Time to Celebrate

Today is my Birthday, and I picked myself a pretty black and white virtual cake from WildOrchidBaking to match our new furniture piece :)
The last finishing touches were done yesterday evening, even though it is a small piece it took many many days, but the results make me giggle.

But I am jumping to the results, lets start at the beginning...

It all started with these two abandoned ugly ducks. Clearly water damaged, and in general sad state.
Also the structure was wonky. We decided to make of the pretty front feet an ottoman, the back feet have no carvings. So two chairs would become one ottoman.

Pulling them apart turned out to be a challenge. The stuff that came out of the chairs was pretty disgusting, fabric pieces, straw, cotton etc and all in a far from fresh state.

We were left with this. The original idea was to make it square, by using two piece of the original wood connected together (a bit hard to explain). But then we would cut a bit of the carved wood, the parts that are sticking above would be all sawed off. Eventually we thought to just keep the wood as it is, and making the seat rectangular and turning the weird sticking out pieces into arm rests.

I think you are now starting to see where we are going at, still butt-ugly but a cool shape, right :)?
We used the original corners to make it stable, this little chair has so much extra stuff for stability, you could dance on it.

The pieces of wood used for the arm rests are upcycled from an old shelf,

After the added webbing it is starting to look like something.

And after many hours of scraping and sanding the ugly dark varnish you can finally appreciate the carvings, which are much prettier and more dimensional than we first thought.

Then I painted it, which I had shown last week. The painting and varnishing took me a full 3 days.

The color choice of the paint work was because of this beautiful vintage embroidery. It is completely embroidered and has gorgeous colors and texture.

Doesn't make these colors you super cheerful?

For the additional unexpected finishing touch a black and white double piping, which is really frustrating to sew and staple but gives a beautiful finishing.

And here it is (she said proudly), it is fun, colorful, cheerful and 90% made of upcycled/ recycled/ vintage materials, yaaay!

Stripes, flowers, lots of colors what is not to love about this?

I think this would be great as a vanity chair in the bedroom, or in the hallway or in the living room. Could even be used as piano chair, but most of all this is a statement piece and should be seen :)

Can't wait to paint the ugliness out of another chair :)

The chair is available at StarHomeStudio among others one of a kind furniture pieces.

Happy (4th of) July!

Happy 4th of July to those who celebrate and for those who don't, happy July!
Half of 2016 has already passed, hopefully all of the bad news for the year is behind us (one can dream, right?). The world is a madhouse lately, trying to look on the bright side is essential for (mental) survival, in my opinion.

All we can do is be peaceful, be kind, be calm and carry on.

Work in Progress

With all the sad and dark things going on in the world, it is nice to escape to a peaceful and colorful place by creating. I am painting a sweet little piece of furniture which is basically made from scrap but I will show that in another blog post once the piece is entirely ready as the transformation is quite something and I want to show it completely.

Hoping that July will bring happy news around the world, I think we can all use it these days!

Newly Listed: Sputnik Sea Urchin Necklace

Sputnik Sea Urchin Necklace Sterling Silver Necklace Beach Jewelry, Natural Sea Treasure by StaroftheEast
Autumn Bird Art - Asian Art - Animal Art - Fall - Giclee Print by MaiAutumn
Starfish art, coastal prints, ocean decor, beach wall art, nautical decor, fine art by TheGinghamOwl
NYC Photography, Large Wall Art, New York Art Print, Brooklyn Bridge Photograph by EyePoetryPhotography

A little in between trip

The other day we went to the city Muğla (pronounced as Muhlla). We ourselves live in Marmaris which is in the province of Muğla, the city however is a bit over a 1 hour drive as it is entirely through the mountains.

Even though it is so close we hardly ever go here, when we go somewhere we usually go to the beach on Sundays or once in a while to Izmir or Istanbul for supplies shopping. We went now as we are in the middle of changing cars. Better said for the past 7 months we are trying to decide on which car we should spent our hard earned pennies on, and the ones we mostly like are out of budget lol :)

We were again unsuccessful with the car buying (we still need to sell our old one too), but it was a nice trip and we had some other stuff to do as well.

Muğla is mostly active due to its university which causes for thousands of students to come here. The city itself still has a lot of parts where you can clearly see its naive village beginning and roots which is lovely.

This was funny, 3 guys were around this goat and farmer statue and we discovered that the statue was new and that they were holding it for the concrete to dry :)

The typical Muğla houses are with lots of wooden details, including the inside ceilings.

This shop was unfortunately closed in the afternoon but I managed to take a picture. It is a cologne shop but a very old fashioned ones and it looks like a vintage lab :)

A shabby music store, it looks like the shop owner either just cleaned the floors and did not want people to mud the floors, or he was gone somewhere and the mop was a way of showing that he was coming back soon (most likely the second scenario).

It was extremely hot, as it has been the past few weeks, and we did not walk around much as our brains were boiling. The shady parks all over towns were much appreciated especially with this weather.

Hopefully soon the comparing of car models will be over, I never thought that buying a car would be so tiring :)

Garden Projects

Just before things got a mess and hectic we had some garden projects done. This is between the house and the wall between our neighbors, and it is also our front door which you can not see but it is there.

We pass this part of the garden very often but because of the doggies we never were able to plant anything as they love digging at particular this part of the garden. There were always holes, we put pots on the earth but they just dug around them.

We finally bought some low fences and planted hydrangeas. It is the perfect spot for them as hardly any sun comes in this part of the garden which is very rare around here as we have such long, hot and sunny Summers.

Shortly after planting them we had to go to Spain, I was afraid that they would not survive it but luckily this year Summer arrived a little late and mildly and they survived the week without water, yaaay!

We always wanted to have hydrangeas there but they are pretty expensive in our floral shop. But then I scored them for less than 1/4 of the price at a farmer's market so I could buy 8 of them for less than I would have paid for 2 in our town, and they are actually better too so I was thrilled :)

Remember the path that we made during the Winter? It really made things easier. No more muddy feet while going to the shed which is our laundry room, and also no more water goes to waste as it all goes to the plants now. However the left side of the path was too narrow to mow and I thought it would be fun to have some plants there. With again the help of the low fences to prevent the doggies from digging, they love digging up freshly planted plants, a cute corner emerged. Once things are full grown it will look better but still I am happy with the results :)

With a tall pot and a plate on top we also made a bird bath/ drinking place which is a success as we have birds visiting us throughout the day to have a drink which is lovely to watch.

My succulent collection has also grown lately, mostly by propagating the existing ones. I love this corner :)

Usually most people think that planting and gardening is for Spring but you can actually continue throughout the Summer till early Fall with most plants as long as you water them enough they will be fine. Do you love working with dirt and plants?

Newly Listed: Green Seaglass Earrings

Green Seaglass Earrings, Bottle Green Anemone Earrings, Little Studs with Sea Tumbled Glass by StaroftheEast
Ginkgo Leaves Photograph Bright Green Nature Gingko Summer Colors Home Decor Print by VictoriaEnglishCharm
With An Air Of Excitement And Mystery - fine art reproduction by obsoleteworld
Landscape photo nature spring dark green blue turquoise tree A quiet place by GinetteBrosseau

Here we are, finally

We have been home since Wednesday, but only now starting to feel human again.
I managed to blog only once from Madrid, after that the Hotel internet became so bad that I could only connect through phone not laptop, and blogging by phone turns out to be a horrible challenge lol.

We have been to Madrid many times, as my mother is Spanish and was raised in Madrid, however this visit was quite miserable but we did our best to make the best out of it.
For starters, this trip was not planned at all and we had to arrange everything 10 days before we had to be there due to family drama. We had huge problems with arranging care for our doggies which eventually was the worse arrangement we ever had. 9 doggies alone all day, a friend was staying at night giving food and water. Considering that our dogs are normally never alone we had them on our minds and were worried all day long until we called in the evening to check in with our friend.

While we were still home arranging our trip to Spain, the doggy care etc, we also got the notice that we are sued by one of our neighbors *sigh*. A terrible man with a terrible attitude wants us to cut down one of our gorgeous trees! Reason: apparently it causes both financial and physical damages! The tree is right near us, never gave any trouble, the neighbor is 50 meters away, and is just being a total pain. So right before we left we had to give a fortune to a lawyer (no way are we going to cut down a healthy 60 year old tree for some jerk) and spent 2 days in his office.
Of course we also had to renew our health insurance right at that time, Friday the 13th btw, and I had to arrange that and pay yet another fortune. When it rains it pours...
So we had a nightmare of 10 days before the trip and of course we had no idea what was waiting for us in Spain...

The trip to Spain was with two planes, with an in between stop in Istanbul we had to get up at 3:30 at night so with barely 2 hours of sleep we arrive exhausted.
Our hotel was right in the center of Madrid, and apparently no one ever sleeps there, people were talking till 8 in the morning, it was crazy!

The first 2 days went to the family issue which was resolved *deep sigh of relief*. On the 3rd day mum started to sneeze, and all other stuff that comes with the flu, at night she had a high fever. The next morning I joined the flu frenzy... We were ill the rest of our stay there, barely sleeping due to noise, coughing, stress and fever we were in a miserable state.

With lots of kleenex (sometimes rolls of toilet paper) we did go to places, we shopped for some therapy and did our best to enjoy Madrid, where it rained which is a rare thing at the end of May.

Love these tiny balconies with little (succulent!) gardens :)

Food is a challenge for me, I am not travel friendly when it comes to food. I am not much of a meat eater, and do not eat any fish, which is in Spain difficult as all meals either have fish or meat. Once the flu kicked in nothing tasted like anything at all. Gosh am I complaining here, sorry for that :)!

At the last day while mum was in bed I met with 3 Etsy girls.

I met with Paloma (Palomilla), Alicia (OddFibulae) and Reyes (ReyesRobledo).
 After the above mentioned days it was nice to sit, chat and laugh. I hope I did not share my flu with any of the girls though! After all the coffee I had that day I could hardly sleep even though I had slept horribly for the past 8 nights I was wide awake.

The next morning we finally went home...
At about 5.30 pm our plane arrived in Istanbul. We had to arrange our second boarding passes as they were unable to give them in Madrid. After arranging all that we still had some time left and went to StarBucks (in the airport) and ordered something. We sat down, with some struggle got online and discovered that Paypal did not get its license for Turkey and starting June 6 (today) there won't be any Paypal in Turkey! The combination of 9 nights of bad sleep, the flu, the travel, the 1 hour time difference and this bad news.... made us miss our plane of 19:50pm, I noticed the time at 19:35 and on the screen it said 'last call' and although we could see the plane they did not take us :( There was a horrible woman with zero (or not even that) empathy not helping at all. The plane which would take us to Dalaman which is a 1.5 hour bus trip from our home left without us. The combination of all the mentioned things above made me totally break down right in the middle of the airport. With tears running down my cheeks we arrange the next plane leaving 4,5 hours later at 00:20 am, 1.5 hours past the time we would normally be home.

The worst part is when you do something stupid you get so mad at yourself. When there is a delay you get annoyed but you can not do anything, but did was the most stupid thing we had ever done and I was so mad and sad.
We were so tired that we made the trip even worse. The only thing that was not out fault was the fact that for about 2 hours there were no announcements about Turkish Airline flights, if there had been we would have heard the calls and we would have made it. We saw others also missing planes, so it was not only our tiredness. At 4 am (5 hours after our initial arrival time) we arrived home where our poor doggies were waiting all alone.
Now after 6 days we are finally becoming human again, still with the flu lingering and tiredness not entirely gone but much better. The Paypal issue has been sort of solved (2checkout and Payoneer) and we are alive and ready to start making pretty stuff again!

Sorry for the ramble, had to empty myself :)