Giving thanks

So my fiancè and I do celebrate Thanksgiving here in Germany, actually for the third time now and the second time with company.
There's something nice about cooking for friends, not just snacks but a whole dinner. We'll probably continue to do so too, but maybe next year we'll start doing it a little more potluck style, because 6 hours in the kitchen are intense!

So here's what we made:

Stuffed mushrooms - Champignons with a bacon/cream cheese, tomato/cream cheese stuffing
Deviled Eggs - Egg halves stuffed with egg yellow, mayonaise, tomatoes, olives
Corn Muffins
Bruscetta
Artichoke Dip
Tuna Dip
Corn Fritters
Flower Pot Bread



Various vegetables aka the Faux Turkey
Cream Cheese Dip



Corn and Green Bean Casserole
Mashed Sweet Potatoes
Butternut Pumpkin Cream
Duck a la Crowns



And there were six people eating...

Happy Gobble Day. We're thankful for stuff!

London Thrift Haul

So it has been a little while since we were in London this August, but I wanted to put this up for a while now. After watching a few thrift haul videos by Grav3yardgirl I'm even more excited about it. I just find it interesting how many clothes are out there and in excellent shape to be sold second hand. I love to shop second hand, as you might have noticed and the rush after a haul like this is just the best!

The items below are from a bunch of thrift stores in Camden Town, there was literally one store next to the other, all in all about 7-8 stores in one street! It was thrifting heaven!
Here's a picture actually.



The thrift shops there were actually called charity shops and that makes the whole thing even better! I pretty much got all that stuff for me and gave to a charitable cause at the same time! Isn't that great? Makes me feel so much better about filling up my closet.

This is what I got:
A cute little dress from F&F, the local supermarket's brand, but I don't mind. It's flowery and very cute!



From F&F, a very cool and fancy black dress. Totally sported this one at the Special Feature of Shaun of the Dead and the theatre preformance of Monthy Python's Holy Grail later that week.



Very cute dress, very basic and comfortable.



White shirt with a pretty cut and fold in the front.



Blue and spotty, pretty blouse from Marks&Spencer



This is a very interesting sweater/shirt thing that I haven't been able to wear yet, but I really like it! It ends close to the hip and would show a lot of cleavage so you probably have to wear it over a dress or something. We'll see...



Win of the day was this cool little red riding hood cape from American Apparel, brand new and only 13€ (the most money I spend on one item all day).



What's more british than a cardigan? Three cardigans! Nr1 is from Laura Ashley, a pretty expensive brand I hear.



Nr2 is sooo cool, I love the bat sleeves and the stripes! It also covers my buttocks, which is always a good feature in a cardigan.



Nr3 is from Marks&Spencer. I really like the colour and the silky buttons.

For most of these items I spent about 4-6€, which is alright for such good quality!

So that's it, my first documented thrift haul and probably not the last. I got so much stuff during our stay in America, but I don't know if anyone's really interested. So maybe leave a comment if you're craving more less :)

Kindergarten Crafts ~ Crazy Bats

My Fiancè works at a Kindergarten, so he's got a bit of creative blood running through his veins as well. Bute when he thought of this I was actually pretty impressed.

Halloween is recently being celebrated in Germany, sadly not in the time when I was growing up, but oh well. So he was preparing Halloween decorations with his kids and created these cute bats:



Step one: put finger paint on tiny kids hands



Step two: make the kids put down their hands on the paper and make sure they don't move their hands



Step three: Paint a tail, legs, eyes and mouth



And tadaaa, you got a silly ol' bat flying around like it's supper time.

Brilliant!

Arts 'n' Crafts 'round the house

I like to surround myself with handmade or thrifted goods. Most of our furniture is second hand and our wall-art is mostly hand made.

Here's a few examples:
A gift from M&M, good friends of ours for our engagement. Such an awesome idea & super sweet. It's placed above our bed.



This was a christmas gift to my man 2 years ago. He loved the Neptune Fountain even before he ever placed a foot in Germany. The picture is from a Berlin calender and I found the frame in my parents attic.



A handmade laptop-case for my man, used it once so far on our trip to Washington. As long as it's unused it decorates our bedroom wall. Not my best sewing work, I might add...



Heart-shaped cutout of cork and a bit of cloth. Add some pins and you got a nice jewellery holder to pimp you wall.



Self-made calender from a folder, half-calendar, half pinboard.



Simple way to keep your paper towel in reach. Figured that out while wondering what to do with my humongous amount of scarves from when they were "in".



So yeah, eboy is pretty cool. That's why I decided to upcycle this thrifted mirror with his Berlin-artwork.



Count Duckula is pretty cool too! A homage to my childhood hero, the vegetarian vampire duck.



And last, but very far from least; a portrait of myself. A gift for my 21st Birthday from my good friend and artist Rory from skalitzers. Be sure to check out his new gallery soon if you're around Revaler Straße in Berlin.



That's it for now. I might do one of these with our furniture. It's nice to find out the story behind a piece of wood sometimes..

The Walking Dead Kitchen Buffet Upcycling

Oops, I did it again; I bought another kitchen buffet. Same store, even better price. I was bargaining so bad, it was almost embarrassing. After mentioning my birthday coming up, I got the super special deal of 40€. Without transport though, and I got a week to figure out how to get it home. Good thing I have awesome colleagues and one of them was nice enough to lend me her husband and car. There were some fearful occasions where we thought it was too big for the car, but it fit perfectly and got home to me safely.

Here's the beauty before its transformation:

Some splotches of age, horrificly horrible curtains. But all in all, in very good shape. I love old furniture. It's so sturdy and non-swedish ;)

But of course there had to be a make-over. I bought the color before I had even bought the buffet. It's called crimson red. Lovely colour for a lovely piece of furniture. At first I was thinking about painting the whole thing and then splashing the "skeleton" with black. You know, just dipping the paintbrush into the color and throwing it at something. Looks amazing on our kitchen wall, but I wasn't sure about a piece of furniture. The splashes made me think of Dexter (amazing show bout a likable serial killer), which made me think of The Walking Dead (amazing comic and then show about the zombie apocalypse). After throwing around a few ideas in my head, mostly stencil-related, I knew what I wanted to do.

But see for yourself, the taking apart begins:

Love the glass drawers on one side of the top cabinet, sadly one is missing.The other side of the top cabinet was tiled. That's where they kept the bread back in the day.
This is what the bottom and top looked like after painting:Having fun using the last bit of paint to horrify the tiles:And here's the finished skeleton of the buffet.

Now for the interesting bit. The doors were all supposed to be covered with comic strips from the "The Walking Dead" comics. Therefore, I searched the internet for comics and came out with a ton. Thus giving me enough choice to cover each door with its own personal storyline. The paper was cut into comicstrips containing one to three panels. They're glued to the wood with wallpaper paste. I mixed more wallpaper paste with the water than it said on the box, just to be sure it would stick.

Here's one of the smaller doors.The glueing process:

 

All done! Took me about 3 days to finish all of them, since I did it after work each day.I coated the doors 3 times with clear lacquer, the backs of the doors were painted with the crimson red and sadly I did this after applying the comics. You can tell in some areas..

But yeah, here's the finished product:

I got the Morticia chair at the same thrift store, just couldn't resist. Maybe I'll make a Morticia doll someday.. and the little Origami bat was a present from an old friend of mine.Some detail shots:        
Here you can see why you should color the inside of the door first...

And in case you forgot how it looked before, because it blew your mind here's a before/after shot.PS: Check out all these funky geeky crafts at the Nerd'n'Geek Linkparty <3