entertaining cards

the one thing i know is that my son (and every child of his age) adores small little things. he may be staring at something for minutes and i can't even see what it is. so this little game is specially for children who are at the age of exploring world, different surfaces, materials and objects.

first of all, you will need cardboard, which you should cut in small square pieces. the cardboard may be white or you can colour it. then you will need everything that could be glued on the cardboard - spaghetti, candied fruits, beans, buttons, zips - the main rule here is to stick similar things on the same cardboard. i suggest you use a paper glue, which doesn't stick to the fingers of children and is much safer than the glue for all the surfaces. ilia used paper glue, but when i had to stick something that was heavy, i used the superglue, but kept it far away from my child.

the main goal of the game is not to ultimately stick the objects to the cardboard, but to show you child different textures and materials. children at the age of 1 love to tear off everything, so once the objects are stuck, they will try to tear all of them off. keep an eye on your child, don't let him eat any of those objects ;)

when you have cardboards ready you can teach your child how the objects are called. we have a big box where we keep those cards: i name an object, and ilia finds the right cardboard in the box and gives it to me. you can't even imagine how this game works, ilia has learned all of the objects in one evening.

thank you

i have been writing a book from some time now. about music and my personal memories connected to different songs and melodies. as you may have noticed i am a huge nostalgic. but i'm also a great believer of memories. and that things happen for some reason. some things happen for you to remember, some things happen for you to learn a lesson and never repeat, but some happen just to bring smile to your face.

i want to thank all those people, memories about whom will bring smile to my face anytime i remember them. some of those people i may not see again in my life or those moments may never repeat, but what i know for sure is that when i'll pass familiar places, or hear familiar music the smile will come to my face and those memories will make me happy.

i saw a movie the other day where the main heroes were talking about the future and that when we are young we think that there are so many things ahead us, and we believe that we have so much time left and we never hurry. but in reality, there are not as many opportunities in life. so if life gives us one, we should grab it.

let's start living fully and let's be happy and gather the moments for us to remember when we are older and nostalgier :)

  

make somebody happy

what it takes to make somebody happy? not that much i guess.

we sometimes lack happiness in our hearts. there may be serious reasons for that or there may be no reason at all. but we still feel down from time to time. and suddenly, a small comment, a small gesture, a small gift, a smile and even a glance can change everything and bring back the sun. the sun may be coming from a close friend or an absolute stranger, but it may light up you day in a way it hasn't been lighting from the early morning.

so what it takes to make somebody happy? it actually takes smiling to the strangers, saying nice words to people, giving out compliments, encouraging those near us, making them laugh, thanking them, hugging them and loving them.

and you know what is the best part of it? happiness is contagious. by making others happy you get happy too.

oh, it's so important to make someone happy

un bacio a mezzanotte

i'm absolutely in love with a song that i found not long ago. and not simply in love with one version of it - but with all the versions that i gathered. 

this version by quartetto cetra is the one i heard first and the one i listened to thousands times..

until i found this great version by jumpin' up. with amazingly cute video clip.

enjoy this song my dear readers, with a lemonade, a smile and nice thoughts about upcoming summer with some nice midnight bacio's for everyone.

 

melody

i got this habit of leaving music several weeks ago. by 'leaving music' i mean that every day when i come home from work i put on some nice music in the car for me to listen in the morning. i turn the ignition off and the song is saved in my ipod for sleepy me sitting in a cold car on my way to work.

you have probably noticed the kind of relationship i have with music. a very special, butterfly-bringing and never ending. sharing with you the soundtrack of today, which was waiting for me in the car and which i can't stop listening to since then.

the choice

few days ago me and my son were sitting and looking at the covers of different magazines and i decided to test ilia's taste. i put two covers with two different girls in front of him and told him to choose the one he liked.

i won't lie - i definitely prefer miranda kerr to zooey deschanel. but my son picked zooey. and not once. he picked her all ten times i put those two girls side by side hoping he would change his mind.

and that made me realize - despite his young age he already has his own taste. that's good to know :)

here is some nice music for you to enjoy this windy grey morning

the shuffle

when we were little and went to school, we had a game which my classmate veronica has invented. i don't know if she still remembers it, but for some reason i kept playing this game and still have a lot of fun with it. the main idea is the following - you put your player (now ipod) on the shuffle mode, start asking questions and ipod gives all the answers you wanna know.

what will happen to me next month? where will i be in summer? what X thinks about me? and any other question your imagination will come up with.

you won't believe how this game actually works. i would have imagined that all my songs on the playlist are about love and nothing except it would come out. but it turned out that my 4,000+ library has answers to all the questions - some pretty encouraging and some very disappointing.

so next time you're in the car and have nothing to do, try this game - i promise it'll be fun.