1940 | little home by hand

A mish-mash of topics today…
I discovered my love of succulents a few years ago (RosaMaria may have been responsible because she always posts beautiful succulent shots). I’ve a small collection at home which is thriving and I’m always busy propagating little cuttings. They grow slowly but steadily and really are the easiest plants ever.

I don’t seem to be alone in this either, since this print of a blooming succulent, taken in Italy during a summer visit to friends of ours, is by far the most popular in my Etsy shop:

In other news, the strawberries on my balcony are putting out fruit like mad this year and I’m looking forward to harvesting. Nothing compares to the taste of a homegrown strawberry. Mine are just past the flowering stage but the farmer’s market carried some strawberries already so we made the first smoothie of the year.

We also did a thrift store round again recently and while also picking up some practical stuff like vases and sports clothes for hiking, I indulged in several vintage square scarves.
These silk scarves are hard to find new (old is so much cooler anyway) and I’ve wanted to try this 1940’s headscarf tutorial for ages.

Love this hairstyle, it’s just so “artsy” . I’m wearing my scarves all the time. I’ll just have to find a way to better secure them on my head…my hair is fine and very slippery so they just want to slip right off.
I got so many scarves that I almost have one for every outfit.

More random things I loved this week:

I saw The Great Gatsby yesterday (really liked it) so I’m now considering getting even more scarves to wear them like lovely Carey does
April from Blacksburg Belle always has great tipps for small business owners, I follow her blog religiously. This video post on time management particularly hit home and has some awesome tipps I will incorporate in my work schedule from now on!
Sherrie wrote a very inspiring post about the concept of enough, which reminded me why I strive for minimalism in my life (ahem, thrift store shopping and compulsive accumulation of plants excluded)

It seems we’re always on the move this year, driving and visiting. This last friday we went to a wedding (I was also the photographer). The venue was a beautiful castle with gorgeous rooms.

The bedroom we were staying in was a real step back in time with the wood furniture and the flowery wallpaper…exactly like I picture rooms in the 1930’s or 40’s (and it may have been untouched since then, as the castle has been the property of the local university since 1949).

I have to say the winding wooden staircase leading up to the upper floors freaked me out a little. It was so old that each step creaked loudly and the whole staircase was tilting heavily towards the middle.

We had a wonderful time, but between driving down, taking photos all day and driving back up we took all of saturday to recover (I did anyway) and we’re taking it easy for the rest of the weekend.
True to my words from last post, as soon as I sat down at my sewing machine last weekend I couldn’t stop and have been sewing up a storm in the evenings, resulting in a summer skirt, a blouse and a silk dress. No wonder I’m exhausted 🙂 I’ll try and get photos soon, but first, it’s back to editing the wedding!