Crafts 2

The timing is a little bit weird, but I would like to write about our favorite Christmas ornament so far. We have been trying to build a small Christmas town since we came to north America. It is probably just the idea of collecting toys what tempts us. We have collected quite a few items

Obviously, a Christmas village cannot exist without a train. We looked for a suitable train for our village for more than 3 years. Our requirements were simple: it needed to be cute and original. (not a very simple task to achieve with our student budgets..)

There is a special organization of Philadelphia which came to our rescue:  Christmas Village of Philadelphia. Every holiday season, the city of Philadelphia hosts visitors from all around the world. Here are some pictures:

There are numerous little shops, a number of food and/or drink booths.. so a lot of fun..

 

It is possible to find countless options for our little village.  That is why every winter we make more than a few visits to the Christmas village. So far, our favorite stands has been the German handmade ornaments and decorations. Our dear german friends travel all the way from Germany and spend the holiday season usually away from their families. All their products are hand made and unique. 

Our train is one of them. Look at the faces of the figurines on the train.

If you are around Philadelphia in any December, do not forget to visit the Christmas town..

Crafts 1

Today, I would like to share a crafts work, which was an old project we had. Everything started when we found the human figures in a street bazaar  in Ayvalik, Turkey. All my family loved the figures but nobody had an idea about what to do with them first. After a brief brainstorming we decided that we want to have these people somewhere visible all the time. (I told you we really liked them). Then we realized the 30 year-old lamp in the balcony, so we had a project: Our figures will somehow become a new lamp for our extremely busy balcony. First we detached all the parts related to electricity from the existing old lamp. Next we found two round metal rings and four metal string to attach the rings to the part holding the bulb. Finally, we (luckily) were able to find thick thread in the same color with our figures. We preferred to knit it loosely both to save time and to have a more exotic style. Unfortunately, although we enjoyed our project a lot (even I helped with the knitting:))) ), somehow we did not take any pictures during crafting.

If you have any questions,please feel free to ask, I would do my best to explain.