THANKSGIVING DAY giveaway!

 My fellow Etsy artist from Etsy Russian Team is having THANKSGIVING DAY giveaway. I am very serious about this one, since I like her patterns and I have a lot of plans how I can use them!
 Enter to win by clicking on the picture:

 

5 Facts Worth Knowing About Coffee

 Coffee is an amazing product. Coffee cultivation first took place in southern Arabia; the earliest credible evidence of coffee drinking appears in the middle of the 15th century in the Sufi shrines of Yemen. Coffee bean is a seed of a cherry fruit that grows on a tree or a bush. Coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world second only to oil. There are over 50 species of coffee worldwide. However, I like tea much more :).

Wildlife Woodland Christmas Giveaway - Worldwide

  Christmas is when magic happens, when Santa appears and when you find a lot of gifts under the Christmas tree.
When I was a little girl I believed in Santa and always waited for this wonderful morning to come. I waited to get something special and for many years Santa was bringing me lots of joy and fun.
I grew up and unfortunately understood that my mom was the one to put gifts under the tree and no need to wait to midnight - Santa will not appear. But the fairy Christmas mood was left with me and I want to pass it to all other people and especially to all the children.

  I decide to give this set of hear pins to the lucky one who will be chosen randomly at the 1st official day of the winter. Hopefully the post will work perfectly and the gift will be delivered before the holiday :)

  So three amazing hair bobby pins crocheted by me from pure cotton are waiting to be won. The prize will be sent to worldwide.

Enter to win!

Top 10 places your dog must visit in Israel

 It is so important to plan your trip carefully, so you can enjoy the new country. Experienced tourists advice is always appreciated. This is 'top 10 must to go' places from one of the Israeli experts in dogs attractions - Jarna, the Great Pyrenees.

 Historical and cultural sites:

1.  Knesset of Israel: A very important political site, pool and jogging tracks are open to the visitors at all seasons of the year.

 

    2. Mishkenot Shaananim neighborhood: This is quite a boring place, however it is good if you need to walk your family out.

 

Kids Bedroom Rennovation Design

 Design of the kids' room is challenging, when the room is small, it is challenging even more. My kids are growing up and they will move to their own room soon, so I decided to go through the new kid's furniture trends to get an inspiration.

 I browsed lots of examples, but decided to show only the best matching to my goal: decoration of a very small room for two toddler kids.

 According to Feng Shui nothing should be stored under beds and bunk beds aren't the best choice. It is also not recommended to hang things above the head. This is exactly what I always felt intuitively. Surprisingly, I found a lot of bunk beds and under bed storage spaces in the contemporary bed rooms' designs. Well, it is space - justified, but we are looking for the comfy feeling, aren't we? As always, let's try to find a compromise.

 The first one that I really like is a modern and quite a minimalistic design from http://designvarious.com collection of interiors:

This is a very clean and light furniture complex. No massive storage units under the bed and the bunk bed is modified, so only part of the body will be under the second level. And it is quite compact.

Christmas Gifts - Be prepared

 You know how it always happens - you start thinking about next Christmas presents right after it passes but you do nothing. When winter begins you are in a rush to get the gifts to everybody and sometimes you buy things just to fill the gap in the list, in the short amount of time you have left and not because you really like them.

 I decided to gather a few gift and decoration ideas more than a month ahead when I got an unexpected gift from Tonya from CityCrochet. She just sent it to me without any reason. It is a completely magical feeling when you get such a sudden present - just feels like Santa brought it to you. We've received these beautiful acorns

and a rose brooch.

Since we've got such a cool decoration element for the coming holidays, I want to find more original ideas for the rest of my family. And I am going to share my findings with you!

 Amazing christmas decoration stained glass candle holder. This will warm the atmosphere in the house especially when it is freezing outside.

 Next on the list are stunning felted toys created by my friend from Israel. She prepared a whole collection for Christmas, but I especially like this one (Vlada's shop):

One more shop, that I like, produces knitted accessories for women and men (and this is very important, at least I am struggling to find ideas for men's gifts).

 Everyone has many acquaintance (colleagues, friends that are not close enough), so I was also looking for small gifts ideas - something that doesn't cost much but is cute and positive. And I found these ornaments.

I also came with a new collection of necklaces which are a perfect gift for any nursing mom, but also for any woman that likes country style accessories.

 These are just a few ideas, but I hope they'll help to find an inspiration for gift shopping.

Discover Israel: Beauty of Kineret

Few last weeks were full of holidays and we had a lot of days for traveling. Though we used only half or even less of them, we really enjoyed the places we did visit. One of such sites was Lake Tiberius. We spent two days camping there. Lake Tiberius is a very popular tourist attraction, so I will not tell about it (I simply don't have anything intriguing to add to the well known facts about Sea of Galilee), but I want to show photos that I took at night and very early morning.

Night fishing and stunning view of city of Tiberius:

 This is the same view just early in the morning:

P.S. Children slept much better in the tent than they usually sleep at home :))

More places to visit, find here. 

Discover Israel: Salt Desert

There are a lot of places in our tiny country that are worth visiting though they don't appear in a tourist guide. I met my husband in one of those places, and we visited together many other stunning sites. We used to climb mountains and descend into caves which became almost impossible for us after our first child was born. It is quite a hot place even at winter, and at summer I can travel there only during the night hours, which makes it even more difficult for visiting with small children. Our dog Jarna also never had been at Judaean Desert.


This is why we were very happy when our friends organized a small BBQ between the salt rocks and invited us to join. It was late and we wisely decided to take only Liya with us :)
Jarna was mad about everything and galloped from one hill to another,  but only in the morning I could really understand how high she had managed to climb. This view is zoomed in, since she was really far and I wanted to see her on the picture :)

Liya slept well in the tent (she is 2 month old here :)) Can you see her there?:)

 In the early morning we walked towards the mountains while it was not too hot.

We spent the hot hours in a deep gorge with just enough shadow and even a small pond, where some of us could even swim :), others slept or climbed. Unfortunately not me this time :(

More places to visit, find here.

Toys guid for young parents

When my first son was born I actually knew nothing about baby toys, just nothing. I knew theoretically that little ones play ruffles, or may be some funny sounding toys, but nothing more. I was looking at the local baby stores and feeling completely lost in this sea of possibilities. I was overwhelmed by all those variations of small and big, cheap and expensive, natural and artificial toys. What will my son like? And more importantly what will be safe and educational for him? I guess most of the new parents are asking themselves the same questions I did.

  Well, time passed and I understood that no one can really answer these questions since all children are different and some toys can be perfect for one and be useless for the other. A few tips from parents who have used the toy can really help. So this is what I am going to do in this and a few other publications - share our experience.

   I want to start with our very new toy, since we've got it as an unexpected present from a very nice girl and also because both my children (3 years and 8 month) surprisingly love it very much. So we've got a pair of Waldorf wooden toys - man and women. I will not tell here about Waldorf's philosophy, since there is lots of info on internet. I will tell that the dolls are wonderful for the toddlers to play role games: you can tell a lot of stories using these dolls, my son is already telling such stories to me. As for my baby daughter - these dolls are perfect for her as well - wonderful size for her small arms and natural wood is safe for teething.

  Oksana has a rich choice of the Waldorf toys in her store, she is not only selling the wooden toys, she sews amazing dolls and creates many other unique things. I am completely in love with her cute toys and planning to order the 'GROWN UP DOLL' for my daughter's first birthday :)

Ukrainian Borscht

The National Cuisine Week has ended. There were many yummy recipes and we decided to try them all. The first choice was Ukrainian Borscht as the dish which is simply enough for mom with small children but is also perfect for dinner. It is quite tricky to cook with two babies, since each one wants to participate in the process in his own manner. So we missed a few steps and ingredients on the way. Nevertheless the soup was wonderful and we will definitely try it once again and while paying more attention to the details.

Shakshouka

Shakshouka is a dish of eggs poached in a sauce of tomatoes,  chilli peppers, onions and often spiced with cumin. You can read more about it here.
There are many different recipes to prepare it, but since I am lazy, I use mine which is very much simplified. My family like it and due to it's simplicity we are able to cook it even outside.
First you need to chop and fry till gold color a few onions (I usually take one small onion per portion, but I like fried onions and prefer to put as much as my family can tolerate). Season per your taste.
Next, chop and add tomatoes to the fried onions (take twice more than onions) then fry everything together till it gets soft.

Poach eggs. Season them per your taste.

Cover the pan and fry till the eggs reach the desired state.

National Cuisine Week

National Cuisine Week has started!

Rosh Ha Shana

When I came to Israel, I was fascinated by the amount of holidays here. I knew theoretically what Jewish holidays are, but didn't realize their impact on everyday life of the country. Much more further I counted the actual amount of non working days and understood that it is not that many, it is just that most of them are at fall and in spring. So it makes impression of almost not working season, especially when all the holiday days fall on working days of the week.
The first September holiday is Jewish New Year. I will not tell about it in depth, since all is written many times (for example, in Wiki). It was difficult to get used to the fact that you celebrate New Year somewhere in the middle of autumn, but I overcame it, and now I am fully enjoying these beautiful three days of eating apples dipped in honey, pomegranates and sounding the shofar.
For this coming 5773 year, I wish all of us one of the best greetings I've ever got:
I wish all of us peace in the soul and in the sky. Be happy.

Bulgaria - Day 2

Well, I will not tell much, I'll better show more pictures :)
This was the first day when we met the horses. It was supposed to be a 'short' day, but for us it seemed quite long.
We came to the stables and each one got his horse.

 I got the only girl-horse named Mavra. She was beautiful :) and quite foolproof :)

During two amazing hours ride to the sea I couldn't take photos, since we left all the potentially 'can fall down' things in the truck.
Finally we arrived to a beautiful lagoon, where lunch had been already prepared for us. However, before we could fuel ourselves we had to take care of the horses. As we found out, horses should take a bath from time to time and that lagoon was an excellent place for a swim. You should know that in spite the fact that horses are good swimmers they do not enjoy the process as expected. So, together with the horses we changed to our bathing suits, meaning that we stripped them of all their bundle on the back: saddle, blanket etc.
Pay attention - we are riding without saddles like prehistoric men.

It is not simple without really knowing how to make the horse (which doesn't really like swimming) enter the water and not to fall down in the process.
Finally the horses were clean...which I can't say about the surrounding water :) - it was full of their excrements - I have already mentioned that horses don't like swimming, haven't  I?
We left them to dry up in the sun in ankle deep water and went to feed ourselves. They didn't move an inch - only when their master called them to get out.

  After the lunch break we had a wonderful trip back in the truck, while my parents rode the horses for the first time:)

Mavra is a stunning horse indeed... so calm :) She was only neighing sometimes when everybody else was galloping, but she had to walk, because my mother is afraid of fast  pace.

Sunflower Story

Well, you never know where inspiration will come from! Mine came from a customer's question. One day I've got a message where a girl was asking me if I can make a sunflower necklace.
So, I decided to crochet this very new sunflower necklace that will pair with the teething ring that I already have in my store. Look and compare :)
You can find the flowers here

I am planning to create a matching necklace to each teether that I have in the shop.

Artists Fair

While I am working on the long Bulgarian story, I will tell how we spent last Friday. It was quite a hot day as usual, but it was special. We were at an artists fair in TA.
It is the second time I participate in such an event, and I have to say the results were better:) So I will definitely join it next time.
At the beginning there were  almost  no visitors at all and all we did was meet and talk to the colleagues.
My dear mother was babysitting Liya while I took a few pictures of my friends.
Liya got this beautiful headband from Shirel at BonbonLand:
 

Toma from MagazinIL and her beautiful baby accessories:

 Vlada from VladaHom and her stunning felted toys:

Horse Riding in Bulgaria - Day 1

Well, since I promised and since I don't want to forget, I decided that I had to start telling you the story right now.
This summer I was very eager to do something big after Liya's birth, I was dying to walk out of the house. So as a true speleologist I decided to... ride a horse!
One day I opened my live journal friends' posts and saw that there is a horse riding tour being organized. I knew the girl that was planning that journey, so I didn't hesitate.
8 days tour with 5 days on horseback were planed. First 3 days should be easy - the flight and arrangements, choosing the horses and a short trip to the old town of Sozopol. Then we were supposed to leave for the BIG RIDE.
I invited my parents to join us, so we could look after the children in turns. Two of us were riding and the other two were going behind in the jeep with both our kids.
The flight was at the afternoon, and we had plenty of time for sight seeing after we arrived at the small resort village (Lozinetz).
This is where we stayed:

Liya looking around:

And finally Black Sea:

Surprisingly, I liked it. I always prefer fresh over salt water and I quite hate the Mediterranean Sea for it's very salty and has lots of waves to my taste. Black Sea was almost not salty at all and almost no waves :).
We closed the day with Bulgarian gourmet meal. Liya is saying cheers:

And a glimpse to the next day:

It's not my size!!

BTW Liya is wearing this hat from my shop :)

Jarna

I just returned from the vacation trip to Bulgaria and was planning to start the week with fuuuulll story about horse riding with kids, but my friend Mulberrywhisper collects pet dog stories, so I decided to tell first about my giant dog Jarna. She is our 4 years old Great Pyrenees Dog. We adopted Jarna just right after we got married, since we knew it should be done before we had kids :)
It was difficult to find a name for her, so finally we looked through a list of star names and found an old danish name - Stjarna which we liked. However, it's a bit difficult to pronounce, so we shortened it to Jarna:)
Here she is 7 month old:

Here, she is after a short walk in the forest:

And finally Jarna today:

Life and Hobby, Life with kids.

Hello and welcome to my blog. The blog is going to be about my life and my hobby as well as life with kids in general. Thank you for stepping by.
My name is Galia and I live in Israel in a holly city of Jerusalem.
I was born in Russia in a town on the coast of the great river Volga.

One of the things that I miss most hear in Israel is this wide water where I could swim all the summer.
In this town began my story which I am going to tell you now.
 Once upon a time there was a little girl who liked to play with dolls, but didn't have clothes for them. When I was 4 my mother got pregnant with my brother and during her pregnancy leave could spend more time with me at home. She taught me knitting and bit of sewing. Then, when my brother was born the situation reversed and now I had plenty of time alone. So I started doll's cloths creations. I used old cloths of mine and very quickly my dolls became the most dressed up dolls, perhaps, in the entire town :) At the same time my gram showed me crocheting, but all I did was a few small blankets for a toy bed. I didn't like knitting and crocheting at that time much, so my passion transformed to other kinds of crafting: I tried many things – sewing for myself, creating jewelry from beads and fimo, even painting. None of this went far.

Time had passed; I moved to Israel, was studying in the university and got my first full time job. I also found a new hobby that took most of my free time – cave exploring.

I got married and my son was born. This was the first time after a long brake when I returned to crafting. Unfortunately, my son was a preterm baby, and had some health problems, so I wanted to create warm toys for him, that also help in development. This is how my first crochet bear was born. Then I returned to work and didn't have much time for craft. But everything changed when I've got pregnant the second time. Almost all the pregnancy I spent at home. I understood that this is my chance to change the reality and finally show my creations to others. During the pregnancy I started my first nursing necklaces creation and after my daughter was born I opened my Etsy shop.