Hello from ....

Any fans in the land of the tastiest squid ever? Like, say, in Tokio?


I'm up for some fun!
All yours,
Fr.Mayer (the cat's home, in good old Germany)
See ya, squiddies!

Art Wall Results (for real!)

Let's start this post with a compliment. Sometimes my significant other really is the most patient person in the world. Kind of an angel, actually. For instance, he managed not to kill me yesterday while I was running around the FF, screaming: "I want to have it done!!!!!!!!!! I want it to be over!" in the most unpleasant manner.

He also helped me to turn this

into this

Never mind the empty frame. It's going to disappear as soon as certain someone finally tells me if I can produce my own little city collage - cause I'm dreaming of having one in blues and yellows right there in the middle of my shiny new art wall *wink*

While at it, I also moved some furniture and immediately came up with approximately 235 new ideas for the corner (that will frustrate me for a loong time because I still need to take care of the chaos in the living room). I also did a fair bit of decluttering and intend to indulge in many more hours of this rewarding activity.

The art on my incredibly beautiful, tastefully arranged and professionally hung art wall was kindly provided by Geninne, Eva Juliet, Tali also known as TushTush, Lucille Prache, a vintage mag found at a Bangkok market and the mighty Cavallini.
Loads of love to my signifacant other! I'm honestly surprised somebody actually reads this neglected blog - there'll be a big design overhaul soon to celebrate the fact that I posted twice within a week :)
Stay tuned!
Your Fr. Mayer
UPD There'll be a little city collage up on that wall very soon. Thank you, my dear interior guru!

Art Wall in Progress or How Not to Kill Everyone Around

Good thing I need to go pick up my bike and ride to the hardware store. Otherwise I'd turn into a mass destruction weapon. Have you ever tried to create a nice little art wall? Say, looking like this?

Then you'd better go buy a couple of nerve cells because some of yours are going to die while you arrange those damn things on the floor, cut out templates, put them on the wall only to watch them fall off and look like a complete mess. I'm also not going to talk about the AGES it took me to finally pull these frames  + pictures together.
Anyway, this is what I completed today:

Step 1

Step 2.
Guess what't falling off the wall right now!
Ok, I think that if I really want to see it all done today, I'd better disappear. I blog too much anyways, right?

Guess who says Hi!

No, dear ghost readers, this blog is not dead. Its owner's life, however, has been quite busy! Three weeks in the States, wonderful, full of shopping and new impressions. No time for blogging! I'll write more about my list of must-sees in NYC and around later, promise!

Let's make it short. I went to a flea market (Golden Nugget around Princeton, NJ), I found a crate, I bought it. 

Please, ignore the laundry in the background. My crate and I (as well as the crate intruder) are both saying Hi!

Still yours,
Frau Mayer

Kitchen: The Best Of

No; I've just discovered this interesting competition and I'd love to take part although I'm not really a scandinavian blogger. Whatever!

And some more!

And more!


And because the dining room is basically a part of our kitchen, here we go again!

Want to see scary before pictures? Go here!

Corners - one (or two) at a time.

It's been a while since we moved into FF (fantastic flat) and slowly but surely I have developed a better understanding of the place. There are so many advantages (endless storage, all the space, cozy little kitchen that doesn't allow any cluttering) but also a couple of smaller problems that need to be tackled (like painting ALL the doors - minus one - as well as the door and window frames. Great thing to do in summer!).

One of the best things that have happened lately is my giving up the priority list. I was acting like "Oh, no, I can't buy any artwork before I've figured out how and where I'm going to hang it". Now I'm just happily putting things into little corners and watching it all come together.

I'm also trying to navigate away from that matchy-matchy, color-coordinated style I used to be such a fan of. Places really do look much more interesting if you don't stick to a million of rules.

Living next to the wonderful gardens, I make myself (yes, you've read it right, I do have to make myself because there are always so many important things than need to be done this very second) go on little walks and bring back brunches that end up in lovely bottles in various corners of FF. Right here you can see a tiny bit of the bathroom that I'm really too ashamed of right now to be able to show more. Well, OK, just another tiny piece.

I've basically just thrown some of my favorite treasures and non-treasures on it: bottles from Morocco, a too-magical-to-be-described perfume from Anthropologie that I treated myself to and wear almost daily and a couple of branches from the said gardens.
That'll be all the corners for today. I'll leave you here with the last picture and a little question - can you guess what happened to the blue wallpaper? :)

Women in my life

Singing women, that is.
There are three of them, actually. All incredibly beautiful and blessed with voices that sound as if they weren't born on this planet.
I had the incredible pleasure of seeing Alela Diane in Berlin a while ago. I spent an hour on a beer crate because I can never see anything during concerts unless I climb somewhere (yes, I'm a garden gnome). Hearing Pirate's Gospel live just cracked me.

Marissa Nadler's songs are very much like her - very dark, impossible to approach, they're to be enojoyed from the distance. I remember that hearing her actually speak was totally weird.

And, finally, Keren Ann.
No matter if she sings in English or French (she does both), it's magical. If I was ever going to marry anyone (I'm not), I'd do it to her Right Now and Right Here.
And she's beautiful, too.

 

Source picture 1
Source picture 2
and picture 3

(Art)work in progress + Hannover on Sunday

Surpirsingly, I've managed quite a lot lately. Let's take a look at the little list:
1. Digested a bunch of inspirational books and picked some brilliant ideas.
2. Went to Ikea (oh yes, that long time no see feeling!) and spent a couple of wonderful hours. Just me and my shopping cart. It's paradise! And here are the results:


Soon, very soon the Chaos Corner will be a thing of the past!
3. Bought these fantastic prints at Lucille's store:

One is going into the bathroom (nicely updated with a couple of very inexpensive yet stunning Ikea rugs), one's destined for the dining room and the lovely blue bowl of Japanese soup will be staying in my modest abode.
4.
Some fresh pictures from the kitchen - it really needed some clean lines. All the cheerful blues and greens made it look a bit like a candy store but black surely does the trick.


There's a very ugly cable hiding right behind the rosemary!
5. And finally, I'd love to show off my neighbourhood (pictures made on a VERY short walk due to the freezing cold)





Sometimes I still can't believe we're really living here, right next to the beautiful gardens, surrounded by the old buildings and yet just a short train ride away from the city center. Oh, Hannover, you're the place to be!

The Power of To-Dos?

Quite honestly, is there any?
I'm going to test it!

So, what needs to be done in FF right now? Let's face the reality!

Living Room
1. Buy a sideboard for the chaos corner.
2. Decide on the art wall above the sofa. Ledges vs free? I'm rather sure there'll be ledges!
3. Buy ledges.
4. Sort the cabinet (oh yes, this is a BIG project).
5. Buy a bigger basket for the faky faky fireplace  - tall enough to hide all the cables. Why are baskets so expensive?
6. Have our great contractor guys hang 1. and 3.

My room 

1. Decide on frames for this (and two further) beautiful picture by Lucile. This lady is a genius!
Order mats (yes, more mats and more frames. Crazy!)
2. Go to Südstadt and order a glass for a beautiful silver frame I bought this summer.
3. Close the holes in the walls and paint over them (I really doubt this one will get done before the summer holidays).
4. Finally buy a pendant (need to go to List for that. And have a test lunch at Lulu. The power of combining!)
5. Have the secret team hang my pictures (all of them! Oh yes!) and 4.
6. Order fabric for cushions, cushions and a bedspread. Sew cushions (hm, this won't be easy).
7. Sort the file cabinet. Ha ha ha. This is a good one!




Bathroom
1. Have the team of you know who install the too-beautiful-to-be-kept-in-the-closet House Doctor lamp.
2. Finally find a shower curtain. I'm feeling so inspired by this

    It's an old tablecloth! Well... I do know a special source...
3. Put some decent artwork/do something to the picture ledges. Maybe then one day I won't be too ashamed to post a picture of my bathroom here.
4. Buy a rug. Oh yes! The green Ikea rug goes with NOTHING in here.

Corridor
1. Buy wire baskets for smaller objects.
2. Have 1 and a lovely framed chalkboard I've recently made hung.

Dining room
1. Do some painting in the niche.
2. Find old wine boxes and replace the baskets where we keep our large collection of alcohol :)
3. Arrange the niche shelves. They look like a complete disaster right now.
4. Solve the chair problem. The ones I bought at eBay (and re-did, with a little help of Chaos Man) are no longer presentable. Ideally, I'd go for some vintage bistro chairs with cushions but where to find those without spending a damn fortune?
5. Make a magnetic inspiration board and have it hung next to the cupboard. I really dislike the empty space between this beauty and the door.

Chaos room
1. Paint the wardrobe. It's going to be gray.
2. Make Chaos Man choose some decent artwork. Buy frames and picture ledges (he actually had a great idea as if where artwork could be hung in his room. Great influence?!)
3. Stop being scared of entering this room.


Random stuff
1. Buy a decent pot for the brave olive tree (it has survived in FF since summer!)
2. Clean the balconies.
3. Re-do the bench+chairs. I'm really looking forward to this one!
4. Sell half of the basement contents. I actually started today and felt really happy afterwards!

Isn't 13.02.2011 a great date to start a test like this?

A frame a day....

I'll tell you a secret. I now have a private guru. I won't tell you this guru's name  - just quote the action-causing-guru-words.
A frame a day. Just a frame. Not more.
I started following these wise words quite a while ago. This is how my living-room floor looked this weekend.

Spot the cat!

I finally made myself carve out some time to play with my scrapbooking treasures (long live October Afternoon - thanks, dear guru!)  - that's what the results look like:

As you can see, I'm quite into hearts right now. Now, let's hope that this qise strategy will keep working as it has already helped me finally measure practically everything I wanted to have framed, order a bunch of mats, quite many frames and do some spray painting in the basement. It also brought me one step further in the middle of Fantastic Flat as I've finally decided what should happen to the chaos corner of the living room. And yes, imagine this, there've been some changes on the other side of FF - right where someone very very messy resides - and this makes me very happy!
See you all, dear non-exis, soon, hopefully with more results! Keep it in mind - a frame (or whatever you like it to be) a day...

Kleinigkeiten + Martha Stewart Living for sale!

Hello there, my dearest non-existing lurking friends.
What's new here? Well, Frau Mayer has decided to treat herself better in 2011 (who hasn't?!). Means: do more for the body (yes, I do go to the gym on a regular basis and have actually managed to do so at least twice a week, every week!) and for the soul. The latter means: organize. Finish projects. For instance, two weeks ago I sat down and made this:
 

These ones were so much fun to make:

And here's my source of inspiration. Too bad I didn't come up with this idea myself, provided my severe map fetish!

Now, the trees are all gone. So are the mushrooms. And so is pre-Xmas stress at work. I'm really enjoying January which is virtually corrections-free.

Sometimes it's Kleinigkeiten (little things) that make one happy! 
There'll be even more pictures of frames, art walls and such as soon as my newly ordered frames and mats arrive. I'm so proud of myself because I finally took several hours to sit down, measure everything and spend a couple of hundred on my art-wall-to-be. I was really tired of empty walls and my favorite prints lying on the floor. More updates soon!

Now, I'm also happy to announce that I have a bunch of Martha Stewart Living mags for sale.

Dec 09, Jan, March, Apr, May, June, July 10. I can add two more to this bunch, however, I forgot Feb 10 in NJ (where we spent the holidays) and there's another summer edition, June or July 08, as far as I remember, somewhere in my basement (which still needs some re-organizing).
25 Euros for this bunch - I live in Germany and would be happy to send within the country for a flat rate of 4 Euros (insured).  If you're in Europe, drop me a line and I'll update you on shipping costs.
Now, back to work, back to work!

Same month, different post!

This is what I call action! As I'm slowly recovering from severe jetlag, I'm trying to find some time for too-long-procrastinated-over things, too.
Like creating an art wall (and this is a HUGE project. Honestly, I'm scared of it). Or buying fabric for a million of cushions I'd like to have. Or decluttering the bathroom. Or selling things in the basement that are taking up space. Or getting a new washing machine (yes, it has to be Miele. I surrender).
Or maybe saying a big thank you to someone who introduced me to soft trees!
Now, I had the most amazing time in Lüneburg, browsing place like this:


And thinking of getting some fluffy trees myself - which I didn't because right after Christmas we packed our things and went to face the blizzards - pobably the most stupid time to fly to the states. Ever. 

And crafting, of course. I actually stuffed a whole little forest!

This time I even got to play in Yvonne's beautiful studio. And entertain Pauline a bit (which was fun, too).

Now I need to survive January (too many days that will be spent at work, too little free time), loose some weight, finish that art wall, get myself another play date and stay inspired.


All pictures courtesy of Yvonne. Tree on!

2011: The Year of Inspiration + Action

Hello there, dear non-existent readers! Frau Mayer is back with a massive resolution for 2011: BE INSPIRED AND ACT.

2010 was great and difficult at the same time. I achieved a lot, finished my teacher training, got a job, found out it was not all cakes and ale. I moved into my dream flat, read (too) many blogs, got inspired, bought furniture, spent endless hours at flea markets and IKEA, decorated, painted, cleaned and organised. I found wonderful new friends (hello there, Yvonne :)  and also lost some. I read (although not enough) and danced quite a bit. I traveled to Morocco, Turkey, London (saw my best friend after quite a break!) and my beloved NJ (yes, and NYC, too! Can't get enough!)  I shopped quite a bit. I got myself a Flickr account.

I read endless magazines.

Right now I feel that I need to read less and do more. During my last visit to Lüneburg I got a whole bunch of lovely mags from Yvonne and fell in love with this Danish apartment. I love the colors and the overall feeling!


Well, it's just logical that the apartment belongs to a Feng Shui expert. She definitely knows her business.

I wouldn't place so many Buddhas in my own place but I love how carefully the details are chosen here.

I never really dared to use pink - maybe it's time to give it a try?


I smiled when I saw this because I have a similar niche in my dining room and it's still half-empty so I'll be working on filling it with some eye candy in 2011, too.

There's only one word to describe this kitchen: gemütlich. Yes, it is!

I love how the owner manages to combine clean and fluffy. And so incredibly simple!

So this is what I am feeling right now - inspired. Let's see what kind of action is going to follow. Happy New 2011, everyone!