from Tunic to Tote

So, the days of Christmas are over!

While realizing that Christmas has passed is not a particularly  merry thought, I am quite happy to wave goodbye to the this year trending hashtag of 'let it snow': #letitsnow ....
Because every time I see that, I picture a French man angrily demanding the boobs: "Le tits, now!"

wait.. an upcycled... cow?

Yep. It's the planter nobody ever knew they needed to have in their life!

helping out my nieces' homeless dolls.

Hi there!

Today's a special day, my friends! Not only because for the first time in weeks I'm able to write a new post (huzza!) , but also because today the Netherlands is recovering from a party called sinterklaas!

Sinterklaas, for those of you who don't know it, is (and my mum is going to kill me for what I'm going to say next) kind of the same as santa claus/christmas. Different, but also the same. There's a lot of gifts, the main guy wears a lot of red and has a beard, you know the drill.

But the amazing part of sinterklaas is that it includes little poems that go with the gifts, where you can utterly and completely roast your family members, for all the mischief they have done last year.
So, what happened? My dad got a few potatoes thrown at his head -all in good fun of course-, I accidentally set fire to a glass full of coffee beans, my little niece produced a diaper so vicious that we almost had to take to poor kid outside, so nothing out of the usual there!

a geeky rocking horse

Last Saturday, Joost and I looked at each other in slight panic: we had a birthday coming up for the son of one of Joost's friends, and we had completely forgotten to buy something for the child.

In my opinion, buying gifts for a one-year old is a headache anyway: they are too young for the really cool things, and too old for the baby-gifts. Fortunately, the father of this child has a not-so-subtle hobby: Star wars.

Well, yeah.. something like that!

So instead of doing the sensible thing and just buy a book or something alike, we decided to thrift something and turn it into something Star wars related.
So, ( with a trunk loaded with things to donate) we happily hopped off to the thrift shop!

And there we found this faded little friend:

a rocking horse! We thought it was perfect for a one-year old, but the paint was a little faded, and the wooden rockers were slightly spotted.
So, we cued the Star Wars music ( PAM PAM PAM PAMPAPAM PAMPAPAM....) and set to work!

recycle week day 1: upcycled candles

welcome to the first day of my recycle-week!

As promised, this week I'm going to give unloved goods a second life, and try not to spend any money on them. So I'll be saving items from the trash in my own house, seeing if I can find things on the sidewalk, or using free items from thrift shops (yes, they do that with certain items)

So to kick off with a simple upcycling project: candles!

As I was cleaning up my house - some of you may have guessed why....-  I realized how many discarded candles I have laying around. Used candles that are too short to use up, that have melted in the sun, ones where the wick has become too short, ones that I don't use because they're plain ugly ( I'm talking to you, oooglay christmas candles!) of just left-overs from tea lights ( these things never burn clean, do they?)

so many of these!

I know, doesn't sound too exciting. But the result is quite pretty! And, if you time your project right, it doesn't take any time at all. So, give it a try, it's cool!

celebration time!

Break our the champagne guys, we've reached a milestone...

This blog has reached 10.000 readers! Whooohhooooooo!

I never expected to get there within two months! Massive thank you to Jillian from refashionista for giving me a kick start, and also a massive thanks to you, my readers!

So it was time to host a miniature party. Luckily I had just the thing for it: a miniature pot of glitter galore!

break in case of awesome you say? Well, this sounds like a pretty awesome occasion to me... bring out your unicorns!

"Break" it!

SPARKLE!

(If you want to make one for yourself; just take a tiny pot, a lot of glitter and write a little label to go with it.. that's it! Makes quite a neat little gift as well!)

It's been a blast writing and making things so far. I hope to keep it up for quite a long time, and I also hope that you keep enjoying these posts. 

Much love! Marije