Merry Christmas

The real christmas spirit...

Our Christmas Tree was supposed to be small and for a more natural feeling it didn't needed to be necessarily perfect looking. So on a Sunday afternoon we went to the next supermarket were trees were sold. At this time new snow was falling and it was cold. We weren't much able to see how the tree looked like, because it was wrapped for transportation and umm, the small sizes were all gone... So we took the Supermarket Standard Size from around 1,80 m and went back home – carrying our tree through the snow and ice by hand, like in older times the people brought their trees out of the woods...
Then, my husband was fixing his very first own Christmas tree in the tree stand and after he unwrapped it, we saw, that the tree was just fully grown and perfect... Anand was even putting the lights and decoration with balls and pine cones on it and he just let me do some small details.


Our Wall-Rug, which we bought in Jaipur was given the colors for the tree. Because its dominating the living room, it doesn't make sense to choose different colors, the result will be loud colors without harmony..
So I choosed orange, gold, antique white and a small sparkle of blue and silver as the colors for the tree ornaments. But of course I bought less things, because it was meant for a much smaller tree. So, even when all balls and ornaments were on the tree, it still looked less and I thought about buying a bit more Christmas balls. But, then I really started loving it, its just a different kind of tree.. The ornaments, balls, feathers and ribbons came from Michaels (a craft shop), Canadian Tire, the this year IKEA-Collection with shining orange glas balls (but why did they combined black with it? Does it make sense to have black ornaments hanging on a dark green tree?), Dollarama and of course some old fashioned ornaments, which I found in the Thrift Stores...


Here I just added a few picture, some more are in this small album below... merry Christmas to you ... :-)

Christmas Tree

Pick of the week

The week wasn't about useful things and even it shouldn't be too much christmas-like and it wasn't really for my flat either... I just found these very nice indian bangles and an elephant.. ;-)

Christmas Decorations II

This week I just want to show some small decorations for the kitchen table, in the living room and outside at our main door... The green fir vase on the kitchen table is decorated with wine charmers, these small deco pieces, which you can put on your wine glas to identify it from other glasses. These pieces are so small, that it was perfect for this decoration. The wood with the bow, which is laying under it, is the extra wood, which was left after putting all green in the vases...



The small santa above the window is made out of a piece of plywood, which got painted. He is hiding the end of the electric lights-curtain.



This decoration is part of a garland which hangs over the door to the living room (we actually don't have a real door there, more some kind of an opening.) Its an artificial garland, with extra (real) green in between, some wooden ornaments and a glass ornament from 1983.


Outside our living door, we dont have a big wreath, because we already customized the entry with a rajasthani mirrored welcome drapery. So I bought a small artificial (because its inside, real green fir would dry too soon) wreath, removed all the plastic decoration from it and added only two small plywood stars, which I painted in red and blue and brought it to the wreath with silver thread and some shining blue acrylic mosaic tiles... finished.

This week I love...

...these poufs and and the two side tables in a modern variation of this old Moroccan style. I know we don't have any place for it right now, but (*wink* to my hubby, just for the case he is reading this...) wouldn't it be great, when we would have the place? ... =)
3suisses.de – Belle Déco

Christmas Decorations I

Who said that christmas decorations are not meant to be kitschy? This mirror in gold and yellow shows the opposite and still everything is allowed at christmas, because it's just for some weeks.
The small socks are made out of fine indian paper.


I found the Noel-Sign in a One-Dollar-Store in White and full of coloured glitter. Its made out of some kind of a stone-plastic mixture. I tried different colour variations and finally liked this one the most, it's a sand-shade for the shadow and my usual offwhite on the foreground, but this time it's very glossy, to give it some more shining...




The bedroom with its dominating white-red scheme asked for more traditonal decoration and so I kept it very natural with a huge pine cone and a snowflake fir-tree green arrangement in the white vase. I just added small electric lights.

Pick of the week

This week I bought something I could use immediately. When I saw the white, round porcelain cookie-bowl in my favorite second-hand store, I had to buy it for the Christmas cookies I intended to bake on the very evening.
But, I was surprised, when I saw the same model in a decoration magazine just some days later. I mean I didn't bought it at IKEA where it might likely happen, that many people have the same one, but in a Thrift Store...?
Anyways, these people seem to have good taste ;-)

Easy Details

This is a close look to two different details in the bedroom, which nearly didn't cost anything.

The first one is our dramatic red panel over the bed.

The complete costs for this one were around 5 $. The core is made of a big double cardboard, which I got as a side product from our IKEA packages. But, you can also ask at any supermarket for such boards, they are just throwing it away after unpacking the goods.
I cut the board in its form and were putting a vinyl tablecloth (1$) as a first layer. Over it I drapped the rough silk fabric which I brought with me to Canada. Then I got some nice paper for scrapbooking and I just pinned it on the board. (There are various designs available, so that you can change your panel as often as you want.) Because of it's light weight, it just needed a few nails to hang and that was it...

My second detail is this small white rope I wrapped between the black metal at the bed head.

I have to admit, that I don't like the bed head much. I know that a designer was thinking a long time to make this product, but this is life, I am thinking about how to change it. My first change was this rope. (I needed two packages, each for 2 $.)


It took some longer time to finish this project and in the meantime the cats started liking it as some kind of a scratchboard, so I guess this idea is meant for a cat free household. Until now it still looks good, but my bed head transformation process isnt completed, I will try to upholster it complety, somehow.... any ideas from you are very welcome... :-)

A tour through the bedroom

In the first months we didn't had the money to make any high jumps in design spheres, my husband just started working and with a little more than 1.000,00 $ we wanted to buy furniture in short time and for the whole flat. So we didnt started searching for the best offers there or there, but went straight to IKEA and bought the things which were at that time available and cheap. Our bed was a special offer and also the bed fabrics. Then we bought the red wool carpet and the white dresser and already had the colour scheme for the room. It was definatly red and white, with some splashes of blue, so it looked in principle like the american flag. That wasnt really supposed to be like that, but the look is fresh and the best we managed in short time.


Later I added details like the blue chair, which is a tradional Shaker-Style chair. I found it black-coloured in a second-hand store, and it took some time to remove the black paint (so my neighbours learned to know me, with black hands and sand paper sitting outside on the stairs) and to recolour it in white and iceblue, but it was worth the job and is now shining again.


The small beach photo serie over the dresser is another second-hand-found. The surrounding was in yellow colour. I painted it white and added some small lines in blue and sand to give the illusion of a real frame.
Actually it was meant to hang in the bathroom, but then we thought, that its mucher better fitting next near the chair.


Our mismatched bedside tables are also just founds. The one (a former TV-Stand in dark cherry was one day standing outside for trash aka. for free ) and the other was a yellow nightstand found in internet from a moving sale for 5 $. The colour is now forming the connection between both...
The old lamp is from a thrift store and is having a beautiful glas ornament. We both really liked it, but we are also worried, because it's not really cat save....



My future ideas for the room are, to add a bit more white, for example as bed linen (to take the red lighter) and I have to think about the curtains. Right now I have rough linen with a floral pattern, but the problem is, that a street light is directly shining in the room at night and the curtains are not thick enough to filter that light.

Our Bedroom: History

When we moved in, our flat was a former model home and I really liked the elegant plum colour the designer had choosen for the bedroom.
On the other hand my husband immediately disliked it and I had to agree, that it is more some kind of a woman colour.
So we started right from the scratch to find our new furniture....

Flowers

Thank god, until now my husband didn't ask me, if we still have enough empty walls for so many pictures, but it happens from time to time, that I do ask this to me by myself.
For example, first I bought this picture and then started thinking about what to do with it... right now I am searching for a frame and then we will discuss the final position in the house... and with so many snow outside, it feels good to buy flowers :-)

Pick of the week

This week I felt a bit nostalgic, was missing my home and family and then I found this glas object (I am not so sure whether it is a wine decanter or a flower vase) and the old cookie tin box.

They are both looking like hand overs from my granny and I even found the perfect places for them in the rooms. One was coming in the living room, as a real showpiece and the cookie box was again getting filled with freshly baked christmas cookies. It feels good to have some older pieces in the flat, it gives a connection to the country which is older than just the time we spent until we arrived in Canada at the end of august.
My husband got inspired and found this very charming glas ornament with “Babys first christmas 1979” Print, which happened to be our first christmas, too :-)

Boxes

What happened with these boxes, that I can't find them anywhere else anymore, than in the museum?

O happy plastic world

Christmas time is coming in fast steps, just one month and it will be already the 24th of december, so it's time to have a look for the christmas decoration offers in the shops.
My first intention was to look for natural things like pine cones, apples and straw stars to keep the decoration as simple as possible. And even when I found the first two things, nowhere was any straw star in sight (even not at IKEA and this shop is at least in Europe known for its large offer of straw stars.)
That straw stars are typical european, I just found out then (even when they are mostly made in China...).
When you type straw star at google.ca, you will find some strange instructions about how to bring a plastic straw in a star like shape, but nowhere you will find natural straw stars like in any german “Strohstern”.


Therefore you will find a huge offer of all plastic toys in the shops like stars, angels, plastic sugar canes and santas, in all colours (just not in orange, the christmas decoration theme I choosed for the year :-( ...), shining, with glitter en gros.
I wonder why they always have to overdo it. Let the glitter away and you would have at least a nice piece for your tree. But it seems like, that this is exactly what people are about to buy (of course I still find some nice pieces in between). But what else to think about a country which considers white artificial christmas trees as antique classical pieces. On the other hand, I admire the large collection of christmas stockings, which every shop offers, together with the fitting tree cloth to catch the needles, so that you dont have to worry about any stains on your floor. The only missing thing: We don't have a fireplace to hang them...