As promised, I went through my collection of work clothes to make inventory of possible outfits. Upfront, here is a picture of many of the items I currently own together in one picture:
As you can see, so far I have lots of black and gray clothes, but not that much white or blueish items. Either way, the collection of skirts, dresses, shoes, blouses and shirts already provides for a whole bunch of outfits.
Here are a few examples of outfits I can create from the items above:
First, three outfits using the gray knee-long skirt.
Now, an outfit using my black dress:
Finally, two outfits utilizing my black knee-long skirt:
I went into my family`s basement the other day and found a few pieces of furniture that are no longer used and which I will be able to take to our new apartment.
First of all, there is my old desk, which is made of solid wood and still in great condition:
Since every piece of furniture is parked in between a whole bunch of other things it was a bit difficult to get adequate pictures. Either way, here is my old desk. It has 3 drawers on the left and a door with deep storage on the right.
Since it is solid wood, I might stain the desk. However, since it is so old, I also might as well paint it and give it some pretty new knobs. At this point everything is still undecided but I will keep you posted once I update the piece.
Another item I will be able to bring to our apartment for free is the old table from the breakfast nook - also a solid wood piece:
As you can see, the table has beat up legs and had to suffer through a flooded basement a few year back. Other than that I plan to achieve a two-toned effect with table. The top will be stained dark and nice rustic-looking and the legs will go off-white. I plan to find parson´s chairs at a good price for these and I already found a few sites online which offer decent prices on quality chairs.
Finally I also took pictures of old dining chairs which I might work on as an alternative. I am not too sure yet if I want these or not but maybe you can give me your opinion whether they are worth the effort of recovering the seats:
We´ll see. They kind of look hard to take apart so I am not sure to start the recovering. But it just might be worth a try.
Just about to start a new job here in Germany, I have been playing around with ideas for filling up my work wardrobe. The thought of having to buy a whole bunch of new outfits left me nervous, as I didn`t bring too many items with me from the United States (due to my previous job´s dress code, I had nothing but black items and I didn`t want to waste important suitcase space with all of those black suits).
I started searching around on youtube for tips on how to create a wardrobe with many outfits and low upfront cost. After watching many videos I stumbled upon this one which seems to be an excellent start:
For those of you who can´t watch the video, here is a short explanation:
1) Select 4 colors, each of which can be combined with all of the other 3 (e.g. Black, Gray, White, Red)
2) You need 5 tops in the selected colors
3) You need 4 bottoms in the selected colors
4) You need 1 good jacket (blazer)
5) Additionally: Black Pumps and a Trench Coat
Now, you will be able to basically combine any of the tops with any of the bottoms, either with or without the blazer jacket.
Great! That works for me. Since I love to wear teal and blues, I created a moodboard with clothes in the color scheme Black - Beige - White - Teal:
I have to admit I chose more than 10 items, but I can already see how verstile a wardrobe like this would be. Most of the bottoms can be combined with any of the tops and shoes. There won´t be much of a problem when finding something to wear to work because everything works together.
Here are a few possible combinations drawn fromt the board above:
The white shirt can be tugged into the skirt and worn with or without the jacket. Pumps and a cute purse complete the outfit.
Here I combined a black skirt, with matching pumps and blazer. To add some color, I matched the basic items with a colorful blue shirt and teal purse.
Last weekend I spent some time going through my own pile of clothes to take invetory. I realized quickly that I have a few gray items but nothing in beige, so I didtched the beige and decided instead on this scheme:
Black - Light Gray - White - Teal/Blue
On yesterdays trip to the mall, I found some great items following my new color scheme and tomorrow morning I will work on creating a few outfits with the things I already own.
We had beautiful weather in Germany the last couple of weeks, and everybody wanted to spend as much time outside as possible.
This included several bicycle tours and visits to the ice cream place.
On Saturday we went to the close-by "Möhnesee", which is a relatively large lake in the area with beautiful bike-ways along the water.
It was just the right temeperature to ride our bikes and the tour was just fun.
One of the many spots we had a break and took pictures.
Towards the end of our 20 km bike ride we crossed one of the bridges that spans accross the lake and found this:
Can you see the locks that are all over the protective fence?
Another close-up:
People attached those locks with their names engraved on them. These locks were all over the protective fence and I thought this was a very cute idea. Instead of writing stuff with pens all over the beautiful brick-tower, people got creative and added this fun little detail to the bridge.
Imagine going back every once in a while and searching for "your" lock!
Anyhow, welcome to fall, apple pies, cooler temperatures, fallen leaves, and the return of hot chocolate. I am so excited!
Yesterday one of my neighbours went to Ikea (which is now about an hour from where I live in Germany) and I went with her just for fun and some daydreaming. We are still about a month away before moving into our own place, so purchasing anything at this point just would make sense. Nonetheless, this last trip to Ikea got my head spinning and dreaming. I loved the incorporation of purple and rose colors in their presentenation rooms so much, that I made up my own moodboard witha combination of purple and gray:
I think that this color combination with a purple accent wall and the remainder in a creme-tone would create a warm and inviting space.
Edit:
I was completely bored today, so I decided to see how different colors can affect the feel of the same base room.
Here is the same moodboard, but this time incorporating an olive-green:
And now the same thing with navy blue:
What do you think? I believe this color switch can make it pretty obvious how two or three small changes can update an entire room.
Enjoy the rest of your Sundays. I´ll enjoy the hearty veggie and bacon muffins my sister made.
This weekend one of our neighbour villages celebrated 1000 years since they were first mentioned. Everybody had done their best to create a great party. With a focus on keeping things as they were in past centuries, they had organized a fair as in the Middleage. It was great. There was so much to look at, many of the inhabitants were dressed in midieval costumes and you could see the effort that had gone into every single detail.
Here is the clown that greeted us right at the entrance to the market.
And here is the globe that became part of the village decoration:
There is my son listening to the backpipe players.
There were a lot of little tents from different artisan trades to look at, such as shoemakers, ropemakers, carpenters, etc.
My favorite must have been the potter, since I couldn´t get my eyes off his selection of pieces. They were just beautiful.
I ended up taking home two items, a flower vase and a plate for fruit or cookies. These were the first two items I purchased in the pursuit of re-starting an entire household. Being that they were handmade from a local artist, I believe they make a fitting pair of firsts.
I love that I could use the caraffe either for water or juice, or maybe even as a charming flower pot.
Have you ever grown tomatoes? Usually they need a lot of son, a lot of watering, but at the same time they can't stand water on the stem and leaves.
So, with the desire to create some type of flexibel structure my dad created a little cart a few years ago:
This is kind of what it looks like. It's a slatted board on wheels. Each spring my dad plants his tomatoes in buckets that fit on the base. In those buckets he puts spiraled metal sticks that assists the plants in growing.
Above you can see the base with its buckets and below you can see the spiraled metal sticks.
This simple structure has proven itself time and again. Whenever the sun comes out my dad can push the tomatoes out onto the terrace where they grow best. If he knows it is going to rain, he can quickly park the plants under the porch.
*BTW, still no camera here. I am using the camera that is on my laptop, so my angles might be a little off
* Also that's not a corner of my face on the second photo trying to see if the computer was getting a good picture ;)
