An early Valentine's day present

The Love

Today has been a good day and the weekend has been a great weekend.
What you see in the picture above is me blaming one of my 4 best friends in the whole world (that's including my partner) that she killed my productivity with her present.
She bought me this amazing set of rubber stamps, complete in a beautiful tin case, with a tin full of ink as well.

Now I have to stamp the whole Universe. It shall never stop.

What is even greater about it, is why she bought me the gift. Where she comes from, Valentine's day is a day to celebrate all your loved ones, not just your lover. Which I find a great idea. So she came today at our weekly coffee meeting, holding this cute-beyond-words package with a card filled with lovely words that I am going to keep for myself.

After I came back home, I got to skype with another one of the holly trinity of my girlfriends (the two have never met the third one) and amuse her with all the extra costs that came with our new house, such us municipality fees, a fine about misplacing garbage and other not so great ways to spend your money.  Laughing about this sort of stuff with your friends always makes it seem a bit better.

The Fun

Now, about the weekend... We met our neighbors and it was a great surprise when we realized that they are a couple of a PhD student and a freelance translator. What are the chances? They are also non-Dutch, but not Greek either, which is great, because we get to add yet more different cultures to our group of friends. They also have the sweetest baby I have ever seen, but I admit that until a year ago babies were just noise producing machines in my eyes, so I did not pay much attention to them.

So our new neighbors joined our housewarming party vol.2, along with my old housemate, my best friend mentioned above and my old house owner with her husband. We were a group of Finish, Korean, Australian, American, German and Greek people who somehow got along really well. And the house definitely feels warmer now. We started out with a plant-based dinner, that I am quite proud of, because you can only cook that many vegan dinners without repeating yourself. And then we drank a few (or not so few) wines. I believe we went to sleep around four o'clock in the morning, which is something I have not done since ages and quite enjoyed it. Sunday got wasted though.


The Work

Today, I had the chance to make some edits to a book that I am ghost-writing, after a great feedback that I got. I love it when feedback is to the point and does not leave you lost and wondering what you should do. Instead, this client is very positive, appreciates the work that I do and gives clear comments on the changes they feel I should make. From what I hear, I have been very lucky so far, getting clients who are reasonable, leave me creative space and pay on time. I cross my fingers that it will continue to be this way. Not that it has all been ideal, but I have decided not to let minor issue compromise my enthusiasm.

For this week, the plan is to write-write-write, plus design a cover for a book, in which my name gets to show up next to "illustrator:". Not bad. Not bad at all!