the upcycled christmas necklace

You must feel betrayed, my friends!
You probably came to this blog thinking I did nice and cute refashions, and all of a sudden I've gone  full hulk-mode and only do projects that involve power tools, muscle and a lot of rubble, and I'm sure you're sometimes wondering.. "Can't she just do a nice skirt instead of a bathroom?" (No, cuz you can't take a bath inside a skirt, baby)

But today, as my lil' christmas present to you, I'll make it up!
And will do so by making the cutest, frilliest upcycled christmas necklace ever, entirely maken out of thrifted, broken and unwanted old pieces of jewelry.

photography shelves.

It was late august last year, and Joost and I -in all our wisdom- decided to throw a housewarming party, even though the house was still in utter chaos.

"Meh, we'll be fine.." Joost said.
"We'll finish in time" Joost also said.
" It's okay if I don't help with the house this weekend, because I have a football match, isn't it?" Joost also said.  ( he did help. sometimes........)
" Is it okay if we sleep over after the housewarming?" several of our friends said.

What ensued were a few weeks of utter panic; insulating, installing drywalls, painting, cleaning and finishing a last minute guest bedroom.
Miraculously, we we ready just in time for the housewarming: with the paint still drying on the walls, I stuffed a bed into our tiny guest room (literally as big as the bed itself) and figured: "hmm, our guests might need a night stand of some kind to store their belongings.."

With no time to waste on night-shelf shopping (I mean, the guests were practically already arriving), I went back to my infinite supply of.. wine boxes. I know I have made wine box shelves before..  (You don't remember? Well, it was here!) But this time, I added a twist!

on playpens and coat racks

A slightly decaying scent wafts across the restaurant. "Oh wait, there's poop, I smell poop, which one is pooping?" At my question, four of my friends quickly set down their cappuccino's, grab their children in an upside-down manner, and start smelling their pants in a sort of professional, evaluating way that only one group of people in this world is capable of: new mothers. 

A final sniff, and one of the friends nods affirmatively. The culprit -together with a bag full of diapers- gets carried away towards the toilets. Quickly the chatter amongst my friends resumes, with as the main topic their children, and everything that comes with (or out of) it. 

On thrifting love and the spoils of the hunt.

Sometimes you gotta write about amazing DIY's, and sometimes you just.. gotta write. 

I'd like to tell that my love for thrifting began with porcelain.

But the more accurate thruth was that I refound my love for thrifting through tableware. 

My actual love for thrifting, as my mother likes to tell me, began with a bathing suit. 

Wired up.

"What would Wolthuis say?" Joost asked, as were are both looking up, towards our newly installed, home-made wardrobe lights that.... for some inexplicable reason, flickered.

Wolthuis is the respectable electrician in our village, and whenever we meddle with the plumbing or electric wiring in our house, we ask ourselves what Wolthuis would say about our work, and imagine he would be very disappointed with us.
In this scenario I'm quite certain how he would react: complete and utter exasperation (and if he had had the jurisdiction: revoking our rights to ever meddle with home-made lighting again).

Before you think we are about to burn our own house down, I have to say that Joost is actually usually quite good at it, and that even I have only managed to blow the fuses once.

Nevertheless; I think it would be a good idea if Joost and I got the message "don't try this at home" tattooed on our foreheads, and instead of showing you how to wire something up that could possibly blow up your house (I'll just save that one for a rainy day) I'll show you a completely save electricity-project instead, while still using electrical wire ;)

big bedrooms come to those who wait.

"Oh come on, you know you've got plenty to write about!" my mum tells me, lifting one of her eyebrows slightly higher than the other, something she only does when she not-so-subtly tries to persuade me into doing something.

Uh, yeah.. we're talking about the radio-silence on my blog, that has been so long now, that it would even have made JK Rowling anxious ( I still haven't forgotten about that terrible wait for book 4, Joanne!) High time to get my lazy bum back in the writing chair!

So here's the quick "hey-Marije-you-slacker-what-have-you-been-up-to-this year?"-slideshow of my life.