First photo of the new year...my Sagey sleeping. The first day of the New Year started with my waking up to the sight of my 2 1/2-year old little boy sleeping on his elephant pillow and sucking his thumb. Everyone slept in late, but me. I was already up and about, ready to start my day. Shortly after taking the above photo, I went upstairs to photograph a few new hats.

Half an hour later I was back downstairs to upload the photos and prepare listings for the previous day's photo shoot.

At that point, the family was awake and ready for a late breakfast. These little citrus fruits are Calamondins which we discovered was perfect for flavoring teas.

Even my daughter started to drink tea like a grown up, although she did manage to spill some camomile tea on the table as the cup slipped onto the glass table.

After breakfast, Papa continued the cleanup of his office and the game room upstairs in preparation for setting up his Carrera Bahn slot car racetrack while the girls enjoyed their last couple of days on holiday vacation before heading back to school. I had one more photo of my oldest to take before the day's end and Safi asked if she could make a sad face.

She is quite the silly girl and tried looking sad, for whatever reason, but looks more pouty here to me. She then ran off and played with her siblings, but not before Seena had her turn on the window sill. She, on the contrary, was going for a "happy face".

Dinner was very late as I started making the pizza dough later than I normally would. In the end, the wait was worth it. No photos of the pizza as it was past 20h and we were all too hungry to wait for me to pose the pizza for my shots. Instead, I took a photo of the recipe the following day.

Day 2...

It's not quite 9h and I'm already awake and setting up a few new headbands to photograph. I had a lot of fun arranging and photographing my newest halo headbands, each one being photographed in a different and unique manner - unlike anywhere I've seen before. The colors are so vibrant and makes me wish that Spring was already here.

After my fun with the headbands, I went downstairs to try a new multigrain pancake recipe from Heidi Swanson's "Super Natural Every Day" cookbook. Her blog is full of healthy and great tasting foods and I look forward to trying many more new recipes this year.

Once again, no photos, but later that evening I photographed the recipe I used.

I made a couple of changes...added a tablespoon of poppy seeds, one more tablespoon of sugar, and zest from one Meyer lemon. The pancakes were really tasty and all gone in no time. I found that these tasted better with a Croatian sour cherry jam than with pure maple syrup and so did my kids.

My husband finished cleaning the upstairs and the kids enjoyed having a big empty and uncluttered room to run around in. My boy rediscovered his jumper and had a lot of fun jumping up and down.

My daughter enjoyed playing with the wooden train that Nona got one of the kids...

...and they all loved sitting and watching "The Letter Factory" - a DVD that went missing for most of last year until it was discovered on this day behind the DVD player and TV (and after I had purchased another one for the car only a few months ago).

She was singing "every letter makes a sound" right as I took this photo. Her clothes were in their play kitchen washing machine, which is why (at this particular instance) she was down to her underwear even though it is Winter. I'm sure she'd think differently if we lived in Germany. I doubt she remembers how cold it was two Winters ago while we spent five weeks in Berlin in the cold snowy weather - most of it indoors in our apartment.

Dinner was something simple and the kids went to bed "early" as the oldest was returning to kindergarten the following morning.

Day 3...

An early start to the day. I was hoping that everybody would be at the table, but they all chose to sleep in a bit longer, leaving Safi eating breakfast with me.

I went to the bedroom to check on the others and found Sagey staring back at me. A few minutes later, he was fast asleep.

With the oldest off to school, the day began early. Late breakfast with the rest of the family, trip to the post office, then to Williams Sonoma, before heading back home. Safi requested that Papa "abholen" her from school, which he did. She then spent some time playing with Legos and built a very nice layout of an ice cream shop.