photography

Warm London & Sunny Brighton

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Just returned from a very short trip to Lovely London and Cool Brighton.

The things I miss about London and Brighton:

1. My lovely, lovely, lovely friends. There’s nothing better than a hug from a friend. Thank you for all the hugs. 🙂

2. The incredible choice of good food. I had Lunch at a Vietnamese place in Camden, it was amazing!

3. The posh crisps.

4. The sea.

5. Brighton.

6. London….

Better start planing the next visit!

The complete history of my DIY failures – part I

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Welcome to the complete history of my DIY failures! I will start by saying that these failures actually turned out to be successes in the end, but let’s just say that both the process and the outcome are not exactly what we planned initially! Yes, WE! My boyfriend/flatmate/partner in crime, Dr. E, should also be held accountable for the successes and failures!

Our new rented flat is more or less a bad taste nightmare, I mean not bad taste kitschy cool, I mean bad taste nightmare. It has this crazy textured plaster that was popular for 5 secs in the 80’s, it has butt ugly doors with yellowish glass, it has beige floor tiles … not to mention the bathroom… For your own health and safety I will spare you the bathroom. Saying all of this, we love it! We have lots of light and space.

Part I – painting tiles

So, the kitchen tiles were originally also beige and had tea pot motives, as I said: bad taste 80’s… to save us some time and money we decided to paint the tiles. I originally wanted to paint them turquoise but Dr. E wanted dark navy blue, we reached an agreement on Marine blue. But, wait! I forgot to tell you that, of course, at the DIY market, they only had paint specifically for tiles in white and beige – these colours were out of the question! So we bought paint that could be used in pretty much any kind of surface, apart from… you guessed it: TILES.

This little fact did not deter us from using this paint on the tiles. Just because the instructions on the tin mentioned every single surface type on the planet apart from tiles does not mean that it can’t be used on tiles – right?  Well! Kind of. Everything was going splendidly, until I applied the second layer of paint and one of the paintbrush hairs got stuck to the paint… when I was trying to scrape it off … I realised that the paint was peeling off and it seemed as if I could have peeled all the paint off the whole wall in one go!!!!!

So this is the state of affairs now! The tiles are painted and look great, but if we make the smallest of scratches on the wall…. That will be the end of our lovely marine blue tiled kitchen wall. It has been 3 months now!

Kitchen Before
Kitchen tiles after

Happy Sunday Breakfast

Yesterday we went for breakfast at the CafĂ© Bleu in Darmstadt. This is, so far, one of our favourite places to have breakfast (or FrĂĽhstĂĽck as the locals called it ;)). It was a really nice day! The weather was warm and we enjoyed a lovely bike ride through the local touristic hotspots, like the Mathildenhöhe and the Rosenhöhe. I was a bit disappointed that there weren’t more Roses at the Rosenhöhe!

This week the weather here looks really promising. I hope the sun is shinning for you too… Happy week everyone!

1… 2… 3… 4… Strawberries (… And other rainy days shenanigans)

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Count with me: 1… 2… 3… Strawberries, the 4th decided it is too cold and wet to ripen properly, what can I say, it’s a strawberry with a personality…

SO, what do we do with 3 strawberries? Not much really, apart from eating them. I am, however, happy that I managed to grow some fruit on our new balcony, despite the cold and the persisting rain!

OK, the week has started well, and I still have a couple of other things to look forward to:

*My new bike will be delivered in the next couple of days,

*And Darmstadt will be hosting a 4-day musical event with more then 100 bands, and it’s all for free – check it out here: Schloßgrabenfest -2013

Have a good week everyone!