Welcome to Boxwood Cottage

Happy New Year 2018!

2017-12-31T05:06:00.004-08:00

In 2017 I discovered a new favorite thing which I love doing and this is chalk lettering!

Here is to a happy and healthy new year 2018!

Cheers!

xoxo Carola

Finally back with an Easter inspired post!

2016-03-23T04:33:00.001-07:00

Hello, somebody out there?

Just trying today if I still know how to blog after almost a year long break *phew*

It's not so easy to come back after such a long time, but I figured I best just start with pictures, right?

And since once again Easter is on it's way, well......

of course I'd like to share with you some pics of this years Easter crafts and decorations. I still love nests and eggs, German paper maché eggs especially and I still love silver German glass glitter and German Dresden foils, it's just so fun to use these for my creations and authentic too, cause I can't deny being German.

I cut some pussy willow branches from the tree in the very back of my garden for the vignette above.

The 3 eggs in the picture above that are not paper maché are goose eggs from my sisters 4 geese, the lucky once that have a long free life and no fear of being eaten, by other then maybe a fox. They are rooming around in my sisters garden and in her neighbors gardens and on their fields too, but in the evening they always come back to their stable in my sisters garden.

I glittered lots of plastic eggs lately and some bunnies and a paper maché basket and small fimo eggs that I made.

I often change my Easter vignettes, put things first here, than the next day there, until I finally really like what I see.

These are too of the nests I created recently. The Easter basket nests above contains all the things I like from paper maché to fine silver glass glitter, to Dresden foil borders and silver bunny and that grey moss, which is called Dschungelgras around here, but doesn't grow in our climate.

Above is a mini nest in vintage tea cup with glittered fimo eggs and a glittered wooden bunny. Below a large nest with glittered plastic eggs in a terrarium which I soldered some years ago

I found the left, yellow(ish) paper maché egg with the German Dresden foil saying "Fröhliche Ostern" at the antique market last month and it is really old whereas the white paper maché egg I painted myself and put the Dresdens on last year. I think they look as if the belong together :)

Just some more vignettes. Below I used wax candle eggs and a wire egg to put in unsual egg holders, like the beautiful bed springs, that my dear friend Julia of Vintage with laces sent me in a friendship swap some time ago and the old tin funnel, another antique market find from last month:

And here comes a Dresden bunny Easter egg boat :)

Spring has not really sprung around here with temps still only around 7-11 degrees celsius, but I can feel it lurking just around the corner and since frosty nights have come to a minimum already I dared to start planting spring flowers into the pots on top of my patio tables and they are such a welcome sight after 4 months without flowers :)

And yesterday I got a new garden/planting table for my patio since the old one I had there was breaking already after many winters in the wet and cold and of course I had to put some Spring bulbs and Easter decorations on top.

I'm officially prepared now for Easter and Spring to come :)

It's my first, no I'm lying it's my second vacation/time off work since I started my knew job in my old company last September, but somehow the Christmas vacation doesn't count, because I spent it inside houses, but it's the first time off work where I can go outside and putter in my garden again and that just feels wonderful!

So how have y'all been doing lately?

xoxo~

Carola

Happy Easter 2015

2015-04-05T00:41:00.001-07:00

I have no time for a long text right now, so I let the pictures speak for themselves today. As you can see it's Easter inside the house and Spring outside in the garden around here :)

Happy Easter everyone!

Carola

Pretty neutral Valentine's day swap creations and an apology!

2015-02-06T21:00:00.000-08:00

Welcome back to Boxwood Cottage in the snowy month of February dear blogging friends and readers, which also happens to be the month of hearts!

Since Valentine's day isn't far away anymore, today I'd like to share with you some Valentines I made last year for a friendship swap with my dear friend Julia of the blog"Vintage with laces" which I'm sure most of you know. She received my parcel too late in order to share it before Valentines day (if I remember correctly it arrived on Valentines day exactly, but she had to pick it up somewhere and had no time to go there and get it on that day) last year, without spoiling her surprise, so I figured I better keep the pictures for this years Valentine's blog post and it looks as if this was a good decision, because things are not really working as planned around here.

I think I told you last month about the reasons for my long blog absence and the new job that I started last year. Well the bad news for me is that the Greek manager of that company decided to just vanish (elope, bolt or however it's called), when things got a bit stressful, a couple of weeks ago and he didn't leave any money on the company bank account when he did so, which left the company bankrupt and me from February on without my new job *sigh* :(

So I really want to apologize for not getting back to all of you and visiting all of your blogs, also you all welcomed me back so very kindly, but I hope that you'll accept my apology and that you can imagine and understand just how stressfull these last couple of weeks were (well I better say still are) for me, because since I'm the only native German speaking person in that company I had to handle all the complaints and pretty much anything else, which left me kind of numb in the evenings and on the weekends with no energy for much else, than a bit of pinning or facebook.

But now I don't want to bother y'all with these unhappy things anymore.

Let's go back to more delightful things like creating hearts for example.

Julia wished for mainly neutral Valentines which was quite a challenge, but I tried my best to fulfill her wish. The pictureses above and below are showing a chocolate cardboard heart box which I embellished for Julia and then filled it with all kind of small things for her to create Valentines with. I also made these lumpy little silver solder hearts that you can see in the box and which are really fun to make. You just let solder drip on a heat resistent surface and then dunk the soldering iron into the drop while the solder is still hot to form the little heart.

I was very inspired to create such a Valentine's day box by a pinterest photo of an etsy offering, that you can see here: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/283515739015978628/ and I think it shows ;-)

The next photo shows a couple of Valentines that I soldered last year and the big silver soldered heart in the upper left corner also went in Julia's parcel:

Below is another white cardboard heart that I cut out and embellished a bit from both sides and a card holder in heart shape that I formed (forged?) for her from smooth silver wire.

The sweet Valentine's flashcards are from my friend from Cari Craft's etsy shop btw! In case you want some too, here is the link to it: https://www.etsy.com/shop/CariKraft

Then I made her a tiny Valentine's day basket:

that I filled with a birdie that I glittered and some old millinery flowers:

I also embellished and old cabinet card for here, the one that you can see sitting on the old black typewriter in the picture below:

Following is an even better/closer shot of it. I also cut out a cupid and painted it with black chalkboard paint as well as a formerly vintage green plastic flower frog in which I placed the cupid along with the cardboard heart that I embellished and that you can see below from the other side with a lace paper heart glued on. I also soldered the scrabble letter LOVE pendant and that small filled glass vial for her and embellished a heavier glass heart as a paper weight:

The next photo shows the whole swap batch I think. I found that two turtle doves paper garland and had to buy it and include it in the parcel. Inspired from them I cut out a turtle dove heart from some old sheat music paper and glued it on the lid of the filled cardboard chocolate heart box the

As you may have noticed I also created some love arrows, one silver glittered and one silver soldered and a bow and I also formed Julia's name with the smooth silver wire:

Lastly I painted some paper maché hearts with black chalkboard paint and wrote and drew on them with white chalk. Not sure if the one I put in the parcel that says "JULIA xooxox 14" has made it to her without the white chalk wiping off. I also included a cardboard heart that I glittered with silver glass glitter and another small cardboard heart that I embellished from all sides and glued some millinery flowers on top.

Well I think this that was it and I'd be glad if this would inspire you to create some Valentines for someone special or just for yourself :)

So in case that we don't speak or see eachother around again before Valentine's day, I'm wishing y'all a day filled with hearts, love and laughter!

xoxo~ Carola

White Winter & Happy New Year!

2015-01-02T14:35:00.000-08:00

I will probably win the price for the fewest blog posts ever in 2014, but one of my new years resolutions is to do more posts in 2015 so I think I better start early in the year :)

I'm so sorry for my long absence dear blogging friends and readers.

Oh well hopefully there are still a few of you out there?

I had a terribly busy second half of 2014 which included a big vegan event that I organised in my city last summer as well as a new job that I started in September and the move of my daughter as well as the opening of her vegan coffeshop also in September and then work, work, work and work until I finally got a few days off last week and this one.

Can you believe that I started to decorate for Christmas on the very last Advent Sunday only? Readers and friends that have known my blog for the last 10 years (yes you read that correctly since I also missed my 10 years blogiversary in September 2014) also know my love for decorating and especially at Christmas time and I usually start with it mid November already, so this season I was really late and decided to do more of a Winter theme than a Christmas theme, so that I can leave it all out for a little longer without getting sick of it already a week after Christmas. I didn't even get around to buy a Christmas fir tree this season, which wasn't too bad, because we celebrated in my sisters and parents houses and in my daughters Café this time and the other good thing of it is that the putting it all away is going to be so much faster without having to put all my antique glass ornaments off of the tree and back in their boxes.

The Winter theme of course includes lots of whites and silver glass glitter and tinsel as well as snowflakes and snowballs. I decorated my little feather tree again with the white cotton batting ornaments that I made and collected over the last few years and my favorite antique tinsel star tree topper (right click to enlarge the photos):

Apart from my mantle I always love to decorate my old transom window/room divider with snowflakes and I also used the dripping snow border that I created last season (with a tutorial for you) on the bottom of the window and really love the look of it so much better than when I put it on the mantle last year.

And as you can see I also had a little fun with the chalk writer on the window panes:

Here is the whole window in all it's Winter glory (right click on the photos then click on show graphic and on the pic again to enlarge them, if you want to see more details):

The basement door got a few adorments too:

One of favorits is this simple french Christmas cone:

The last days were quite dark here, around Winter solstice, but I quite like the natural light in the next shot:

Following I share a few more shots of my Winter mantle with the old Dresden cardboard sign (saying "Schenke und Erfreue" which simply means Give Joy) which I found last year and the crocheted snowflakes garland from last season which I still both love:

The white star pillow was a self made Christmas present from my sweet niece who`s 18th birthday we celebrated just 3 days before Christmas and the wooden Antiques sign is a Christmas gift from my dear daugter. I like the look of the wooden logs in the old wooden crate with the twinkle lights on it that gives the impression of fire in the mantle.

On top of the mantle as always I like to decorate symmetrical and used pais right and left of white feather trees, white bottle brush trees, mercury glass trees, white snowball candles, white deer and so on and on:

It's shining and twinkling and glittering all around here and since outside we had no snow at all so far this season at least inside the cottage I get a feeling of a snowy and frosty and still cosy Winter :)

The Merry Christmas glitter sign that I bought from Andrea Singarella in the US when she still had her fab online shop is still one of my favorite festive & glittering things :)

And I also still love all the bottle brush trees that I collected over the last 10 years and my little Putz village:

and a bit closer:

For new years eve which I spent at home with my daughter and out frightened cat Riley ( he hates the fireworks and is kinda panicking, especially around midnight when it gets really loud) I made this Happy New Year garland:

And for the new year 2015 I'm wishing all of you very GOOD LUCK with the last photo :)

Btw did anyone out there missed me at least a bit while I was away from my little blogging space for 6 whole months and wants me to keep blogging or am I all on my own out here by now??

Would love to catch up with you during the next few days though!

xoxo~ Carola

Creative spaces bloghop winner and "Where bloggers create"

2014-07-10T01:54:00.000-07:00

Hello dear blogging friends and readers,

welcome back to Boxwood Cottage and just a short post today to announce the lucky winner for the Creative Spaces Vol 3 2014 blog hop and my participation in the 6th annual Where Bloggers Create blog party, which is this Saturday already! See Karen Valentine's pretty announcement button above and in my side bar. I'm frantically rearranging my studio right now so that I will be able to share something new with you on Saturday and I hope that I'll get it finished until then. July is always the hottest and most humid month around here and you can imagine it's not really a pleasure to work here upstairs in my rooftop studio because I have no air condition other than opening the big rooftop windows on both sides of the room. So I hope to see you here again on Saturday! :)

A big thank you to all the bloghop visitors and participants who left my such kind comments about my studio under my last blog post and now without further ado the winner of the Creative Spaces Vol. 3 magazine chosen by random number generator is comment number 31!

Karrie Ortiz - Sweet Paper Treats - California

Congratulations Karrie! :)

Please e-mail me your address, so that I can get the magazine that you can see in the picture above send off to you!

Have a great summer week everyone and hopefully until Saturday!

Carola~xoxo

P.S.:
Happy birthday wishes to my dad whose 81st birthday is today! :)
Alles Liebe und Gute zum Geburtstag Papa! :)

Creative Spaces Vol. 3 blog hop & magazine give away!

2014-06-24T04:48:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Creative Spaces Vol. 3 blog hop dear blogging friends, readers and new readers!

I'm very happy to reveal and share today that my studio has got published in this beautiful magazine:

About the picture above I must point out that I haven't collaged the inside lid of the suitcase myself as Jennifer has stated in the article. Jennifer couldn't know that this old suitcase was a gift from a dear blogging friend Ann Perry of The Tin Rabbit. Sweet and talented Ann (who owns a wonderful creative space herself btw) sent me this old suitcase, filled with vintage gifts (they are not in it anymore), for a friendship swap we did a couple of years ago and I treasure it ever since!

If you want to see more pictures of my creative space and the descriptions please click here the link from my Where bloggers create post 2013 contains about 30 photos and many detailed shots.

I'd like to thank Jennifer the Editor of Creative Spaces for asking me if I wanted to be published and for this great oppurtunity to share my studio and blog with an even wider US audience and of course for the beautiful article she created from the photos I sent to her and also for making this a very pleasant experience for me :)

Jennifer has sent me two magazines of which I gladly share one with one of my lucky readers. To win it just leave me a comment and a way to reach you and tell me what you like or don't like about my roof top space and I'll use the random number generator to find the winner. Good luck!

And now I wish you all a very pleasant blog hopping! http://www.papercraftsconnection.com/?p=24021

See you again soon with another magazine article reveal (yes how lucky am I to get published in two different beautiful US magazines in the same month) this time it's all about my garden and I'm also going to share a bunch of new Summer garden photos with you :)

xoxo~ Carola

Wonderful April review & Happy first of May!

2014-05-01T01:10:00.003-07:00

We had the 4th warmest April since the beginning of statistical weather records in 1881 and that really shows because nature is 4 weeks ahead of her time and everything is green and lush :)

We had so many warm and sunny days with temps over 20°C/68°F

I just love my purple tulips :)

The lilcas are in bloom

and the spanish Lavender in a pot:

Don't you also think the clematis montana rubens looks quite similar to the flowers my sister had once painted onto the pottery ball below?

The Spring flowers in the wire basket in the next photo that I planted in February are beginning to look a bit sad by now, but I do still love them:

And here comes the April view through my two rose arcs with the boxwood roundabout

It's so good to see the blue sky and the Clematis montana rubens in full bloom with the lilac tree in the background. It's one of my favorite Spring sights in the garden:

The whole garden looks very lush and green and all trees got their foliage early and many are still in bloom. It's an especially wonderful April this year! Feels a bit like Summer in April sometimes :)

Forget me nots are blooming in abundance in every border this April :)

The daffodils in the big border above, planted last fall came out so pretty!

Of course since this year Easter was very late on April 20th there had to be a bit of Easter decor here and there in the garden too:

We spent Easter Sunday at my sisters home in the countryside where the geese are running free in her orchard:

As you can see in the photo above Easter Sunday was the most wonderful warm and sunny day and we had the Easter "egg"(free) hunt as well as our vegan lunch and coffee and cake in the afternoon outside in the garden, which was such a treat especially compared to last year, were we still had frost at snow at Easter, although it was early in March.

Some beautiful April garden blooms close up. The purplish auricula above and the pure white bleeding heart below:

Following are the buds of my Eden rose, I can't remember of ever before having had such big rose buds in April, so they will start blooming this week already :)

Happy first of May dear blogging friends & readers - I hope a few of you are still outside there, also my blog is still not updating in the side bars of blogs were I'm linked up with :( - and I wish you all a wonderful & happy garden month of May! :)

xoxo~ Carola

I'm sharing this post with:

Garden Party No. 1/2014 at Tracies Fishtail Cottage blog

Spring is here - inside and out!

2014-03-20T00:44:00.002-07:00

Welcome Spring and welcome back to Boxwood Cottage dear blogging friends and readers! I woke up to a wonderful blue sky again today and the weather forecast has promised us sun all day and temps around 20°C which is around 70°F in the shadow. On my southward sunny and sheltered deck this is going to feel more than 80 as you can see on my thermometer here in a shot from a couple of days ago:

We have been very lucky here in Northern Germany this last Winter season with unusal mild weather and apart from a few days in January almost no snow. It feels as if parts of the US have kept the cold temps and winter storms and snows at bay, so that it couldn't come over here and I'm very thankful for this mild Winter. Many plants that otherwise would haven been frozen to death in Winter are still alive this Spring and nature is at least two to three weeks ahead of the season.

But before I share more deck and garden pictures with you I'd like to show you some photos of my early Spring decor around the mantle in the dining- and living room. I haven't brought the bunnies and eggs out yet, just wasn't in the mood this year with Easter being so late in April, but I'm finally going to start doing it today. In the photo below you can also see a new aqcuisition of mine, I finally did it and bought two white Tolix metal chairs. I wanted to have these for at least two years now, but always thought the originals too expensive for my budget, so I was very happy when I saw that Butlers a German furniture and decor store chain sold a remake of the original Tolix chairs and called them Streetlife. Still I was hesitating to buy them but when a month ago they sold them out for half of the original price I just had to hurry and get me at least two. They sold them all out in just a few days. Now aren't they pretty and go well with the rest of my dining area?

I think the pleaded white metal barrel, that I used upsidedown as a table in front of my mantle goes especially well with them and the huge white metal lantern I hung inside of the mantle too!

I'm really happy with the fresh springlike look right now :)

On top of the mantle I decorated some white snowdrops, white wooden birds and old apothecary bottles and white ceramic apothecary pots (a recent antique shop find) along with some gifts my dear friend Julia of the Vintage with laces blog had sent me in a friendship swap last month, like the sweet lace-heart sticks that I stuck in a sugar dredger which you can see better/closer in the first picture of this post and the gorgeous white heart bunting and lace heart I pinned at the mantle.

The pussy willow wreath along with the snowdrops are belonging to my early Spring decor which I will change again very soon.

I'm quite in love with my new old apothecary ceramic pots. You might not know that my first profession was a pharmacy assistent and I even learned at the vocational school how to write on these labels with stenciled lettering and I also learned there all the latin names of the plants used to make the medicines. So these bottles and vessels really do have a deeper meaning to me, reminding me at the old times in my life.

In the close up photo above you can see another of Julia's sweet lace heart sticks between the faux snowdrops in the silver cup, this one with a bling button in its center, aren't these just too cute? I love them all Julia!

Below is a photo of the constantly changing decor of my small side shelf between the mantle and the big cupboard:

But now let's go out into the garden again. The crocusses bloomed beautifully and very early this Spring and are almost done by now. I especially like this white variety with the soft purple stripes:

I already cut back the roses at the rusty rose arc below hoping that they'll soon grow back again with fresh sprouts of leaves:

As in every Spring I so love my blues! For others yellow like the sun might be the preferable color of Spring but for me it is blue like the sky :)

And violas ( mini pansies, "Johnny jump ups" or viola cornuta) are a must of course in all shades of purple and blue as you can see in the photos above and below.

And believe it or not but with the first warm Spring days the butterflies were already back in the garden and it is such a joy to see them fluttering around. The one below that is sittung on the blue primrose is called "Kleiner Fuchs" and if you rightclick onto the photo to see the big version of it, you can see that he has a whole in it's right wing and a very battered edge of the wing too so it must have one that has hibernated somewhere.

Of course I had to put Spring flowers like Paperwhites, Ranunculus, Primroses, Daisies and Grapehyacinths etc. in all the spare pots I could find and distribute them at the tables, shelves and pot holders around my deck and garden:

Even some pink tulips are already opening their pretty buds in the warm sun at the garden shelf:

The brimstone butterfly in the photo below that is just drinking from the pink primrose is a favorite guest in my spring garden:

It is such a good feeling to put out the cushions again in my deckchair and then sit there and just take it all in, the warm sun rays, the butterflies fluttering around, the scent of the flowers, the blue sky and the singing birds, ah yes my friends life can be so beautiful! :)

I'll leave you today with a closer shot of my new antique garden barrel (a Christmas gift from my parents last Christmas) that I finally brought out on the porch. It's called a Victorian dolly tub, used to do the laundry washing in victorian England and still before WW II. For now it serves me as a table for my french bottle holder drying rack which I use as a garden tool holder right now. As always I love the look of all the galvanized zinc items together, weather they are vintage or new:

So that is it from my Spring home and garden for today. I wish you all very happy Spring days my dear blogging friends and readers and I hope that you can enjoy it the way I do right now and especially for my US friends which for a big part had to suffer (and some even still have) under a long strong Winter this season. Spring will come to you soon as well just hang on and look forward to it!

Happy Spring days to y'all!

xoxo~ Carola

I'm going to share this post with the following parties:

Inpired Friday at Debra's Common Ground blog
Sundays at home at Alice's Thoughts from Alice blog
Blisfull Whites Wednesday at Becky's Timewashed blog
What's it Wednesday at Paula's and Pattie's Ivy and the Elephants blog
Funky Junk Party at Donna's Funky Junk Interiors blog

Tea party ~ Happy St. Valentine's ~ & Early Spring garden

2014-02-14T03:41:00.000-08:00

Welcome back to Boxwood Cottage dear blogging friends & readers! Today I'd like to invite you to a British High Tea party. Now isn't that fitting for St. Valentine's Day? Well actually this was my birthday party a bit over 2 weeks ago. My daughter made all these delicious little treats for us.

Since they're not only extremely yummy but also look very pretty I thought I share some photos of our tea party treats with you today

Don't they look mouthwatering? And everything is/was vegan of course! :)

We had scones with strawberry jam and clotted cream and I love those and thought they were my faves but to say the truth I had to try the berry tartelettes and the lemon bars and chocolate strawberries and lavender shortbreads and of course the sandwiches too and I loved every bite of every piece and can't tell anymore which my favorite was.

And I also like to share with you this pretty creatively wrapped gift parcel I got from my sister and my daughter. Are you curious what is in it? It's a really awesome gift, just click here to see it: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/283515739015468974/

But now I'd like to share some Valentine vignettes I snapped around my house and garden with you to celebrate this special day. Let's start with a black chalkboard heart in a soldered glass box:

and some spelling of Happy Valentine's day with flash cards from my friend Cari Kraft:

Then there is a rusty and scrolly iron heart hanging in the rusty chandelier a gift from my dear Auntie which unfortunately is not with us anymore:

and below hanging from another iron chandelier my for red beaded fabrics hearts that I purchased many years ago. The red color is not so mine anymore but to celebrate Valentines I find them really great:

Another black chalkboard heart and a soldered arrow (both made by me) in one of my old typewriters:

And in the following photo are some Valentine pendants which I created and soldered last month:

Below is another vignette with an old postcard in an old flower frog and a new soldered arrow:

After I finally put the snowflakes down out of my old room divider and put in some hearts instead:

Close up they look much better in photos like the glass bead heart below:

or this crystal heart:

and then there is the crocheted heart in the next photo, that my friend Julia sent me last year. Initially I had planned to share Julia's and my Valentines friendship swap with you today but since both of our parcels have not arrived yet (although we know that they are already in the respctives countries for days because we have sent them registered mail and can check where they are- slow postal service I can tell you!) this has to wait, probably even until next year, because I don't think people are interested in seeing Valentine's once the day is over, although for me February is the month of hearts and I will have mine up at least 2 more weeks :)

In the next photo is a silver glittered heart that I once got from my friend Madai:

And here comes another heart that I soldered a few years ago:

But now follow me outside because even in my garden I have some hearts like the galvanized one you can see in the next photo:

or the twine one which sits in my rosemary topiary:

We are very fortunate here weatherwise because since that short Winter intermezzo last month the weather is rather early Spring like as my garden thermometer shows you with 11°Celsius plus in the shadow:

So I was brave and bought a few spring flowers like daisies and primroses already and put them outside on my deck and I really like the springlike view. Winter doesn't have to come back now because I would be very happy with such an early Spring for a change!

I know some of you are still having Winter storms with icy rain and heavy frosts and snow at the moment and I hope these photos will give you hope, hang on my friends and Spring will be there soon!

Love the soft pink of the primrose below:

And here comes my wish for you today:

Happy St. Valentine's Day dear blogging friends and readers!

♥♥♥

xoxo~ Carola

I'll be sharing this post with the following blog parties:

Donna's Funky Junk Party 231 Spring decor repurposed
Debra's Inspired Friday at her Common Ground blog
Alice's Sundays at Home at her Thoughts from Alice blog

It's that time again ~ first Valentines and frosted garden

2014-01-27T05:29:00.003-08:00

Yep it's January, almost February so it's time for creating hearts and other Valentines, but first of all welcome back to Boxwood Cottage dear readers and blogging friends!

My friend Julia and I agreed to do a friendship Valentine's day swap some time last year, so right after I had put the Christmas stuff away I pulled out all things Valentine and started creating

I was indulging in reds, pinks and silver mainly, because Valentine's day is not for neutral colors only for me, it's the one time in the year where I really love reds and pinks, so in that spirit I created this heart box for example:

But then I got an email from Julia telling me that she wishes for white Valentines only because she's not in the spirit for reds. Dang! So I had to restart and rethink all the things I created and wanted to make for her, but of course I'm always up for a challenge :)

And outside it's cold anyway since we are in Winter and the garden is supposed to be either frosted or covered under a blanket of snow, well that wasn't true at all here in Northern Germany until last week anyway. These frosted garden pictures I took back in November already on a magical sunny and frosty late autumn day:

I loved how everything looked covered in the blueish frost

and I really looked forward to many more of such beautiful Winter days, which until today never came again. We had a lot of stormy and rainy Winter days and many just boring grey sky dark Winter days but no more frost and no snow at all not even a tiny bit and that while you guys in the US have record breaking cold Winter days, even in the Southern States - here it was rather warm at least for Winter that is

My beautiful last blooming Eden rose frosted in November 2013

The garden view from my bedroom window:

And a closer shot of the back yard area with my new old white garden door that we installed last October. I love the frosted glass of the big red lantern:

Well that was pretty much how the garden looked all those weeks since October/November until January 20th, but Winter can't fool me in thinking that we'll have an early Spring, not here in Germany. I'm born at the end of January and on my birthday it's always cold and I knew the cold would come sooner or later and of course I was right. Since a couple of days it got colder and the frost is back, not as beautiful as in the November pictures above, but much colder this time and since 3 days we even have a bit of snow and tonight it has snowed again so today the garden is covered under a thick blanket of the white stuff. Winter has finally arrived here too now! Sorry no pictures of the snow yet, but I hope that I'll get around to take some later if it isn't going to melt before lol

Now I have to finish my friendship swap parcel for my dear friend Julia. Julia if you should read this, I'm almost finished, but had to mix black and silver into the whites, because without them it was just too boring, hope that's okay with you!

This is just some wall decor in my studio but I'll share the Valentines I made for Julia in my next post, when she got her parcel.

Until then I wish y'all a great start into the month of hearts!

Happy Winter days my friends!

xoxo~ Carola

Sharing this post with

Angie's Knick of time Tuesday at her Knick of Time blog
Paula & Patties What's it Wednesday at Ivy and the Elephants blog

~* A Christmas review & Happy New Year 2014 *~

2013-12-31T15:49:00.001-08:00

It's a Christmas review in pictures mainly and I promise that I'm not going to bother you with too many words today:

Got this fabulous old galvanized Dolly Tub in the picture above for Christmas from my parents and for now I'm using it as a table for my galvanized bottle holder which I use as Christmas bauble holder right now. Of course they are both going to live in my garden soon.

I used all my colorful glass ornaments for this vignette cause a little color for Christmas doesn't hurt along all the whites and neutrals and I quite enjoy to look at it

A french Christmas cone hanging at the basement door

I made lots of paper and snowflake ornaments this season, many of them as gifts but some I kept for my decor:

And snowmen, like the little one above and the soldered double sided one which is hanging under the snowball basket below:

Some close ups of my vintage glass tree ornaments:

This years real fir tree in it's full glory above and below:

A view into the Christmas parlor on Christmas eve afternoon, just before the family arrived:

And these I took just yesterday because of the good light of a rare sunny Winter day:

My chandelier decorated as "couronne de noel" hanging over the dining table close up:

The dining table almost ready for Christmas eve dinner:

and again for Christmas dinner the next day:

Got to share a picture of the delicious vegan Christmas dinner with a Tofurky roast that my daughter made/created for us:

And another picture from yesterday when the sun shone into the house so lovely:

These two quite large antique Putz sheep were a Christmas gift from my parents too and the glass filled with old lace doilies and borders is a gift from my sister:

Some silver stars in a pressed glass bowl for New years luck:

And I added a Cari Kraft flash card Happy New New Year banner to my mantle arrangement:

Happy New Year 2014 dear blogging friends and readers!

Carola xoxo~

Sharing this post with:
Debra's Inspired Friday at her Common Ground blog

Alison's Friday Unfolded at her Nancherrow blog

X-mas decor pt. 1 ~ A sparkling snow border DIY ~ and the Give away winner!

2013-11-28T05:23:00.000-08:00

Hello and welcome back my dear blogging friends and readers on a sunny almost Winter day! I'm so glad to be back here with you today and once again I have to apology for my long blog absence. I was so busy putting all that Halloween decor away, cleaning up, renovating, crafting and then decorating for Christmas etc. etc. that the time just flew by.

To make up for it I made a little DIY for you for a dripping snow border or garland but more of that and how it looks mounted onto my mantle further down this post.

But first let me show you a few of this years Christmas decorations like the canning jar snow globe with the soldered lid and the old Erzgebirge angel inside which I actually made last year already but don't think I shared it here so far. I put it on top of the old bird cage along with a few bottle brush trees for which I still have a huge weakness.

Of course I had to put some of my favorite star and snow flake ornaments into the panes of the old hanging room divider window again and love how the following photo turned out with the natural sun light brightening up the whites of the lace table cloth (which actually is an old bed spread) and the little white feather tree at the right side that's standing on the old sewing machine table.

I put the crystal chandelier which hung here over my dining room table elsewhere ( over the couch table) and hung this iron chandelier decorated with crystal drops and greenery etc. over the table instead, then I put that old vintage honeycomb bell inside and love how it looks together now:

I haven't finished my Christmas decorations yet, but that being said I think I never do, I always tend to change things up again and again. As you can see I still have some pumpkins in my

decor because I just couldn't part with them yet as they still do look so beautiful.

Coming now to my favorite part to decorate for the seasons, especially the Holidays

~ it's the mantle of course!

I filled the old window which I still had standing inside the mantle from my Halloween decor when it was filled with black birds, with bottle brush trees instead and quite like the look. Onto the iron gate I hung icicles some of which I made from cotton batting myself a few years ago and the two beautiful glass icicles that I own. If you like to see things closer btw, well I think if you are a long time follower you know very well by now that I leave most of my photos quite large so that you can click on them, then right click and chose show graphic and then onto the little magnifier to see all the details in the original size, but in case that you are too lazy to do that which I understand because it is a bit time consuming, I tried to do close up pictures of the most part of my photos too. Still I think they always look best in their original size.

Above a close up of the little shelf which I had used as apothecary shelf in my Halloween decor and now filled with tiny buttles brush trees and a small white feather tree on top. Below a picture of the mantle when all the tea lights and some candles are lit:

Unfortunately you can't really see how the silver glittered trees, the glittered garland etc. are sparkling in the candle light and also when lit by the sunlight like below unlike you enlarge the photos.

That thing on top of the mantle window that says "Schenke und Erfreue" ( Meaning "Give and make happy") is very old Dresden and made from pressed cardboard and then painted and glittered. I love old "Dresdener Pappe" as it is being called here in Germany and as most of you may know by now. That was a very lucky antique market find from last month.

Well now let's come to my little DIY the snow dripping and sparkling border again. Ever since I saw a picture of such a mica snow border in blogland I wanted to have one and try to make my own. I photographed all the things you'll need to make it in one picture and can assure you it's drop dead easy to make. You can see the necessary steps from the bottom of the photo up to the top:

You just need to make yourself a template first which you can also find at google search and then print it out, cut it out and transfer it onto a piece of sturdy white cardboard in the length you want and then cut it out again carefully and paint it over with white craft glue (like Elmers for example), let the glue go everywhere especially at the edges and then quickly before the glue can dry pour mica flakes (in my case vintage ones which are called Sparkle Christmas snow and can be found on etsy) all over it, make sure to really cover all the glue. Then throw off the excess mica flakes (lay something underneath it, so that you can catch the excess snow flakes and use it again) and voila there you have your own snow dripping sparkling border :) Set aside to let dry and make more if needed and when it's completely dried you can mount it onto your shelf eges or like I did onto your mantle edge. I used white pins and just pinned it on. Now doesn't it look pretty winterey and vintagey festive? Click picture to enlarge!

I also have another new garland hanging in front of my mantle which I love and which is made from beautifully crocheted white snowflakes.

These gorgeous white crocheted and starched snowflakes I also bought from an etsy seller (called Sky Blue Fancy from Latvia) and then pulled them onto a wire to make them into a garland.

Another favorite in my Christmas decor is this feather tree that my daughter bought for me in Buffalo when she studied there a few years ago. I love the old silver tinsel tree topper and I decorated the tree with mostly white cotton batting ornaments some old flea finds, some new and some like the little snowmen which I created myself.

The silver tinsel tree on top of the crate I also made a few years ago from silver pipe cleaners and I still like it. Into one of the old wooded crates I use as shelves I put the glass terrarium in which I put my tiny putz village along with some more bottle brush trees and faux snow:

I had a small piece of the mica icicle or snow border left and mounted it onto the wooden frame of the terrarium and then enlighted the little Winter wonderland scene with a string of star lights.

At the right side of my tiny Winter wonderland is this folding table with the glass box on top and the white plate shelf on the wall over it, which I also decorated Christmassy. And having just said that, I spot a rusty bunny and a glas egg hanging there still from last Easter ha I'm blushing here I can tell you and will have to put them away when I go downstairs again lol.

I was very lucky to find this flock of very old tiny putz sheep lately for a bargain price at one of my antique market excursions with my mum and for now it found it's place on top of the glass box.

Along with the very old little feather tree with the original, old, tiny blown glass ornaments, another lucky antique market find from two years ago.

I also put Christmas tree candles into the two small apothecary bottles on top of the box.

Inside of the Ikea plant terrarium which I bought last Spring, I put some old blown glass baubles and Christmas tree toppers still in their original old card boxes:

And of course I had to put out my beloved old brass trumpets again and hung them over the old french iron mirror along with some tiny wreathes and a 3D musical star of which I glittered the edges with silver glass glitter:

Lastly I'd like to share with you this years advent candles. I found the zinc numbers lately in a shop in Worpswede and wraped them around the vanilla scenting candles which I put into a silver tray along with a mercury silver vase and some greenery:

And before I wish you a happy first Advent for this upcoming Sunday, I'd like to announce that the lucky winner of my Holiday give away from my last post is Lynn of the blog Shabby Story. Congrats dear Lynn, please email me your addy so that I can send you a little surprise parcel with a soldered Christmas ornament and a silver glass glittered ornament, both made by me.

P.S.: Please let me know when you also make a snow dripping or icicle mica border after my DIY I'd just love to see it! And in general if you have some vintage inspired white Christmas inspiration to share!

Wishing you a happy first of Advent 2013 everyone! :)

See you again soon I hope for part 2 of my Christmas decor 2013 and pictures of my frozen Boxwood Cottage garden.

xoxo~ Carola

P.S. I just found out there was a problem with my two latest blogposts not showing up on bloglovin and on other blogs links. Looks like it had something to do with my rss feed being too big over 510 k. I reduced the feed to showing only 10 posts and now it will hopefully work again *phew* I admit that I hate technical problems like this, it's just stressing me out.

I'm going to share this post with the following blog parties:

Be Inspired Friday party over at Debra's Common Ground blog
Feathered Nest Friday over at Coutney's French Country Cottage blog
Shabbilicious Friday over at Kerryanne's Shabby Art Boutique blog

What's it Wednesday over at Paula's and Pattie's Ivy at the Elephants blog
Blissful Whites Wednesday over at Becky's Timewashed blog

Knick of Time Tuesday over at Angie's Knick of Time blog
Fridays Unfolded over at Alison's Nancherrow blog

Part 2 of my Black & White Fall/Halloween decor plus a new Holiday Give Away!

2013-10-17T02:13:00.000-07:00

So dear blogging friends and readers as promised in my last post here is part 2 of the Black & White Fall/Halloween decor this year.

Let's best start downstairs in my parlor with the mantle. I put an old wooden window frame inside the mantle with a white plank behind so that I have a good contrasting background for my black cardboard birds.

Then I added a great thing my neighbor found and I call it the iron cemetery or castle gate which is now holding the witches broom and 2 paper skelleton guards.

On top of the mantle I added an old camera that I put on top of 2 stacked old books and then put an old clockface in a vintage wire flower frog on top of the camera and around it I grouped several vintage alarmclocks showing midnight - the witching hour. Then I worked in pairs again and put two black IKEA lanterns on 2 glass pedestals on either side and then two white chenille pumpkins in 2 glass bowls and so on shown further down this post. I love the black glittered Boo sign I recently found on etsy and the ancestors garland which my blogging friend Tina created and also he reflection of my black bird garland in the white mirror.

A close up of the vintage camera:

Another very big black crow/raven is just about to fly away from a real pastel green pumpkin sitting on the here so called Dschungel grass in another glass pedestal:

It stands on my white dining table in front of the mirror which is decorated with many more decorative pumpkins, especially my beloved creme white baby boos:

They are placed in bowls or on plates on a grey table runner in the middle of the table so that there is still enough space to sit and eat, or if necessary I can easily put them elsewhere to have the middle space free again for bowls of food.

The decor is often changing around here while the season is progressing. For example did I exchange the black chalkboard that was saying Happy Fall for this great wrapping paper saying Happy Halloween when I received a fabulous Halloween parcel from my dear blogging friend Julia from Albania. Wanna see what she sent me? Well of course I just have to share it! First of all the sweet heart that she is she sent me 3 old bed springs, knowing how much I wanted these and never found them around here so far. Further 3 tiny wasp nests that I also wanted so badly too and seeing the great creator of beautiful things that Julia is she included some great handmade items like the Undertaker coffin pillow you might have seen on her blog already and the most beautiful paper tags:

And she also created one of her wonderful fabric pumpkins for me that I admired so much over on her blog a few weeks ago. As always the details of Julia's work are amazing, it has a perfect shape and just look at the stem and sweet mini tags she added to it! I'm madly in love with it!

I also totally love the round chip box she has embellished from the inside and outside and sent the tiny wasp nests in. It even has a "31" inside the lid (not shown in the pics because the outside of the lid is so fabtastic). Oh and btw the most creepy thing ( a true Halloween moment!) happened when I opened the chip box with the wasp nests, a little black Albanian spider ran out of it, hiding quickly inside of the wrapping paper which also had black spiders on it "EEK"! Since I didn't expect a real spider in the box of course I was startled and even a bit horrified, but just for a moment lol, then I took the paper outside the open parlor door into the garden and released the tiny spider there. When I told my daughter about this incident she said: "Oh the poor thing will have a language problem now" Which made me laughing out loud - thinking oh yes German is a difficult language that's for sure and so might be Albanian which I don't now yet. Anyway Julia couldn't have made this Halloween moment any better, even if she would have planned it. I assume the tiny spider just lived inside one of the wasp nests little wholes and so came to an unexpected travel from Albania to Germany :)

Of course after I told Julia about this little incident she said that it probably is a specimen of the rare Arachnia Albania which are getting 35 cm huge. Argh now how mean was that? I should have been warned not to open the chip box seeing that there already is a picture of a spider on top of the lid!

Well after I got Julia's parcel I was inspired to use the small space between my mantle and the old armoire for a Halloweenish Apothecary installement:

I incorporated the 3 beautiful tags as well as the coffin pillow and the chip box with the wasp nests of course! Thank you so much dear Juls for all the inspiring black & white Halloween goodies you made for me and of course for the black masks, b&w straws, wasp nests and bed springs too! I love it all very much!!! If you happen to not know Julia yet ( but I think if you read my last post you must now her by now) then hop over and visit her at her blog Vintage with laces for more fabulous inspiration! I'm eagerly waiting right now for her next blog post about her own black and white Halloween creations & decorations because everything she already told me about sounds just to spooky cool!

The Halloween book in the back of the shelf, the round paper tags, the soldered pendant and the witchified cabinet cards are some of my creations from Halloweens past which I still like and had to use again.

Directly vis à vis the Apothecary shelf stands this spooky shelf consisting out of old crates on top of an old rusty trunk.

I filled a terrarium with a white ceramic skull and bone hand lying in a moss bed - He died in 1892 as you can see he he. At night I put a flickering tea light inside of the skull which made it look very creepy! I hope to get some good shots of it soon or Halloween eve at the latest.

I also printed out some magic book covers on brown paper and put the so magified books under the witch lantern:

And here is another shot of my dining table like it is looking right now with the pumkins on top of the bed springs and some branches out of the garden painted white to have a place for the black birds to land on.

And a wider shot of the top of the mantle all dressed in black and white now and of course I'd love to hear how you come to like it?

On top of my couch table I have another (not spooky just fallish) pumpkin vignette which I think looked especially nice bathing in the warm October sun light:

As well as this white 3 tiered chandelier in the corner beside the big window does which I filled amongst other things with 4 fabric "no sew" pumpkins that I made out of white muslin gaze and twine filled with cotton wool:

Oh and last week I forgot to show you this black and white Halloween cone I made and hung in one of my studio windows upstairs:

and also my little black Boo house with a tiny glittered cat and white owl on top of the roof:

And last but not least Riley the Boxwood Cottage tabby finally sleeping in his basket in my studio which he always used to reject before, usually prefering all kind of boxes.

Now my dear friends and readers if you will be so kind to tell me in the comment section under this or my last post, which picture with b & w Halloween creations or decor of this post or my last post from 10 days ago you like best and why, you can win a glass glittered Christmas treat that I made along with a hand made soldered Christmas pendant, so that you have something new to decorate for the Holiday season. Since I totally forgot my 8 year bloggiversary last month I think it's high time for a new blog give away and perhaps I'll chose even more than one winner, depending on the number of comments. I'll announce the winner(s) in my next post which will probably be at the end of this month or the beginning of November.

Until then I hope you'll all have some fabulous days counting up to

H A L L O W E E N

xoxo~ Carola

I'll be sharing this post with:

The Be Inspired Friday party over at Debra's Common Ground blog
Feathered Nest Friday over at Coutney's French Country Cottage blog
Shabbilicious Friday over at Kerryanne's Shabby Art Boutique blog
Broomsticks on a Bayou blogparty over at Anna's Frosted Petunias blog

What's it Wednesday over at Paula's and Pattie's Ivy at the Elephants
Blissful Whites Wednesday over at Becky's Timewashed blog

Knick of Time Tuesday over at Angie's Knick of Time blog

Black & White Halloween creations & decorations 2013 part 1

2013-10-07T01:20:00.000-07:00

Can't believe I didn't do one single post last month dear blogging friends and readers, but today I'm back to share with you what I was working on during September. Above for example is a witch silhouette that I cut out to decorate a lamp in my studio for one of my favorite holidays that isn't even a holiday in Germany which is Halloween. I love all things Black & White and so Halloween is the perfect opportunity for me to indulge in these neutral colors.

Most of the things that I created last month were for my dear blogging friend Julia in Albania so I'd like to share these with you first, now that Julia has got her parcel. Julia had sent me a beautiful surprise late b-day (Jan) parcel in March right in time for Easter so she's got her late b-day (July) parcel in October right in time for Halloween :)

I asked her a few questions in our frequent e-mails like if she would like something black too, because so far I saw mostly white things in her gorgeous studio and when she said yes she would, I was sure it had to be a Halloween parcel for her and then around the end of July we both started pinning Black & White Halloween things on our Pinterest boards and I got more and more sure about what she would like (btw, here is the link to my Pinterst board Fall & Halloween in case you'd need more inspiration. I have pinned over 1200 inspirational pictures there!) and then I asked her if she has IKEA in Tirana and she denied it so knowing Julia is a paper lover too and IKEA had just opened a new paper section I got a few more ideas on what to send her and especially on how to wrap it. Well now below is a picture, a first sneak peek so to say, about what I sent her, already wrapped. The b&w paper and the pointing hand tag for instance are from IKEA. I cut out and glittered the silver maple leave and the black bat though:

The striped paper and the Love tag and the top hat tag in the next photo are also from the IKEA paper section. A top hat tag isn't that just too cool? As the top hat lover and addict I am myself of course I had to had these! I made Julia the little witches broom with a b & w paper straw:

Well and of course I had to part with one of my old top hats (no matter if my collection consists of 7 or now 6 top hats right, it's still a collection) for my dear friend Julia. It's over 100 hundred years old and I know that Julia loves all things old with history just like I do. We both have a passion for flea markets and in Albania near Tirana where she lives now apparently are no flea markets, so I had to put some vintage finds in her parcel too and a black chapeau claque seemed just so suiting for Halloween don't you think? I remember how happy I made Lisa of Tarnished and Tattered when I sent her a vintage top hat in a Christmas friendship swap once and was hoping that it would have the same effect on Julia:

I painted and altered the peat pot above and below and added a spooky hand

and I painted and embellished the lids of tiny bonne maman jam glasses and filled them, this one with a doll leg preseved in water. Oops I think I added the water after I took this picture, but it looks a bit creepy I can assure you:

I also altered a vintage flea market bottle for Julia, gave it a vintage crystal glass stopper and filled it with real vintage mica:

and I felted for her this tiny white pumpkin for:

and made her a Halloween collage on an IKEA clip board for The Witching Hour:

Then I added more flea finds like the big vintage wooden spool below knowing Julia loves these and the cabinet card of a vintage gentleman which I mounted on an old black metal plate. I have a bunch of these old black metal plated found in a leather pocket of a vintage camera. They must have been used for photo taking somehow in the old days. I still have to find out how exactly they were used.

I also found her the tiny old coin purse above and put an old key and keywhole in it for Julia's further use in her creations and then I put it into the skull box (paper maché egg) that you can see below.

The black and white enamel sign is another vintage find for Julia and as you can see above I had lot's of fun cutting out and glittering gourds and pumpkins. So don't disturb their party lol

I had kind of a vintage moon theme going on for some of the things I created for Julia like this egg box that I painted, embellished and filled with tiny treats. If you are curious about what was inside the box and how Julia liked her parcel, you can hop over to her blog Vintage with Laces and see what she shares about it.

My whole Alex drawer was filled with treasures I gathered, shopped, found and created for Julia during the months of August and September.

Once I had it all wrapped up prettily and sent it off to my dear friend I finally started creating things for our own Halloween:

Like the witches shoe above, my favorite so far, to which i had to add the sharply pointed tip and then painted it all black and added the tiny Dresden foil stars and filled it with the spooky grass, a tiny old picture of a woman, a tiny broom and a tiny witches hat I made (Julia got such a tiny witches hat too btw). I also made the black glittered bats in the photo above and cut out one bat into the paper bag which actually looks great at night when I put a battery operated tea light in it.

Then I created the black and white Halloween wreath above and some paper spider webs inspired of course by Pinterest pins like so many of my creations.

One of my vintage black type writers in the studio holds some of my creations and finds and below is a cute vintage skull on which you can open it's jaw (so I had to put somethin in it he he), that I found on etsy:

I further used some more peat pots to make little treat baskets for the kids like the white painted one with the black Dresden spider web, which I also saw on Pinterest. Oh and don't you like how the round eyes tag in it looks seen through the magnifying glass of my third hand tool below?

I gathered so many black and white things on top of and around the Alex drawer in my studio that I'm running out of space and I think I'll have to bring some things down very soon to decorate the living room with it for the Halloween party.

Btw the neutral colered gift wrapping paper rolls in my new wire paper basket in the photo above are all from the IKEA paper section in case you want some too. An no IKEA is not paying me for saying this, I just want them to keep up this great section in future. They also have the black and the brown number tags which I used for the "31" above and below:

Of course Miss Potter my vintage studio dressform needed to get spookified a bit too so she got a white mask and a black netting and I embellished her not so spooky old top hat with one of the silver glass glittered maple leaves that I made just to make her look fallish:

Further I couldn't help it but had to make a not too realistic looking spider (cause I hate real spiders, they just creep me out) with wire and beads and then I sat her in a lace spider net that I put into an embroidery hoop of course an idea that comes from a Pinterest pin too:

Right now I'm working on coffins painted with chalkboard paint like the one below, but I'm not sure it's done yet:

I'm watching you so BEWARE he he ;-)

Well I think that's all for today but I'll keep you posted on my Halloween decorations downstairs very soon I promise, which by today consists mainly out of lot's of different arranged pumpkins - no orange ones yet so, because I'll save these for carving and only use them in front of my house entrance door in the Halloween week itself. So now I'm going to leave you with another shot of the old bottle which I altered for Julia, just because I like it so.

Oh and btw if you have created something in Black and White for Halloween too, please let me (us) know in the comment section or better even post a link to it, because I'm curious to see it and you can never get to much black and white Halloween inspiration, can you?

Until next time I wish y'all happy Fall days my friends!

xoxo~ Carola

Sharing this post with:

http://www.commonground-do.com/2013/10/be-inspired-160-halloween-home-tour.html

Celia's witches shoe party at Adventures of the striped stocking blog

Summer at Boxwood Cottage garden ~ Update June to July 2013 with London shopping tips!

2013-08-31T02:40:00.001-07:00

Welcome back to Boxwood Cottage my dear friends and readers! I uploaded the pictures to this blogpost almost 4 weeks ago and haven't got around to write a post to go along. Summer was busy here and I was eager to squezze every drop out of it, but today is a cloudy morning and my last chance to get this garden update post finished in the month of August, so here we go!

These pictures I took in the far back of my yard where we cut off all the bushes of the cherry laurel hedges last year which had grown into trees already and took too much space of my little garden and too much light and they were a lot of work also. I chose a fence instead of the bushes wich I can use to grow and hang all sorts of climbers, plants and things from it and I'm so happy with the new space that I gained and it feels so light and airy now sitting there.

To have more space that I can use to plant new flowers and decorate always is a wonderful thing to me!

I love parasols and I love to hang things so of course I also had to hang vases, lanterns and candle holders from the parasol:

Doesn't it look so summery? I took these photos during my late May/early June vacation

It was a wonderful warm day which were very rare here this May and June:

A refreshing citrus water on a garden tray that you can just stick in the soil or in any garden pot which is filled with soil and deep enough.

I moved my potting bench to this garden corner too:

I'm still thinking about what to do with the soil/floor/ground in this corner but for now I just lay a few step stones and wooden tiles I had still lying around onto the bare ground. There are also still the fat stems of the cherry laurels in the soil which I can't dig out because of there enormous and deep root system and I have no good idea how to get rid of those until right now. Here I just put a clay pot over one and another pot with a hosta on top of it.

What I really like is that I can see my garden shed again now that the huge and dense bushes of the cherry laurel are gone. Of course I'm thinking of painting the shed white and also the fence, would you do it? Looks like a lot of work to me, but I'm sure it would be worth it!

I attached a zinc shelf to the fence which cannot rust and is a real bargain at Ikea (costs only 7,50 €) and which also is very convenient and useful for some garden decorations :)

The light is really beautiful back here on a sunny Summer day and I enjoyed lot's of time back here this Summer relaxing, meeting up with my family, my garden friends and neighbors and also reading.

You almost wont believe what a dark garden corner this was before just last Summer!

Above is a wider view about this area behind my maple tree and I'll show you some more alterations I've done to this corner further down this quite long post so if you haven't got yourself comfy yet and got yourself a drink you'll better do it now before I'll go one ;-)

Here are just two shots I had to share with you of my clay garden princess and the pretty delphinium and snapdragons surrounding her. She as every reason to smile I think.

A favorite flower of mine this year again was my peony Sarah Bernhardt with her huge soft pink and filled blossums:

And also my white snow ball peony which due to very cold and nasty wet weather in June didn't last long enough though and I had to hold up there heavy wet heads:

In June my daughter and I also spend a few days in London where the weather was as nasty as here in Bremen but where at least I could enjoy some shopping and I promised you in my last post to share some of my London shopping tips with you so here we go. I finally got around to visit Jessie Chorley's beautiful, creative and inspiring J & B shop at Columbia Road which I can highly recommend to every creative soul and I bought a few of the papers and cards and tape there which she has designed as you can see in the picture below. She was in the shop herself dressed in a 50ies dress so pretty and we got to talk a bit and exchanged e-mail adresses, she was really nice. I especially loved the old fashioned way in which she wrote all things she sold in an old ledger book which she had purchased at a flea market. Her shop is filled of creativity and whimsy(ness) just the way I like it.

The clipboards and Garden Chronicles as well as the big black bird (who is my biggest black bird or crow so far and who is already looking forward to be a highlight in my Halloween decorations this year) and the pretty aqua metal seed box are from another shop though that is quite old and famous in London it's called the Liberty of London which has a rather fabulous garden and outdoor departement that I wouldn't have expected and totally loved. What a pity that I couldn't purchase most of the things I loved there because I wouldn't have got them in my suitcase and also Ryan Air has very strict rules when it comes to overweight. Very strict indeed and there is no messing with them I can tell ya, only 1 kg too much and they want your to pay 60 GB pounds for it! So unfortunately we had to leave some of our purchases that were not worth paying that much overweight in the waste bins of Standsted airport boohoooo :(

Another fabulous inspiring shop we visited while in London was Anthropologie at Regent Street which is not far away from the Liberty btw and which so far I only new from pictures seen in my US friends blogs and which didn't disappointed me either, on the contrary I was absolutely amazed by their fabulous displays and ideas and I would have loved to move the whole shop to my hometown at once!

We bought some gifts there for my sisters birthday and other than that just the 3 door knobs that you can see in the photo below, although I could have bought lot's and lot's of gorgeous things there if I have had the money and the transportation means that is lol

I like how the door knobs and seed box I purchased in London are matching so well with the aqua colored glass and bottles I had standing on my window sill already.

When it comes to shopping vegan foods there are quite a lot of places in London beginning at one of the Whole foods markets and ending at Inspiral if you love raw vegan food, so if you are interested in vegan food shopping or restaurant tips just let me know. Of course we had to buy lot's of yummy vegan treats that we can't get here in Bremen too. My favorite restaurant in London also within close walking distance to Anthropologie and the Liberty was Tibits though and that although it is not a vegan restaurant (yet) it's vegetarian but with lots of yummy vegan choices. It's situated in Heddon street just behind the busy Regent Street with a lovely backstreet atmosphere and very cosy and still urban chic inside and you go around a food boat with lots of great looking and scenting choices where you can load everything you love and want to try onto your plate and then you'll get your plate weight and pay for it. If something you just wanted to take got emptied up before your nose you can be sure a cook comes from behind and is filling it up again, freshly prepared. Everything I chose was delicious and also the healthy and very yummy freshly prepared juices there I can highly recommend to you!

So before we go back to the garden I just have to share this photo of our (male) cat Riley with you who is dreaming most likely of what you can see printed onto this cushion ;-)

Another shot of my peonies which were so pretty even when they started to fade:

Another flower I wont want to miss in my garden is the foxglove as well as the alliums you can spot in the background.

Foxgloves, roses and alliums in my right flower bed:

and the peonios blooming in the foreground ah what a beautiful time that was, but luckily it's likely to come back again next season :)

A close up of one of my Eden roses:

and of a new white Allium variety that I planted last autumn and unfortunately forgot how it is called:

and a little bit closer even:

Beautiful sunny garden days at Boxwood Cottage garden this Summer:

Ah I just love my little paradise and hope that it shows!

Well let's go back to my new back yard corner and see what else I put there. As I told you in my last post I brought the willow bed down from my studio into the garden and never regretted it so far. I spend many happy hours lying on my day bed here in the garden looking up into the blue sky and reading of course. I'm a summer reader because I love to read while in my garden.It is the most relaxing feeling to me. I also aquired another parasol for this corner because July finally brought us real Summer days with lots of sun.

And in missing of a garden gate or old door which I still need to find I installed a light white lacey curtain to shade me from the looks of my neighbors which seldom but sometimes go along the path behind our row house gardens which lies between my garden and my garden shed.

So what do you think about my new garden room, how I like to call it, like it?

Would you like to come and have tea here with me?

Here the golden evening sun shines right onto my lovely Annabelle hydrangea another favorite garden flower

which I would not want to miss in my Summer garden!

Just like the delphinium and snapdragons which bloomed their best in blue and red around the 4th of July, so fitting that day with their colors, right?

Oh and here again my Eden rose, in all her wonderful beauty:

And another pink favorite rose which after her 4th or so Summer season in my garden finally grows and blooms beautifully is Giardina:

Talking about beautifully blooming blossums I also have to share my new filled hollyhock variety with you that blooms in a gorgeous apricot color:

and before you fell asleep about all these flower pictures and I bore you too much with them

I'm going to close this Summer post with a close up of this frilly beauty now:

I hope to see ya again here soon probably this autumn my friends! :)

Wishing you all happy and sunny and warm late Summer days!

xoxo~ Carola

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Sharing this post with:

Cottage garden party over at Fishtailcottage.blogspot.de
What's it Wednesday at Ivy and the Elephants
Inspiration Friday at Common Ground

5th annual Where Bloggers Create party ~ Boxwood Cottage Studio 2013

2013-07-11T15:45:00.001-07:00

Prolog: This is a long post with over 30 photos so you better grab a cup of tea or or a mug of coffee and make yourself comfy now ;-)

Welcome back to Boxwood Cottage Studio dear blogging friends and readers - new and old - and to the 5th annual Where bloggers create party hosted by Karen Valentine of My Desert Cottage blog - see her event button in my right side bar. It's also my 5th time to participate and every year when Karen announces the party date being in the middle of July I think oh no I won't make it this time, there is so much to do in the garden right now and it's too warm up there in my attic studio under the roof top. But alas I did it again since the weather wasn't really hot this summer until now and I started by making space to create a new corner and studio vignettes, as always vintage inspired which means I mix up vintage flea- and antique market finds with new modern furniture mostly from Ikea. I brought my willow day bed from my studio down in the garden where I also created a new garden corner with it. In Germany there is saying "2 Fliegen mit einer Klappe schlagen", means with just one change I made two spaces better which I just love! So now you want to see it and I'm going to start by showing you my new favorite studio corner and then all the cleaned up and rearragend rest of my studio. The garden will have to wait until my next post though.

In that corner under the pitch of the roof I had my daybed before which I didn't really use there apart from putting stuff on it when I created. Now I got my white Alex drawers from Ikea out of a hidden dark studio corner where it was before and put it there under the pitch of the roof and I instantly loved it there, where it is reachable so much better when I sit on that vintage chair at my studio table and create. The drawers are all filled with papers like vintage wall paper and sheet music paper which I often need in my creations.

See the blue evening sky in the picture above? That is the best thing about my my studio that I have 3 huge double attic windows up there giving me lot's of natural light.

I also put my vintage suitcase collection there under one of the windows and I really like them there better as in the corner I hade them before. They are mostly filled with Christmas decorations.

Above is a close up of my Alex with a vintage typrewriter (old time writing) vignette on top and my black chalkboard (ex kitchen cupboard door) behind it.

The clipboard is one of the London finds from my vacation there last month and I typed and printed out a reading chart to clip on it.

Following is a close up of the vignette on the small Lack table beside of Alex. There is my stamp caroussel for example and a vintage shoe last ( my paternal grand father was a shoemaker) and you can also spot the paper maché pumpkins lying in the white drawer which are waiting to get painted for some autumnal vignettes soon.

Here is a close up of my vintage flea market find suitcases, some are old leather others are coated cardboard. Of course I had to put one of my vintage black top hats on top of the stack:

Not to forget a close up of my favorite suitcase I got a few years ago in a friendship swap with Ann Perry of the Tin Rabbit in Texas. I simply love how Ann decorated the inside of the suitcase:

And in case you'd like to see it I also took a close up of the vintage black typewriter vignette (this is one of 3 vintage travel typewriters that I own).

After the close up above here is a wider view of that corner with the table I use to create at:

And another close up of some of my old scissors which I'm especially fond of, sitting in a vintage glass flower frog. The soldered domed glass pendant you might also spot there I made for my oncle recently and it's filled with pictures of my auntie which passed away not too long ago and her wedding ring also fitted between the two domed glasses:

From here we move a bit farther to the right under the next rooftop window where I have one of my Expedit shelves for studio storage and an old black train light as well as an old black telephone ( yes I adore old/vintage black things!) :

Let's have a closer look at the shelf now. In the left wire basket I store my collection of vintage postcards and cabinet cards:

Here comes a wider view of this area where you'll also see part of my comfy old studio sofa and my laptop on which I type this right now:

followed by an even wider view of one half of my studio:

In this area I have another Expedit shelf which my faithful blogging friends and readers will sure remember from older blog posts:

This area also is a bit more colorful and contains part of my collection of vintage sewing machines

as well as my aqua colored Räskog supply cart who quickly became my most important studio helper who is always handy and in reach:

On the opposite side of this studio shelf are two of my studio desks and another one in the left hand corner under the window which is my soldering table. As you might have guessed I also love to hang pretty things from the wooden beams at my studio ceiling like the vintage inspired umbrella, the honeycomp paper ball or the huge wooden scissors:

You might have also observed by now that I'm no minimalist, by no means really ha ha. I love eye candy and I need most of my pretty things displayed around me for my viewing pleasure and inspiration:

The white painted printers tray I moved from the corner unter the pitch of my roof top over to this wooden Ikea desk and I like it much better here right now. This time I also cleaned up the space under my desk especially for Alexandra ;-) In the wooden tray on top of the vintage travel suitcase under the desk I store my jewelry making stuff and the suitcase is filled with paper maché boxes:

I can easily move the white tray away if I should need more space on top of the desk:

The washi tape holder stands on the desk shelf and under it is one of my recent creations a soldered bug in an old book under glass - inspired my idol Sally Jean Aleander:

At the left side of this desk stands my vintage spinning wheel on top of another small Expedit shelf:

and farther left is this attic window of the north house side over my soldering desk. Since I love birds and everything about them I also have a bird/nest garland hanging in the studio window and a bird cage hanging from the ceiling. The glittered nest garland is one of my treasured garlands from my talented friend Madai of Butterfly cottage in Florida. The vintage postcard fabric banner is a creation of my friend Anita who sews the most beautiful things.

Off for a little a break .... no just joking can't leave you now ;-)

I like how I can see the huge scissors in the studio mirror reflection seen above :)

This vignette stands on a tiny set of drawers which sits on my glass desk and shows some of my soldered shadow boxes. You can right click and superzise all of my photos btw if you'd like to see even more details. I also have a collection of vintage rulers displayed here in an old milk jug:

Sweet Charlotte - a creation of my long time blogging friends Jenny and Aaron from Everyday is a holiday blog - is peeking from behind the boxes :)

Phew this is a long post but don't fear you almost made it through it, because this is the last studio wall/corner that I want to share with you today

As the top hat addict that I am of course my studio dolls get little top hats too :)

In the last photo above is my framed collage of waxed nature finds which I created in my sisters atelier last fall.

Well I think that I should better stop here for today because there are so many more awesome studios out there in blogland waiting for you to get discovered at this great inspirational party. I'd like to thank Karen for hosting it again and everyone of you who made it until here and I would love to hear from you so that I can visit you back.

xoxo~ Carola

I'm sharing this with he following parties:

Knick of Time Tuesday - see button in my right side bar
Blissful Whites Wednesday at Timewashed blog - see button in my left side bar
What's it Wednesday at Ivy and the Elephants
Inspiration Friday at Common Ground blog

About a "Summer dinner party" and the cutest chickadee babies!

2013-06-29T03:58:00.001-07:00

Welcome back to Boxwood Cottage dear blogging friends and readers! I'm so behind on blogging. The roses and peonies are in full bloom now for almost 3 weeks already and I still have pictures from the end of May to share with you today. Last year was the first time that I had my birthday party in May not in January when my b-day actually is and I loved it so much because the weather was wonderful then and we could go outside and enjoy the garden too. So I planned a Summer dinner party at the end of May this year too, but the weather didn't play along, oh well. It was a rather chilly and overcast day and so we stayed inside, but we still had a very nice party and I don't think anyone but me really cared for the weather that evening. In the picture above you can see our vegan and gluten free menu for the dinner party which I put in one of my vintage black typewriters. Since my daughter and I are vegans and a very god friend of mine is vegan and also can't eat gluten, it was quite a challenge to come up with a delicious meal that anyone, regardless of whether they are omnivores, gluten free or vegan would enjoy, but my clever daughter who did most of the food preparing did it very well.

Good for me so I had more time for the decorations, which I enjoy doing much more anyway. With all the white and some black accents in my home I wanted something more summery and went for pink and natural hues. I love these small milk bottles and bought them already several months ago along with the pink and white polka dotted paper napkins and striped pink paper straws which I also love so much (as a regular follower you might remember the black and white striped paper straws that I used for the Halloween party decor last year), so of course for my birthday party dinner I finally had to use them all. I had great fun adorning the bottles with some washi tape and the small friendship hearts that I soldered in February. My friends could take them home as friendship tokens after the party was over.

Now aren't these bottles just so cute?

And I finally had an excuse to use my beloved honeycomb paper balls in pink and white shades for the party decor:

And also the pretty fabric bunting which my friend Anita sewed for me several years ago:

I filled the little milk bottles with a mixture of ice cold pomegranate juice, organic rhubarb lemonade/soda and a bit of vodka, which was very yummy.

The cucumbers I filled with a delicious vegan tuna/soy-yoghurt/dried tomatos/capers mixture, these were everyones instant favorites and I'm sure going to make them again for a family birthday next month.

Since my white bleeding hearts where still in full bloom I used them for the table deocr as well:

And also for the decor on top of the mantle, more friendship hearts :)

Another shot of the honeycomb paper balls, aren't they just too pretty hanging from the chandelier?

I also had a pink paper parasol hanging from the ceiling:

This next photo is one of those that I took shortly before the guests sat down to eat and it wasn't so easy to think to take pictures while my friends were already there, but luckily with my dear daughter helping me so much with the food and all I did it and found the time to take some more photos.

before and after dinner shots or better viceversa lol

The lilacs were just in full bloom at the time (May 24th) and looked so pretty on my old Adler sewing machine table:

Of couse we also had a very delicious vegan dessert with a yummy silken tofu vanilla creme and raspberries underneath, as well as self made almond powder cookies and Amaretto liqueur at the bottom and strawberries and freshly grounded vanilla sprinkled on top hmmm

Here's another befor the party shot, because I love the light in this photo:

And at the end of the day it was also a good thing that it was to chilly to go and sit outside because Mr. Chickadee and his whife were very busy feeding their babies right in front of my patio door at the side wall:

And so we did not disturb them with their exhausting task.

A few days earlier papa chickadee, a very busy man, who build the nest in the bird house all alone,

flew right into my living room. While I sat in my deckchair outside I heard a strange noise behind me so I turned around to see Mr. Chickadee behind the window pane inside my parlor. Of course I had to help him to get out again, but I had to have a photo of him sitting on the lamp at first:

Too cute these tiny birdies aren't they just? Of course he was afraid and very excited and wanted to find the way out to keep building the nest for his wife and babies, but it was so difficult with all the things I had standing on my window sill and hanging over it

So that I had to put it all away in order for this sweet little one to find his way out again and then finally he did it! So this is a very rare shot now of my parlor window and window sill without any decorations inside:

Of course I used the opportunity to thorougly clean the window and sill which was really necessary, so thank you Mr. Birdie for giving me a visit inside and help me finish my Spring cleaning lol :)

I really enjoyed the very good garden view I had through the clean and decorless window so I took another photo of it on a wonderful sunny May day, as seen above. And how very convenient that now I had the window already cleaned for my dinner party that I held just 2 weeks after this little accident with papa Chickadee :) It all went so fast then, momma chickadee haf moved in layed eggs and the little ones hatched and during all this time my daughter and I, and later also my neighbor Ulla did our best to supervise the bird house because it's in their nature that our cat Riley and his neighbor cat friend Tommy tried to climb up to the bird house on any given occasion and no wonder that they were on constant cat alert with all the noises of the hungry little ones coming out of the bird house.

And then, 10 days or so after my dinner party, at the beginning of June, the sweet chickadee babies were ready to leave the nest. At first we could only see them peeking through the hole of the bird house from time to time and then the next day it was really hot and the bird house was in full sun exposure for hours and that was the day that they decided to discover the world!

Now tell me please isn't this the sweetest chickadee child you have ever seen calling for his parents?

I so adore his feathery hair do!

Not long after this photo he decided to hop out and sit on the stick in front of the hole:

and then from their after a while he just leaped to the next branch over the bird house:

We were all so excited to see our little ones discovering the world and take off for their first ever flight. The first 3 babies did it that evening and the next 3 the next day.

Some of them like this grumpy little cutie pie needed a bit longer and a lot of cheering on from his momma (she came back and forth to him, still fed him, kissed him and then showed him several times how to just fly off, just to cute to see this all happening live in front of my parlor door) until he finally took all his little heart and flew off, but the better for me that he took so long because so I had more time to take some more pictures of him close up:

Yea I know he doesn't look very amused:

After they all flew off to the next lilac tree we were so relieved that the cats didn't get around to catch any of them and I just hope that they will all stay alive long enough to enjoy their little lifes and maybe also my garden:

I leave you now with two shots of my beautiful snowball which unfortunately has already faded by now:

Next time I'll share with you some pictures of my garden with the new seating corner in the back and all the beautiful roses and penonies etc. in full bloom and also of the pretty things I brought back from my trip to London two weeks ago along with some restaurant and shopping tips for London visitors and also some things that I have meanwhile created. Until then I hope that you enjoyed this post and will visit me again soon! Thank you all for still coming to see me here after so many years, cause I just realised that in only 3 months time I'm going to have my 8th year blog anniversary, wow how time flies!

Sending Happy Summer wishes to all of you out there!

xoxo~ Carola

P.S.: Thank you so much to those of you who where concerned and asked about the heavy high waters and the floods we had here in Germany during this month of June. I'm very thankful that it wasn't anywhere near here where we live in Bremen. We had more than our fair share of rain here too this month, but that was it. I live close to the river Weser and the floods usually happen along the river Elbe. I can't even start to imagine what the poor people in some of the cities and villages that were flooded for days have been and still are going through. It must be absolutely devasting for them I'm sure :( Hope they all have good insurances at least. I don't think that I could live there because to most of them it had already happened just 10 years ago and now again! So so horrible!

~ Happy May garden days ~

2013-05-31T23:26:00.001-07:00

Welcome back to Boxwood Cottage dear blogging friends and readers! I can't believe my long May vacation is almost over and it's back to the office and work on Monday, but before that I want to at least share some May garden pictures with you. This was an unusual cold and wet May for us here in Northern Germany but I know it was like that for most of us even in the South of Europe and in many parts of the United States. What has happened to my favorite Spring month? Well nevertheless I used every sunny moment there was outside on my little piece of earth.

On my deck I planted lot's of Spring flowers like violas/pansies and bleeding hearts at first in April and then started to plant Summer blooms in my pots in May and I'm still not finished with it. I also sowed sweet peas, cosmos, zinnias etc. in my zinc cold frame box and pots in hope of getting pretty summer flowers to bloom all Summer long, but they're all taking longer than usual to grow:

I love to watch them grow so, don't you? The sweat peas I always leave them in the cold frame and let them climb up the trellis I put in it.

In April we still had bare trees without leaves because of the long frosty period, but came May the green literally exploded and finally every bush, rose and tree in my garden was green once again. I especially love my maple tree sitting right smack there in the middle of my back yard, blocking the view to the houses behind my garden which I think is good!

Then the sweet blue "forget me nots" started to bloom everywhere in my borders as you can see in the next photo:

And the pink tulips I planted new last autumn started to bloom in the other big border under the roses:

And it is so nice to see all the alliums and perennials grow again, after we had freed the border from weeds:

My crabapple tree got lots of buds and flowers this year, while last year there wasn't so many so I can look forward to lots of tiny red apples this autumn:

The hostas also came out beautiful again. Since I do not have enough space in my borders for these beauties I planted them in pots. This one sits on my potting bench in front of a mirror:

When the sun came out the tulips in my rose garden opened their flowers really wide:

Below is my favorite tulip called Angelique:

Of course Riley enjoyd the rare warm and sunny happy Spring garden times outside with me:

He abandoned his favorite blue chair this season and now prefers to lie on top of the blue garden table:

Our neighbors cat Tommy is never far from him, you can spot him under the table:

The next photo is a close up of my favorite little pansie the Viola cornuta:

My auricala also survived the long Winter outside and bloomed again beautifully as seen below:

A closer auricula shot:

And a macro shot, I so love this dark reddish pink color:

I found a verbena in that same color and planted it in one of my hanging baskets:

In the photo below it is wet from rain and looks like it is varnished, don't you think?

Of course I also had to take another birdseye view shot of my small garden now that finally everything is green again:

I love to see my patio and borders from above and I'm so thankful for my little paradise. Do you see in the next picture how the English rose "Constance Spry" in the white rose arc has grown all through and around it? Can you imagine how wonderful she is going to be when she opens her pretty shaped pink blossoms in June? In this rose boarder are also Heritage, Rokkoko, Abraham Darby and two big Eden roses that will all bloom very soon and I'm so looking forward to see them all bloom again:

I really like the red flat stones we put around the border last year it makes the shape pop more and is so much easier to mow around it now.

Next is a view of my patio on a sunny day here I could actually sit in my deckchair and enjoy the warm Spring sun:

And this below is the view of my garden from the back of it. All the boxwood hedges got fresh green sprouts by now and I have to cut them again soon so that they'll stay in shape:

The clematis Montana rubens below still in buds is meanwhile blooming beautifully too:

And my pure white bleeding heart also still blooms so great that I had to share another shot of it:

It's also nice to lo look right through it on to my deck as seen in the next shot:

So now tell me please how's your garden growing this season?

I'm going to leave you for today with this picture of my deck and hope to be back very soon with pictures of a belated birthday party I have had a week ago.

Until then I'm wishing y'all a very happy start of Summer in June with hopefully more sunshine for all of us!

xoxo~ Carola

About moths, butterflies and bleeding hearts ~ A short April catch up post

2013-04-30T23:34:00.000-07:00

Welcome back to Boxwood Cottage dear blogging friends and readers to a short (at least for me - only 10 photos today) April catch up post about soldered moths and butterflies in my studio as well as the Spring awakening (finally) of my boxwood garden.

I was so very inspired by a class called "The dead bug society" that my idol Sally Jean Alexander

( she always has the best ideas and imagination and I would have loved to be there in person and take her class and learn some of her tricks and techniques - oh well hopefully one day) currently gave in San Diego, that I just had to give it a try and see if I could make it and so I figured out on how to solder my own insects. I also loved how they put them under glass in old books and here are my first results. Above and below is my first soldered moth in a very old book found at one of my flea market excursions in which I cut a deep window and then I soldered a thin glass pane under the book cover . It can also be displayed standing like in the picture below.

So what do you think, did I do my idol SJ justice?

Apart from the moth I also tried my first soldered butterfly (see below) and I'm so glad that I learned to free hand cut my own glass instead of just buying pre cut glasses in online shops because there are so many more possibilities since then :)

Well that's it from the studio for now and I hope to share some more creations with you in May.

I hadn't had the luck yet in April to catch a beautiful butterfly with my camera outside in my garden although I saw some of them swirling around already but nevertheless I'd like to take you outside for a short stroll:

It has finally warmed up here and Spring has really sprung after what seemed to be the longest and coldest Winter ever to us, especially March was so cold and frosty that nature is way back in our garden and I couldn't help but buying some Spring flowers to bring in some more color and delight.

The bleeding heart is one of my many favorite Spring flowers so I had to have a white and a pink one. In the flowers beds they just came out and aren't blooming yet but these beauties from the nursery are already in full bloom and aren't they gorgeous? The spanish lavender in the shot below is another nursery purchase. I have to buy one or two of these beauties new every year because they aren't frost resisting here in Northern Germany.

The magnolia bush has just started to open its white starry flowers and all the bushes and trees are beginning to show a hint of fresh green. I took a birds eye view shot from my roof top studio window to share with you and you can see all the greens sprouting in my flower bed under the white rose arc. Especially the tulips and alliums all have buds to burst open very soon and I can't wait to welcome them back again!

It's so wonderful to be able to enjoy the garden and the warmth of the Spring sun again and since I'm off work for the whole month of May (yay) I'll be doing just it as best as I possibly can :)

May is my favorite garden month of the year and so I hope to share many more garden delights during this wonderful month with you my dear friends and readers very soon.

I'm going to leave you now with another shot of these pure white bleeding hearts:

And wish you all a very happy "May Day" and a great start into the wonderful month of May!

Hope to see you around soon!

xoxo~ Carola

I'm linking up with the following parties:

What's it Wednesday at Ivy and the Elephants
Inspired Friday at Common Ground
Cottage Garden Party @ Fishtail Cottage
Blissful Whites Wednesday at Time Washed

Spring garden~ Happy White Easter~& a surpise parcel

2013-03-30T23:33:00.000-07:00

Welcome back to Boxwood Cottage on Easter Sunday morning! Since my dear daughter did all the yummy vegan backing and cocking for today I had the chance to put a new post together. I got a beautiful surprise parcel from my friend Julia of Vintage with Laces who currently lives in Albania a few days ago, but before I share all the goodness she created for me I'd like to show you this vintage inspired cone that I made for my mum's b-day which was last Wednesday.

In used waxed paper around the whole cone and then embellished it with some of my precious paper doilies and love how it came out.

Of course I did my best to make it pretty from all sides, above is the backside. I had fun filling it with vintage goodies like an old china doll head, old cabinet card and velvet millinery as well as one of my soldered hearts.

Something else that I'd like to share with you today are a few pictures from my early Spring garden which I took during the first week of March:

This is what I think that early Spring should look like. Horned pansies/Violas and cats alike enjoying the warmth of the sun after a long cold Winter. And blue I just love a blue Spring!

Above is our Riley napping on his favorite blue garden chair and below our black neighbor cat Tommy who took advantage of my deckchair as soon as I left it lol

I also took out some Easter decor, like this wire rabitt filled with marble eggs:

the rusty iron rabbits below reside outside all year round though:

And these aqua glass bells do look so springy don't you think?

I took two days off work to take full advantage of these sunny early Spring days on my patio and started cleaning of the flower beds.

I was so happy that Spring was finally here and of course was absolutely sure it was here to stay.

Ha! I was so wrong. Little did I know during these two happy early Spring days that Winter would come back full force just 2 days later.

This is what I woke up to the next Morning, well that was still some how okay with me for early Spring days since it melted away quickly during the day. But since then it kept snowing every second day at least and not only that, we got an icy cold east wind along with another period of strong frost which lasts for 3 weeks already now and there is still no end of it in sight. Yesterday I heard in the news that this March is the coldest March ever since 130 years here in Germany brrrrrrrrrrr

Well my dear blogging friends and readers I think we better go back into the warm cottage:

Just two more pictures of the cone because I think it looks so pretty in front of my white glass cabinet and I also wanted to bring your attention two my cute new birdie stamp door knobs. Aren't they just too cute and springy?

Okay but now it's time to share with you the handmade goodness that came as a belated surprise parcel for my big round birthday which was two months ago. When you get a parcel from Julia you just know that you're in for a real treat because everything she creates is just perfect in my eyes. Below is an overview about all the loveliness dear Julia has sent me before I'm going to show you some close ups:

For me a beautiful parcel always starts with beautiful packaging and wrapping and Julia really is a master in doing this. I'm really smitten with the way she's making it all so personal like the parcel below with my first names initial C in the gorgeous heart with the stitched edges:

Or with the stamped and aged paper envelopes she makes:

It's all in the details like in the gorgeous round tag below:

Or in this pretty bow with old lace and an aged button on top of a fabric rosette:

I also love her stamped tags and below is another personalized gift package with small fabric stamped tag:

of course inside of these parcels you'll find true treasures. My heart skipped a beat when I opened the large one and found this fabulous, dreamy, fabric Easter/Spring collage inside:

Isn't it a wonderful piece of artwork? I'm so happy with it! I love the image Julia has used from Karen our Graphics Fairy and also the tiny number tag she glued on the egg in the image and the springy light pastel blue border and of course all the lace and the details like the button flowers and the pretty edging. For now it found a perfect place hanging from a white wooden shutter in my parlor where I can see it and marvel over it all day.

Julia owns the most beautiful stamps and uses them so well in her creations like on the reading mark above which she has also personalized with a C at the back side.

The sweet paris inspired lace note pad above has a great way to stay closed with an elastic rubber band which is inside the lace wrapped around topped of with a beautiful flower button.

Oh and I love this all white fabric heart in the picture above. It looks so very fresh and pretty the white really kind of shines!

Thank you su much sweet Julia for making my week in this cold long Winter which is supposed to be Spring.

If you happen to not now my friend Julia yet, hop on over to her blog and be sure you're in for lot's of eye candy and beautiful inspiring ideas: http://vintagewithlaces.blogspot.de/

Well my friends I'm going to leave you now with these last two pictures of a vignette in my parlor. For the black chalkboard egg I used a candy box which already had a cut out bunny shape and I glued a wooden bunny I had in the same size, which I glittered with silver German glass glitter before, beside of it.

Wishing you all FROHE OSTERN ~ HAPPY EASTER ~

See you again when real Spring has finally sprung around here. Fingers crossed that will be very soon before we all end up with a depression. Who would have thought that we'll be having a White Easter this year?

xoxo~ Carola

Sharing with:

Becky's Blissfull Whites Wednesday at Timewashed blog
Debra's Inspiration Friday at Common Ground blog
Vintage Interior blogs VI ~ God helg
Angies Knick of time Tuesday at Knick of Time blog
Paula's and Pattie's What's it Wednesday @ Iviy and the Elephants blog

The bunnies are loose ~ pre Easter deco ideas & a winner!

2013-03-12T07:18:00.000-07:00

Welcome back dear blogging friends and readers to Boxwood Cottage in March which of course means it's all decorated for Easter by now and I like to share with you this years ideas for my Easter decor and going to reveal the winner of my Valentine's Day Give Away at the End of this post.

At this time of the year you'll find signs of Spring and Easter everywhere you look around here

Easter is my favorite holiday to decorate for well apart from Christmas that is. The crate shelf above looked like that for the last two or 3 weeks, but last weekend I redecorated it again as you'll see in my pictures further down this post. Oh btw did I mention that this is a long post with 35 pictures? So you better make yourself comfortable and go get a cup of tea before continuing ;-)

The mantle is always the first piece I decorate and I like to decorate it differently each year so I really had to think twice this time until I came up with the idea of putting the two wooden brown bunnies under my two higher glass domes which I really like now and also to embellish the goose eggs (of my sisters geese) with cut out letters spelling Frohe Ostern/Happy Easter. I'll show you more close ups of the top of the mantle later.

I cut some pussy willow branches from my garden to decorate with the chicken blue eggs which I handpainted and decorated with wire and beads many years ago:

Around the rusty crown ( a gift from my colleagues for my b-day in Jan.) I put some of my old wooden Erzgebirge German folkart (ore mountains in East Germany) bunnies.

Below at my window sill sits a plaster hare from my friend Anja of Mathildas Design which I also put under glass with another goose egg. I just seem to have a thing this year whith putting hares and bunnies under glass and I just like the antique apothecary bottles in front of it.

Below is my small wall shelf invaded by sheep/lambs and bunnies too:

Crocheted eggs, white birds and an old bunny candy container as well as an iron stone egg are decorated on my white three tired iron chandelier:

And another plaster bunny and plaster egg I sat in this glass terrarium (which is a fabulous b-day gift from my dear neighbors and was filled with blooming bulbs when I got it in Jan.) along with nature materials like moss, birch bark and feathers:

Oh and last week we finally had some days with sunshine as seen in the photo below:

Now we come to the close ups of the mantle and of course as always my pictures are really large and you can click on them and then right click on show graphic to see the original size with even more details.

The glittered Happy Easter garland from my dear friend Madai of course is a must on the mantle at this time of the year. I also love the white hare in front of the white urn with the ostrich egg. And here you can see the letter decorated geese eggs much better:

The sewing machine table is also decorated with a variety of eggs most of them decorated by me. The red eggs in glass box I hand painted over 10 years ago. My favorite is the large pink foil egg in the back which was an antique market find:

Before we come to some close ups of this wall in my parlor I show you this wider view of it:

You can very well see my compassion for black silhouettes in these pictures so of course I had to make some more silhouette Easter eggs, this time I embellished the huge paper maché eggs. The one in in the old wire basket with the stick in the hand is my favorite.

I also painted some cardboard eggs and paper maché eggs with black chalkboard paint, like I did with the big hanging bunny last year and it's fun to write on them also my chalk lettering isn't very pretty I must admit.

I just like to spell words with my Anthropologie letter cups like HARE and then I used them as nests:

Some of the smaller eggs I glittered with the silver German glass glitter and embellished them with silver Dreden borders. All in all the neutral colors rule my Easter decor and I really love it, don't you?

I think the huge egg needs some more embellishments, or what would you say?

The big and quite heavy white plaster hare in the middle shelf looks as if he wants to jump out of it. I hope he's not gonna break my glass box then ;-)

Now I'd like to introduce you to my latest antique market find!

Please meet Manni my new old Steiff bunny! Isn't he just the cutest pet?

A white Easter bunny also sits on top of my topiary on the kitchen window sill:

Last week I really thought that SPRING had sprung here after 3 warm and sunny days in a row and that my cups under the kitchen cupboard spelling it had helped, but I was so wrong, because last Saturday we woke up to a new blanket of snow outside and since then it is here to stay along with heavy frosts again.

Since I never showed you these sweet antique iron stone cutting boards that my mum gave me for Christmas before, I thought I'd share a close up of them today. Aren't they just wonderful with the fairytale silhouettes?

From a close up back to some wider views of my parlor - both photos taken this Sunday:

With all the snow outside it was at least very bright inside too.

This small and very old, already glued together candy container bunny was another recent antique market find, that I just had to give a new home:

And of course I changed out the vintage postcards in the iron card holder from Winter ones to Spring and Easter ones:

Another cardboard egg which I embellished with a white bunny and gold Dresden foils hangs from a window up in my studio:

Talking about my studio I just have to share with you some pretties from other artist friends that I got recently. Dear Tina from Tinybears in Denmark surprised me with this beautiful fabric book for my birthday in January:

Thank you so much sweet Tina, I absolutely love it! :)

Then this week I got an e-mail from another dear friend, Julia of Vintages Laces, who now lives in Albania and she wrote me that she also has sent out a belated birthday parcel to me. Wohoo Julia I'm so looking forward to another surprise! :)

And before I tell you the name of the lucky winner of my Valentine's Day Give Away I have to share a give away that I recently won with you. It's the wonderful lace cuff from artist Sandy Babb over at Quillcottage that my wooden hand is modelling here for me. Isn't it gorgeous with all the intricate details? I feel so lucky to have won it! Thank you dear Sandy!

Well and finally without further ado the winner of a soldered arrow and heart made by me is:

Miss JENNIFFER!

Congratulations Jenniffer! Please email me your address to Carolinchen39athotmail.com!

Thank you very much to everyone who played along!

Since I probably wont get around to do another blog post before the official beginning of SPRING next week and Easter just around the corner at the end of March, my mums b-day and many other things inbetween I'd like to wish you all a happy beginning of Spring and a very Happy Easter Holiday!

xoxo~ Carola

Sharing this post with:

Blissful Wites Wednesday at Timewashed

What's it Wednesday at Ivy and the Elephants

Inspired Friday at Debra's Common Ground

http://vintageinteriorblogs.blogspot.de/

Knick of Time Tuesday

New V-day creations & a Valentine's day give away!

2013-02-13T13:51:00.002-08:00

Happy Love Day dear blogging friends and readers and welcome back to Boxwood Cottage on Valentine's Day!

I'm still in this red and pink mood and still creating Valentines in my studio and this what my studio table looks like right now:

So what did I create with all that stuff apart from the chocolate or candy heart boxes and silver glittered love birds that I showed you in my last post you ask?

Well there are the soldered heart charms in the photo above for example and also the the cupid arrows and the quiver for my mannequin that you can see in the photo below:

Well actually I was waiting for natural light to take theses photos but I had no luck, when I had time to shoot it was always cloudy or dark outside, but I still wanna share my cupid with you, so here it is in it's full glory and flash light:

A close up of the arrows:

Another thing I made are these sweet candy cones:

They are so fun to embellish:

I hung it with a hook from my new favorite studio toy:

Which is my Räskog cart from Ikea, one of my best birthday gifts that I had on my wish list and got from my dear sister:

It's such a handy thing to have when creating and gives me more free space on top of the table

Since it's made out of metal you can pin all kind of things on it simply by using magnets.

Now to my little love day give away:

If you are faithful follower of my blog or will become a new follower and will leave me a comment under this post telling me which was your favorite of my V-Day creations from this post and the last one and also leaving your e-mail addy so that I can get back to you, I'll put your name in one of my top hats and will draw the winner of a prettily wrapped soldered heart and arrow parcel within the next two weeks. Of course internationally friends are more than welcome to play along!

Good Luck!

If you like to share the love you can use the button above and post it at your blog or side bar.

I hope you liked the photos and creations I shared with you today and wish you all a fun and lovely Valentine's Day and I'll see you again soon, probably already with some Spring & Easter decor and creations since Easter is only a mere 6 weeks away from now!

~ Happy Love Day to you ~

xoxo~ Carola

Sharing this post with:

Be Inspired #126: Celebrating Love on Debra's Common Ground blog

Some early Valentines & 2 January birthdays 25 + 50

2013-01-31T23:02:00.002-08:00

Welcome back to Boxwood Cottage dear blogging friends and readers at the very end of January. January always is a very busy month around here, because it kinda starts with my daughters birthday and ends with mine. Can't believe she's 25 years old already and even less that I'm the double of her age, well of course I always was, but that new number just sounds so old *EEK*

I also was busy putting all the Christmas decorations away and starting to craft and decorate for Valentine's day as you can see in the picture of a corner of my studio below:

I just adore vintage paper honeycombs like this pretty red heart and bell (see above) I once got from sweet Ann Perry:

Of course V is for Valentines!

As for every season I loved decorating my blackboard in the studio for Valentine's day and since I'm still in the glittering mood I glittered hearts and arrows and cut out cardboard birds:

I also created two new cardboard Valentine's boxes like the pink one below with that sweet lady embellishment I got from Julie Collings etsy shop last year:

and for a change I also created a white Valentine's box. Loved making the arrow from a paper straw:

Further I embellished these two tiny cardboard houses with Dresden foil trims and borders and some charms as cupid homes:

The cone in the middle of the two glittered love birds also got some red and silver embellishments and I filled it with all things red I could find in my studio. And of course I needed some paper hands for my blackboard vignette:

My vintage china doll got the glittered top hat already as her New Years attire so for Valentines she needed something new and I soldered her a heart necklace:

Well my dears that's about all for now and next time I'll share with you some of the beautiful birthday gifts I was lucky to get.

So how about you, have you put all signs of Winter and Christmas away already and did you craft something new for the month of hearts?

The weather is very mild here for Winter right now - after two weeks of heavy frost and snow that is - and it now raises falls hopes of an early Spring. As most of you I also can't wait to get back out in the garden.

I wish y'all a very Happy February my dear friends and readers!

xoxo~ Carola

Sharing this post with:

http://www.timewashed.com/2013/02/blissful-whites-wednesday.html
What's it Wednesday @ Ivy and the Elephants
http://www.commonground-do.com/2013/02/be-inspired-126-little-romance.html
http://www.funkyjunkinteriors.net/2013/02/sns-174-its-all-about-valentines.html#more
http://sew-licious.blogspot.de/2013/01/valentine-showoff-party.html

Vintage new years eve vignettes ~ Happy 2013 ~

2012-12-31T12:37:00.000-08:00

Celebrating New Years Eve in the studio tonight and thought I'd share some vignettes around the studio with you my dear readers

As you can see I had fun playing with my old top hats, vintage suitcases, dolls, chalkboard and silver German glass glitter again

I made the big 2013 with silver pipe cleaners

Of course clockfaces some soldered, some real and others out of cardboard play a role in my new years vignettes as well as vintage old new years cards

Happy New Year to the world :)

My old dressform got a vintage velevet top hat for the celebration adorned with a big black millinery flower, a silver border and and some vintage bling

I think the black and white maskes are appropriate for the new years eve ball

Since it's Winter the snowmen are celebrating too ;-)

The paper maché balls and pine cones that I glittered are hanging from the studio chandelier adding some sparkle to the festive vignettes

I also glittered the small top hat for the china doll

Now after all these close ups I give you some wider views

Hope I brought you in the mood for a great party with these new years eve vignettes from my studio tonight and I'd like to wish you all good luck for the new year 2013!

Happy New Year 2013!

xoxo~ Carola

Sharing this post with:
Debra's Be Inspired Friday at Common Ground blog

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Vintage new years eve vignettes *~* Happy 2013 *~*

Vintage new years eve vignettes ~ Happy 2013 ~