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Project of the day | Staging Spring
I did get the balcony fixed up. Then I went to a store that as I discovered yesterday had locally grown hydrangea. So far, so spring. Then, on the way back – guess what – it started snowing. It would appear that sometimes wishful thinking isn’t enough (who knew?).
Since desperate times require desperate measures, I resorted to what any home-story-teller who is worth their grain does anyway: I faked it. Rather: tried. As will become apparent in a moment, this is probably one of the worse attempts at staging spring. So … here goes nothing.
Yeah, that table cloth under the hydrangea is not ironed. Neither is the table-cloth on the table, which is actually a curtain. I mean, the table-cloth is actually a curtain, not the table. 
I must say, those teacup candles are versatile. I need more so I can have them EVERYWHERE. 
Hyacinths. Just noticed that one of them is molding a little bit. Meh. 
Hello beautiful! 
Or should I say: hello bluetiful? 
Less elegant, more playful. You might say this balcony’s style is all over the place. I choose to call it „eclectic“. 
Unless I don’t show you the picture I just showed you, and show you this instead. Doesn’t work with real life visitors, though. Unless I make them leave the balcony frequently so I can rearrange things according to what they’re going to look at next. Seems like a lot of work, though, so … probably not. 
Now we’re getting somewhere with the spring feeling! 
So … another picture of the same just from a slightly different angle. 
And another! OK, I’m done. Das könnte Dir auch gefallen:
Att hitta hemmet i sig själv och här i världen
On walking and stumbling
Mont Sainte Odile | Photo journal
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Project of the day | The sunny season’s living-room
Today I am going to take on balkonia, and hopefully turn this sadness into something … well, better.
Yes, I was lazy in the fall. Just left the plants right where they were. Guess I’m paying for that today. Maybe I can get Peter to take care of it? 
Imagine me with kids … 
Can you find all the miserable plants in this picture? Can’t get so much worse, right? Here’s to hoping that I’ll be able to show you some after pix tonight.
Have a wonderful Saturday everyone!
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Der Garten meiner Eltern :: My parent’s garden
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Spring cleaning pt. 3
Mission completed! I did enough to be able to abandon this project, and show some after pictures that don’t reveal everything I didn’t do. Success! Oh yeah, and I tried out some more no poo methods which I now can recommend with a clean conscience.
I wish it actually looked like this … 
… but this is more accurate. Actually, no, it’s still too staged. Except for the mugs. Yup, there’s two of us – and Peter usually sticks to one mug, so … you figure it out. 
It actually looks a bit sterile … hm. 
My best friend (apart from lemon and baking soda): white vinegar. 
Forgot the before pic, so here’s one from during the process. 
After. It’s an old stove, so this really is the best it’s looked since I moved in. 
The yuckiest part: under the sink, where we keep all the recycling bags/bins and the compost. 
Still couldn’t win a beauty prize for this but again: old kitchen, lots of people have lived in this apartment. I cleaned the stove according to this recipe: Sprinkle some baking soda onto the plates, add some drops of white vinegar, let it sit while you do the rest of the cleaning. Then you just wipe it off. Before wiping the stuff off, I used one of those metal brushes (I don’t know what the technical term is, they are specifically for these kind of stoves). I found the recipe for this on a Swedish site, they had a lot more useful tips on cleaning, mostly also no poo: Bästa städtipsen för ett fint hem.
For all of the surfaces (cupboard doors, tiles, working spaces, mopping the floor) I used the white vinegar/lemon/water mixture again. For the sink I just cut a lemon in half, rubbed it in and let it sit for a while before rinsing with water. Again, I am really satisfied with the results, so I am definitely done with the poo that we have standing around here.
I found another link with no poo cleaning methods on ByzantineFlowers (I really find this blog inspiring, makes me wnat to try out a bunch of their recipes!): DIY Citrus Cleaner – you’ll find a lot more no poo alternatives than what the title reveals.
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The quitter wins
I am not ready to let the kitchen cleaning mission go yet I still don’t really feel like it. Then this CRAZY idea popped into my mind: What if I just do the parts that seem easy, and see how far I get? This might sound simple to most but for someone who has been walking around for most their life thinking that doing things half-assed is not allowed, that you have to decide if you’re in or out, that you don’t start unless you’re going to finish, blablablah … for someone like that (not me, of course), the conception of this possibility is really mind-blowing.
After all, if I allow myself to start under the premise that I can quit whenever I want, why, maybe I’ll actually go through with it! If I go about it as I usually do, locking myself into the notion that you have to finish what you started, I probably won’t even start …
So here’s to a day full of doing things half-assed and starting things without finishing them (or at least allowing for that alternative)!
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Spring cleaning pt. 2
Although I didn’t get as far as I had hoped, I still got the chance to try out some no poo cleaning techniques – and can therefore make some actual recommendations:
- Oil and a mix of vinegar, water and lemon (roughly equal parts) turned out to be my best cleaning friends, I didn’t use much besides that. When it comes to oil and grease stains, it’s really a fighting-fire-with-fire kind of method – and it works, too! The spice rack being located above the stove was covered in a sticky layer of cooking grease and dust. I just dabbed some paper towel in oil and wiped the sticky surfaces. Just use the cheapest you have/can get, doesn’t need to be you precious EVOO. This is obviously only step one, unless you’re content with replacing the old grease layer with a new one (that will get yucky in a few weeks). This is were the lemon/water mixture comes into play. Why not use that one first? Well, I guess you can, but when I tried it felt like I needed to use much more force with that one – using oil was a lot easier.
- I tried out the recipe for cleaning the oven (actually started with that one since you’re supposed to let it sit for 8 hours). I found that the ratio in the recipe made the mix to dry, so I just went with my instinct and added more water until it took on a „wasabi-like“ texture (if you were to conclude from this that I have a sushi-related problem you’d be right on). Also, I used about double the amount of the original recipe. I got good results – I am telling myself that the stuff that I couldn’t get of has been there even when we moved in. This recipe is perfect for me since I am not a very patient person. I tend to get sloppy at the end of a task but luckily, with this recipe, I do not need to worry about whether I am going to die from the next meal I prepare in the oven after cleaning it. Sometimes you can have the cake and eat it, too!
- Oh yeah, maybe the most useful piece of advice that I managed to ignore once more after already having made the mistake: filter the lemon juice before you pour it into a spray bottle. Otherwise the pulp will clog up the pipe/spray head thingy. Or: don’t use a spray bottle, just dab the cleaning rag in the liquid.
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Boho bedroom
Lemurian Crystal Healing | Part 1
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Spring cleaning pt. 1
The urge to spring clean has overcome me early this year. And I am not even going to work my way up, I am going to start with the kitchen. Cleaning, and rearranging, and throwing out stuff we never use, and all that jazz. So, you probably won’t hear from me the rest of the day. Or ever again because this might take a long time.
This is what it looks like right now:
Before Here’s to hoping that it’ll look better by tonight, that I won’t get fed up in the middle of it, and just eat take-out from paper plates for the rest of my life.
If this makes anyone go „This is what I should be doing but I really don’t feel like it“, I recommend Karen Kingston’s Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui. It is an easy and inspirational read, and it’ll motivate you.
Basically, if you want things to happen in your life, new things to arrive, you have to make room by getting rid of old stuff that you have no use for anymore, that only sits there and steals your energy. Sound familiar? That’s right.
So let’s let go of the old and make room for the new.
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