23 is a nice Number

23 was my number when I wrote my final exams back in school. 23 is the number of conspiracy theorists. 23 (and one and a half day) is the number of years that I’ve lived this life to date.

birthday breakfast with fresh lemon balm tea from the secret garden

I’m not so great at birthday recaps, but I had a really nice afternoon with two of my best friends, the latest episode of Downton Abbey (season 3 is finally airing!) with my fellow fangirl, someone dropping by to give me a book that they wanted me to read (I’d invited you in for tea if I hadn’t been so baffled by your showing up, sorry! By the way, the nail polish didn’t make it.), which is probably the most effective way to get me to read something anyway, baking, dinner with Scoundrel who came down from his internship especially for this evening, the sweetest and most surprising congratulation on facebook and the most awesome present ever.

I got myself flowers. I actually don’t like getting flowers, except it’s something very spontaneous and not bought. I’m not a big fan of flower shops, too. These are from the Secret Garden, pink roses (there’s another bud behind the blooming one) and more lemon balm. Oh, and my room is still a bit under construction decorationwise.

As for the baking, these are chocolate cupcakes (that are still to be perfected. I forgot the baking powder. Yes, genius that is me, but they were pretty tasty anyway.) with sweet cestnut and chocolate buttercream. I love buttercream.

The parcel my mother and grandmother sent me just arrived in time. They actually had already given me something bigger that had been sent directly to my place but they also wanted me to have something to unwrap. The things above are from my mother and her boyfriend (guyfriend? gentlemanfriend?) who added the magic lamp-like oil flakon to the gift. I think I’ve still got some rose oil to fill in there. The candles are something I get every year from my mother, it’s a really dear tradition. I never light them, though, I always forget about them on special occasions and they are far to precious to simply keep my tea warm.

The shawl was a present from my grandmother, the finest, softest wool I’ve ever felt.

These are the big present my Shire family gave me for my birthday: The perfect boots. Martens Triumph with Union Jack lining. I’ve dooling after them for such a long time, and now I finally have them, just in time for the cold part of the year. I just love the colour, the feel of the leather under my finger tips, the satin lacing, the details. Somewhat Steampunk, somewhat doll-ish, somewhat kick-ass. The perfect boots for me.

But if you thought these were the most awesome present ever you’re wrong. That one came from my father who personally showed up to hand it to me. That one…

… was this. A Faber-Castell Polychromos set with all 120 colours that they provide. It is awesome. I used to buy one colour at a time some times back in school when I really wanted to reward myself for something, but that’s no comparison to this beauty.

I could spend hours just looking. And reading the names of these colours. The picture above shows one of my favourite palettes at the moment (definitely including the yellows) and the colours that Jules generally refers to als “Hedgefairy red”. Did I mention I think I might have the best father I could ever imagine?

I didn’t show pictures of these, but I also got gift certificates for an outfit (from Jules) that I’ll write about more when it’s done, and three of my favourite ice creams from the cafeteria (from aforementioned Lady of the Lake). As I greatly believe in giving oneself gifts, I got me new brushes and the latest issue of Ottobre, but more about that another day.

I hope you had a great time, too, birthday or not. ♥

Three Years

Wow. My third Hedgefairy anniversary!

I think of a blog as a very interesting project. Not only can I use it to show the world who I am – or who I’d like to be -, but also is it fascinating how it changes and evolves over the years, together with its writer. Sometimes I go back to my first posts from when I was 19 and wonder if I have changed notably for everyone else, too. As we rarely see change when we’re dealing with the changing person or project every day after a while…

As for the stats I’ve got roughly a 40 views average a day, in my first year it was only 6! My overall views for this year, however short it might be are about double of the overall views of my whole first year, 2009!
Which can only mean one thing:
There are actually people who are interested in what I write. Yay!

So: Thank you, all of you, my dear readers, for three years of Teaparties & Fairytales. May it grow during the next twelve months even more, and may you still be reading it when the title announces the next anniversary.

THANK YOU.

P.S.: AND this is my 401st post! So many reasonst for a giveaway… so you better watch out!

Birthdays are great

I know this because Monday was my birthday, and as a good lifestyle blogger I’ll show you some pictures (and maybe even give you some notes on them. Oh well, of course I’ll comment them.).

Birthday Breakfast

This is the birthday present I got from Scoundrel, a book on fungi from 1919, including coloured illustration cards. I had been staring at this through the window of the used bookstore for month and not dared to go inside. When the book wasn’t there anymore one day, I got a little suspicious, but Scoundrel assured me quite believably that he had nothing to do with it… And now there it is!
He usually hides my presents somewhere in my room and I’ve got to find them. This time he only replaced one of the flower illustrations over my drawing table with one of the mushroom pictures, and I was incredibly happy when I found it!

I got two of the accompanying books for the Spiderwick Chronicles by Holly Black and Toni DiTerlizzi from my mother and grandparents, Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You and Care and Feeding of Sprites. They are wonderfully illustrated (the main reason why I wished for them as I haven’t read the actual books yet) and the latter even came with a large glow-in-the-dark poster.
The other book is the Steampunk Bible, a compendium that just came out this year. Nocker gave it to me wrapped in prints of a Steampunk Uncle Sam poster, and he also acted as a proxy for Constantine who couldn’t come as he’s in Ireland for the next Semester.

The felted flower hair clip is from Teli (self made, of course) who also made a blog post with better pictures about it. The wonderful leather pencil case with its contents is from my father and meant to accompany me for at least the rest of my university life, but probably longer.

The wrapping paper my father used.

In the evening Bertie turned up, too, and we went to the African place just around the corner. Sadly I took no pictures, but they placed us in the tent-like part of the restaurant which is lit by torch-like lamps and has a thick layer of fine sand instead of usual flooring. We’ve been there before, but we didn’t even know of this part! And of course, the food was great, too.

I’d actually say it was one of the best birthdays I ever had.

Closing picture from left to right: Bertie, Nocker, me, Scoundrel, Teli.

Still Alive

But quite busy, and this is only a small update. I returned from the harper’s workshop on Sunday evening, just to attend the Latin exam on Monday morning and then I’ve been utterly useless until today evening due to lack of sleep during the last two months.

So you may excuse the lack of updates lately, but I promise you that I will make a post about my birthday and harp this week.

Lilibeth, if you read this: I’m sorry I didn’t call you yesterday, but I was really, really at the end of my rope. I’m off to training in about one hour, but as soon as I will see you online, I’m going to conquer the phone and call you, darling.

That’s done, so now I’m going to examine my new sports trousers. I think they’ll need some embellishment.

Going to Narnia, brb

No, not really. It’s more like the harper seminar I got from my family for my 21st birthday and the last hours before my Latin exam. I just wanted to tell you so that you don’t wonder where I have gone for the next week.

So I’ll leave you with this picture of the sweet autumnal bouquet Teli brought me for my birthday and the promise of pictures of the rest of my birthday presents including my new harp ^^ next week.

Plus, I’m planning to torture you again with loads of character concepts for steampunk including endless sermons about the details of the costume designs. Fear me! ;)

And maybe I’ll be able to show you some pictures from the con, too.

Treasure Chest

I promised to show you Jules’ present today and so I will do.

I had pondered over it a while and finally came up with an idea suiting a treasure hunt: a chest! And as Jules is complaining about the lack of good male hand bags most of the time I decided to sew one, and this is the result:

An old key works as the fastener

I love the rocailles that I used for the raspberry embroidery, the colour is called "scarab"

I think Sir Ludwig likes the treasure chest, too (and the colours match, anyway ^^).

We also found this really big (about the length of my hand in diameter!) and beautiful flower in the garden while taking the photos and didn’t quite know what it was. I’m going to ask my grandmother when I go and visit her at the weekend, but maybe you can help me, too?

The crafting details are as follows:

• Making time: About 5-7 hours, I guess, including shopping for material, sewing, embroidery and tantrums ^^
• Material: Very thick crafting felt, embroidery floss in six colours (ochre, dark pink, raspberry pink, light pink, very light green, light green), rocailles in scarab (but only the red toned ones) and gold, glitter thread, velvet ribbon, crochet lace, an old key, white crochet cotton
• Success: Perfect, Jules was absolutely stunned. :)

Final Close-Up

Present Growing

Top o’ the morning to you!

Remember that I mentioned to post a teaser about Jules’ birthday present sometimes? Well, as he is coming to visit us this weekend, here it is.

I dare say I like the way the picture came out.

Plus, I hope that I’ll get it ready until Friday! My to-do list is enormous like always but I’d be rather confused and helpless if I had nothing to do on the contrary.

Thanks to Lilibeth I’m pretty much hooked up on this Anne of Green Gables video. I love the song and the video every time reminds me of the fact that my darling pen pal is going to visit me, too, at the beginning of June! I’m really looking forward to that.

But now I’ve got to go and check off some of the to-do points.

Bye then!