As you might have guessed from my absence, things have been incredibly full around here for the past week. One of my sister's just had a beautiful baby boy!! We were so excited and celebrated even though we are so far away. We have had my dear little sister and step mother visiting and I have also had an amazing week with the shop - thank you lovely people! But now we have just found out that Yashar has tonsillitis so I will be back here as soon as he recovers.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

V
xo

Since it has been soooo hot and humid here..oh and did I mention we don't have air-conditioning... I wanted to make a small place for Yashar to play in and where I could read books with him in the coolest part of the apartment. This happens to be in an area near our front door where there are no windows letting the sun coming.

I wanted to make it an inviting little corner, but just using things we already had at home. And so this little space was born. I took a spare little mattress that we had (from the horrible and totally unsafe cot we had when we first arrived (needless to say, this cot is no longer in use!). I covered it in one of the simple white sheets that are so common here - they have such a nice pattern/texture to them. I ended up folding it in half and sewing up two of the sides (thus just leaving an opening on the side facing the wall) to help the cover stay in place while Yashar plays.
I also made two new cushions to laze around on. One from the material from a long top I was taking up and another from dress I was taking up. The dress was meant to be an ankle length maxi dress I think, but on me it came to this weird length. I loved the material so much that it became a cushion straight away!

Then all that was needed was a few more cushions we had around the place (remember the Summery Cushion?), some toys, a boy who loves books and a wonderful little sister of mine to read to him.

P.S. My Summer Sale for the Light Garden shop ends tomorrow.

Sunflower fields lined the road for most of the trip.

First up, Turkish road-side dining... I love some of the little road-side 'restaurants' that you find here once you get out of the city. Some of my favourite things to eat at these types of places are Lahmacun (Lahmacun is deserving of its own post I think!) and various lamb dishes.

Of course you have to be a little cautious with the place you choose - I look out for somewhere that at least has some other diners in it, where the food looks fresh and the owner looks proud! But you can't be toooo picky - these are definitely not fine dining establishments!

This one we stopped at had lamb roasting on a spit at the front and seats under a big grape vine. The meat is sold, not by the plate, or by choosing a particular item off the menu, but instead by the kilo! Actually there was no menu... the proud owner just told us the two dishes available, we chose the lamb of course, and agreed to his suggestion of a simple fresh salad and some of the best looking yoghurt I have ever seen.
The meat just fell of the bone...delicious! Hmmm...can you tell I love food?

What started as an idea for a rough little dog house did sway a little towards the Taj Mahal...who says dogs can't enjoy a nod at magnificent architecture, especially plastic dogs!

Yashar is in love with these little figurines we got recently - a dog, a tiger and a cheetah. He feeds them his milk and his cereal, lays them down on his pillow when it's time for a sleep and brushes their teeth. So when he heard the idea for giving the dog a little house he was so excited!!

For this one I did the cutting and sticking together. I had grand plans of coming up with a design with special tabs to hold it all together, cornices and detailed windows...but then Yashar woke up early from his nap, so some hasty chopping of cardboard and some masking tape to hold it together quickly became the method of choice!

Then Yashar did the painting of the mini palace...why I got this out to do after his bath I have no idea!

Scenes like this (from our trip to Australia last December/January) and our little trip to Bozcaada, an Island off the coast of Turkey, dotted in wineries and covered in old stone buildings and vineyards (the water was so clear and there were always plenty of ships on the horizon - so pretty) ...

made me want to create this:
I have put prints of this in the shop, as well as a print set of 'Make a Wish' and 'I heart Hedgehogs' so that savings on both the price and shipping can be made...those peaceful girls seem to want to keep each other company.

More on Bozcaada soon! Hope you are all having a lovely Summer (or Winter!) too.

With a 6 hour journey each way for our little holiday Yashar was definitely going to need some entertainment along the way!

My strategy: Lots of yummy snacks, his favourite finger puppets, his favourite friends - tiger, dog and cheetah figurines (he loves to feed them, give them drinks, bath them, wash their teeth so this is bound to be a good distraction!), a new toy that won't be pulled out until we are on the way, a pack of colouring pencils, some favourite books, great music, plenty of stops along the way and timing the trip to coincide with his nap. Fingers crossed!

I also quickly and very roughly drew up this little sheet of frames for drawing in, getting some inspiration from all the gorgeous vintage frames on Etsy.

I know at Yashar's age it is really just scribbles he is doing, but I thought this would be fun to talk about with him. I am getting tempted to do some myself! I'm thinking a series of silhouette portraits, and another sheet with a landscape in the middle and then drawing elements from that landscape in each of the smaller frames, or maybe favourite cartoon characters portraits, or landmarks along the way....so many ideas!

I like that this is not just a plain colour it in sheet, but instead will hopefully provide a basis for lots of creativity and little masterpieces!

**I had wanted to upload a copy that you could easily print but the site I usually use for making downloadable pdfs has just been banned here in Turkey :( Ahhh, the scandalous life of a crafting blogger in Turkey ;) And hence the delay for this Making Mondays. So I'm hoping I will be able to come up with a work around soon. I will update this post when I do. In the meantime you could try right clicking and printing the image...but I'm not sure if this will work :( You could, of course, draw your own gorgeous one!**

Hopefully this will make some of your car/plane/train trips just a little more peaceful!

We are off to spend a few days at Bozcaada, a small Island in the North Aegean, close to the entry to the Dardanelles. The Island is dotted with wineries, full of history and we plan to stay on a farm so that Yashar can enjoy playing on the grass and with the chickens and goats...sounds like the ingredients for a fun (and hopefully relaxing) holiday!

We have still been busy making things this week so Making Mondays will soldier on (or perhaps craft on) in my absence. Have a great weekend!

Oh...and I have been meaning to say...I have been getting some lovely emails and comments lately. Thank you so much for your encouragement and kind words! Whenever I have a moment I try to track you down and visit your blog or reply to your comment. But sometimes I can't find any contact details :( If this is you then I want you to know that I appreciate your comments so much - I love hearing your opinions, thoughts and about the way you do things. Your comments really do make me so happy and keep me motivated! Thanks peeps!

In the past few weeks there has been a certain comforting smell in the air. As I sit out on the balcony in the evening I can recognise it from winter time. It's the smell of the Ihlamur Tree - The Linden tree. I recognise it because its leaves are used to make the tea which is one of the best cold remedies I have ever tried!

I did a little research on the net and found that the flowers have flavonoids in them - which act as antioxidants, volatile oils, and other elements that soothe and reduce inflammation. So it's not just an old wives tale!

My mother in law had someone bring her some of the leaves from her village near the Black Sea for her to dry in preparation for next Winter. To make the tea you just put a few handfuls of leaves and blossom in a teapot, cover them in water and slowly boil for about 20 minutes (make sure you don't make it too strong). This is a very common remedy here, the leaves and blossom are widely available at all the local markets and whenever a neighbour would catch us sniffling away their first suggestion would always be to have a soothing glass (the small Turkish tea glasses) of Ihlamur.

Apparently the tree is also called a Lime or Lime Blossom tree and in German folklore it is known as the 'tree of lovers'. Its intoxicating heady smell fits well with this I think.

On that note, I also wanted to mention a wonderful little article that Chandra from 'Mommys Who Blog' wrote about the Light Garden. It was so nicely written and made me all warm inside so I just had to mention it! Mommys Who Blog has an excellent collection of reviews -the subject of which is self evident! And Chandra's posts are insightful and interesting. Definitely worth checking out.

Oh! And one of my prints made it to the front page of Etsy as part of the treasury below -very exciting!

Raspberries appeared at the local market this week - yay! I stocked up because last year they disappeared again so quickly. So we have been having them fresh, I froze some for smoothies, of course, and I made my first attempt at Raspberry Jam!

It was so easy, took less than 10 minutes and turned out so well, if I do say so myself...and I do! Hehehe, Senol is sick of me saying 'look how it set so well', 'it is sooooo yummy', 'did I tell you how delicious it was?!" hehehe!

In the book, Sacre Cordon Bleu: What the French know about Cooking, Michael Booth, does a course in chocolate making at the Ecole Ritz Escoffier. Doesn't that sound so good??? Anyway, he lets us in on his teacher Chef Forais' 'secret' to making delicious jam - instead of using the same amount of sugar as fruit (which is the standard recipe for most jams) he uses only half the amount of sugar (ie half a cup of sugar for every cup of fruit). He says that this reduces the 'sugar burn' in your throat you get from jam and increases the pure fruit flavour. Of course, that would have been useful to remember before making the jam...next time.

I looked at a few recipes on the net before coming up with this:

1. Put 4 cups of mashed raspberries in a pot and bring them to rolling boil, boiling them for 2 minutes.

2. Add 3 cups of sugar (most of the recipes say 4 cups, but even the 3 cups I used is a little on the sweet side, if I made it again I would make as per Chef Forais' instructions above) and stir in well.

3. Boil for 3 to 4 minutes, stirring constantly, and pour into jars.

Most of the recipes say to then put it in the blender for 5 minutes or so, but this is definitely not necessary! And I didn't bother doing the whole sterilising the jars thing...I know this will be finished far too quickly to worry about that.

Did I mention this was really deliciously yummy???

I am so, so happy to be a part of this! One of my blogging friends, Kara Melissa Sharp, is currently holding an art raffle to raise money for her wonderful and gorgeous little son Sebastian. Sebastian has Cerebral Palsy and the money raised is for therapy for him.

You can see the gorgeous photography from all over the world (and one of my prints!) that you can win at Sebastian Can Do, where you can also buy tickets. You can also read there about how "we came to find out, and our journey from ignorance to awareness and understanding". I have definitely learnt a lot from reading it. Photograph taken by Jessica Bibbee in the Reed Flute Caves of Guilin, Guangxi province, southern China.

I hope that, as much as we can, we are able to help and support Sebastian.

Kara also has a wonderful and inspiring blog called Free as Trees, about her life and adventures in Egypt, where she currently resides. Her words are thoughtful and real and you can see some of the beautiful photos she has taken. The light just seems to have a special quality in Egypt that I love.

I especially like this one she took in Alexandria (which you can also win!).

A sneak peek at some new work...I will be putting these prints in The Light Garden shop just as soon as I put on the finishing touches, print them and take some photos ...hopefully by this evening...

The weather here is pretty much 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) every day here at the moment and it is getting to that humid, sticky time of year where your forehead glistens with sweat even while you are just sitting there. Many of the locals escape to Summer houses down the coast or on the nearby Islands. But here we are in Istanbul, no air conditioning... So when I first thought of the idea for this I was lying in bed, dreaming of a cool forest, mist in the air, dipping my feet in to a cool stream. If I could just transport Yashar and I there now!

This little girl (and puppy!) are surrounded by love.

This is a little boy who has climbed to the top of the tallest tree to keep the little girl I did a while back company. I still love, love, love the song it was inspired by, so here is the verse again:
I have climbed to the top of the tallest tree
And no one knows I'm here
And I could hide for hours and hours
And I can see for miles
And I have never fallen
And I will not come down
And the sun is shining

I think the lyrics are so beautiful! Does any one know who's song this is? I had it on a mix CD that I have long since lost the cover for. I would love to know! ***edit: the track is Broken from Car Stereo Wars. Thanks Ida!***

I hope you like the new work!!