Welcome to Holland ...

One of my all time favourite Pieces of writing, I guess because it sort of sums it all up for me. I need to take pause and come back  read it from time to time, to be reminded sometimes that life is  just as beautiful but in a different kind of way.

WELCOME TO HOLLAND

by
Emily Perl Kingsley.

c1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

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Etsy SALE Time

We are doing a bit of reorganising and tidying up here at Myrtle & Grace H.Q so we have decided to have a little SALE on ETSY, Pop on over to have a look by clicking the "Etsy" Frame off to the side .

Decorating DONE!

My Tree is DONE!

the inspired occasion: Emily’s shabby vintage tea party

Enjoy our Party Part 1...

the inspired occasion: Emily’s shabby vintage tea party: Themed to perfection At The Inspired Occasion we believe that theming any event gives your occasion an unbeatable edge! From choosing ...

i HEART decorating the Christmas tree

Decorating the tree HANDMADE style.

We have had a little set back or two today while decorating the tree! You know how you get an idea and you just can't get what you need locally to get the job done? Well I really wanted just red lights on the tree this year and do you think I could find them anywhere! They are now on there way from Sydney thanks to Mr. EBay. 

You've already had a little peek at the felt doves we had been making and with 6 now done and one more to finish off that's one job nearly out of the way. Miss Emily and I spent some of the morning cutting out snowflakes from the pages of an old vintage book we found a the local secondhand store. Emily had said her favourite bit was unfolding the snowflake because it was exciting- like unwrapping a present, just don't know what you are going to get! Bless her little cotton socks. 

Decoration number three was even easier again. Using the same book we ran the pages through the printer with words and phrases such as "Merry Christmas", "Jingle Bells" "JOY" and images like our love heart onto them and simply tied them onto the tree with red ribbon. I love the effect. But as we were busy finishing off the paper side of the decorations minor disaster struck. Our Feed bin filled with tree, gravel and A LOT of water, sprung a leak!  There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza! There is not much I can do at the moment except keep on mopping up water until it has drained out enough for me to be able to budge it. I can barely lift the tree on it's own as it is. Let alone with 3 buckets of gravel and 20 litres of water too. So here are the pictures of what we have done so far...

Home printed vintage messages in "Stencil" and "Claudia Jean" Font

In this picture hand cut snow flake vintage messages prints no. 15 advent rusty bucket, felt dove

"No. 15" advent calendar rusty bucket from The Upholstery Gallery- Ballarat

Hand cut snowflake from vintage book. Little Felt Bird hand stitched in the background.

Home printed message on vintage book page. "Heart"

Hand cut snowflake again.

This is as far as we got before the leak won!

The Impromtu photo shoot

We decided it would be a great idea to take some more photo's of stock today. I tried out my new white background. Which now has a few new dints and creases in it thanks to the kids, but I guess that was bound to happen sooner or later. Slowly my photography skills are growing and I was really happy with how these ones turned out. Hope you like them too! All the details for these items can be found over on the Facebook page, just click on the little Facebook badge to the right ------over there---------> and it should take you straight there!

This little model kept running off

Then didn't like the idea of sister helping so the biting started Ouch!

And then HE decided he'd had enough of wearing a dress and had a tanty! LOL I bet you were thinking the little model was so pretty in the dress too?

This co operated for quite a while

I am proud of how this photo shoot turned out.