31 July, 2013

Familjfotografering: Sandemar Naturreservat, Sverige


V and I have scheduled a few little sessions this year to keep the rust off our skills. I am excited with what came of it. We tried some new things (like an elaborately planned picnic) and flew by the seat of our pants with others. We met our family in the parking lot of Sandemar Nature Reserve, and hauled all of our gear, food, supplies, etc about half a mile back into the reserve. It was a particularly hot day, and the perfect setting happened to be right on a cow pasture - so the horseflies were out in force. I got bitten somewhere between 6-9 times on my legs and arms. Those little buggers bite right through your clothes!!!

Despite all that, it was really fun hanging out with the K family. Here are some of my favorites from their session!






















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03 July, 2013

Around...

I've been trying to show you around my house now for a while. I showed you the bedroom... then realised our place is pretty small and part of me sort of likes keeping it private in a way. Also, getting nice light in our place is a bit difficult. We live in a basement apartment, and have windows on only half of our walls - so it's pretty dark. Especially since our walls are a dark brown textured fabric - it just DRINKS the light we do get! I will however, show you some things around my house making me happy today

I have phases of writing religiously in my 5 year journal for weeks, then nothing for weeks. I have been writing in this journal for about 19 months now and it's fun seeing what we were up to a year ago on each date (that i wrote). Today I am playing catch up, using the photos in my phone to remember what we were doing on the days I didn't write. I've got a month of catch up to do... 
 ...but I have my tea and a little bit of internet, all while watching Friends on the Xbox. It will be done in no time at all!

This piece of furniture makes me so very happy. We bought it for 15 Swedish Crowns. It was an instant asset to our home, supplementing the storage for our tiny little kitchen that has only two cupboards.
After a few weeks, I decided there was just too much wood in our house (wooden doors and doorframes, windowframes, hardwood floors, and a hardwood ceiling - not to mention our oak table and chairs, coffee table, computer desk...ENOUGH!) and I asked V to end the madness. He painted this piece white for me, and it completely transformed the space is in.

 We recently acquired the light bluey-minty-teal plates from the dump and they added a little more charm, with the bright red tea pot!

'Tis the season for Peonies in Sweden. I never really appreciated the flower until this year for some reason though. They are so lacy and gorgeous! A friend of ours was kind enough to share some flowers off their peony bush with me and these sit in my window.


 These hang on a wall near our fireplace. They were part of a Valentines gift I gave to V. The feathers and the wood round are watercolor paintings. The detail in them is just lovely. They are by an Italian artist, whose work you can see on Etsy, here.


I would love to own about 10 more of her beautiful paintings!!! These were very reasonably priced and they are originals, which is wonderful. I always catch myself looking at them when I'm in this area of our home.

Do you have favorite spaces in your home?


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01 July, 2013

DIY Chair Up-Cycle

I've always wanted to dumpster dive. That probably sounds so weird to some of you lovely readers! But it's true. I only heard about dumpster diving after I left the states. A few of my friends have been dumpster diving in Ohio for quite some time and they've gotten some of the coolest things! Not to mention it supplements the groceries. Seriously! Unopened, one-day expired food! It's amazing!

But this is not about eating food. This is about finding treasures! Our family is big into second hand shopping. We have a few favorite shops, and we all call each other when we go second-handing to tell each other if there's something good somewhere. It's pretty great! Lately though, we've taken to checking out dump sites. It sounds so much worse than it is! Ha! 
People for some reason like to take perfectly good things to place in the woods or maybe near a construction site and leave them. We have found entire leftovers from estate sales and whatnot there - and some really interesting furniture. Last week, we picked up a walnut coffee table that can convert into a full sized dining table. It's really fabulous.
This week, we found 5 matching chairs. One was broken so we left it, but the other four looked like this:


Most of the chairs were just dirty, and 3 of them had the cushions removed. I'm not exactly sure why! It looks likes someone tried to glue the cushions onto the chairs rather than just using the screws and screwing them into place... the mind boggles.
The chairs were originally a beige/tan color and were all about this level of dirty:


No smell, no real stains even! I could have washed them, to be perfectly honest. But no. I had other plans. Our kitchen area is red themed with little hints of teal, so I wanted something to really match!
One sacrificed tablecloth later and voila!


 I realized that the chair I chose for the photo was my first cushion re-do, and as such the pattern on the fabric was not entirely straight - but oh well. We're sitting on them, not staring at them! The rest are good though.
I got this "tablecloth" at a second hand shop for something like 5 crowns - which is like buying something for $.50. It was just a bit of fabric with three edges turned under and hemmed, and still had the selvage.


Well... now it's chair cushions.


And much better for it!

The whole project took about an hour. First, I laid out the tablecloth and checked that I had enough fabric for the job. Then I laid the cushions out on the fabric and cut around them with pinking shears, giving enough space to wrap the fabric around to the bottom of each side of the cushion.
I didn't remove the old covers because they weren't smelly at all, and really not that dirty. I just gave them a little wipe down then covered over them. I used a hammer tacker to staple the stretched fabric to the bottom of the cushions then used the same screws that came inside the chairs (all the original screws were inside their holes, just waiting to be used!) to screw the cushions back onto the frame. Easy peasy!

Have you done any quick up-cycle projects lately?


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