Happy Monday!
Good morning! I hope you all had a good weekend and were able to fit in some home-related projects like I did. I always feel so much better going into a new week when I had a weekend that I consider productive, don't you? I had a good balance this weekend -- a little work, a little play, moved some furniture around, entertained guests, went to an outdoor festival, and then... a surprise present from my husband. It was the cutest thing, he disappeared to go buy some 'trash bags' at the grocery store and returned with a brand new sewing machine for me! I heard him struggling to open the door with his keys so I went into the hallway to help him and noticed his red face and that one was hand tucked behind his back. I thought to my myself, "Oh how cute, he brought me flowers!", so I started to grin and he looked at me and said, "I'm sorry mausy but the store didn't have the bags you were looking for so I got this instead", and he handed me a box with a picture of a white AEG sewing machine on it! I nearly died. This of course made my weekend because we've been so busy over the past 6 weeks getting our apartment here together, traveling, seeing family and old friends, etc. that I haven't had much time to sew and he knows that this has bothered me. It's nice when someone you care about so much takes such a personal interest, isn't it?Outside of the sewing machine, my 1940's buffet (purchased on eBay from a seller in southern Germany) arrived yesterday and I am completely smitten by it. I genuinely love it. You can see some photos here if you'd like. I've been wanting one for ages but these Jugendstil style pieces are hard to come by and when you do find them, they are normally very expensive. I paid around $450 for mine (and $300 for delivery - I know, meep!) but it's perfect and in excellent condition so I'm happy.
Guess what? You know how I've often complained about the lack of fun paper products here in Germany? (A Paper Source or a See Jane Work type of store doesn't really exist here.) Well I went to this chain store on Saturday called McPaper expecting nothing other than the typical conservative red, blue, or gray solid color notebooks or ugly fruity notebooks (see their website to catch a peek of what the average stationery shop looks like here)... But what do you know, I found a few nice things from Herlitz (another boring paper company so I was surprised to see some of their new designs), a 2009 from teNeues designed by Hanna Werning, and a folksy blue spiral bound notebook from a company called Pip Studio. Yay! Trust me, this is progress. I hope to see more of this stuff on the shelves in paper stores, office supplies do not have to be boring. It's very much how 1980's America was, but just as things changed in the states and now even large companies have been forced to jazz up their collection due to demand. But enough about paper...
So... what did you do over the weekend?
(images taken by holly becker for decor8)