Magical world

We kept looking at these mushroom photos since yesterday. We moved around a small area from the forest and still we have spotted so many mushrooms, looking so beautiful with the light filtered through the trees. These photos are mostly digital, made by my friends and me and some of them are analog, taken with a Zenit E. I have other photos too, showing larger angles, but these details are so fascinating for me, since I don’t go to the forest often (this is probably very obvious from my enthusiasm :)).

Forest

We went to the forest today to look for mushrooms, both to eat and to photograph. It felt so good to do a small trip (we took a buss outside the city) in the middle of the week. I had only one class to teach in the morning and I felt somehow very free going directly from school to the forest. The forest was empty and peaceful and full of beautiful details. I took lots of film photos, but here are a few digital ones, till my films are processed. We have found lots of really interesting eatable mushrooms, too, and we had already ate some of them. It’s the most delicious thing to eat something you have picked yourself from such a beautiful place.

Dala horses

I really like these horses and how cheerful they look on our kitchen shelves. I found first the big blue one, for less than 1 euro in a second hand shop. It’s a vintage one and I don’t mind at all that it has some small damages to its paint. The smaller orange one is also vintage and also a very cheap flea market find. I have bought the unpainted one in a vintage boutique. It was awfully painted in white with some sequins and glitter on it, probably some kid’s project. I managed to sand down most of the white paint, but I still have to do some detailed sanding in some parts. I plan to leave it unpainted.  

Linking up to Vintage Charm, Vintage Bliss party and Thriftasaurus

Fall decor

In out kitchen. Everything is thrifted, of course.

Linking up to Vintage Charm party.

Slide

It’s Bucharest, I think, sometimes in the sixties, maybe? So empty and strange and nostalgic. I have found this slide at the flee market, in a box of junk.

Pioneer

These photos were taken in one of the happiest days of my childhood. I was such an anxious child, always worrying, always frightened of unknown dangers. But I was lucky to grow up in socialist times, when children were taught that everything is rational and simple, that truth and justice will always win, that every darkness can be illuminated by the greatness of the human mind, that only light and clarity awaits for us in the future. No matter how wrong this hope proved to be, no matter how many beings and ways of living this ideology left out, no matter how hypocritical this rhetoric really was, I still think of those times of delusion as a perfect environment for me to grow up in. Believing in equality and fairness, believing in a responsible collectivity, in which people guide and help each other, in which mistakes are criticized constructively and progress is made together. A big part of being a child in socialist times was being a member of a collectivity presented as being as such, of being a pioneer, part of the organization of children between 8 and 14. The kids would prepare by learning poems and songs (really ridiculous ones thinking of them now, but they seemed so great and reassuring back then) for the ceremony in which you would enter the organization and you would receive the red scarf, the symbol of pioneers. It happened that the ceremony in which I was made a pioneer was scheduled on my birthday. It was the best birthday ever. Going home from school to my birthday party, wearing my brand new pioneer attire, a small kid on the street told her mother: “Look mom a pioneer!” and my 8 year old self promised to never forget that moment. And I never did.

Signet ring

My mother gave me this ring. In 1970, when she was still a high school student, she worked for one summer vacation in a fruit preserves factory. It was something usual in socialist times for teenagers to work for a little while in production, so they earn some pocket-money and find out about the realities of workers’ life. My mother remembers that after that summer in the preserves factory she bought several things. She remembers buying a red dress with white dots, an umbrella, some books and she still had enough money to buy gold and to custom make a signet ring. The gold was state regulated and the amount you could buy per person was limited so she and my grandfather had to queue together to buy four wedding bands (two for each of them). She had made this very typical seventies ring out of the wedding bands, with her initials. I wear this ring now sometimes even if it is not beautiful, but it’s story and the fact that it looks so dated is funny to me.

Linking up with Vintage Charm party and Thriftasaurus.

The tiniest birthday gift

Among other very pretty things, this is the sweetest birthday gift my friends gave me: a tiny silver bird brooch, quite old, I think.

A short moment of light

The sun came out from behind the clouds for a short moment. These were taken with my phone, it was the only camera I had at hand at the moment. Such a good light to take photos of my plants, too.

1977 jewelry

These have been with me all my life: tiny gold and turquoise forget me not earrings and a gold chain with a key pendant on which it is written “della felicita”.

Linking up with Vintage Charm party.