surrounded by my favorite fragrance of lemon blossom.

I'm not really into New Year's resolutions, but more into 'Every day is a new day!', like the bold & bright tear-off calendar by Dutch graphic designer Karel Martens. For each day of the year, Martens has created a unique arrangement, originally constructed using his signature method of printing letterpress monoprints from found metal forms, and then digitized to comprise 365 compositions in total.

teste di moro siciliane

Teste di Moro Siciliane wall vase - souvenir from Palermo, which Henk bought during the father & son trip with Minne to Palermo & Napoli.

The legend of the Moor’s head goes back in the XI century, during the Moors domination in Sicily.
In the district of the Kalsa, the Arabic district of Palermo, lived a beautiful girl, who used to look out on the balcony while taking care of her plants. A Moor, one day, saw her and was so fascinated by this girl that he wanted to show her all his love with sweet talks. The beautiful girl returned the love, but that young man hid a secret: soon he would return to the East and, moreover, there would have been a family waiting for him, composed of his wife and children.
The young Sicilian, wounded in pride and pierced by what she had believed could be the great love of her life, planned an act of cruel revenge. One night, while the Moor was asleep, she killed him and cut off his head so that he could never return to his family, staying with her forever.
The head became a vase, where basil was planted, a plant linked to the divine symbolism and always associated with sacredness. From here, then, the name Moor’s Head was given to the vase. Inside that vase the basil grew luxuriant, thanks also to the bitter tears shed by the girl. The beauty of the plant aroused envy in the inhabitants of the neighborhood, which started to ask the local artisans to craft some pots of clay with the same shape.

The legend of the Testa di Moro: the alternative version!
There is also another version of the legend, that we find more plausible but definitely less folkloristic! The Sicilian girl protagonist of the story, in this case, was of noble origins and had undertaken a clandestine relationship with a young Arab. Love was soon discovered and the two were beheaded. The heads of both were turned into vases and placed on a balcony so that everyone could know the shame of that love. And that’s also why the Testa di Moro are made in pairs!

august randomly

On my bedside table;
Picasso, Friends & Family by Edward Quinn. It's a A charming and surprising portrait of Picasso's everyday life in postwar France. We went to see the photo exhibition in Malaga last June. The book just came out and it was a surprise for my birthday from Henk.

Friday afternoon we picked up Liam from daycare and he stayed with us for dinner. Reading books in the attic room after the bath. Liam loves the children's books that I have read countless times to Minne & Pippa.

Sushi Saturday at our friends in Bussum. All made by Marieke. It was a proper sushi party, including mikodo play with Loïs.

cigale collection

Les cigales fêtent l'été.

odd objects

Do you recognize this? Being pleasantly surprised by an unexpected shop window.

We spotted a very cool collection of odd objects in a shop window in the Voorstraat of our hometown.

An enormous gathering of animal wall vases, not only the usual cigale, but also swallows, butterflies, dragonflies, beetles... and many other curious stuff and odd objects.

Pooh, it was difficult to choose between all those beautiful and cute wall vases and we allowed ourselves to choose 3 ceramic pieces.

Well we have found a nice spot on the wall for all three of them;

a brightly colored beautiful butterfly in the kitchen
a extraordinary swallow in the bedroom
and another ceramic cigale to join our collection in the living room

cigale collection

The cigale collection with flowers from the backyard.

cigale wall vase

A new cigale wall vase.

This French vintage vase we found at Magasin Horaz in The Hague yesterday.

With the Echinecea from the garden, in Dutch we call it sun hat (zonnehoed), it looks gorgeous on the wall at my desk.

peonies & paper

table lamp - Piet Hein Eek
peonies - market
vases and paper flowers - Lammie Verkoopt
book Llibres! - souvenir from Mallorca

cigale wall vase

cigale wall vase, a photo by wood & wool stool on Flickr.

The cigale wall vase is even more beautiful with a parrot tulip.