Happy Birthday to meeeeeeee....

Yes another year has gone by - and to mark the occasion my sister decided that it would be fun to dress up her pet rabbit Bumper with a festive outfit. I'mnot entirely sure that she is very much approving the choice of her owners sense of humor, but oh well - I enjoyed receiving the picture :)

So my 28th birthday came in unlike last year I had my parents over to actually join the celebartion. I got hopelessly spoiled by them and David a.k.a. 'Bloke'. Gifts ranged from Guitar Hero 5 - which David still regrets giving to me since I have a tendancy to try and 100% a song by playing it 21 times in a row - and a lovely silver necklace and beutiful designer dress from parents.

David also thought the world was ready for me driving so I also got driving lessons, for all those in the Berkshire area, I will warn you when I go out on the roads :) For lunch I was taken to Jamie Oliver's restaurant in Oxford - http://www.jamieoliver.com/italian/oxford
I must admit it was the best past I have had for a very long time and if you do happen to eat there try the anti-pasta starter plates, simply amazing!
For dinner we went to my favorite, The Crab at Chieveley - nothing can beat that place when it comes to seafood. I have had an amazing day surrounded with the people I love most - It was all very special.

After a few days off work - it was back again, some really nice things have gone live in the last few days. I love the London Eye Halloween site: http://www.londoneye.com/ - we did the Flash on the mainpage and the site overhaul. I'm very proud with my 'Blinky the Frog' :)
I love making those little Flash animations - Rachel did a very good job on the extra mouse over fog to compliment my area fog.... anyway go check it out!
Lot's of exiting stuff is incoming but more later ......

poladroid - family photo? :)

poladroid - family photo? :)
Originally uploaded by designcuriosities

Well I was doing my daily browse on Flickr - and I bumped into a Flickr pool called 'For the love of Lops'. Lops in the meaning of lop eared bunnies.

I saw this picture and I though this was the coolest family portret!
For your daily bunny fix hop to www.dailybunny.org

Busy, busy, busy - did I mention busy?

I promised to be good and post a little bit more, but who am I kidding :) Anyway a few updates on how life is going on this side of the world. This weekend I went to the Battle Proms at Highclere Castle, although the event is always great fun - this time the weather was just bugger.

It was cold and rainy and it took a good time before it cleared up a bit in the evening.

Due to the weather we did not have a Spitfire flying over for an air show, but the weather did pick up enough for some amazing fireworks! However there was enough alcohol to keep us warm :)

And believe it or not I was home and in bed before midnight... am I getting old or what!

Unfortunately in May me and a group of friends had to say goodbye to a friend of ours who went back to Malaysia after studying here in the UK for a few years. Priscilla is part of our kimono group and the 5 of us normally go out and about in kimono to eat sushi and be stared at by Japanese tourists in London.

So we organized a farewell lunch in Mitsukoshi - the food was amazing, pricy but amazing.

Afterwards we all ended up indulging our sweet tooth in Häagen-Dasz London. It was sad to see Priscilla go but at the same time another member of the Immortal Geisha Forums joined our group here in the UK. Her husband is in the military and is stationed in the UK.

Lyuba is now part of the IG UK team :)

Anyway here is my lunch 'Kitsuke' (Go google it)

I love combining modern with traditional! Sunglasses and kimono. The Obi I'm wearing is light grey with bamboo

embroidery on it, and a very funky looking kimono.

Now that I finally upgraded my Flickr to a pro account the shocking truth and amount of my kimono collection is shown. However I have been good and sold also quite a few items in the past few weeks, just to make room in my drawers - or David will go nuts :) More pictures of the lunch can be found *HERE*.

At work things have been pretty crazy! Been doing a lot of Flash work lately and here are some of my projects:

- Carlsberg Export - Flash Site

- 7-Up Natural Wonders

- London Eye - Suitcase game

- Benney Watches

And I seriously need to update my portfolio site since that has been a bit neglected.

However it is growing really fast and I am doing really cool stuff right now at work - however I'm longing for a proper holiday.

But in about 5 weeks David and me are flying to the land of clogs to celebrate my mums 65th birthday!

Speaking about work the guys in the office see me getting my packages from Japan every now and then - so they all challenged me to come to work in kimono one day. Well don't challenge me since I probably end up doing it :)

So that is pretty much it for now - I'm going to log into World of Warcraft and check out my new present ... a Teldrassil Sproutling. It was a present from David *love*

Why no title? Well I couldn't think of one fitting this post. I could start off with something along the lines of 'AWESOME QUEENS DAY 2009!!!' But after yesterday it was not as festive as one would expect it to be.

For those who have not caught up with the news, yesterday a 38 year old male drove intentionally through the crowd who was watching the Royal Family go by, in an attempt to their lives.

Fortunately they did not get injured - however a lot of innocent people did. The current situation is 5 people dead and the idiot who did it dead as well. Watching the Dutch news in the UK is proving to be a bit of a challenge at times - but there is a steady flow of information from other sites.

In my opinion Queens day have lost it's innocence - we always could get very close to the Royal family when they participated in Queens day activities. I even got to shake hands with the Queen when I was a toddler - she visited the city I lived in that year. I think only time will tell what will happen to Queens day, I hope it will stay the same old Dutch party that we all know and love, but I'm doubt full.

Hopefully there won't be any more deaths, two of the nine people who are still in the hospital are critically injured. Let's hope for the best.....

Now that mini image at the top is my attempt to make my own Tompoezen this year. So for the non-Dutchies a Tompoes is this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tompouce

After my horrible attempt to make pastry cream on the 28th - I had better luck with a different recipe on the 29th. It actually was the proper solid stuff. One of my colleagues followed a different recipe this the result (no I'm not laughing....too loud). I did the pretty one in the back (^o^)

Besides all of this the move is going fine, despite the fact that there are boxes everywhere in the house now. I cannot wait to get rid of them and make the place look pretty again. I simply cannot live that way with boxes everywhere.

Today the IKEA furniture arrived adding to the boxcount, but hopefully we can work hard and get it all built this weekend! And I think I got the coolest officechair in the house

Things are going to change....

So March was a busy and interesting month just to name a few things:
- I passed my probation at my job
- Going to move house (again)
- But just to live with my Bloke :)
- Got a massive expansion on my kimono/Japanese collection
- Did I mention moving in with my Bloke?

Job wise it was a lot off stress an mayhem over March, end of the financial year was looming and all the design work had to be squeezed into very little time. Fortunately I was able to work fast and not get stuck with loads of work in the evening and weekends. Some stress and hard work is fine but I'm glad that month is over.

David decided to take me out to the Crab at Chievely, which is a lovely restaurant with amazing food. Starters like scallops with white chocolate & caviar - and if you get a chance do go for the Crab, that baby is huge! Anyway he asked me just before the starters to move in with him, now I can be a real girl and start crying (I must admit that I had to swallow a few times to keep the tears back) but I didn't want to just burst out in tears in the middle of the restaurant.

Also the couple next to us seemed to listen to everything we said and threw a bunch of dirty looks our way. So the big move of my place to his/ours will start right after Easter. It is pretty weird to see your place up on a letting agency site while you are still there. The sign has been firmly planted outside so it is all ready to go. I will miss my kittehs though :(

My kimono collection has grown rapidly in the last week! I had to indulge in some beauties (which all can be found on my Flickr stream on the right), but I think my latest purchase is one to look out for - It is an antique geisha doll. Which reminds me from when I was a young girl going with my dad onto big Japanese container ships to meet the Captain and where my dad had to do business.

They all had a glass display with one of those dolls inside, now there is a lot of touristy shit on Ebay - but I have found me a little gem. I think I will call her Katsuragi - seems to be fitting for her and also remind me of my first encounter with one of these dolls.

So as you might have guessed it will be a massive move with all the things I got to take - poor David :)