Holidays in Portugal

This past week we went to Portugal to spend Christmas with Ze's family, and in the process took some pictures while walking around in Lisbon. Unfortunately there are a lot less lights than in previous years - the economic crisis there meant they had to save electricity!

Still, most of the main streets had decorations and lights...

Some more lights in the roundabout called Marques do Pombal...

... and a minimalist tree in the downtown square Rossio!

And we found a burger place that appeared recently in Portugal, with a very nice interior decoration, and very tasty hamburgers!

We're now back in Poland, looking forward to New Year's eve!

Happy New Year!

Christmas Tree

Finally we post our Christmas Tree - after thinking a lot about it, we decided to make a tree out of some large wood sheets, based on an idea we saw on a design blog. It was a lot of work, but I think it was worth it!

 We started by taking the wood pieces and cutting them diagonally.

I used sandpaper on the corners so nobody got hurt with the splinters, while Ze started cutting the shape of the tree.

Sandpaper again, and checking if everything fits...

Glue all the pieces together, and it's ready to be dressed!

And this is how it looks like! Merry Christmas, everybody!

Gingerbread Cookies

Last week we went to Ze's work Christmas Party, and it was great! Among other attractions, there was a table where we could make our own gingerbread cookies... and of course we did some cookie for us!

 Here we are at the restaurant the party took place in.

 After preparing the shapes a lady took the trays to the kitchen where she baked the cookies and then brought them back for us to decorate them.

And these are the results! It was a lot of fun to do!

Presents and Table Decorations

This year we will have two Christmas dinners: last weekend my family was here with us, and next week we'll go to Portugal to visit Ze's family. This was also the first time my grandmothers saw our apartment... I was quite stressed preparing the house and making it pretty for their visit! Because not all grandparents are fans of concrete floors, I wanted to make sure they wouldn't have a heart attack! :)

We packed the presents - this year we have lots of gold and red details in our decorations, so we chose the same color for the paper and bows.

 This is the present from my mother - she made this wool pillow cover by herself!

Obviously a more formal and elegant decoration than the last party :)

Christmas Decorations - part 2 (party!)

Here are some photos from the Christmas party we organized last weekend. We were surprised at how great the presents were, people had some really nice ideas for them.

Here is the gift lottery

And these are the presents we got - a dragon made of house-ware items, and a white Christmas crown!

Thank you everyone for coming!

Christmas Decorations - part 1

We are finally preparing our apartment for Christmas, and getting ready to host a party with our friends! We'll take pictures and show you how it went, of course... I'm actually very excited, because everyone is supposed to prepare a gift by themselves and I'm curious to see what ideas they come up with!

All the decorations ready, and some shopping at a new H&M Home store that opened nearby - it was actually a bit disappointing, it was very tiny and not a lot of variety.

Have a great weekend, see you next week!

DIY - Coffee Table

Recently we've been looking for a coffee table, but we were never sure which one would be the best choice for our living room... but we did like very much an idea that is becoming popular recently, of using a section of a tree as a small table. And because we really like the mixture of natural wood colors in our white interior, we thought this would be the perfect choice!

A big thank you to Łukasz who got us the wood pieces, and to my parents for all the help preparing them!

This is how the pieces looked in the beginning, with me, Ze, and my parents all working to remove the bark!

After the bark was removed, we left the pieces to dry for two weeks, and then it was time to polish the wood with sand paper, to remove the splinters and some of the stains.

More polish, with Leeloo's supervision, of course...

And some more polish (and lots of dust!)

And this is the result!

And now there are several choices: painting the pieces with some colors, maybe paint only the top, or only the sides, or leave the natural color and protect the wood with an oil, or even darken the wood with a colored oil... we don't know what to do! Any suggestions? :)