Quick and Easy Broccoli Tarte

At this time of the year fruit and vegetables are quite expensive in Germany and, even worse, of fairly bad quality. Ever got tomatoes in February? Don't do it.

One of my favourite vegetable in late winter is broccoli. And one of my favourite dishes with it is this broccoli tarte.

Stuffing the Titles

Since a few days now it has been cold, rainy, windy – short term: ugly November weather. In January. Neither winter nor spring. It starts making me depressed. I'm not in the mood for going out of the door, a good opportunity to revamp my shops.

For the Sake of Love

I'm just tweaking some photos for a wedding magazine. It will be published at the end of January, early enough to get ideas for the great day and early enough to realise them before the great 'wedding run' in late spring.

Winter is Back

... as was to be expected :-(

Again snow and frost. Not as much as it was but enough to dash my hope for an early spring. No, I will not complain - wouldn't help anyway. For comparison I look at my 'Cool Lounge'-photos which I took last winter - and I cool down ;-)

A New Etsy Team & Some More Green

Since a week or so I'm a proud member of Etsy team 'In the Making', thanks to an invitation from Pey!

Pey is the owner of Etsy-shop Peylu and co-owner of folkartvision. Her shop Peylu is one of my favourite shops since round about two years now. I love her paintings of birds and 'egg-watching' and those of - yes, furniture pieces, which is quite unusual. You have to check out Pey's shop! Her second shop, folkartvision, was new to me but is equally gorgeous. Here she and her partner Anatol sell beautiful and unique mixed media wood collages. Well worth a visit, too!

The members of Etsy team 'In the Making' are some of the most excellent artists on Etsy - no girlie-girlie-plastic-stuff! Check out their shops, you will be surprised! The full membership roster you'll find here.

The team's motto is 'Think different' and 'Thinking outside the box', something I always would support! The team is creating stunning treasuries which you can find here. Or search Etsy's treasuries for 'imteam' or 'in the making'.

We have a flickr group and a blog, too. A lot of stuff to read and to look through! A great THANK YOU to our team leaders who have set up all this and who have done a great job! Thank you, Pey! Thank you, Betsy! (BetsyBensen - check out her incredible jewelry!) Thank you, Anette! (Dragonhouse of Yuen - the most beautiful hares you've ever seen!)

As a small contribution I have created a treasury this morning, mainly featuring some team members (but some other great sellers, too!). And because I'm still in spring mood (hey spring, where are you today??!!), it is about a little bit of green. Click on it to see the original with clickable items.

Spring is in the Air! Really?

It's cool over here but not cold. The sky is blue with just a few white clouds, the sun is shining. The birds are singing and tweeting as they do when spring is on its way, the daffodils pushing their tips through the soil. It smells like spring!

OK, it's mid of January, a bit early, I know. Yes, we will have frost again. But today I'm in spring mood. I will work a bit in the garden later. Want to remove some of the ugly brown, frostbitten remains from last autumn. I want fresh green!

This morning I've started to prepare a few springtime photos which are going to the printer to list them in my shops later.

I love the sky blue of the forget-me-not. It is pure spring.

And so is the grass.

These are tulips' flower buds. Crisp, juicy, full of life.

Somebody said, the best of spring is the anticipation of summer. For today I'm looking forward to spring! Happy Sunday!

A Living Room for Leo

Recently I told you about Leo, the least weasel baby I had found in late summer. He couldn't be released into the wild last year because it was too late already. We have to wait until May.

In the meantime Leo is living in a cage in the living room. After he had outgrown his 'baby'-box I wanted to give him more space in a cage that I could easily move around. At that time I still thought to release him in a few weeks and in preparation for this I wanted to move him into the garden for a few hours daily to make him learn what rain is, what sun and storm and night.

I got an old wooden cot with castors to which I mounted a top cover from slats. I lined it with a fine mesh. Inside this cage I put the baby box, a long piece of a tree trunk, some shelves, boxes and tubes from paper towels. Already with his first box I decided to let him stay in contact with bacteria from the garden. Soil, sand, gravel, stones, old and fresh leaves, grass and pieces of wood from my organic (!!) garden instead of shop bought litter. When he moved into the cage and discovered he could leave his baby box and had a lot more space to run and jump around, he squealed with glee.

Not a piece of beauty: Leo's cage. Here with the top cover open and a wicker chair and a small stair from cardboard boxes in order to get back into it.

When it turned out that Leo couldn't be released last autumn, it became clear too, that this cage – intended as an interim solution – would be too small for him for the months to come. In the wild a male least weasel's hunting ground is around 1,5 ha (= 15.000 m² = roughly 161,500 sq ft). Leo's muscles need to be fully trained to cope with such spaces. This was impossible to achieve in his cage. He needed to run longer distances.

After thoughtful consideration I decided to let him run in the living room. All windows and doors closed, all harmful decoration removed, nobody but me (without shoes!) in the room, Leo completely seizes this room from top to bottom during a few hours each day. Least weasels sleep around half of the time. Their sleep-wake cycle is irregular but they are active night and day, even a bit more at daytime. Leo sleeps around three to four hours, then he's awake for more or less the same time, being extremely active with small breaks in between. These intervals are not consistent, but I can't figure out what they depend on.

When Leo is active he is somewhat hyperactive, as least weasels are. He climbs up the curtains, jumps from wicker chair to wicker chair and runs across the room like lightning. (That's why it's so hard to get good photo shots.) He especially loves the sofas because he has a good grip on the cloth and there are cushions and blankets under which he can hide.

Leo last autumn while in the cage outside in the garden

In the wild an adult least weasel would be busy all time preying on food. Leo gets his food from me and in his spare time he wants to play. He fights with my hands and fingers, preferably when he is hidden under a blanket, which is good for me because his teeth are really sharp. He tries to catch whatever I have, pieces of leather (his favourites), knotted pieces of fabric, crumbled pieces of paper and of course, his toys. Typical least weasel, whatever he catches, he immediately carries it off and buries it in one of his hiding places, behind a cushion, under a blanket, behind a book shelf, in a tube or in a drawer. Into the drawer he gets from somewhere under the chest, although I don't know how he does it. It looks extremely funny when he's lugging a piece of knotted fabric that is four times as large as he is. And because Leo is a least weasel who in the wild mainly feed on voles whom they follow into their underground tunnels, he creeps into everything he fits in. He creeps into tubes of course, but also under a turned over newspaper, into vases and into the sleeves of whatever I wear.

However, Leo gets his food in his cage only and I want him to sleep there too. He loves blankets and if I would let him, he would prefer to sleep under a woolen blanket on the sofa. But with the help of his toys it's easy to get him back into his cage. That's when we get back our living room.

Small Thing - Great Design

I love old advertising posters and tin plate signs and I prefer to light a candle with matches, not with a cigarette lighter. Can you imagine my surprise when I wanted to buy some matches and the shop owner gave me these? Aren't they beautiful?

OK, they obviously resemble a cigarette pack, so those of you who hate cigarettes or smokers, just skip this post. For the rest of you I'll even share a close-up:

I don't know whether these cigarettes ever came in a pack like this. It looks more like a reprint of an old, faded ad. But it makes a very nice matchbox. More of these, please!

As Time Goes By

To be honest, I'm not really fond of watches and clocks. I feel controlled and dominated by them, something I don't like at all. I don't need an alarm clock in the morning, I'm able to get out of bed on my own – very, very early, btw.

I'm owning one old wrist watch, the first and only one I've ever had. And I'm not longing for another one. Although this old watch is very simple and not even waterproof it is still in working order. Maybe because I very rarely wear it ;-). With one exception. When I have to travel by plane I put it into my handbag since I once nearly missed a flight. I was sitting in the lounge at London Heathrow waiting for my flight back to Germany. They didn't announce any departures in that lounge, perhaps to not disturb the people reading or working. However, when I finally got the feeling I should move to the gate now and I asked somebody for the time, it nearly was too late. I had to run like mad – Heathrow is huge!

There is also a clock in my kitchen. Pasta and eggs need to be cooked precisely. But that's it. No decorative clocks anywhere in my home.

Last week a friend of mine asked me to post on the internet some stuff she wanted to sell. I visited her and took some photos. Among crockery and coats there was an old wooden regulator clock. It really needs some restoration but seems to be of some value (I don't know anything about clocks and I may have dumped it).

Back at home and tweaking the photos I realised that this old clock displayed in a fresh and modern setting can look absolutely beautiful. We used such a background for the clock's photo simply for colour contrast. I'm surprised.

I had seen old clocks before, all cluttered in even more cluttered spaces. But with this new and fresh approach I would reconsider my distaste for clocks and watches. Maybe I should buy this old thingy?

The Cucumber

I'm just back from the supermarket. I've got some cucumbers. And one of them is a bent one!!! YEAH! I haven't seen one in 22 years now since in 1988 the European Bureaucracy banned them with its „bent cucumber rule“. Cucumbers had to be entirely straight to make it into the supermarkets. What an incredible rubbish!

In 2008 this EU ban was scrapped BUT the bent cucumbers didn't come back. In Germany the discounters wanted to stick to the straight ones – to keep the prices up. Which is just another hogwash because cucumbers always are fairly cheap.

And today to my big surprise there was a bent cucumber in the box between all the straight ones. I purchased it with a smile :-)

I'm completely against standardisation of fruit and vegetables. We've had to live for so long with the bad results of such madness. Not only disappeared a lot of cultivars, the remaining produce became bigger, uniform and optically flawless, all at the expense of taste and nutrient content.

That one bent cucumber makes me hope for the return of all the tasteful varieties we had in the past. I'm patient.

About Dust Bunnies and Other Pets

The beginning of a new year is a lot about diets and better organising home and tasks. As I'm not on a diet at the moment (I should, but I'm not in the mood for one), I'll have a share in the latter.

When it comes to cleaning the house my most hated task is vacuuming. I don't know why, most people I know prefer vacuuming to any other household task. Maybe it's because it's loud and warm. Although my Miele cat & dog does a very good job and I do like the design, in a two storey home a vac's storage place at 50% of the time is at the wrong storey. A few hair on the bathroom floor, some sand from the least weasel's cage, crumbs from the cat loo – I don't want to lug the Miele upstairs for just this. So either this dirt has to stay (and will accumulate) until I'm going to vacuum the complete storey or I have to use hand broom and dust pan, which I hate even more.

Some years ago I purchased a cordless broom. This thing was bulky, ugly, even louder than the Miele and the batteries were dead long before I'd finished my job. The worst, it didn't vacuum properly at all. I gave it away after some weeks.

A few months ago now I stumbled upon a test report about cordless hand vacs, saying that the rechargeable batteries today are of a different quality and therefore these vacs run much longer than those from the previous generation.

There were some really beautiful hand vacs, one being a real designer piece from an American manufacturer. But another very nice one had better test results, was cheaper and had a cute name, the AEG Liliput. I purchased a black one for around € 30 including shipping.

One of my best decisions! The charging station is fixed to the wall in my office with the Liliput resting in this cradle while not in use. The charging station and cradle are a bit flimsy and could be improved. But the Liliput is nice and at hand when I need it. And I need it often.

Once a day I run it along the edges of bathroom, kitchen, hall and around the least weasel cage. It runs around 10 minutes before it needs to be recharged and this really is enough time. It takes me about five minutes maximum to get rid of the dirt.

Due to the air movement that arises when walking through a room, dust bunnies, hair and light dirt accumulate at the bottom of the baseboards, not in the middle of the floor. I never realised that before. With the Liliput vacuuming the edges and corners and the occasional crumbs here and there, my floors look much better now - every day!

A small investment for a huge improvement.

BTW, I'm not connected to AEG in any way and I'm sure, there are other hand vac brands out there that are equally good!

Shipping Costs Significantly Decreased!

Thanks to Deutsche Post, sending letters to international destinations has become much cheaper as of today.

Deutsche Post has restructured its prices for letters completely. Instead of three destinations (Germany, Europe and World) there are left only two now, national and international.

Whereas previously I had to pay €6,00 for my prints to be send to the US, today postage for this same letter (international Großbrief up to 500g) is €3,45. That really is a huge difference, isn't it? Standard letters international are €0,75 now (were € 1,70 [World] previously).

Postage within Germany is pretty much the same. Postage to European countries has slightly increased due to combining this group with the world group. But the savings for the ex-world-destinations by far outweigh this small increase. At least for me. Thank you, Deutsche Post!

I've amended all my shipping costs in both my shops, Etsy and ArtFire accordingly. See you there?

2010 - Leo

Finally and most important, in 2010 I've got Leo. Or rather, I've found him. In my garden. A hungry, motherless least weasel baby (Mustela nivalis / German: Mauswiesel).

I didn't have any idea of how to bring up a least weasel baby and so had nobody else I asked for help. Nobody wanted to take this smallest of all predators, and our town's official veterinarian would have had to put it down, if neither its biological mother nor anybody else would have taken care of it. Its mother didn't turn up and so I decided to give it a try. I didn't know what to expect, but today my least weasel is a beautiful, strong and healthy youngster.

I found Leo at the end of July when he still needed to be coddled up for some time before being released back into the wild. But September was cold and nasty and when I finally found out how to prepare a proper release, it was too late to do it that autumn. My vet said, at that point Leo no longer was a wild animal but a domestic one and release could not be undertaken before May.

So I made arrangements for this unexpected, prolonged cohabitation. There is still Mini, my beloved cat, who would be more than pleased, if she could put a paw on Leo, and very often it is stressful and time consuming to juggle Mini, Leo and my own needs. But I'm thankful too to get so exceptionally close to such an animal.

I really love that cute little guy and we will see how this goes on. If there is anybody out there with at least a little bit of experience with a least weasel, I would be grateful for any tips.

2010 – Rocking Horses

When it comes to rocking horse sales, 2010 was mixed. During the first two thirds of the year the manufacturing processes were changed and the machines were moved and/or replaced. This broad restructuring with all its challenges resulted in our having insufficient stock. The first horses from new production were sent mid October – fairly late for the Christmas business to come. During these last three months of the year the horses were sent as soon as they'd been produced. No time to build up stock. But the horses were as beautiful as ever and in 2011 these things will become much easier.

2010 – Etsy & ArtFire

In 2010 there was a lot of Etsy-stress. You may or may not have heard about Etsy moving away from a 'normal' marketplace into the direction of a social networking site. This wasn't stated clearly but there were so many changes that after a while it became clear to those who wanted to know, that Etsy somehow is connected to Facebook. 

I didn't do very well on Etsy but after having analysed my shop and my competitor's shops I finally got an idea of the changes I should undertake. But before I even could start with these improvements Etsy had changed the search function. More precisely, they have limited the search results of any given search in a way that now sellers are forced to renew there items even more often to get seen at all. This is a slab in a seller's face. Small sellers are unable to cope with this procedure. Keeping in mind that renewing is Etsy's most profitable earning and being concerned about the increasing fraternisation with Facebook, I finally decided to open another shop. On ArtFire ;-)

After having done that I worked on my photo formats. I only had larger photos in my shop previously. The idea behind these larger photos was to give a customer as much photo as possible for the given shipping costs. Shipping internationally, it is these costs that dictate what I can offer. I have added to both my shops smaller formats now (5“x5“ and 5“x7“), which I sell as sets. Instead of getting one larger photo at least a customer can choose to get several smaller photos now. We'll see how this works out.

Something else quite important: Etsy has implemented a feature that allows sellers to add and show prices in their countries' currency. I've changed my prices on Etsy to EURO. For those, whose curreny is EURO, this is the cheapest way to buy from me.

On ArtFire, my prices are in US-Dollar. If you want to pay me in $ US, my ArtFire shop would be the best option for you.

2010 – My Nephew Got His First Apartment & I was Happy to Help

Just after my friend's move in August my brother's youngest son had rented his first apartment – and asked me for some help with the design. The apartment, 30 m² (323 ft²) in an old building under the attic, was in even poorer condition with the previous tenant having left a disgusting mess. Here my brother actively did the renovation, so my help was confined to the design and to look for the furnishing.

2010 – My Best Friend Moved House & I was Happy to Help

In 2010 my best friend and her two children moved house in summer. In late spring, after she had found a suitable small house for rental, she asked me for help with renovating and decorating. She and her husband were going to part. The situation was quite difficult, the house was in very poor condition and there wasn't much money.

So in summer I spent a good part of my time designing the look of the new home, organizing the renovation, looking for kitchens, sofas, beds and tables, choosing floors and paint, and finally helped with whatever I could. It was sometimes exhausting, but it always was a lot of fun. And the result is absolutely pleasing.

Happy New Year 2011!!!

I've been absent from my blog for soooo long now and I apologise to the few readers I still have! But new year, fresh start – so January 1^st to me seems to be a good date for a new take off – nicer than November 27^th, don't you think so?

2010 was an extremely busy and difficult year for me. To be honest, I'm glad it's over. What happened? A lot. I want you to enjoy my blog, so I'm sharing the good things only. I've split them into single posts in order to search and find them properly.

I will come back to all these topics later this month, so stay tuned!