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...

Tara

When I found this 1975-Lithographie of a woman with hat in a second hand store, it was hanging in a cheap gold-coloured plastic frame, from which the colour was already nearly gone.
Although the motive is still a bit “kitschy” and at least ten years away from being 'Retro', I fall in love with the motive.
It's a real contemporary interpretation of Art Nouveau. The shape of the face is still perfectly made with the Golden-Cut-Rule, but the symmetrie is broken in the background with its paisley-like shape, which gives the picture a sur- prising modern twist.

In the same shop I also found a nice wooden frame, even though it was dark green and plastic covered, I intended to use it for the picture.
I dont know where a dark green frame really fits in, but when its in a second hand store, maybe the former owner didnt knew that, too. Fortunatly the plastic cover got easily removed and I painted the frame in a creamy white shade (light antique white) which I already used on other projects in the living room and some days later “Tara” found her place on the wall.

Pick of the (last) week

I was obviously in an orange mood when I went for shopping and so it happened, that I bought a pillow, a shawl and a very nice duppatta-cloth in different shades of orange.
I think, its really the perfect colour to give warmth to a room.

Back

It took some time, but finally all problems are solved so that I can move ahead with my blog. The only difference is, that we don't have Linux Ubuntu anylonger, because of a strange Root-Problem. Now we are using Linux Opensuse. A lot of things are new for me, but I am happy that everything seems to work again. :-)

Pause

Last night the operating system on our laptop collapsed while its upgradation/kernel panic (R.I.P). So unfortunately I won't be able to post anything until Anand fixes the problem (hopefully soon). Until then have a wonderful time ahead.

Change

I changed my blogger layout back from a very nice brown flower version with lots of problems to handle it, to a boring standard eblogger version. Even when I still like the other one more, its much easier to write and work on my posts in this version, because the very idea of a blog is, to write in it.
So it didnt made sense anylonger to have the nicest blog design but the most difficult way to work with it... bye bye stylish template, welcome back to standard...
I will have a look on the further development of the designs and maybe I even will try a new layout from time to time just for fun, I mean hey, this blog is about decoration, nah?
But right now, I'm very happy to write and build up this place and the experiments should be in the posts and not the template :-)

Christmas greetings

An Artist, whose work I really like is Andras Bartos from Berlin, because his pictures are sometimes cute, sometimes sweet but mostly they have a dark story behind it, also. So, its really candy and cool together.

Here, one of his ideas, about how a christmas greeting card should look like...

Compare like...

When I was in India, I sometimes saw Warli-pictures on walls and in Galleries and I really liked how the tribal art even developed further, so that there are warli figures available driving in Rikshaws or sitting on the desk with a pc. In Canada I found these ancient pictures from native americans in the museum painted on Buffalo leather, which really reminded me of Warli-Art.

Ribbon Work

These partly antique brown frames came with us from germany to our flat in Ottawa. As we dont have any furniture with dark wood in the house (it also would make the rooms looking much smaller) we didnt know what to do with it , because there seemed to be no good way to hang them together also. Then finally we found a wall where I just hanged them one by one as if they would hang on the ribbon by itself and the effect makes them looking together like one.

Art Nouveau

I just bought this gift wrap paper and I am still so happy about the motive because I'm a fan of Alphonse Mucha since an Exhibition with his pictures and prints in the Berlin 'Bröhan-Museum' I saw years ago. Right now, I have lots of ideas what to do with it, but nothing in special, so I guess I will think about it for sometime...

First Impressions

Just to please the blog layout, which I have choosen, I decieded to post some pictures of the brown-offwhite colour scheme only. It doesn't mean that I dont like colours in general, infact we have so many different colours and patterns in our home right now, that we are still fighting to have a calm atmosphere without too many disturbing patterns.

White is a way to calm down, it gives that special beach house holiday feeling and it even gives light in our shawdowed living room, which is especially in the dark winter days a real advantage. That white doesn't makes a room looking cold and “like in hospital” its necessary to add a lot of different materials and fabric. The wall colour should be an offwhite tone, only. Our white cats Linus and Shweta are of course working on the cozy looking factor aswell. Some of the pictures are from the house of a friend and out of the museum of civilisation in Gatineau and the small stone cottage I just saw once in a street and liked it so much, that I had to make a picture immediatly.

Start-post

I have already a personal blog since one year and from the very beginning I also wanted to write about decoration and I wanted to write in english.
So this blog now, is maybe the best combination of these both.
Even when I sometimes write about decoration matters in my personal blog aswell, still I dont want to fill it with this only, because its mostly about the life of my husband and me in the different countries we live in (and written in german). Its about sightseeing, cultural differences and struggles, so I dont want to bore some people with deco themes only. I still hope, that this blog wont become boring aswell and I am very excited to have my own place now, to share my decoration ideas and inspirations with you.