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 :) 

Finding Treasures

Dear Readers,

Today was a very happy day at the mad's scientists side of the world. I spent some quality time with my man doing some treasure hunting in a second hand store in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

We have a chain of second hand stores who are called Kringloop Winkel. There are a couple in every city, and they sell practically everything from a button to a couch. some of the things are very cheap and some of them are more expensive, but let's just say it goes between 0.10 Euros to 300 Euros.

There are a lot of vintage items there. I just love the boxes they have, since they are really crafts, I use them for everything, from storing cookies, buttons, pens etc. and they all have such wonderful printing on them.

I got two: one with a print of Albert Heijn (which is practically the godfather of supermarkets in Holland), and the other is a really nice one, of a printout of an old dutch house , like those you see in Amsterdam, and it fits 1 packet of flour, to start my bakery laboratory again hehe :)

On top of that I got 3 cooking books: a eastern dutch one with Indonesian recipes for all the sauces we make for stir fry and, one grandma's cooking dutch book, with all kind of vintage recipes, the other one is a calories guide in Dutch, for all the dutch foods.

I love Sesame street (well who doesn't) and I am especially crazy about Elmo. And so I was so happy to find this box in the store, I am already thinking about what to put in it, any ideas?

Yesterday i opened a "Crafty Tula" page on Facebook, with all kind of organizing tips, please like my page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Crafty-Tula/224832560925642?sk=wall

and here is the first tip of the day from the page, I will post some from time to time here too, and refer my Facebook readers to my blog as well. If you guys have any organizing tips, please do share/ comment below.

Tip of the day : 

How to organize your sheets so you can easily find one whole set:

If you don't want to to search so hard after those hiding sheets, just put all the sheets you are folding into one pillow case, that way you wouldn't have to think hard when you are trying to match your sheets to your pillow cases, and while you arrange them in your closet, it also looks neat.


Later on I realized I have 2 chicken breasts in the fridge which I have to make, so what is better than to make oatmeal schnitzels.
They are always crispy, very healthy and very tasty, or as my man said after eating it : Did you buy this or make this ? (what a nice compliment, I guess he liked 'em).

For all of you who want to know how to make them, here is the recipe, unfortunately I couldn't take a picture of the final schnitzels, since my man ate them all too fast , Enjoy :)

Oatmeal Covered Schnitzels:


Ingredients:
2 Chicken Breasts
1 Egg
Chicken Soup Powder
Oatmeal
Sunflower Oil

Preparation:
1) Cut the chicken breasts into thin slices.
2) Put some oatmeal in a deep bowl
3) Mix the Egg with the chicken soup powder, than add a bit water and mix it all together. Add the chicken slices to the bowl and let it marinade for 2 hours.

4) after 2 hours in the fridge, warm a pan with some sunflower.

5) Put the chicken slices in the oatmeal and use it to cover them completely.
6) fry the schnitzels.
7) Serve with some white rice or with fries.
Bon Appetite...