Second hand and furry friends

To me if you ask what love is

This picture says it all

I remind you guys that my indiegogo project 2 hearts in one house,  is still ongoing, please share this :) 

Here is the direct link:

http://www.indiegogo.com/2-hearts-living-in-one-house?a=32306

I already told you how much I love the second hand shop in Rotterdam which I go and visit every now and then. That sensation of finding treasures and vintage items for almost no money is amazing to me. 

I think that here in Holland people keep their stuff in really good stuff. Some as good as new, and that is why it is always so nice for me to find things I can re-use.

This time I took you with me. The kringloop winkel is a relatively large store where all the second hand items are brought in by donations usually and treated with so much respect... 

The staff arranges all the items by departments, you can see here that these are baskets, and decorative stuff.

I saw these 2 beautiful vintage sewing machines, which I thought were wonderful

How about this "Disco table"? self made I guess ...

It's the second time I see this organ, it doesn't play very well , but is so beautiful in my eyes. what do you think? 

When we walked back home, we met a furry friend, who wanted to say hi:

He was all covered with his rain coat and everything ;)

Of course he brought his friends. The big one was protecting the small one all the time, as we approached. It was just beautiful. Mother Nature is remarkable sometimes... 

And my man also made a new friend :) 

While we were waiting for the bus, I saw them again, they are everywhere these days 

And so , this time, I had a lot of loot and found some really cool stuff:

 * A Cookie box, vintage with English bears on it. To be later used as a cracker box.
* A Sesame Street box, I already have the Elmo one, so my man found another one for me. I thought it was very nice. I put stamps in it.
* A English Dutch dictionary.
* A World Atlas in Dutch.
* A Cookie monster towel kitchen hanger. you will see later how useful it was.
* 2 tin boxes for sugar and for gravies.
* 1 m&m's doll to join his friend on my window.
* 4 stamps with a stamp pad of forever friends bears. For my book scraping.
* A huge box which in I put all my pasta and noodles.
* A stencil of Holland, which I thought was cute with cows ,houses and windmills.

That all cost 5 Euros. How about that?
Later on we had dinner , chicken medallions, with sweet pepper from our market visit, and some bami , which is Chinese noodles. Yum, my man cooks so good ...

The next day I started putting my loot into place , so here is my gravy box reasting nice next to my spices box.

Underneath it in our rack, there are now 2 beautiful boxes, instead of a huge mess.

And my favorite item, the cookie monster, needed some cleaning , but now is holding my towels

Amd can also hold a spoon on his head. How cute is he?

And the m&m's fire brigade now is resting next to his friend on my window

Here is a close up on my new vintage stamp set

And of course the beautiful box in where I keep them. Did I mention I L-O-V-E Sesame street?

Then my man went into our bedroom with a hammer and a few nails and a few minutes later, I saw a wonderful decoration he did for it , 3 hearts on a rope, in 3 sizes. I love the assymetry in which he hung the hearts in, he has a true sense of decorating and style too 

With this beautiful view of my window I sign off tonight, have a wonderful day 

The mad scientist :) 

True Friends

A friend is one of the nicest things you can have, and one of the best things you can be.  ~Douglas Pagels

You don't need to have so many , but a few is certainly a good thing :)

I can count my best friends on one hand, but all of them are very precious to me, plus, it's hard to find something special, so if I got a few, I am a lucky person. 

Yesterday me and my man (well it was mostly him, but I cheered him and handed him the nails) finally got to putting our curtain up. we bought it at IKEA for really cheap a couple of months ago, and we had it for quite a while, but we never put it on. so after loaning the driller from our dear friends and a couple of hammers on the wood , my man was working really hard , and here are the before pictures: 

and finally, we had a beautiful window curtain to look at, I took a piece of linen I used to cover my flowers in my wedding, cut it in half and made curtain holders out of, so it would remind me of good things, here is the result , beautiful, isn't it ? 

While I as borrowing the driller from our friends (who live practically on the corner of our street) , my best friend Lisa loaned me a very nice catalog of  an online store called "large.nl" which are specializing in T shirts,  Goth clothing and other very special items and Jewlery. so I sat down to read it and found a lot of stuff which I like and would like to have in the future (when I have the money), some nice cookie monster items (I love him, in hebrew his name is Oogie, and if we ever have a dog again we will call him Oogie after that), a nice grumpy care bare shirts (smiling on the inside, ha ha so sarcastic) and a shirt of Beaker from the Muppet's (I am a huge fan), see for yourselves:

Later on I started to feel a little nauseous and had headaches, I think it was from the Chinese food I ate  with Opa yesterday, and I paid for it big time, but luckily a couple of days ago I made my mom's special Jewish Penicilin chicken soup with a ton of love in it (like she said), and it only needed some re hitting.

Here is the recipe for it:

Mom's Jewish Penicillin Chicken Soup 

Ingredients:

1 Large Potato (Pilled)

2 Carrots

1/2 Cauliflower

1 Zucchini (Pilled)

2 Chicken thighs 

1 Small Onion

1/4 

Parsely

Celery leaves

1/2 Celery Root

2 Celery Stalks

2 spoons Chicken Stock Powder (I have a specialty one from Israel but any bullion will do) 

2 Spoons sun flower oil

Salt

Preparation:

1. Cut the potato, carrots, cauliflower, onions zucchini and celery root into cubes. 

2. Preheat 2 spoons of sunflower oil in a cooking pan, and add the chicken thighs, let them become golden, throw in the cut vegetables, and add some water until the top of the pan. 

3. Add 2 Spoons of Chicken Stock Powder , or 2 bullions cubes, taste the soup and see if it needs more salt, then add according to taste. 

4. Bring to a boil. Then turn down the fire to the lowest flame.

5. In the meanwhile, chop the Parsley and the Celery leaves.

6. Add the Parsley and Celery leaves to the pan and let everything simmer for at least 2 hours (the more you let it simmer, the better the soup is).

7. Serve hot, with some bread or add some noodles (small soup noodles) 

Eet Smakelijk (Dutch for Bon Appetite, oh wait that was French, never mind)... 

Later on I created a project on a website called indiegogo.com, which is a website I came across due to my very nice musical friend Wolfman" and his wonderful pack, which deserves a seperate post, I promise to make one about the pack, cause it is a very special group of artists. 

Well, I called the indiegogo project 2 hearts living in one house, just like what my man once said to me. 

I told the story of what happened to us in the last couple of years. The project is to collect money for us to have our home back, and that means a floor and some basic furniture, since we lost it all due to the constant 

moving we had to go through the last couple of years. 

Here is the link, please share as much as you can :

http://www.indiegogo.com/2-hearts-living-in-one-house?a=32306

I must say I never expected to receive such warm reactions about my project, I want to post some of them here, cause friends are a very rare thing today, and I wanted all of you to see how special people can be, and how they make my heart warm in such difficult times:

"Tula…I had no idea you were going through these difficult times and I a very worried about your health. I wish I could give more, but money is tight during the holidays. Hopefully, 98 more people will give $37 each too and help you get your home furnished during the holidays. Merry Christmas to you both.

Wolfman"

" I don’t know how, but I know there is some connection between you and me – check my avatar here, which I promise has been up for some time. I am delighted to make what looks like the first contribution to your project. I hope the amount – one percent – serves to attract many more. Best wishes for unbounded happiness!"

"2 beautiful hearts…

All the very best to you,

Merry Christmas and courage to both of you,

Angie
xox"

I am a very lucky person indeed...

We are about to go to very special friends for dinner, so I hope this was a nice post for you, and have a great Christmas day, full with a lot of hearts.