Racing stripes

/13 Reacties/in /door

I could not resist this little fellow. I’m gonna replace the silly bamboostick that got in the place of his former handles and I’m gonna give him a good clean. And I’m gonna love him for the rest of his days, because he’s so darn cute. I’ve always wanted a rocking zebra when I was a little girl (I realised that when I stumbled into him, it wasn’t much of a childhood trauma). It’s always nice when one can fulfill a childhood’s dream (even when you turn 30 that same same year. Ah well…some people buy the car they dreamt of when they were little, I buy a rocking zebra).

I’m off to the Meet the Blogger happening in Amsterdam now to talk Lifestyle Blogging for one whole sweet afternoon. Have a lovely weekend my dears!

Brown

/5 Reacties/in /door

I wasn’t a huge fan of the colour brown. But combined with vivid colours, brown becomes beautiful, a thing designers perfectly understood in the 60s and 70s. Every time I stumble upon a piece from those era’s, I’m stunned by the wild colour combinations they used back then.

I’m a bit of a nerd, so I have a habit of exploring these kind of finds from very nearby (can you imagine me already? With a vase sticked to my nose? I should ask a magnifying glass for my birthday and practice more on my Serious Investigator’s Look). The vase at the left for example, has these very tiny pale yellow and green spots, colours you’d never expect on an old German Vase from the 70s.

I gave this cute lampbase a Rie Elise Larsen shade, to give it a bit of a contemporary twist. I’ve doubted for ages about the colour for the shade, but I think I’m gonna like it (it’s like that time I bought the Smurf blue curtains for our bedroom, sometimes it takes some time to get used to stuff. I guess my gut is as daring as those old designers, whereas my mind is still a bit conservative). In the end I had to buy it before the husband did, I drove him crazy with my whining “what colour to choooooose?!”.

So… even brown has now the potential to get in my top ten of favourite colours, as long as it’s combined with bright oranges, greens, purples or reds.

Our white brick home

/8 Reacties/in /door

There was one thing we were absolutely, one hundred percent sure about when we went on our Quest-For-A-New-Home last year. We would not, I repeat, not buy a home build with white bricks. In our humble opinion, people who lived in a white brick home were idiots and above that, had no taste. They had to be arrested and punished for the fact that they voluntarily chose to live in a white brick home. Overall, we thought white brick homes were ugly. Period.

And then we fell in love. Truly, madly, deeply. With a white brick home.

We love our white lady. Now the painter is almost done with his work (the woodwork turned from brown and yellowish white to dark blue and bright white), we love her even more (as far as that’s possible!). She looks like she is ten years younger and like she’s ready to go to the Pub and pick up men half her age now. She’s gorgeous and she knows it!

That’s how things go in life. You think you want Prince Charming, you fall in love with Shrek. Who turnes out to be the best thing that ever happened to you…

(A “Hi!” to all new followers! Welcome to my little blog, I hope you’ll like it here! Want to get to know me a bit better? Check out the ‘About me’ page. Have fun and thank you!)

Eclectic

/6 Reacties/in , /door

The little girl in me still loves statues of animals (mostly dangerously on the edge of kitsch). My eyes for detail love the look of flowers on old crockery, preferably those very detailed ones like the one on the teapot above. I love colors, but I couldn’t live in a home with walls painted in every color of the rainbow, but I do love those bold and simple patterns from the 60s and 70s. I’m so very glad they invented that wonderful name ‘eclectic’ to cover my love for a hotchpotch of design!

Today I’ve been playing with my camera again. I love how those detailed patterns on old crockery come out even more beautiful when you photograph them from closeby. How the light reflects. And how on the picture the left side of this teapot almost becomes invisible with that bright Summer light.

I often feel that my blog is one big adverse mess of non-connected pictures of a lot of old stuff. But now I think about it, it is just really who I am. Eclectic! But would you please excuse me now, I have to go and stare at some detailed patterns and my animal statues are screaming for attention. So long!

Marie-Claire Idées

/9 Reacties/in /door

I’ve been saying (or should I say threatening?) that I want to buy a sewing-machine for ages. Since my attempts to learn myself to knit and crochet ended up in two major disillusions, I reckoned that, since I am good with machines (read: computers) I should be able to work with a sewing-machine. And even when it ends up with madly-throwing-crochet-needles-in-a-corner-of-a-room, it’s a good thing to learn something new (and learn that you’re not made for crocheting or knitting). In short, working with a sewing-machine would mean the opening of a world of new and fast creative projects and I liked that idea.

Even the fact that my last encounter with my mother’s sewing-machine wasn’t a very good one couldn’t stop me from obsessing about it.

A couple of months ago the opportunity to get my own machine came up. I was allowed to take-over the one that belonged to my Love’s grandmother, which would be the perfect way to finally practise my sewing skills. And since it belonged to a dear family member, it would be terribly rude not to use it, so..no way back, no procrastinating, one way or another, I had to make it work.

Yesterday, I used it and what can I say? We’re made for each other! Even ’taking the corners’ (pardon me for my bad English sewing slang) went well, so even the ears of the little owl and wolf came out quite well. I used the easy patterns from a fantastic book of Éditons Marie-Claire (the publisher of Marie-Claire Idées) called “Knuffels om te naaien” (in French called “Doudous à coudre”). I can’t find it for sale in Dutch anymore, but searching the internet I did find this fantastic webshop of the lady that designed the patterns and she still sells the book in French.

I’m happy to conclude that there’s finally a technique I can handle, next to sewing little mounted animals. And by the way, all the animals in the book have a name. These two are called Lou the Wolf and Hubert the Owl. I should have known we had to be! ;-)