Taking Down our Christmas Decoration

So sad, another christmas is over! Yesterday, I took everything down and stored it in our attic for our next christmas which will be in Portland!! Leaving Texas in October for good, woohoo. So I had to think what should go into the boxes and what I can donate or put on the curb. I decided that all the reds needed to go. When I was little, bright red was my favorite color (my first bike was dark...
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Great New Items in My Booth This Weekend!

I’ve been working hard to get all my items finished that I’ll be selling at the Third Monday Trade Days this month. It’s been a busy summer and I enjoyed fixing, repairing, upcycling, dumpster-diving and street-shopping a lot. My schedule has been filled with markets throughout every single weekend and restoring during the weeks. In between, I took some graphic design jobs and...
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Upcycled Tables from Reclaimed Wood

My favorite shopping mall is the street! Some women love shoes, I love weathered wood. Whenever someone is taking a fence down in the neighborhood, I am the first one to show up and pick it up. And I am their favorite street shopper. Most people are delighted because more often than not, during trash days, it doesn’t get picked up and sits on the streets for weeks. If they can, they even...
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Upcycling Old Bed Sheets To Curtains

I am so glad my family is the type “hunters and collectors”! My Mom gave me all those beautiful old bed sheets from my great-grandparents, or maybe even from their parents? They are really beautiful and they were made to last because they had to be passed on to the next generation. And they do! You know how much I preach about recycling and upcycling -these are fairly new terms but...
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Dressers: Ideas & Inspiration

Today, I picked up a Subaru-load of old deck wood from my friend who needed to get rid of it. Now, I am thinking about all the neat things I could build and immediately thought of shelf racks. For some reason, the web sucked me in and I found these fabulous dressers instead. I still have several drawers left from my previous dumpster-diving tours that I could use. They look like kitchen drawers...
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Upholstering a Small Bench

Amazing things are happening and as you can see I have been very busy (by the minimal number of blog posts…). Weekends are stuffed with shows and fairs; means getting up at 6 driving down to Dallas, and then all the time throughout the week, getting prepared, selling online, lining up at the post office and all the awesome street finds along the way (and restoring them)!! Taught two...
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How to Prepare For A Garage Sale

Today, I had my very first garage sale and here I am giving you tips how to prepare one! It was a great success, so I guess I must have done something right and why not pass on my suggestions? 1– First you have to check if you need a permit for your area (or if you are allowed to have one). 2– Set a date, preferably on a weekend (I read somewhere that the beginning of a month is...
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New Addiction For Artists, Creatives & Visuals: PINTEREST!

Who’s tried it yet? Do you have an account? Yes, there’s another forum on the market and I am usually the one who watches the benefits first and analyzes its pros and cons. Kinda like facebook. I was on facebook when they just started and I had 5 friends for 1 1/2 years. How often did I use it? Not at all! If you have just 5 friends who post as much as you do, you can imagine how...
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Days Like These…

Today’s one of those days when nothing exciting seemed to happen. But when I look back, a ton of stuff happened, why not share? Thursdays and Fridays are my hubby’s days off and so am I -thank goodness I am self-employed! In the morning the best news in a long time came in: my parents are coming to visit in March, woohoooo!! First time since I moved here from Germany 4 years ago....
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Where Does An Artist Feel At Home?

One week after our trip to the West Coast, I am still digesting all the information intake and the impressions we swallowed along the way. We started our trip in San Francisco where we stayed for a week. Then we took our rental car, a silver 2011 Jeep Wrangler, and drove to Crater Lake. We have met so many people who live in Oregon who have never been there. Seriously? And then we met a retired...
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A Creative Mind Living In A Fake Bubble

Most of you know that before I moved to McKinney in Texas, I traveled the world, lived in exciting places like Germany, England, Switzerland, New Orleans and worldwide at sea. Some of them seemed less exciting but they all had something to offer for my needs. McKinney was voted #5 “Best Places to Live in the US” by Money Magazine in 2010. The criteria chosen: - unemployment rate...
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How to Make Your Guest Room Inviting

After I have renovated our bedroom, it was time to have a look at our guest room. It’s quite a dark place because it has only one window to the North, so when I painted it first, I used a bright yellow to lighten it up a bit. The furniture I used in there ranged from dark to light wood. And above all, I mostly used it to store stuff that I don’t use much or not at all -ok, I threw my...
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How To Choose Artwork For A Bedroom

Last week, I decided to give our bedroom a make-over. Here are some pictures how it looks like now: My husband chose the wall color long time before I moved in and even though I like brighter colors better, I thought it was a calming and nice choice for a bedroom. So, I decided to keep it and not repaint it. I chose to put only few artwork into the room because it’s the place where I get...
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How Living in New Orleans Changed my Life

After a week of no blogging, I missed you all! But I spent some great time away visiting my former home-town (was for two years) New Orleans. Love it or hate it, there’s no compromise on this place. I moved to NOLA in 1999, my second job after my 3-year chef’s apprenticeship in Germany. Being an apprentice in a male-dominated profession in Germany is not much fun and there is...
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Why Should You Surround Yourself With Artwork?

Did you ever wonder why people buy artwork? Did you wonder why some spend millions on one piece and others a few pennies but treasure it more than their bank account? There are many different types of personalities and their motives differ from one another in many ways. Recently, I wrote about why art is a great investment, so I don’t want to delve into this subject in this post. There are...
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