Being in love with stuff

I am currently bidding on Ebay items for the wedding. I stupidly bid on multiples of the same items hoping it would ensure I was successful on one, FIVE silver candelabras, TWO rose bowls and TWO tall vases later I am sickenly looking at the other five candelabras and four rose bowls that I also appear to be fated to own. This is a warning to the wise, do not make this mistake.

So whilst I am in online shopping mode I thought I would share with you a few gems that I am in love with at the moment both to buy and just to admire. The first being this beautiful dick egg blue case on Etsy from GRSG

www.etsy.com/shop/getreadysetgo 

(I love most of the things in this shop)

I can think of so many uses for this case: I don't own a lot of makeup but if I did it would live here; if I had a wonderful collection of cotton gloves and hankerchiefs they would live here; if I owned beautiful ballet shoes they would live here and if I had lovely vintage snaps they would live here.

And this lovely, delicate, lace necklace from White Owl, again on Etsy, would look amazing with the right outfit; I'm thinking a lovely tea dress on a summers evening whilst sipping Pimms with a handsome gentleman

www.etsy.com/shop/whiteowl

and in a modern contrast I am in love with the colours and shapes of the work of Rie Tsuruta such as these little beauties

http://www.rietsuruta.co.uk/gallery

Don't they just look so clean and fresh? Spring and summer all wrapped up in lovely ceramic.

Finally, as I am in desperate need of a life overhaul (I have put on many many pounds and am getting very very little sleep) I have been thinking of getting a bike and in the midst of my searching I fell in love with this Batavus Old Dutch bike oh how I wish I had money and didn't live somewhere with seven LARGE hills

http://flyingpigeon-la.com/2010/03/custom-batavus-old-dutch-5-speed/

What are you loving at the moment?

Now to see if I am the lucky owner of a gazillion silver plated candelabras, wish me luck...

Happy World Diggers Day- What it is that I do

Hello and happy, what is known among us shovel monkeys as, 'World Diggers Day'. A day, primarily facebook based, which celebrates all those who are out in a muddy hole in all weathers, scrutinizing bits of dirt and old rubbish, in order to understand the human condition.

It being such a momentous day, I thought this might be a good opportunity to explain what it is I do and that whilst you will see that I come to Greece several times a year, it is never a holiday, more's the pity because I could ruddy do with one!

I am actually doing a Ph.D in archaeology, in 5000 year old Greek archaeology to be more precise. Before this I worked for just over two years as a commercial archaeologist digging on a variety of construction sites around the country.

In that time I have worked on all manner of sites from quarries where I had to stop twice a day whilst another section of the site was literally blown up, to city center car parks uncovering Roman bathrooms and industrial crucible furnaces. I have often been mistaken for a boy, despite wearing pigtails and being quite slender (I blame the hard hat, hi-vis clothing and the manical shoveling); I have been genuinely offered work as a labourer and have been stopped in the street to be told 'you look reet sexy in them boots'; It has been so cold my hair has literally frozen, so windy I have been blown off my feet and so wet that the water has been up to my thighs. All this because none of us have really grown out of the 'playing in the mud' phase of our childhoods - the pay is terrible, three years of university education, £30,000 worth of debt for the princely sum of...(drum-roll please)... £7.50 an hour, but the reward of the job can be fantastic. You are standing there, in a field, having seen the sun rise, knowing you are the probably the first person in 1000 years to hold the ceramic bowl you are holding or to walk on the road you have just uncovered.

So in honour of the day and to show you the marvelous sites I have seen so far here in Greece here's a glimpse of how people lived 3000 years ago - they really don't build the way they used to:

 

The Lion's Gate, Mikines (Mycenae) I should add that these cyclopean walls are huge, I mean some of the stones are literally (guestimated you understand) 5 x 1.5 x 1 meters, that's like 200 tonnes, 1 stone, 1 flipping stone out of a wall of, well, lots of flipping stones!

 Down towards the cistern - it got too dark and I didn't have a torch, how very un-Indiana Jones of me!

The Treasury of Atreus, tholos tomb with a mahooosive Greek cohort all nattering away at a million miles an hour!

 

You can kinda see why they came here, them Mycenaeans weren't daft.

Happy World Diggers Day!

So Where Am I Now?

OK firstly, I stupidly tried to change my blog header and now it loads blurry. Apparently this is problem blogger are having and I can't get around it, I've tried loading the JPEG to host websites like photobucket but nothing is working so for now my title will have to look a bit lame.

So where am I now? Nafplion, yep that's right Greece! I am here for research and it is so, so lovely, therefore, I thought I would share some pics of the loveliness that currently surrounds me, colonial architecture and views...

 

I'm working, honestly...

So where the devil have I been?!

Indeed where have I been? I start a blog and then disappear...well where do I begin?

Christmas was manic, I mean really manic. The boy and I had the genius idea to invite any of our friends who couldn't get home for Christmas for dinner at our insey, teeny, weeny flat. So with us, 8 people needed to be crammed in to our living room which was already being largely taken up by a humongous, yet twinkley, Christmas tree.

On top of this we also had to visit all our family in both Wales and Birmingham in the snow

I cooked for two days! TWO whole days. The meal included a large turkey, a ham (bought from Joe's, the best butchers in the world and based in Bala, North Wales), a mushroom wellington for the vegetarian, a wide variety of veg, stuffing, home made cranberry sauce, and then all the usual things like mince pies, cakes and cheeses. In the end I was so exhausted (little did I know the full reason for this at the time) I didn't take any pics of the sumptuous meal that we made.

Then I got ill.

To cheer me up whilst I was poorly sick the Boy surprised me with a bunch of sweet pink carnations!

New year came and went in a fevered state. We watched the original Star Wars trilogy and pretty much went to bed.

On New Years day I woke up feeling more human and the Boy, being the sweetie that he is, made me fresh bread for breakfast mmmm. 

As I was feeling more like my old self I decided it was time to take up some knitting and began making the obligatory scarf, which is currently laid to one side with the suspicion that I have messed it up and may need to start again. I just don't think I have enough patience...

Other lovely things we managed to do over the holiday period were to go to see Swan Lake which was looovely (and has inspired me to look for adult ballet classes) and spent a day thrifting and bunting making in an attempt to look like we are proactively planning the wedding (due to take place in just over 6 months!).

I found some lovely fabrics, plates and some clothes (not for really for the wedding but clearly a necessary purchase!)

And for some it the entire holiday season was all too much...

Out with the new and in with the old

So I've started a blog, how very modern of me. I'm not generally a modern type of gal, in fact it is only in the past few months I've embraced Twitter and the smartphone revolution.

I like old things, they always seem to be made with more care, to have more character; all utter nonsense I'm sure but in this age of Primarche and Ikea (both of which I admit to regularly frequenting) it seems nothing is made to last, it's all about instant gratification, getting the right look now and throwing it away tomorrow.  So as I am also poverty stricken with saving for THE wedding, I am trying not to buy new. This means charity shopping, car boot sales (please, please let me know of any ones you would recommend) and lusting after the goods for sale at the local antique shops.

So far our tiny (repeat TINY) flat is a mishmash of Ikea and charity shop randoms which often also seem to have originally derived from Ikea, and it drives me crazy. There will be photos and more rants about how crazy it drives me at some point soon no doubt...

I am also collecting old plates, candle sticks etc. for the wedding (which should always be followed by the dun dun der music of imposing doom). Our wedding, the small, outdoor, candle lit wedding that is now the large wedding, inside, during daylight hours, but the gods were kind and we found this little lovely, hidden amongst the sand dunes of North Wales...

 

The entrance to the tiny church yard

 

 

The back

The inside (www.snowdoniaguide.com)

The beach behind

Isn't it just the lovliest?! It is really old and doesn't even have electricity, it's beautiful. But there is a catch, well a couple actually, the first is that it fits 80 people, well the boy has to invite every aunt, uncle, and cousin twice removed and replaced with a robot, which leaves very little room. The second catch is that it is in North Wales, not quite commuting distance from Shefftown and to qualify to get married there we have to go every month, but isn't it so worth it?!

Originally we wanted an outdoor wedding at night by candle light until my married friend had to break it to me that here in England you have to be married indoors and before 6pm. Who makes up these silly rules?!

There will be so much more about THE wedding (dun dun der!)...

So there you have it, my first post. A mini moan about consumerism and a long gush about our church.