This week I love...

.... fancy USB-flash drives. Who says that technical items always have to be practical and unemotional. I just love the items you can create with the USB-drives, from artificial food like Sushi or fruits to jewelery, robots and many more. Its not necessary, less useful and lots of fun ... :-)

At the End of July...

... you start to realize that the light and long summer days are getting shorter again and that it is earlier dark in the evenings. Its the time to lit the first candles and although there is still one month of real summer left, first thoughts are wandering to all the colder months of the year, when its snowing every day in the Canadian capital. So, just fight the dark winter thoughts and read a book..


... one which I can strongly recommend is 'Daughter of Fortune' from Isabel Allende, about a brave girl, who is traveling from Chile to California during the time of the gold rush in the 1840s. ... :-)

*Blush*

Most of the time our couch in the living room is white.. but sometimes when the practical Ikea-slipcovers are getting washed... our second cover (which is not matching to the rest of the orange-off white-blue room) has its grand entrance for a couple of days... and makes our couch the shining red center of the room... (which is of course not very practical, when you have white cats - with white cat hairs... =)

Work in Progress

Once it was a T-Shirt of my husband, but thats already so long ago, that I was not even able to find any picture of him, wearing it. Then it was laying around for some time just in a closet and finally I recycled it for my purpose.
First, the T-Shirt got cut into many different pieces and out of these pieces I was able to sew a small bag for me.



This bag is having the perfect size, when I m walking outside with my cats every morning, because I just need my keys, the camera and a handful of peanuts to feed the squirrels.

Raw Sugar Café

Recently a friend introduced me to the Raw Sugar Café in Ottawas Chinatown and immediately I fell in love with the interior decoration.
No chair seemed to have a matching partner, all colors, styles and materials were happily mismatched. Even every table had a different design. The whole café had so many nice and interesting details, that I just want to show a few: ...




...to pull all these pieces together, the café owners used a very dark wood flooring and one main wall color, with only a few accent colors on smaller part of the walls.
But, in a Café it is of course not just about the design, I can also recommend the nice cakes and tea, as well... (try the Lemon Tarte ... :-)

This week I love...

...the two nicely yellow chairs from the etsy-store of Hazel & Hunter.
They are old traditional chair models and still the colors and the print of the fabrics makes them look quite modern and able to adjust to a modern environment as well as to a traditional one...

... and the wonderful royal, blue chair from Coastal Living Chic which shop happens to be on etsy, too....

Pick of the week

Today, I want to present three of my latest bought/found items:

They are all coming from the Value Village in Ottawa, where I have been on one weekend for long hours and with all the colors and motifs they seem to celebrate and show the summer with flowers, colors and holiday dreams...


The first item is an already often washed and therefore nicely soft vintage fabric with an old fashioned flower print. I liked the delicate flowers and colors, which are not that shining any longer because of the previous washings.



The blue dress made it very fast from a found to a favorite piece.
The material looks like as if you could also make aprons out of it, but the cloth is just perfect for hot summer days. So, all small flowers come to me... :-)



The last item is a colorful candle holder, handmade from Mexico.
Normally I don't like to buy other peoples souvenirs in the thrift stores (I prefer buying it, when I'm in the country by myself) but I wasn't able to resist the hand painted flowers, the shining bright colors and the interesting form of this 2 $ item... and so it found its new place in the book shelf and hopefully my cats are not deciding that it is their latest toy... .

Splash of Color

Recently, I found these three pictures for a nice table setting in a book from 1967 and liked them immediately...
They are looking so bright and colorful in their shining blue, orange and red and seem to fit perfectly for a summer garden party... So don't be afraid, to overload your table with patterns... just have a look in the garden, it is right now overloading with flowers, as well.... :)

Work in Progress

I was working on and struggling with this picture for a longer time (thats why it is still with snow)... and also had a break in between, where I finished something else... But, now it is ready and it is my first real Canadian picture...
I m still not that happy with it... for example the house looks a bit like falling to one side, but finally I decided that it is enough and that everything which I'm trying to make better, trying to add more and more color f.e., could actually also make it worse. ... and so I stopped and here it is.. :-) Lets see how my next Canadian motif will be and maybe I will become better in time.

Recent Finds from the Thrift Stores

In the last couple of weeks, I made a few pictures of new old furniture, old fabrics and other finds in the second hand stores of Ottawa.. and I want to share some of the pictures with you.. when I only would have a little bit more place in the house, I guess some of these pieces already would have found a new home with me... :-)

Summer Board

My Corkboard changed its colors and is now shining in white, blue and beige.. the typical beach colors... lets see how long it will stay like this now... .

This week I love....

... the pillows from lamadesign.com... I've liked the page already for a while.. but today I want to show some of the pillows which I like a lot..
They are not fitting into my decoration right now.. but somehow I will find a way to change that and have my own black and white corner in the home... just for pillows. ;-)