First year as an expat and art is still a huge part of my life

                                         
Hello friends,

My blog has had a facelift and I will now be adding lots of random posts about my artwork in general, my life as an expat in Bonn and my new found life as a wife & homemaker.
This will be my first official blog post under a new name, therefore I will keep it short for now.

Since moving to Germany in April 2014, I spent the first 3 months in Cologne living in a temporary apartment, until we found a more permanent home in the lovely town of Bonn. Whilst my husband was settling into his new job, I went exploring in the city centre to familiarise myself with my surroundings. My husband is German and works for the University of Cologne, but I actually met him in Greece when I was living there for a year in 2011-2012.
We've been together for 3,5 years and been married for 10 months of those years. Lets just say that my life changed for the better from the moment I met him but that's a whole other story, so I won't get into too much detail.

Back to living in Cologne....The first few months living in Germany I was allowed to be a bit of a tourist, with most days out exploring and adjusting to the slight differences of the German culture. The fact that it was Spring meant that the weather was ideal for weekend trips to other parts of the city and especially for keeping my mood quite happy. Sunshine always does the trick! :-) I didn't speak any German apart from some basics but the fact that most people spoke English made life a lot easier. I had fun exploring the products in the supermarkets and doing my first shopping. I learnt which products were good and which weren't, (with some help from my husband) and I found a little routine for those first 3 months. 
In the 2nd week we were there, all our things arrived from Bournemouth, which included a mattress, a rocking chair, a big tv, 3 small tables and over 40 boxes. Once the things arrived, our tiny studio flat was like a hoarders paradise! Lets just say that it wasn't very comfortable! Luckily we kept the things that we were really looking forward to using again, and the rest we put in a garage provided by my husband's boss! Thank goodness for that!

Once things were more settled in our little studio flat, I went exploring again and found this lovely art & craft shop. I spent ages in there looking at all the various sections and decided to buy some small samples so I could start experimenting with decoupage. During the mornings my husband was at work,  decoupaging slowly became a new (healthy) addiction for me and now 1,5 years later I am still creating.  In between exploring the German city and looking after the home and cooking, art was once again a big part of my life.

 The above hangers are my favourite transformations! Hangers were always so boring, so I wanted to beautify them a little. This is the result which can be found on my etsy page at mypapercave.

Let me know what you think and thanks for reading! x