Hunting & Gathering

Being about to move, a lot of decisions have to be made. What will I need at my new place? What is worth keeping? And has the time come to let some of the things that I hunted and gathered over the past years go?


And while wrecking my brain trying to make decisions, I wonder why people collect and buy all these stupid little things. Why is it so hard to throw stuff away? This pullover we did not wear in months, these pair of shoes which are so broken that they will fall apart only at the attemt to take a walk. The receipts from the last holiday in Sweden. And the books we have been reading a hundred times already and did not pick up in years. We might think that we will loose our memories about the moment when we saw the pullover in the window of this little shop in France, or the first day at school where I wore those shoes for the first time, the nice cupcake that I bought and the wonderful person I shared it with, and the feeling I had and the person I was when I read this book for the first, second and third time. 


And by sorting out things, pieces of our memory, don't we also make a decision which things we want to remember and which situation we rather would forget? Keeping the receipt from the little café but not the receipt from the restaurant where we had the awful lunch is like saving the good memories and cherishing them while destroying others by throwing them in the bin. 


Maybe this sorting through memories is healthy because we can build us up a nice world that we can escape to when times get rough and the real world does not hold a lot of nice experiences for us. But then again, not every nice memory can be kept so at one point we have to tell all this little memory reminders


"Thank you! It is an absolutely wonderful memory that I am reminded of when I look at you. But if this was a truly magical moment, I will remember it even though there is nothing that can remind me of you." 


and let go... 

Wie selten auch Liebe ist, so ist wahre Freundschaft noch seltener.

What would we be without our friends? Without these people we met at kindergarten, school, university, while travelling, on parties or just by walking on the streets asking for direction. While I am sitting here in a little hostel room, wondering for which flats to apply, it's my friends who make me feel at home picking me up after a very disappointing day and giving me a preptalk for the following one. At this point, I should probably also mention the internet, which, in a world, where you can travel from one side of the globe to the other in just one day and have all this beautiful moments, makes it possible to build up a friendship and be with each other, sharing pictures, music, stories... lifes.


And you know, you have the meetings which are like butterflies passing by. You feel happy for a moment. It puts a smile on your face. And then the moment is gone. But then you have these encounters, where you just feel that it could be the start of something really special. Someone you can share your heart with. Share memories, the good ones and the bad ones. 


And sitting here, all by myself, I feel so very lucky to have met some people who are, no matter how far they are away, always with me and follow me through my life as I follow them through theirs. Like little butterflies. Putting a smile on my face and reminding me that there are things to be happy about. And due to one really special friend, I chose this quote to headline this post <3

We love UPcycle

If you feel like going through all the things you possess and clear out all the stuff that is no longer needed, think twice before throwing them away for good! Nowadays, it's not only about whether the thing is still useful to you or could be to somebody else in its current state but whether it could be TURNED INTO something shiny and (almost) new. There are so many cool, fancy, cute and absolutely amazing things out there that can be made through UPCYCLING uncool, not so fancy, ugly and boring things. How this can be done is described by a million blogs and websites floating out there in the world wide web. 

So now when going through my closet the categories I make change from closet, trash and charity to closet, trash, charity, upcycling box and exchange. Because even though you don't have any technical skills or just not the time, you could still recycle your clothes, shoes, jewellery and everything else by offering them to other people on pages like www.kleiderkreisel.de . So even if you do not love the stuff you want to get rid off anymore, there is probably (at least) one person out there who will love it! :) 

To get some inspiration, here is a list with links to some amazing pages: 

http://www.weupcycle.com/

http://blog.dawanda.com/category/anleitungen/

http://kreative.stoffe.de/naehanleitungen

I started off with a little skirt made from an old men's shirt. I bought it for just 1,50 on ebay and now I have this cute little skirt with buttons in the front that was my favourite companion during the last summer. 

So let's go people, let's UPCYCLE!!

Ile d'Oleron ... Paradise for love birds

I spent two wonderful weeks on the little island Oleron which is located about three kilometers away from the shore of France. It's a wonderful place covered by little white houses with orange roofs and blue blinds. Clemént and I made some bike and even a tandem trip to the far north and the far south of the island!
On our way back home, we stopped by in Paris and spend 40 wonderful hours in the city of love <3 But although our time was limited, we saw most of the famous buildings and sights and pampered ourselves with some great french cuisine.
Being back in cold and grey germany, all the memories seem to fade away so quickly... 

In the sun, sun, summer sun... 

Beautiful building in the middle of Paris.

Trying to skip the queue and to just jump on la tour Eiffel :)