Slam swappers meeting in Amsterdam

Like last year there was a slam swapper meeting this year again. :)




This time it was in Amsterdam. The meeting was just "great". We arrived there on Friday midday, where we met everyone at the hostel. Well, due to some transport problems we were the last again, but hey, that always happen when Volker drives somewhere with me. ;) Volker and I stayed on a camping site out of the central city. The first day we walked around the canals and saw the red light district. And in the evening we went to a sushi bar (sadly I couldn't eat there because of my histamin intolerance). And after the dinner we made a little geocaching tour with the teams Gyldenale and i-t. :D And after around 2 hours we finally found a cache. I couldn't believe that there aren't many caches in Amsterdam.

The other day we met at the boat tour. We drove with a boat through the canals which was really interesting (well, before the meeting I didn't know any famous buildings or sightseeing of Amsterdam except the coffee shops). After that we made some pics at the "I amsterdam" sign which is harder to make when you are a group. ;) And the rest of the afternoon we spent in the park sunbathing and signing slams. The guys got little mad so they went geocaching again. ;) And the dinner we took at the Hard Rock Cafe (which isn't very friendly to big groups, also if they reserved the table). And as it is hard to find a good place for 25 people in Amsterdam we let the day end in the hostels bar. :D


I can say I totally liked this weekend, also if I didn't like Amsterdam a lot (it's now at the end of big cities and replaced Paris). But maybe I should visit the city in autumn when there are not that many people around. Too much traffic, too many people.. But it was great to see the girls again (thank you for the weekend!!!) and I'm still sorry for my BAD English.. :( Writing is much more easier then talking. Next time in Vienna I'll do my best. ;)

Weekend in the North

This last weekend we spent a weekend in the North, exactly in East Frisia. We visited some friends which we also introduced into geocaching. Before we arrived there we already found our first mystery in their hometown. ;) The next day we drove to an interesting Earth cache "Salt marsh" and we tried to find some caches in Norddeich. Some were easier to find as we already had such caches here in the region.

 

We also visited a Viking market. Sadly it was too windy to wear our medieval clothes. The market was close to the sea, so it was a really nice atmosphere. :D We had some really nice mead there. Well, the owner of stall gave us more and more. ;) We only wanted to taste the honey whisky, but at the end we had tried many other honey drinks, too. Normal mead, lavendel mead, cherry mead ;)



The next day we drove back home. But before we made a last stop at the most leaning tower of the world. Yes, it is in East Frisia. :D And between Emden and Delmenhorst we looked for a TB Hotel. Sadly there was no inhabitant in it, but this TB Hotel was just great. I guess the owner had put a lot of work in it.





Today I forgot to make pictures, but I finally found my first FTFs. I can say I found three FTFs. They were published by a friend of me and it was here in the forest. When I found my first one, our neighbor arrived there, too. She gave me her GPS yesterday as ours is broken again. :( She wanted to make her first FTF, too. But I was little bit faster.

31 days of geocaching #4

Today we went geocaching again. It is the 4th day in a row, not our longest row, but it'll one day. There is this 31 days of geocaching. You can get a souvenir on every day in August that you go geocaching. Today we wanted to look for a mystery that I already solved a few months ago. It is part of 5 other caches. So we drove there today during this hot weather (today it already felt cold as it was under 30°C). But then we stood in a little forest and were looking around. The hint said "above" and terrain 1,5, so it wouldn't be too hard. We were just before to drive back home, when Volker said, look is it this. We've never thought of anything like this. So this was a surprise and we solved it (as there was so much wood lying around). 

Close to the cache, was another one. Well, it was a nice idea, if the logbook wouldn't have fell directly in our hands. Normally you had look in all those little boxes to look for the logbook. But when we opened it, the logbook fell into our hands as the little box wasn't put together. :( But it was still fun to see it. :D

ATC part 2

Yesterday during the heat I managed to make some more ATCs, but guess the heat didn't make me very creative. What do you think? If you want to have any of the ATCs feel free to join my group and the swaps there. :) Hopefully I can try out some other techniques these days.
But we don't want to forget our geocaching challenge. I'm trying the 31 days of geocaching and already found 2/31. Today number 3 will follow but haven't decided for a cache yet.

Creative saturday during this heat

This heat makes me crazy. :( How could it get so hot in Germany, I want the 25°C!!! You couldn't go outside and go geocaching. This month we only found only some few caches, so I hope the August will be better. There you can get a souvenir everyday. :D I hope we can make it!

But I used this day for being a bit creative again and using my new rubberstamps. This time I didn't make any ATCs, but I made some envelopes and stationary again. So here are the results:

ATCs part 1

Some weeks ago I got some new rubberstamps and other creative supplies.. So I made some more new ATCs which I wanted to share with you. Please tell me, which of the ones do you like most? It would be great to get a feedback of you.

Artistic saturday

Last week I got my ATC workshop book. And today I wanted to try a little bit. I took the first easy steps, but seems I failed. It looks too

cute and too childish in my eyes. Well, I guess it'll be getting better with the time. I painted with water colors. On the one pic (with the banana) I tried to see something in it, and that were.... bananas.. ;)

Last week I also drawed some zentangles again which I wanted to share with you again. :) I hope you like them. I wanted to use them for envelopes, but it is so hard to send them out. ;) I hope the one who'll receive those will know how much love I put in those.

Tomorrow I want to try to do some more atcs, but this time with vintage pics. I hope those will look better. If you still like and want some of ATCs that I made today, please tell me, I can send those to you. :D

Envelopes in another design and the start of a yahoo group

Lately I looked in the in the Internet for some nice ideas for art. On that way I also bought myself a new book for ATCs which hopefully will arrive in the next few days. And while I ordered this book I found out about another kind of art which made me really interested. It is Zentangle®. I already tried it for some envelopes that I made. :) Does anybody of you already knew about it and make those little pictures?

And I created my first own ATC group with Saskia, a pal of me. If you are interested in ATCs and would like to join us there, you are more than welcome. We are still at the beginning and could need new members. Here is the Link to it: Magical ATCs

Hopefully not our last geocaching day

Last weekend before the big rain we made a last tour with our GPS.. It has some problems to run correctly and no it is on the way to get repaired. I hope we'll get it back soon.

The little geocaching tour we made near Hastenbeck this time. All caches weren't very hard to find. But the last one was a bit more difficult. You had to move a little ball through a maze to get the logbook. That was a nice idea.
I hope this wasn't our last cache. If you go geocaching what kind of GPS do you use? Ours still had a guarantee, but I don't know if we'll get it back.

Pentecost geocaching year 2

Volker is climbing in the tree

This year we didn't had so much luck with geocaching on these holidays.. :( Yesterday we planned the geocaching tour for Fynns birthday. It is about 6 km long and we planned 11 stations (for 11 years). When we planned all places I found out that another owner of a mystery cache placed some stages on the same places, so we had to go this round today.

Volker at the final

First we made three mysteries we solved last night. They were easy to find. Volker was climbing a bit ;) oh and not to forget, we hadn't so much luck with the weather. It was very wet (in the morning it was raining for a long time) and there were a lot of ticks running. I guess we had around 20 ticks on our clothes and Volker had one under his socks. I hate ticks!!! Well, more about the geocache.

Thordis using the GPS.. ;)

The mystery we had to do had 9 stations. The first 7 were very easy to make. But the way to stage 8 was very steep and muddy, so it wasn't easy with the stroller. And we searched for the stage for about 30 minutes. :( No luck and no hint from other cachers helped. :( But we got the finale coordinated from them, so we'd know the last stage. Now we know that we have to delete 3 of the stages we had planned, but I already found new places. :D