Meet Me

If you enter my home on a random Tuesday afternoon, you will probably find one of two things: my girls completely engrossed in their building blocks, or the kind of energetic chaos that makes you want to lock yourself in the bathroom for five minutes just to breathe.

Hi! I’m Victoria, a mom to three beautiful girlies, an Early Years ESL teacher (English as a second language), and a Nigerian navigating the beautiful, structured, but sometimes overwhelming life here in Germany. Raising three active kids far from home comes with its challenges, but doing it inside a typical small German apartment? That is a whole different story, I’m not ready to get into….yet.

When we first moved into our apartment, it was just my husband and me. But then we started having babies, and those babies became little, big humans who learned how to move around quite a lot, but our space was small….still is. But I also knew that if my kids jumped around too loudly, we risked disturbing the neighbours downstairs, and Germans take their ‘Ruhetag’ very seriously.

So I had to figure something out. First, I had to figure out how to make our small apartment space work for us, and then figure out ways to keep my super active kids calm, but engaged in a way that wouldn’t bother the neighbours, and in a way that would help me survive a long afternoon until bedtime. So I learned how to look at our regular household environment differently, and work with it:

• When it’s a rainy German afternoon, we claim the dining table for sit-down crafts, colouring time or the relief packs I design for myself and my kids on Canva. This also doubles as quiet-time activities for us.

• When their legs and feet are hungry, and they need to jump around, but I also need to keep things quiet for the neighbours below us, I pile all the cushions around the house so that they can hop from one to the other without hitting the floor.

• When they want to be outside or have water playtime, but mama is too tired to pack them all up plus all their things, I take my regular kitchen bowls, fill them up with water and take them to the balcony – they can play there all day if they like.

• When it’s paint day, I roll up my rug and spread old newspapers or an oil mat on our dining table to minimise the mess. If I don’t want to give myself that much work, we head out to the balcony again.

So you see, 3craftmama is about making long afternoons lighter using realistic, low-prep ideas that fit into the real life and home space of a tired mom who’s raising kids far from home because navigating motherhood without your village is no child’s play. And I want other moms/parents like myself to know that we don’t need a massive backyard/living room or a luxury budget, to raise creative, busy kids. Sometimes, all you need is something quick and reliable to anchor the afternoon.

Please make yourself comfortable, have a look around, and let’s find something for the children to do before they start climbing the furniture again.