he town of Krynica Morska, where we’ve recently stayed for a weekend, was surrounded by this kind of fairy-tale forest. And of course when I wandered through it, I had my camera with me, so here are a few up-close shots of a beautiful forest which has finally woken up after the winter slumber.
I love forests - especially the ones that look wild and overflow with abundant greenery. Who doesn’t? And Spring is probably one of the best times to go for a long walk through one of them – everything looks so fresh and alive, birds are singing and the mosquitoes haven’t woken up yet ;-)T
he town of Krynica Morska, where we’ve recently stayed for a weekend, was surrounded by this kind of fairy-tale forest. And of course when I wandered through it, I had my camera with me, so here are a few up-close shots of a beautiful forest which has finally woken up after the winter slumber.
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Tulip exhibition at the Castle in Malbork Remember yesterday, when I wrote that we didn't go straight home, but did some sightseeing on the way? Well, we went to visit the Castle in Malbork, a medieval fortress built by the Teutonic Knights. Till today, it's one of the largest and most impressive gothic castles in the world - but I'll write more about it later this week. Once we arrived, a nice surprise was waiting for us - it turned out that on this very weekend a Tulip Exibition was taking place. So today I'd like to invite you to my coverage of this event, which you'll find here - those of you who speak Polish, can both read the text and see the photos, and those who do not can concentrate on the latter ;-) Enjoy! This is your new blog post. Click here and start typing, or drag in elements from the top bar.
Hi everyone, I'm back from my romantic weekend :-) It was a long journey yesterday, since we did some more sightseeing on the way, but we finally got home yesterday evening.
The get-away was great, Krynica Morska off-season is a perfect place for a relaxing break - if you feel like abandoning for a few days everything city life has to offer. In return, you get the sea, beach, forests, lake and generally a lot of nature. Before I have time to write something more, here is a peek preview of a few shots from this area of Poland: And a change of plans again - my husband is "kidnapping" me for a romantic weekend at the seaside, to a small town of Krynica Morska, which is supposed to be a very picturesque one. We're leaving in about an hour!!! So please keep your fingers crossed for a good, sunny weather this weekend, and hopefully I'll get many reasons to take my camera out of its bag ;-) Poland is not exactly the Tulip Country - although apparently we are the 4th biggest producer of these flowers in the world - so when we organise a tulip exhibition, it's not a grand-size one. Still, the III Annual Tulip Exhibition which takes place this weekend in the Orangerie building of the Wilanow Palace is a good place to visit for all tulip lovers. Since these are indeed my favourite flowers, I certainly couldn't have missed it. The long exhibition building is scattered with glass vases overflowing with tulips of all colours, types, shapes and sizes. It's certainly a pleasure to watch, although the fact that it's extremely dark outside and the few windows do not provide much light (especially that it's cloudy and gloomy outside) made me grind my teeth in frustration - conditions for taking pictures: worse than bad... But since I got to look at hundred of tulips, I'm not going to complain here - let's just say that I'm far from happy with the photos below, but it's the best I could do under the circumstances. At least I have some sort of souvenir from the event and a few photos for you, to post on my blog. By the way - the tulips on the photo on the right are called "Happy Generation" and were my absolute favourite ;-) And which do you like the most? Our visit to the Christmas Markets in Berlin this past weekend was unfortunately accompanied by some nasty rain, so taking photos was quite tricky. One place when I could do it without any problems was the Magic Winter Wonderland created in the middle of KaDeWe, one of Berlin’s most luxurious department stores.
The entire place was set up to look like a winter park, with snow-covered trees, fountains, lanterns and sculptures, with a huge and lushly decorated Christmas tree in the middle. It acted as a background to the numerous shelves and tables with all sorts of decorations – fantastically-shaped glass balls, candle-holders, figurines and many, many others. See for yourself – a piece of Magic Winterland it was indeed! The wedding floristry theme continued today, which meant more pink and white colours, more meticulous work and – of course – more fun. First we made another wedding bouquet, but this time a decorative one, with a slightly flowing shape – the most difficult arrangement I had to face so far. I have to admit that halfway through the work I had my doubts if I ever manage to finish it and if the result is going to be anywhere close the desired one - but it was actually better than expected. Here it is: Next, we proceeded to do a head wreath - it’s quite time-consuming but pleasant work (although it requires nimble fingers), and the technique can be used also to create a lot of different kinds of wreaths – small wedding car decorations, first communion head wreaths for girls, small Easter or Christmas wreaths and generally decorative hanging ones! I wish I could describe this technique here for you (and all the other ones too), but it's impossible - it has to be shown by someone. So if you're interested, I can only recommend you to do the same that I did - go to a floristry course... And the very final piece we did today was a wedding boutonniere for the groom:
First wedding boquet I ever made The November mornings in Warsaw are cold, dark, wet and gloomy, but despite that I got up this morning before 7 o’clock with a smile on my face and a thrill of pleasant anticipation – today was another day of my floristry course. This time we were introduced to the basics of wedding bouquets, and we’ve spent 5 hours (yes, 5 hours!) creating a well-crafted, meticulously finished biedermeier bouquet. You wouldn’t believe how much precise work goes into such a small floral creation, and how many special techniques and tricks there are to make it look the way it does – I know it now. But challenging as it is, it’s also very pleasant work, and I felt as if I was creating a small flower masterpiece. It might not be perfect – after all, it was my first attempt at such a bouquet – but as it stands on my table my eyes keep wandering back to it. And let me just point out the it is actually pink, and still I like it – which says a lot ;-) Here it is: And today I’m officially initiating the CHRISTMAS SEASON on my blog – after all, it’s less than two months till the Holidays!!! And for this occasion I have made a Christmas wreath – a real one, using the techniques learnt during my floristry course. It took 4 hours to make it (yes, I’m not kidding, that’s how long it took), but it was definitely worth it – I think it’s the most spectacular Christmas arrangement I’ve ever made!!!
It’s lying on my table right now and I just can’t get enough of it – I’m planning to make at least 4 more of these for Christmas, with various types of decorations and in different colours – never mind that my back hurts from all those hours of bending down and I have scratches all over my hands – I just love it. So I tell you – if you want to have a truly unique decoration for your house this Christmas, or a really touching gift for someone – go for a home-made wreath! I just came back from another part of my floristry course and I’m flying! Well, not literally, especially that I hurt all over, but I’m in this state of well-satisfied exhaustion, having spent all my creative and physical strengths up to their limits - on arranging flowers. The first task we faced today was to prepare an asymmetrical, linear and parallel-bound bouquet, and let me tell you, they might not look like a lot of work, but they certainly are. Here is my first attempt at such a bouquet: And here is the reason why I can hardly move – a huge (I think it had over a meter in diameter) funeral arrangement, which took over 2 hours to make and required some heavy lifting and crawling on the ground in order to evenly arrange the bottom part – but I must say the final result fully justifies the effort, even if I say so myself ;-) And here is the final arrangement we did today, also a funeral one, this one a bit smaller and tear-shaped – which was the biggest challenge (we had to adjust the length of each flower exactly right, so that a perfect tear is formed). I may not love yellow flowers that much, but combined like this I really do not mind! And tomorrow we’ll be doing my two favourite types of flower arrangements – table arrangements and Christmas ones, including wreaths – I really can’t wait!!! :-)
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August 2012
AuthorA fiery red head, a writer and a photographer in love with beautiful design and all things creative |