Hello, my name is Susanne.
On this page I will talk a bit about myself and how my passion for making dolls started….
For me creating dolls is very special, a gift.
Every doll is a part of myself and each doll becomes part of my family and is very close to my heart.
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I'm married, have a wonderful husband and we are proud parents of 3 fantastic boys.
Our family and 2 dogs live at the moment in sunny Florida. More about that later…
I am originally from Germany, from near Hamburg.
About 20 years ago (I can’t believe it has been that long ago….) I met my Canadian husband in Germany, fell in love, got married and followed him 5 years later to beautiful Ontario/Canada.
Do to my husband’s job we lived in different parts of Canada over the last 15 years, and for the next 4 years we will call Florida our home.
My little sister went to a Waldorf school and that is how I was introduced to the Rudolf Steiner Philosophy and the many wonderful things that come with the Waldof education.
My mom had a gift/craft store in my hometown where she sold crafts, jewelry, wooden toys ( Ostheimer), dolls ( Silke , Sigikid), fossils , minerals and antics. Beautiful items, that were very inspirational as well.
When my first son was born, I became a “stay at home” mom. These days it almost sounds like a bad thing when you decide to raise your children yourself.
To my husband and me it was very important that our child would grow up with a parent at home. To make some money on the side I started to provide “daycare” for other children out of our home. I have always been creative and being around small children and being creative with them, made my desire to make other things forthem as well much stronger.
I believe that every child should have a handmade doll and so I started to make small simple dolls for my son and my daycare kids .
Here are some pictures of dolls I made then.....
I always loved Waldorf dolls. The simplicity of their lovely faces and soft bodies was something that captured my attention right away.
When our second son was born, I joined a La Leche League group in Owen Sound /Ontario. The lady that ran the group was a WHAM and made baby slings. I
bought my first sling from her and since my son wanted to be carried by me all day long that sling became indispensable almost immediately. Soon I had more then one sling and after we had to move to a different part of Ontario I started to make slings myself and sold them locally.
I always made some dolls as well, but had a hard time getting all natural products for them.
During that time I didn't use the internet yet....
I would have loved to send my children to a Waldorf school, but my husbands job never brought us close enough to a Waldorf school and the possibility of frequent moves, never gave that dream a real chance to being realize.
I had planned to go back to school in 1998 to be able to work in my learned profession as a nurse assistant in Canada. Life had other plans for us, and a year later our 3. son was born.
I continued to sell my baby slings locally, making dolls and many other things and providing home-daycare.
In 2004 we moved again. This time across Canada to Alberta, where my husband’s family lives.
Now our children had grand parents, aunt’s, uncle’s and cousins close by. Since my family lives in Germany we never had that before. My mom would come to visit as often as possible and my husband’s parents as well, but we didn’t have any of them in driving distance.
We bought a house on 10 acres in the country, 30 km (about 19 miles) from the town of Cold Lake.
It was a dream come true for me!
The peace and quiet and nature all around us was fantastic. We had our own little woods with trails in them.
The kids build forts and played for hours with swords and shields, hammers and bows that they made themselves out of wood. We had a big flower garden, herb garden and my wonderful husband dough a veggie garden and planted all kinds of great vegetables for us.
In the winter my husband made a skating ring in the front yard for the kids to play hockey. \
Our youngest son learned to skate on that ring.
The kids would come home from school and spent hours in the dark with a big porch light on skating.
Deer, foxes and coyotes would walk right by our fence line and sometimes even come into the yard.
Because we were so far out of town we had a fantastic view of northern lights on many winter nights.
As you can tell I really loved that place and we know already that when my husband retires, we have to buy a place in the country, hopefully a quarter section or something like that.
I would love to have Angora goats and chicken, a horse….
During our time in Alberta I worked full time in town and launched my first web site. polarbearcreations .com. Selling and buying on E-bay taught me about internet business and I was ready to take my sling business online.
I never had enough time though to put enough time, money and effort into the sling business and my dolls.
It was quiet frustrating!! For most of the time I had and still have, way too many things going at the same time, but I learned over the years to get better organized and to realize that I can’t do it all myself.
I don’t think I ever been bored in my life! In fact I have sooo many things that I would love to do, that I will never have time for, but by now that’s ok.
Last year we got the chance to move to Florida for 4 years. Yes, it was hard, very hard to leave our house and land in Alberta, and believe me I cried quiet a few tears, but we knew all along that it would not be forever, and so you move on and experience something new.
I believe in the following:
Home is where the family is, not where your house stands!
Florida is sooo different, but when will we ever have the chance to live
30 minutes from the beach, have a pool in the yard, and see dolphins and manatees in the wild?
What an experience!! Our children have adjusted very well to their new surroundings and made lots of friends already. During our stay here they will have many experiences and memories that they will never forget.....
I will be able to devote so much more time on my doll making and my slings and the web sites.
My head is full of ideas and lately I have gotten so many inspirations that I would like to realize as well.
I can’t wait to start…
