Images from Italy 1

Italy

I am off to Italy for a week. A friend of mine, Natasja de Wet, an artist from Cape Town, is one of only two South African artists, invited to exhibit their work at the Florence Biennale 2009. We are meeting up in Venice on sunday and from there we go to Florence to install her work for the Biennale and to emerge ourselves in art for a few days.
See you all next week...

Dubai in Pictures 3

A small shop selling prayer beads and Kufi caps

A boutique selling headscarves

Dubai in Pictures 2

This is the view from the school where the boys go for their swimming lessons. Twice a week as we walk back to the car, this is what we see. This was taken at about 5:30 in the afternoon, just as the sun was going down. The Burj Dubai was glowing pink. All 818m (2683ft) and 162 floors of it.

Anika's room

Our house was very much boy-orientated before Anika's arrival 16 months ago. With 2 boys aged 10 and 11 everything was about sport, cars and Star Wars... then the pink revolution happened. Our house became a lot more girly and soft. I think we all love it...although not all will admit it! For the first year Anika's bed was in our room as we did not have an extra room available. After long discussions about how we will rearrange our home we decided to 'build' an extra room. We have a huge living/tv room upstairs from where all the bedrooms are accesable. We built a temporary dry-wall to devide the room in two and so created an extra small bedroom for Anika. (We live in a rented house so permanent structural changes are not allowed.)


I painted a (pink) tree on one wall and decorated it with leaves and flowers. The tree is now attracting all sorts of creatures and we already have butterflies and birds living in the tree. I am keeping an eye out for frogs and insects... ;-)

The one end of the room is taken up by a changing table, but will be replaced by a play area in a year or so when Anika is potty-trained. Do you recognise some of the fabric in the curtain?

A lampshade from IKEA fits right into the theme of garden creatures...

and so does the cross-stitch sampler, grandma made for Anika.

Since we are plagued by mosquitos in winter (summer is far to hot for them too!) I made a mosquito net to protect the pink one at night..


More on her room to follow...

Dubai in pictures

Today I am starting a new series of posts. It will feature images of Dubai that you won't find in the tourist brochures.

This picture was taken in the Mall of the Emirates a while ago. The boys were looking down on a promotional display on the floor below.

Our bird family - (sad) update

Saturday afternoon as we came home from a shopping trip, we found the baby bulbul on the ground beneath the tree. Thy mommy bird was frantic and very upset. She sat in the tree nearby, calling loudly to her baby.


At first we stayed clear to see what would happen, but after a while I couldn't stand their distress anymore and I decided to pick the baby bird up and put it back in it's nest.

The rest of Saturday and Sunday we didn't see any of the birds around and the nest seemed deserted. But I still hoped...


This morning I found the dead baby bird beneath the tree. I still don't know if it died from injuries sustainded from falling out of it's nest, or if the parents deserted it because I touched it. I hope it is not the latter...

We buried the dead bird under the tree.