…for decorating and other things related to the end-of-year holidays. I put up the winter trees. One on the small metal table and one in the corner. And, as is customary, I put an angel at the top 😀 The tree on the small table also houses the prezzies and the coffee table has its own little winter forest.
Today, Mom and I also wrote the holiday cards.
I love The Martian. I went to see it with Gert yesterday and it’s a great movie. I found it to be very realistic, in so far that is possible. Matt Damon portrays a very ingenious and likable main character. It’s intriguing to see him struggle in trying to survive on a hostile planet like Mars. I definitely want to see this again, and I can’t wait to read the book.
Today I went to pick up my new folding bike. I’d been thinking about getting one for a while now to help me when I travel to people or places that are far from public transport points. I can’t always walk those ends and I also don’t always want to rely on others to pick me up or drive me. With a folding bike I can take, for example, a bus or train and then bike the rest to go see Eva instead of hoping she can pick me up.
I started looking at Marktplaats last week for a cheap, but good, folding bike. I bid on one on offer a town over but got outbid. That turned out to be my luck as I came across a beautiful bike. One of those tiny models, in red and grey. And even better, it was in perfect condition. The previous owner used it for her commute and had it serviced every year. Because of a job change she didn’t need it any longer so she was looking to sell. I bid, and it got accepted.
It was a bit further out of the way than the first one, so Mom drove me there to pick it up. We made a first stop in the town before to go to the Action. I’m in need of cake plates for birthdays and such. I’d checked at Blokker and online but couldn’t find some that were both pretty and affordable. I need about twelve so no way I’m buying sets of four or six for € 15,00 – € 20,00.
The Action came through as it usually does. I found gorgeous glass plates with a design in them that made them almost look like crystal. And, even better, they also had serving plates in the same design. So I got me twelve cake plates and two different sizes of the serving plates. I love pretty things 🙂
Then we went on the pick up the bike. It was just as cute in real life as on its picture, and it fit in the back of the car perfectly.
Once home, I took it for a little practice round around the block. It’s felt a bit odd at first. It’s so small and the front wheel and handle react very fast. Especially compared to the heavy front end on my regular bike (I have a crate on it). It’s low enough so I can put my feet on the ground, though, so if I need to pull an emergency stop, I can.
Later, I made a new centerpiece for the coffee table to celebrate the fall. A good end to a good day!
When you move, there’s always things you need. Or want. So today, Mom and I took a trip to Ikea.
I always feel like a kid in a theme park when I go to Ikea. I take the long route through the entire store.
Look at everything, play with things, try out stuff. Mom is less fond of the place, but she goes along with me. And occasionally tries out a chair.
We also always eat in the restaurant. It’s not a true Ikea trip without meat balls or chicken sate. Plus I love the parking spaces for the shopping carts.
I got a tall black-brown vase for the front window sill and coloured sticks to put in it. Also candle sticks, a basket, two small trash bins, a poster frame and various small knick knacks.
This trip also served as an inspiration trip for things I (might) want later on. The red flower wall sticker would match the reddish accent colour I have planned for the dining area very nicely. I don’t know if I’ll end up with the actual wall space for it. That depends on what kind of cabinet of sideboard thing I get for that area and where I put it exactly.
The living room needs a hanging lamp to replace the current ceiling light. That one is too small for the scale of the room and has no personality. I’m looking for something that evokes nature but is still fairly smooth. I’m not looking for something to hold dust 😀
I also want (and need) extra storage in the bathroom. I’m looking into bamboo as a main colour/material and this rack would be ideal above the toilet. Unlike the other house, the tank of the toilet hasn’t been hidden in a low wall that I can use instead.
Now that most of the boxes have been unpacked and things are mostly where they’re supposed to be, I’m starting to make my ideas and plans for this house more concrete. I can’t do all of it at once, or right now because I don’t have the money or the space for it, but I also don’t want to rush it. I want to take my time and get a feel for this place and for what my personal style really is. In my first house I just bought whatever I could find that was cheap and useful. So I ended up with a lot of Ikea and a lot of hand-me-downs and thrifted stuff. And those where then often items that were okay, but not really things I loved.
Then, over the past two years in the previous house, I started acquiring furniture pieces that I loved. I bought a sofa set (Ikea’s Ektorp), a bed (from the local hardware/interior store) and drawers for the bedroom (from Ikea’s Hemnes series). As I did so, I realised my style had also changed. From being really into white and light wood and fairly straight lines with country elements to a more rustic style and darker woods with nature elements.
I now have a whole new house to work with and shape to my wishes. I’m very pleased with the bones (layout, light floor, dark wood kitchen) and I have ideas for the various rooms, but I’m taking my sweet time to see if it will stick. I plan to get a lot of things from Marktplaats and/or thrift stores, so that demands patience any way.
Last week, I struck gold, twice.
I was browsing Marktplaats when I stumbled across this really pretty low metal table. It was engraved with fancy patterns and looked like a sort of big display dish on legs. I knew I had fallen for it when I e-mailed the seller asking how sturdy it was. After getting her answer (pretty sturdy) I bid €25 and it was accepted. Friday after work, I headed to her work place, where we’d agreed to do the handover, and soon I was in the train on my way home with a small table.
It was kinda tricky getting it home while riding my bike as it was too heavy to drag alongside me, so I had to support it on one hip and hold the top 😀 I’m sure it must have looked funny to passers by to see me occasionally struggling with the wind. I made it safely home, though, and after cleaning and thinking about where to put it. I ended up with this. I’m not quite happy with the styling yet (I want a different plant and a different pot) but for now it will do.
I’d also been thinking about what to do for a coat rack. My entry way has a recessed area before the electricity closet and the toilet. I have a free standing coat rack (which is awesome, I must say). However, I use the recessed area for one of the two litter boxes (the other one is in front of the electricity closet). This means I have no space for the free standing one. I could conceivably build a platform above the box and put it up there, but then it’s too tall.
This means I will have to use the wall. But I don’t want any random coat rack, or even just hooks on the wall. I want a little shelf to put something pretty on, and maybe keys or something. And I want pretty hooks. And I think I do want a little platform thingy above the litter box. Maybe to put a box with scarves and hats on, or to sit down and take my shoes off. *gears are turning*
I decided I wanted a somewhat rustic looking piece of wood to put vintage-type hooks in and then hang that on the wall. A visit to the local hardware/interior store, however, did not help. They had pretty, rustic, wood. Which was way too thick and heavy. They had thinner wood, but not wide enough, and the pieces that were wide enough, were too thin…
Then, the week before last, I went to the Action. And there I found the perfect thing. A ready made little shelf, with a sort of vaguely white washed look, and the cutest shaped wooden supports. Immediately I saw the potential, so I bought two. One to just hang on the wall as a shelf. The other to take apart.
I spent last week looking for hooks. At first I kept on the vintage tour, but it was hard to find something that looked like what I had in mind. I ended up browsing Bol.com, as I do, and decided to see what hooks they might have. After a few pages of fairly standard ones, I came across these and had to have them. I figured five hooks would be enough, so I settled on one set of three, and two singles.
The trio of hooks looking like branches are these, from Puhlmann. The other two are from The Zoo.
This morning, after I was done working, I decided it was time to build the coat rack. I had removed the supports from one of the shelves a few days before, and moved the hangers from the back of the supports to the back of the shelf. Last night I made small indentations where I wanted the various hooks. All I had left to do, was screw them in. The hooks have a fairly large screw sticking out of them at the back so I just started manually pushing down while turning them until they stuck enough to stop wiggling. Then I could turn faster and within ten or so minutes, I had all five securely screwed in. Except the deer. Due to some paint left overs on the top end of the screw, it wasn’t as solid as the rest. Fortunately it was nothing a quick unscrew, a few drops of superglue and a rescrew couldn’t fix.
So now I have a coat rack that is almost ready to be hung. That fairly large screw on the back of the hooks is of such length they are all sticking out at the back. I’ll have to go find my metal saw to get rid of that, and then it can go up the wall. The shelf is ready as is, all I’m gonna do is screw in a hook or two on the bottom to hang keys on.
Monday I saw Man from U.N.C.L.E. with Gert. It’s a fantastic movie, I love it 😀 It’s campy, and a glorious throwback to the sixties. In terms of plotting and general vibe it reminds me some of Kingsman, but then with Americans and in the past. It earned itself an immediate spot on my want-on-disc list.
After this we went straight on to The King’s Garden (aka A Little Chaos). This is a period film about the gardens of Versailles. It features Kate Winslet as a female landscape artist who gets hired to design and build a part of the gardens. She has to face her own insecurities, contempt and sabotage by other male landscapers and navigate the budding romance with the head landscape artist who happens to be married. It’s a cute film, with very good locations and a very nice Alan Rickman as King Louis.
Wednesday it was time to see The Fantastic Four with Nienke. It’s a fairly bland movie. I liked that the way they got their powers was different but other than that… I like the 2005 movie better and that one isn’t good either.
Today was market day in town so I took a gander with Mom. Bought some jeans on sale for €5, which was a steal. It’s a nice model with some flare around the ankles and a three-button close instead of a zipper. I also got this cute, light blue, stoneware pitcher. It’ll look nice with some flowers in the spring, or as a general decoration in the bathroom once I have adequate furnishings there.
At the end of the afternoon, Eva and Jarig came by with Feije. We briefly strolled around the market some more and then headed to La Sicilia for dinner. We ended the day with a quick cup of tea at home before they left for The Farm.
This Sunday should be fun as well, it’s my cousin’s baby shower 🙂
Spring is officially here so that means taking down the winter decorations and putting up spring ones.
Both trees are up now, it looks grand 🙂 Even better that last year, then we couldn’t fit both trees in the living room, so we had the other in the hall.
M
onkey also approves of the tree, he fits nicely with the winter picture 😀
I’ve also, over the last few days, put the final touches on the plans for christmas dinner so I now have a menu, a shopping list and a timeline of preparations. Bring on the 25th!
In the living room we have a number of base decorations that generally stay the same throughout the year. Plants/florals in the window sill, candles beside the TV, those things. Besides that, I make seasonal display things for on the coffeetable and a (fake) floral arrangement in a vase. As with the seasons, this changes roughly every three months.
I have several plates, trays, bowls, vases, jars etc.. I construct these in, but nothing a bit taller and enabling layering. So I’ve been wanting a tiered serving tray or something like it. But, picky as I am, I wanted a wooden one, or maybe a vintagey metal one, anything but one of those standard porcelain actual serving trays. And let those be the only ones I have been able to find lately…
So I was thinking what I was going to do for the winter piece without the tiered tray and not really getting any inspiration. I made my autumn piece in a long, white, wooden tray. It would be ideal for winter, but I couldn’t make it work 🙁
I’m just realising I never showed the autumn piece. Probably because I made it around the time Captain came, and I was kinda busy with that 🙂 So here it is.
Anyway, back on track. Last weekend I was at my cousin’s birthday and she had exactly what I had been looking for on her table: two tiers, unfinished wood, and about 50 cm or so high (including handle).
As luck would have it, she had been given it by another cousin. Which meant, it was current, and probably still available! I asked my other cousin where she got it, and made a mental note to check it out.
Wednesday, during grocery shopping, we made a stop at the store where it came from. At first I couldn’t find. I went through the whole store and was afraid they might be sold out when I suddenly spotted one last one on top of the shelves.
Once home, I pulled out my winter stuff and general decoratives and it just clicked. 🙂
I’m still looking for a, slightly smaller, vintagy metal one for variation, but this is an excellent start.
Quiet start of the free Friday. Kim came by later in the morning for tea and book talk/borrowing. In the afternoon it was time for singing class. I’ve been growing frustrated with singing the last few months since I’m on T. I definitely notice vocal changes and it messes with my ability to sing in that I can’t reach what I could before and in the lows it doesn’t do what I want it to do yet.
I finally expressed (some) of this during class. We decided to focus more on excercises and easy stuff to ease the frustration and such. We’ll see how this goes.
Even so, I’m not sure I want to continue with this beyond this year. I like singing very much, and I learn a lot, but I’m just not that invested and I notice I’m loosing my desire to sing. I don’t sing as much freely anymore, and when I do work on stuff for class, I’m so focused on matching the timing and such rather than being in the song. I’ve always liked either singing along with the artist, or doing it by myself without music best anyway. I’m in it for the lyrics mainly 🙂
Saturday morning Mom and I went to Uithuizen for groceries and some other errands. Bought some decorative stuff at the Action and various tasty things. Then we went to the florist to get a piece for my aunt and uncle’s fiftieth anniversary. We’d been invited to the celebratory dinner that evening. I also bought a beautiful fake floral arrangement. Big blue vase with various forms of greenery in the top and some twigs.
At the end of the afternoon, the Parents came back to the house to pick me up and we drove to Assen to eat at Yankee Doodle. It was a very fun evening. I hadn’t seen most of my cousins in quite a few years, so it was really nice catching up with them and trying to figure out which kid went with which cousin since they were wee ones (or not even born) when I last saw them. The youngest of the kids nicely had everyone dancing to her tune as most everyone ended up being face painted. Don’t I make a pretty tiger?
Today I slept in and finished the little explosion book I’ve been making of Tessa. I wanted a photo book of her for myself too, ever since I made Mom and Dad the giant ass one I gave them for St. Christmas. But instead of doing another print on demand thing, I decided to make one and settled on the format of an explosion book. This is made from three squares of paper and ends up being this cleverly folded thing. There’s an excellent tutorial in my pinterest pins somewhere. Ah, here. Watched The Little Mermaid and The Emperor’s New Groove while working on it. The Emperor’s New Groove was funnier than I was expecting, good movie.
It wasn’t very busy at work on Friday, so when I got there a wee bit before twelve to start my shift at noon, I figured I’d ask for leave. I had some reporting stuff to do later on, so I just asked for leave until 16:00, which I got.
Then Nienke suggested we go to the movies. So she asked for leave, and then Thomas was game for movie as well. We harassed traffic for quick answers, which we got, and off we went to the cinema. We decided on Need for Speed which was actually a pretty good movie. There was a decent plot, nice actors and very pretty (and fast) cars.
Afterward we went back to work until the end of our shifts, it was hilarious seeing everyone’s faces when we showed up again after leaving earlier 😀
Saturday we went to Ikea, really early in the morning. I got the big Hemnes cabinet along with some fabric baskets to put inside it. When we got to the kitchen part, I fell for the dishes there. I’d been bored with my regular whites anyway so I got new plates and bowls in dark purple and faded green. Also two picture frames to display some of the Paul Kidby prints I got as a Kickstarter reward. After getting home I spent the rest of the day building the bloody cabinet. By nightfall it was ready so I could put stuff in it. It will probably take a little bit of getting used too, as it’s a wee bit deeper than I anticipated/remembered. But it does already look much better than before. It’s real nice to have a proper place to spread out the altar.
This morning in Pilates class we got a new series of excercises, ouch! After lunch I removed all the winter decorations still in place and put up the spring stuff. It looks nice 🙂