BEA the boyfriendly tote

My latest listing (and the last for some time - at least until I set up my work space again in the new home) is this large city tote made from black denim and cheerful striped canvas.

It is a Valentine's day handbag with a bit of humour, inspired by this week's European Street Team's challenge. The theme is "Bring your inner child out to play" and HERE are all the entries, in a blog post by enchantedhue, who won last week's challenge.

The boyfriendly tote has a reinforced, zippered "boyfriendly" pocket in the back to store your date's wallet - so he never has to fish it out of the depths of your handbag, trying to avoid the lipstick and the tampax during his search...

The tote has two comfortable shoulder straps, a cotton lining with flowery pattern, an interior pocket and it closes with a magnetic clasp.

Ghost of a bicycle

Inspite of the frosty weather there are still some keen cyclists braving the cold every day (my husband included).

This picture was taken a few days ago in front of our house. The bicycle of our neighbour (the house has nine appartments) had left a print in the morning frost - it has been since erased by some fresh snow but the true cyclists don't realy notice it. The only problem, according to my husband, is unfreezing the lock every morning with a cigarette lighter...

And here is a charming treasury from brownbagvintage that warmed up my day - thank you, Michelle, for the feature!

Go west...

On the Etsy European Street Team forum thread there is always a big buzz of excitement when they count down the minutes to new spots opening on Etsy Treasury lists. The lists have a limited life time of 2-3 days and every day either a main list or so called test list of Treasuries West makes room for new curators.

This afternoon it was the "westies" opening and thanks to the lovely ESTsians Loddelina got featured in four of them. Thank you so much, FebystanDesigns, Kreativlink, HeliS and enchantedhue, for these amazing collections!

Treasury lists are like pretty shop window displays where everything fits together with perfectly matching colours and textures. I like to print/screen the most memorable sellections and keep them in an "inspirations" file - sometimes it even helps me track down a shop I have forgotten to mark as a favourite...

And this main Treasury feature came as a lovely surprise from mythunderstood, a funky jewelry and accessories shop. Thank you, Lisa!

It is almost 23h and I just checked the Treasury countdown clock on craftopolis - it looks like the main Treasury list is minutes away from opening - here comes the buzz...

Tulips

Picture: leapinggazelle

Yesterday, while grocery shopping before yet another bank holiday (you have to love Bavaria, from all the German regions they probably have the most public holidays), I bought myself my first bouquet of flowers in the new year.

As soon as I walked in the shop, I noticed that Christmas chocolates and glittering holiday decorations have disappeared from the most prominent shelves at the entrance - instead there were big buckets on the floor, filled with delicious bouquets of tulips in all colours of the rainbow! I love tulips and I don't remember seeing them in shops this early in winter. They were like a ray of sunshine on a cold and icy Tuesday so I came home with a bunch of 10 mauve tulips (costing less than 3 euros).