I wish you all very happy holidays and a great new year!
Thanks to everyone who posted comments and supported me - most of all the biggest Seekers fan in the world, MJKJ, of course!

Time to think about the new year!

While I would have loved to do way more updates in 2016, the flooded cellar and some other things put a brutal stop to that. As I mentioned previously, we will intensify our efforts to buy a house next year and that means there will definitely be a lot of stuff that will gnaw at my time and energy. So for 2017, I keep it as with 2016 and promise nothing, so I can't disappoint later.
Still, here's a bullet point prognosis of what will happen:

What will not happen:
- Seekers
- long stories
- big new projects such as homebrewed campaigns for games etc
- Sims - I don't quit, but right now I neither have time nor interest

What might happen:
- fresh reworks of old Seekers artwork, new sketches
- short stories (99% of them probably not in English, though)
- photo funnies
- old artwork of mine if I can find the bigger scans or the originals
- generic board game material for print-out, like doors, markers or floor tiles

What will definitely happen:
- Dolltopia
- Dolltopia Outtakes
- various tutorials and sewing patterns (yes, the groundwork is currently being done!)
- photos of original (not customized) dolls
- photos of painted metal and plastic miniatures
- reviews of board games
- various articles about dolls, doll house, modelling accessoires or whatever keeps me occupied at that time

Of course there's the possibility of one or more things surprisingly finding their way to the website, after all. Perhaps I can squeeze in one wish project or another and Giselda's fans can be happier than expected, or I get a sudden urge to spend a day making Sims stuff or drawing a Wacky Wingling. Perhaps we end up finding the perfect house promptly, though, and there'll be exactly zero time for anything between renovations, bank appointments and moving. We will see.
What I know with absolute certainty though is, that the weekly board game sessions with my husband do wonders for me. Afterwards I'm always totally giddy and creative, which is great for my other hobbies. I'm a bit worried that my dolls are thrown under the bus right now a bit too much, but currently I divide my raising energy very well between all kinds of stuff, and the natural consequence of games was drawing comics and writing stories back in the day. so things looks quite well for the future, even though there are a few stumbling blocks in the way of moving and co. on the road first. That won't last. :)

Whee, today I have to rearrange some things!

The Photo Wacky Winglings merged with the Dolltopia Funnies into a single category. From now on, you can find them in the shiny new menu "Photo Funnies with Gisi & Toys". I know, the name doesn't flow so well, let's hope I'm more creative in other things. ;)

Why is that? Because Giselda is still the only finished Seekers doll and thus could only go on adventure alone or with other dolls. Nareen, however, is a Pullip and was thus scheduled for the Dolltopia Funnies. Due to that I have some gags rotting on my harddrive for almost a year because I couldn't decide whether they're a Photo Wacky Wingling or a Dolltopia Funny!
Now they are happily merged (there are some new ones, btw!) and I decided to write "toys" instead of "dolls" since action figures could make some funny yokes sometimes too, who knows!

My husband and I dived head-on back into the miniatures hobby after a 10-15 year long break. So much to do for that now!

I must admit though, I'm very unhappy lately about the time it takes to translate everything to English when there's 0 feedback. The only comments from English-spoken folk are for Sims (which moved back to its own website long ago) or made by spambots. That's a very peculiar change from before.
So from now on I will publish everything I do in German right away and will only do translations right away if it's unique and/or important content (like Dolltopia, crochet instructions, these news or any comics), the rest I'll translate when I'm bored or someone explicitly asks for something. I do understand that many things I write are not very interesting for you guys, since there are countless English blogs and Youtube channels covering dolls, board games etc, but there is not that much material of this kind in German and so the German part of the website is my main focus of attention.
There are things which I will never translate, e.g. board game reports and short stories - my English isn't good enough to translate prose (it's bad enough in Dolltopia!) and the reports are just a funny side thing. To avoid confusion, the menu points for these things are not visible in English.
Rest assured that any kind of comic or photo story will ALWAYS be translated (although not always free of errors, lol).

Currently I work on the last few Xmas presents and keep hoping for some sunnier days. It seems that mother Nature has no plans for that, though, so I guess I'll have to ponder on how to put up enough lamps to lighten up the table. I need photos to finish sewing patterns, articles and other tutorials! ^^

Well, the silence here is deafening!

I'm truly sorry about that, but this year turned out to be quite a rollercoaster! The flooded basement kept us busy for months, the extreme noise pollution by the party spot in the neighbouring village once again ruined the whole summer for us and cost us many nights of sleep, and overall we're just unhappy with our living situation.

So we're looking for a new abode, and since my husband finally has a permanent contract at the university (that was the best news in 20 years after all those fixed-term contracts!) we're for the first time in our lives in a position where we can think about buying a house or flat and so our next move is supposed to be our last. As nice as thinking about finally taking roots is, though, as hard it is to decide for the right thing and then find it. For months there's nothing but stress and so far there isn't an affordable home on the horizon, mostly due to the problematic situation with free lots close to Bonn (but sure, also due to our requirements. Something that requires us to take a credit MUST be the perfect thing!) Over the last few months, every free minute we didn't spend with house search either went into decluttering for the next move or into crocheting rattles for babies, since that earned me a little pocketmoney.
To complete the stress I had some "funny" hickups, e.g. my graphics card died (okay, after 11 years it had done its duty...).

About the proclaimed server move, our provider did NOT contact us about our order and so we don't have a new server yet and thus didn't move the website(s). Why our order is ignored - no idea. Up to then their service was always great but this time something went wrong. Calling them and getting to the root of it is a bit drowned out by all the other stuff. I'm done with the digital backups and decluttering, though, so once we'll get a new server (just not as cheap as the ordered one) we'll be ready to go.

For the rest of the year we'll take a break from looking for an estate to get some other delayed things done and also to decompress. So I finally come around to write some things for this website! I have soooo much material to edit! Of course I also have to sew a few Xmas gifts etc, but over the next weeks there will be some move on Eph's Den! I have photos, sewing patterns, crochet patterns, material for the board games/miniatures section and and and, and I HAVE to edit some of that because else a) I'll burst from impatience soon and b) the chaos on my harddrive will never get better. ^^ There's so much old artwork missing in the galleries, too... Oh, to have time to draw, that would be nice. Well, if nothing else I'll have time once we've found our home and moved!
Keep your fingers crossed that we'll find the right house/flat in 2017 and just drop by every now and then to see what's new in the galleries and articles. :)

Ladies and gentlemen,

once again I can only apologize for my inactivity and announce that this will be the state of things for a while longer.

A little while ago there were heavy storms and floods in and around our area and our room in the cellar was flooded. Apart from several hundred Euro in damages and sadness about the loss of some unique things (e.g. handwritten novels I wrote back in school) that also causes a ton of work.

Additionally we finally ordered a new server since the current one is quite old by now and failed a few times in recent years. That means work too since there's a lot of old data that needs backups and sorting. (I will warn before the actual data move separately, since my websites won't be accessible for a while during that phase.)

Last but not least I'm ill and tired. Constant sleep deprievement and stress from noise (especially from events in the village opposite to ours and the neighbourhood, but also from very heavy ships) and shit like the cellar room and frustrating weekends where we can't spend any quality time due to too much noise and/or sleepless nights really gnaw at my substance. For us it's impossible to sleep with up to 80dB of music at 3am and when the noise restarts at 8am right away you only exist in zombie mode. My thyroid, for instance, is completely messed up again after only two good months and I suffer from several bad symptoms.

Let's see when I can continue Dolltopia, at least. I hope to publish at least the odd outtake now and then but I'd prefer to work on the actual storyline ASAP.

At least the events will cease in late October for some months again, so I hope I'll be able to get some things done over the winter.