Mother's Day Owl Giveaway

Happy Mother's Day everyone! Of course, my new owl giveaway is in the theme of Mother's Day: a mama owl with her baby owl. The baby owl is the tiniest owl I have ever made. I didn't have buttons small enough to do his eyes, so I used seedbeads.

If you want to win this cute keychain, just leave me a comment beneath this post and include your email address so I have a way to contact you if you win. If you want to increase your chances, you can get additional entries on instagram and facebook. The giveaway is open worldwide. On May 26th I randomly draw a winner.

Today I gathered 43 entries for the Dutch King Owl giveaway and drew a winner. Congratulations Joanne! Lots of people loved the King Owl, especially the Dutchies, but unfortunately, there can only be one winner per contest. So it's a good thing there will be a new contest every two weeks, so you'll have plenty of chances to win one of my owlets.

Mother's Day My Way

When I was a child, I would get up early on Mother's Day and bring my mom breakfast in bed and a gift. Both the breakfast and the gift were made by me, she always ate the breakfast (quite brave) and always treasured her present.

I love traditions and keeping them alive. Especially when they involve handmade gifts that require some extra love and effort, so the recipients can really feel how much they mean to me.

Tomorrow it's Mother's Day. My mom lives in the Netherlands and I live in the States. I can't send her homemade breakfast over the post, but I can surely send her handmade gifts.

iPhones are how we connect on a daily basis. Even though we live on different continents, we are still very much part of each other's lives, and we use iMessage, Facetime and other apps to do that. So her iPhone is important and therefore it requires protection.

My mom is obsessed with cows, she thinks they're the cutest thing ever and has a large collection of cow plushies (only some made by me) and all kinds of other cow trinkets.

So I made her an iPhone case, disguised as a cow:

Currently, NerdWallet is hosting a Mother's Day Your Way contest. They're collecting blog post entries about the best Mother's Day presents under $25. 

My handmade Cow iPhone 4 Case is defintely the best present for my mom this Mother's Day. I'm sure my mom will love it. I hope she will treasure it and show it off to her friends, like she did with all the other Mother's Day gifts I made her as a child.

I had to make sure not to post my entry for the contest too early, I didn't want to spoil the surprise for my mom. But it's past midnight in the Netherlands now, so she should be sound asleep.

Below are a few photos of my beautiful mom and I, from my last visit to the Netherlands. 

Yep, these were made using an app on our iPhones!

Long Live King Willem-Alexander

Today I got up at 5:20am. Very early. 

Last night was date night. We went to an evening baseball game. We debated staying until the end of the game, but since we had to get up early today we went home after the 8th inning. That was a good decision because that game ended up lasting a record number of 19 innings! It ended at 1:41am! Less than four hours before I woke up today.

Anyways, so we woke up really early today. Why? 

Well, we had to be at the Dutch Consulate in San Francisco at 7:00am to watch the abdication of Queen Beatrix and the investiture of King Willem-Alexander, of course!

With the new King came a rather nice but controversial King Song, that introduced a new hand gesture for the King. Three fingers in the air to make a W; a W for Willem-Alexander. See us flashing our three fingers at the Consulate:

Even though we are crazy busy this month, we are very happy we made time to attend this event. After all, it is not everyday your country gets a new king! The last Dutch king died in 1890. The ceremonies were very moving and made me realize I'm more nationalistic than I ever thought before. 

I even took some photos of the big screen. See below our King Willem-Alexander and his Queen Maxima on top, and on the bottom our future Queen Amalia and our previous Queen Beatrix.

The Dutch Consul General made a speech and provided the dozens of early-bird Dutchies with a nice breakfast and a piece of a beautiful windmill cake to celebrate this momentous day.

Oh, and this day is very special for another, not so royal but nevertheles grand, reason: today is our 9th anniversary as a couple! 9 years ago, at Emory University, Yasu and I shared our first kiss, never even imagining that we were kissing our future spouses.