Snapshots From Home

June has commenced and I am wishing you all a happy new month! This month will be a very busy one and packed with travels. I will be off to Paris on Wednesday to attend the presentation of the new Habitat collection and discover a few new spots in the French capital. Next weekend I will be off to London with my Urban Jungle Bloggers partner-in-crime Judith to speak at Blogtacular about our green and thriving community. Then I am off to Amsterdam, Austria and back to Paris. In such busy times I love to save some rare but precious moments at home and unwind. Oh well, and enjoy some new little additions bien sûr!

I will not bore you with my future trips now, I will do that after the trip, ha! But for now I just want to  share some little snapshots of my home with you (yes, still the same small shoebox apartment). I have added a few new 'tchotchkes' to my home which I really like! Recently I've been e-thrifting and managed to score a few goodies like two vintage ceramic vases (mid-century German pottery) and a cute brass crane figurine - all found on eBay. I have also potted my new mini plants from Bordeaux (you remember from HERE) and the Sedum plant is now in my 'evil eye' planter, handmade by the potter Leandro Marcelino of 'Hey Camel Bazaar' in Vietnam.

For the scent of a comfy home I have opened the brand new KOTO scent diffuser which is perfect for summer as I tend to reduce my candle burning during the hot season. The diffuser is perfect as it scents the apartment gently and it looks pretty stylish. For candle lovers there is now a small KOTO candle too, all available through Skandinavisk.

Maybe you remember the motto I preach for small home dwelling: One in - one out. With all the recent additions it's time to restore the good balance which I will do by donating a huge pile of home goodies for free to a local flea market that will be organized on June 13th in Munich and all earnings will then be donated for earthquake relief in Nepal. That makes me double happy!

Photography by Igor Josifovic

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The Poster Club x Silke Bonde

Sometimes there is this feeling when you see something and you say: match made in heaven! Well here we go with one of those examples, maybe in this case it's a match made in poster heaven. Denmark based The Poster Club has launched two new posters created by the fantastic Copenhagen based artist Silke Bonde.

The two watercolour art prints called 'Cove' and 'Leaf me' are exclusively made for The Poster Club and come in a limited edition of 300 signed prints. So, if you want one of these two beauties you better hurry up and go to The Poster Club and secure yourself one signed art print.

Silke Bonde's work is wonderfully light and airy - her art seems as elusive as a fresh breeze and as invigorating as cold waters. And on top of it all, it just looks amazing. Having said this, my heart goes out to the art print 'Cove'. What about you?

Photos by Enok Holsegård, styling by Sofie Brünner

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Welcome To At{Mine}

If you are a regular reader of my blog or you follow me on one of my social media accounts, you will know that I am an eager user and fan of the new London based online interiors community at{mine}. In fact I've been a beta member from the very beginning and blogged about it back then (read it HERE). Not only do I love to share pictures of my home on at{mine}, I also love to peek into other creative homes and discover how people live in their homes. By now, many of my friends and leading interior bloggers have joined the beta community. And right now, at{mine} has launched its brand new site with many new features and a fantastic new look & feel - both on desktop and mobile.

The interiors community at{mine} is all about real homes. It showcases peeks into real people's homes as well as inspiring brands and their stylings. Users can also tag certain items in their homes and thus help others to find furniture and home decor pieces they like. But above all it inspires you to create and recreate your home and share it with likeminded people who respond and feedback.

The new sites features great functionalities like a search option to look for certain users or categories, the explore section gives you a fantastic overview of all available categories and lets you thus delve into inspiration hunting according to your needs. You can like and comment on pictures and add items that you like to your wish list.

The new at{mine} community is still in beta phase but will launch officially very soon. However, as my dear Happy Interior Blog readers you are very welcome to join me and many other inspiring people on at{mine} right now by using THIS INVITE.

See you at{mine}!

Photography via at{mine}, living room image with dog at{Carolina V}, 

sofa image at{Rebecca Guss}

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Urban Jungle Bloggers: My Plant Gang & Airbnb Apartment In Bordeaux

This month's Urban Jungle Bloggers topic comes a bit earlier than usually. Which included a major challenge for me - I was on vacation until last Sunday in France. Consequently I had no time to style up and shoot my plant gang at home. But you know, challenges trigger creativity, right? So instead of making night pictures at my home, I simply decided to share my plant gang at home away from home - in the fantastic airbnb apartment where I was staying in Bordeaux, France. So today's Urban Jungle Bloggers post is about my Bordeaux-bound plant gang and a little home tour. On y va!

The idea to set my plant gang into the airbnb apartment in Bordeaux was triggered the very first moment when I entered the apartment. I loved its light flooded rooms, the minimal styling, the magnificent old wooden flooring and there was one large plant in the living room - a big and healthy Pachira tree. But one plant is not a gang, right? On the other hand, an Urban Jungle Blogger is not a simple tourist, but one that visits plant shops too, right? Thus one morning I found myself exploring a plant shop in the neighborhood and doing my way of 'souvenir shopping' - I got myself some nice plants.

I was beyond happy to find two plants that I had on my wish list for quite a while (I mentioned them in our interview on The Sill) - I bought a cute pink Sedum rubrotinctum and an Aeonium cyclops (both of which I brought back to Munich). I also bought a tiny Lithops plant, a Nerium oleander and what I think to be a Gilt Edge plant. Voilà my plant gang at home away from home!

The airbnb apartment in Bordeaux was a perfect choice for my city trip. It is located in the city's old town overlooking a lively square, the Place du Palais with magnificent building. The apartment features an airy living room with an integrated kitchen, a bright bedroom, a small corner room and a second mezzanine bedroom plus a bathroom and restroom. I loved all the old details in the apartment: the already mentioned wooden flooring with its outstanding pattern, the high ceilings and plastering, the beautiful windows, the old brass window handles - in one word, this will be my place of choice again if I return to Bordeaux one day. Soon I will share more about this beautiful city in the southwest of France. In the meantime I am off to see all your plant gangs!

Urban Jungle Bloggers is a monthly series initiated by 2 bloggers: Igor (Happy Interior Blog) and Judith (JOELIX.com). Every month we share ideas to create an urban jungle through styling ideas, DIYs and green tips & tricks. You can find additional inspiration on our Urban Jungle Bloggers Pinterest board and keep up-to-date on our website and Facebook page. Want to join? Use #urbanjunglebloggers on Twitter and Instagram. Or let us know and we'll share the badge and upcoming topics with you. Let's bring some green into your homes and blogs!

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Living Small & Happy

I feel a bit repetitive when I try to blog about living small. To be honest with you, I feel a bit idle in my circle of topics and images. Why idle you might wonder. Well, sometimes I feel I am not as inventive and ever-changing as many other interior bloggers. Others seem to reinvent their homes on a weekly basis like shuffling the furniture, changing the colour scheme, exchanging all decor items, adding new pieces to the home and so on. I on the other hand feel like I only change bits and pieces over a longer period of time. Is it interior decoration idleness? I used to blame my little apartment with limited space for it. But who knows who's to blame. And is there anyone to blame and for what?

A few days ago I mentioned this feeling of idleness in a comment on the blog or Instagram - I don't remember exactly. I said something like I feel a bit 'boring' as I am sharing the same images from my home whereas others have so much more variety to show and change constantly their homes. A reader replied to my comment saying something like: Maybe this is exactly what your readers like about you. A certain continuity and steadiness. Good point. It made me rethink and reevaluate my concerns. I wonder, do you have such concerns about your home from time to time?

I've been living for seven years in this tiny rooftop apartment in Munich. Questions popped up like: Shouldn't I be moving to a bigger place finally? Shouldn't I exchange everything? I mean I have some furniture pieces from day one being in the very same spot. That ping-pong of doubts and questions resulted in a 'cut-the-crap' attack and an affirmation of my happiness about where I am, what I do, how I dwell. Simple. It seemed like the only good way to go on: Embrace your life in the moment and live happily ever after. No matter how big or small your home is.

Of course I am not preaching an interior standstill here. My home does change and evolve - over time. I add and take away. Key is that I have grown way more conscious about the choices I make. I have stopped buying things on impulse because they caught my eye in an instant (yes, I was guilty of that). I let it sit a day or two and take a more conscious decision thereafter. Do I want that new chair? That new vase? If the answer is 'yes', then I'm good to go. If it is something like 'well, yeah, maybe, if...' - just forget it. It's not meant to be.

Here I am again feeling repetitive by saying that living in a happy home is about surrounding yourself with people you love (ok I live alone for now but you know what I mean) and things that have a meaning for you, that tell a story. Go around in your home and try to remember those stories behind your choices. A certain piece has no story? Well, you know what I'd say now. But then I would sound repetitive once again. Live happily, my friends!

Photography by Igor Josifovic

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New Shelf Unit At Home

Sometimes I feel that I am pretty continuous for an interior design blogger. I mean I have furniture in my home that's been around for seven years now. On the very same spot. Imagine that! Whenever I read of those creative interior bloggers who shuffle their furniture weekly and exchange their furnishing on a regular basis, I feel like an idle conservative. So I made a decision to change my shelf unit for once. And here it is. 

Previously I had a somewhat quirky shelf unit that was irregular in its shape and with closed sides. Now I have opted for a lighter, airier version in order to keep it light and bright in my small space. This shelf unit has open sides which is perfect to display cascading plants like my ivy as they are free to grow and get enough sunlight even if the shelf unit is not placed close to a window. Moreover I liked the Nordic vibe of the shelf unit using oak wood and a white finishing.

I found my shelf unit named 'Farringdon' at Habitat during one of my visits in their Paris store. I liked it instantly and a few weeks later it arrived in my Munich home. I also like the fact that it offers a lot of space for ever changing stylings and decor vignettes. After all it seems I am not that idle. Nor am I a conservative. Here's to fun shelf stylings!

Farringdon shelf unit by Habitat, Vida floor lamp by Urbanara

Photography by Igor Josifovic

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