Chili Con Thread

Just a little (late) update in the home and food department. Our chili tree from last year produced a bunch of little chili peppers and I was looking for a good way to hang them up to dry, but also make the look pretty and add to our kitchen interior design.
So I harvested all the chili peppers and used needle and thread to make them into a silly little chili garland, which I then taped to our kitchen shelves.

They're just looking too cute all hanging in a row up there. But don't be fooled! They're feisty little beasts full of spicyness. I like to put them in various dishes, like carrot or pumpkin soup or my favorite hummus recipe from Atilla Hildmann's Vegan For Fit.
Spice up you life and craft on!

Our Open Dresser for the Hallway

This project got finished in march actually, but I never got around to show you the finished product. For images during the making of check my Picturesque March.
I don't think I even have a before picture, because it was just so not pretty to look at. We just had an old shoerack in the space and our jackets were up on three tiny hooks on the side wall. My brother actually helped with the design of this dresser. We got all the wooden pieces for this at the hardware store, they even cut it the right sizes there for no extra charge. The wood for all of it cost us about 60€, plus the hours we put into the making.

I wanted to have the coat hangers match the colours of the dresser, so I sanded all of these down... 

...and painted the in the same purple I painted the vertical pieces and splashed the sides with. 

Painting the dresser was the funnest bit. The putting together and drilling a bunch of holes in the sides was no fun at all. We even got a complaint from our downstairs neighbour that if we wouldn't stop with the drilling they'd call the police. To be fair it was a sunday.. but still, what the hell? We'd only been drilling for like 15 minutes.

 

This is the coat and miscellaneous part with two shelves one above and one under the coat rack. The coats are colour coordinated of course, how else would you line up your coats?

 

And here's the shoe rack. Made up by 21 wooden poles which are connecting the middle and the outer right dresser wall. I handpainted the poles individually only to find out that with the paint they wouldn't fit in the drilled holes anymore. So I had to take off the paint with sandpaper on all 42 pole ends and then paint them again after they were put in the right place. Fun!
But it was totally worth it in the end. I love our open dresser! And it's much easier to put away your shoes and coat right after coming into the apartment when there's such a pretty dresser waiting for you.

This post will be part of the Creadienstag. 

Our Wedding Invitations

After making the Save the Date's ourself we started working on the design of our actual wedding invitations. We chose a frame we found online which connects two branches with a bow and topped off with a crown. The two branches represent the two families connecting and the crown stands for our merged last names: Krowns.

The invitation was actually designed with Microsoft's word and paint programs, so super simple. I printed the invitations and RSVP cards on a thick lavender paper and cut it out at home with my paper cutter and a punch cutter. Then I just had to punch a hole in the RSVP card, cut a thread and connect it to the card.
And voila. There's our invitations. Nothing too fancy. Just the way we are.


By now we have heard back from all our invited guests and are excited for every single one of them attending our wedding. 32 days to go!

This post will be part of the Creadienstag.

Picturesque Month ~ 04'14

Been letting things slide a little on this blog. Mostly because of wedding planning madness I guess, just one more month to go! Well, here's April in pictures:

The month started out great by me winning whole weekend full of cultural events on the radio. It was the "Volle Packung Kultur" on Radio Eins and it included:
- a book reading by Ahne "Zwiegespräche mit Gott"
- a sewing class (first picture)
- a diving class (second picture)
- improvisation theatre play at Bühnenrausch
- Electro-Swing Revolution party (skipped on that one)
- museum "The Kennedys"
- audio-walk through the Berlin district Friedenau (third picture)
- asparagus dinner at Restaurant Friedrichs 106 (won't ever go there again, terrible service!)
What a weekend! Totally needed another weekend after all that activity. I was allowed to bring another person to all the events and it was so much fun!

The city was blooming in April! We had some lovely weather and the nature in the city was beautiful. Since we live a little bit out of the city center we enjoyed the nature while jogging, training for the Zombie Run in may!

Of course there was a lot of crafting too, although it was mostly crafting for the wedding, like these Origami wedding flowers. While crafting I love to listen to audio tapes and I just scored a bunch of Harry Potter audio tapes for really cheap at a flea market, so stoked!
 
The future husband was getting some crafting on as well. He finally finished the Batman on the cross, a project he started one year ago with his Munich fleamarket find.
Then of course we watched the awesome LEGO movie and Ken loved the Metalbeard LEGO set, so I bought it for him. And since my boss' son got the same set for easter and put it together in 3 hours, the man had to beat that time by a half! Oh snap, outdid a Nine-year-old!

Usually right here shows you the concerts I went to that month, but there was only one in April. It was a friend's band, the Snoffeltoffs at the White Trash Fast Food Closing party. I spend a lot of awesome party and concert nights at this venue, so it was sad to part with it, but it is reopening at another location. Must check it out soonish, especially for the burgers and the Rock'n'Roll Bingo!

On other news we enjoyed our first easter in our Berlin apartement all by ourselves with long breakfasts and Bob's Burgers. The weekend after easter we went on a Minication in our old hometown Munich and thrifted like madmen. Hope to make it there next year as well.

That was April, May's almost over and June (wedding&birthday month) is coming right up. Let the madness begin and pray for me not becoming a Bridezilla!

Weekend Trip to Munich ~ Fleamarket, thrifting and food!

A couple of weeks ago we went on a bus all the way down the A9 Autobahn to Munich, our old home. We hadn't been back since our move back to Berlin and the annual giant Spring Festival fleamarket was the perfect excuse to visit old friends and neighbourhoods and most importantly restaurants! Here are some impressions of this year's fleamarket:

One of the highlights of the fleamarket was of course this lifesize yoda statue. I don't even know if it was on sale, because I was too scared to ask for the price!

Of course you also shouldn't ask for the price of Star Wars merchandise while wearing a Star Wars sweater! Recognize the bag? It's the one I made at the Upcycling workshop in Hamburg.

Wearing sunglasses over glasses, that's how you do in Munich!
The last thing we found was an awesome toy dragon:


He's going to be the perfect Smaug for our glass cabinet at home.

These were my favorite fleamarket finds:
the stupendous Smaug (50cent)
The Hobbit boardgame (4€)
The Lord of the Rings boardgame (2,5€)

After roaming the fleamarket we were hungry for some chinese food at our favorite restaurant:


The Jackie Chan China Restaurant has got everything a chinese food lover wants plus an awesome name! Are you surprised that when we first went there it was only for the name?

Invigorated by various kinds of fried rice/noodles/vegetables we headed to my favorite second hand store in Munich, the "White Raven".

On the ground floor you can find lots of used furniture, electronics and rarities.


If you head upstairs there's glasses, silverwear, dishes and other kitchen and cooking supplies.

Right opposite to that is the textile area where you can find everything from wedding dresses to wifebeaters. This is actually where I found my wedding dress for the cicil registry office for only 4€, which I'll show off soon.

The last room is full of books and tapes and other media. They actually have a very large collection of english books as well and since there was a half price sale on children's books this time I bought 5 hard cover books of Harry Potter in english for only 12€ total. Strike!

In other news we went to eat burgers, visit the old neighbourhood(it's still exactly how we left it)drink beer,eat sushi & ice cream and hung out with a bunch of good friends. It was like we never left, but we did and I was so happy when we got home late at night on Sunday to drop into our bed in Berlin!