Sale!

It's sale in my favourite shop Exota, so I bought two shirts, a cardigan and a dress! I just couldn't resist...

Italian magazines

Speaking about international magazines, in Florence I bought two Italian magazines. Of course, I can't really read them, but the pictures speak for themselves and I am able to find out what is written about the products (brand names, price, stuff like that). And that's enough, isn't it?

I didn't want to spend a lot of money on them, since I can't read them anyway. So I just choose some of the cheaper ones. There were many to choose from, so that wasn't a problem. I think the magazines are much cheaper in Italy than here in the Netherlands. The Casa Facile spoke to me right away, and was just 1,90 euro so I choose that one. The Hachette Home was packed in plastic, so I couldn't flip the pages, but since it was just one euro, I bought that one too.
It seems like there are more ads in it than in the Dutch magazines, but maybe that's just because the ads are new to me, so I might notice them more.

I don't know which one I like better, they are both good. If I had to choose, I would say the Hachette. I guess the CF is a little more low budget and DIY, like our Dutch 101 Woonideeen and the HH comes a little closer to our VTWonen. I really wish I had bought more magazines....

In the HH I saw a picture with a little stool in it that reminded me of Wood&Wool stools, which I adore. I love it when there are hand-made items in magazines, especially if I know them from the blogging world, it feels a little familiar right away. In this case I am not sure if it really is a Wood and Wool stool, the size seems a little different and I can't find the name in the texts. I will ask Irene of Wood& Wool Stool on her blog.

try-out

Last year in London I bought an Elle Decoration magazine. Inside was an advertisement by Ford that somehow attracted me. I started painting it but never finished it until today.

I hadn't done any painting for a long time and just used some old paint, both gouache and acryl, from my childhood. The result is far from perfect, but I do like it. What I also like, is that during this one painting, I saw my skills improving. I know some of you like it when I tell about the 'mistakes' I make and about what makes me learn, so here we go...

For example, the big flower was painted a couple of months ago, the other ones today. I definitely like the small ones better, especially the right one. There's more dept in it, I made much more use of dark and light colours. You can also see it in the background, I started down left and worked up to the right corner. Down left there are too many brush strokes visible to my opinion.

I finished with the branches, which I think are the best of the whole painting

Maybe I should try more, and see what I can come up with. If I only had more time....

New furniture

Recently I bought some new additions to our living room.

The chair was bought on 'Marktplaats'. That's the Dutch version of Craigslist. The plaid is a bit too large for it, so I need to buy some nice pillows or something, but I am very happy with this.

The little red vase I thrifted in a second hand store in Delft, just as the plaid. The yellow lamp was bought on Modcloth. I saw it in a post by Deedee and I had to buy it. So I went to Modcloth and immediately bought it, without thinking. When the package arrived, it turned out I had to pay a lot of taxes and the plug doesn't fit our Dutch socket. Still have to fix it. But I love it and I think it looks really good on my grandma's desk.

Modcloth claims it's handmade, but i've no idea by who.
I guess some of the stuff Modcloth sells can also be bought here in Europe, but I've no idea how I can find out if an items is also sold by other shops. Does any of you know how to do that?

Florence

I went to Florence for a couple of days with my mom. It is such a beautiful city. Last time I went there was ten years ago, when I went on an Interrail trip to Italy with my boyfriend. I remember very well how impressed we were with al the amazing art. It was the first time I saw these kind of things. Since then we have visited many beautiful places and I was very curious how I would look at the same things with more experienced eyes.

It turned out that the things I had remembered all those years were the things I still loved most. All the other things I had simply forgotten, but all memories came back when I saw them again. And with them a lot of good romantic memories of our first big holiday together.

So I had a very good time. I also noticed that this time I noticed the beauty of the more ordinary things much more than the first time, when I was just amazed by all the famous stuff.