Friday, 27 September 2019

Newly Listed: Antique Wire Egg Basket


Antique Wire Egg Basket, Farmhouse Basket, Rustic Shabby Kitchen Home Decor 1920s - 1930s by StarHomeStudio
Farmhouse Print or Canvas Art, Rustic Home Decor Print, Bird's Nest Print, Shabby by LisaRussoFineArt
Chicken Art, Farm Photography, Farmhouse Decor, Shabby Chic Art, Rustic Country Kitchen Art by StephanieSchamban
Feather art, Rustic Farmhouse decor, nature print, bird feathers, feather art print, wall art decor by semisweetstudios

Tuesday, 24 September 2019

Get the Look Vol.17


I love these wooden panels, it gives so much depth and warmth. But most are pretty much the same as they are new. We had a beautiful old chest, while the front was in pretty good condition with gorgeous hand-carved wood, the rest of the chest was made with cheaper wood and wasn't in good condition at all. So I removed the rest of the chest and made it ready for hanging. The original keyhole is perfect to hang it.



I love unusually shaped furniture pieces. The one on the top is a small new piece with fun shapes.
Our coffee table will fit much more stuff, plus it is an original mid-century piece made with reverse painted glass, bamboo and metal in a very cool shape.



Elephants in Hinduism and the Indian Culture are a symbol of intellectual strength and sturdy earthy mental strength. It is a sacred animal and is considered the representation or the living incarnation of Ganesha, the elephant-headed deity riding a mouse. Therefore there are many elephant sculptures from India in the shape of elephants, often very decorated. The one on the top is a beautiful new piece. The elephant available in our shop is from the 1970s entirely handmade.



Some collect teapots or teacups, but there are also tea stainer collections. Aren't these adorable?
We are selling an instant collection of vintage kitchen tin pieces.



I love the colors and quality of 1950s toys, the blue, turquoise, pink and red combo is still pretty today. We have a whole stash of old new stock handmade doll chairs from the 1950s, very primitive but pretty.



I love earthy handmade pottery, love the combination on these shelves with pottery, plants, wood and stones. I think this clay vase would fit right in.


Thursday, 19 September 2019

Newly Listed: Bird Bag


Woodland Bird Bag - Golden Oriole, Vintage Embroidery, Blue Green Colors, Patchwork and Leather Bag by StarBags
Completely coincidental: the bag we've made has the exact kind of bird as my new friend (hope she's doing alright). The embroidery is vintage, funny how things fall in place sometimes.

Tuesday, 17 September 2019

Kitchen Update


I finally got a little visible progress in the kitchen.


Removing the protective stickers already helped a lot.


The table is another project that I hope to finish this week. It is a gorgeous table which was our table in the Netherlands but it has been in the house in Kütahya for 22 years to it got some water damage. You'll see soon how that turns out.


I bought a special tile paint, it shines like tile and keeps the texture.


Ahhhh so much better, wish I had cleared things up before taking the photo but I had been painting for 4+ hours by then and just wanted to go home. The kitchen feels much more like it belongs to us. The shiny handles wouldn't be our choice either but we can live with those :) In the future we want to move the kitchen to a room that for now will be our office, a closed kitchen will be more practical with the dogs, but that is a big (expensive) change that will have to wait some years. The kitchen is also not designed very practical, I think there is like 8-9 meters between the fridge and the stove :D The kitchen is the only place we are not happy with of the house, but it is huge so that makes it up quite a bit.

Thursday, 12 September 2019

Making Friends


3 days ago I found this little guy in our garden, while it tried to get away from me it clearly could not fly. I could barely grab it before one of our dogs got hold of it, our spaniels have never hunted in their lives but they do unfortunately have a hunter instinct.


Not sure what to do with it I brought it between our two front doors, safe from our dogs but also a door between it and the street cats!
I brought some water and seeds but when I cam back for it an hour later 2 cats were looking at it right in front of our gate, and our dogs were looking at it from the other door, the poor thing didn't know what to do.


Fearing that the cats would make a meal out of it as it was already dark and they were lurking at it. I brought it to our laundry shed. Put a towel in one of the laundry baskets along with water and seeds and it slept in there the first night. The next day I had to go very early to the new house so I couldn't take it anywhere but I checked on it and it was now standing on a handle.


The next day I read that a broken wing could take anywhere from 2-4 weeks to heal and as our situation was not ideal I rang our vet who informed me that the directorate of national parks takes in birds and other wildlife and brings it to vets, so I brought it there, this is their lovely office, right in the park.


I had made a box with a wooden stick and air holes for better transportation, I hope it will recover fully. I still have no idea what kind of bird it is, if anyone knows, I'd love to know as well :) Thanks to someone on Instagram I now know that it is a female (or immature male) Eurasian Golden Oriole.


Tuesday, 10 September 2019

Progress, Progress


It has been quiet on our blog, things have been hectic with the moving. It doesn't helps that the houses are not in the same city, everything takes a bit more time, but slowly we are making progress. In the meantime I did manage to finish these three chairs of which I had shown the first a while back.


As for the house, a big ugly hole is now filled with an induction cooking plate. The tiles I'm planning to paint tomorrow, I have washed them and applying painters tape, so I'm ready to go and get rid of these busy tiles.



In our basement we made a storage room for all our big products, we built those metal storage shelves and have been filling up our car every trip, I have been carrying around so much lately that I think I sport about as much as a fitness fanatic :D too bad that I'm not losing any weight!


We got a warm water heater, warm water is always handy, and the bathrooms are slowly getting cleaner too :)


The biggest adventure as of late was getting an electricity line.


There was, of course, electricity at the house but the previous owner did not go through the hassle to have the electricity go from industrial (which is used while building a home) to regular. It is costly and an absolute bureaucracy and all-around pain.


On Monday our electrician called that everything would be at the house the next morning at 9 am. To my surprise when I got there, half of it was indeed there (I expected everything to be late). The electrician and half of the materials had arrived and about 15 minutes later a tiny excavator arrived to dig a ditch for the electricity line. 2 seconds later it stopped working. It looked antique and after 1 hour and 15 minutes of watering, oiling and staring at it they gave up and it went away and another one was called.


At just after 11 so 2 hours in, a second excavator started.


And hit a water line, right away...even though we had asked the water company where the line was, but turned out that we were not correctly informed.


Everywhere became muddy but I told the excavator guy to continue (they are paid per hour and the clock was ticking). Knowing that the water company wouldn't come straight away to fix the pipe.

Lovely waterworks in the meantime.


Although a bit messy and muddy things went along.


While the electrician laid down the line, sand and such I wanted the excavator to do some other work while waiting, again time was ticking and I wanted to make good use of it, but very soon he got a flat tire :D


And my shoes were feeling odd, when I looked down I saw that they got very wide as they were completely falling apart, I hadn't used them for a while and the glue had dried, at the end of the day I hardly had any shoes on, it was funny but very inconvenient :D


After almost 2 hours, at 1:15 right after lunch the water company arrived. The favorite job of all Turks is to watch 1 person work while at least 4 other watch how he works :) But things get eventually done, you just have to be chill (it took us a while to get used to this utter mess but that is how life is here). And if you show impatience or annoyance, it will just take longer.



The excavator guy arrived shortly after that with his fixed tire, he was gone for two hours (not on my bill) and it actually turned out in my favor as he normally would have to wait for the water company, so a lucky break for us.


The road was at the end of the day better than it was before, everything got done, it took longer than anticipated but all is well that ends well. It will take about 2 months (!!) for all the paper work to be done to get the electricity in my name, crazy.