Do you remember that we went there a few months ago?

Happy to have an interview in this super magazine, click on over to read if you please! Find out what my chosen super power would be.

Via Where is the cool?

Louise by Helmut Newton.

Face Plate by Beth Max.

Feather print The Wild Unknown

The Parma- National Maritime Museum.

Classic boy.

In love with pink again.
Above Hannah Kanola.

Kid Feet.

Anatolian Vintage Rug via Loom Rugs.

Antique doll house from V&A.

By Eve Arnold via Magnum .

Via Shiny Squirrel

Off the point, thinking about this haircut for me.

I love hanging out with ishi…after the school disco…

…on the train…

…at home…anywhere at all!

Our window boxes are looking supremely springy, Muscari are my favourite springtime flowers.

Soft colour for a Haar filled morning from Totem Colour Blocks.

Leah Goren.

Villar Real Ceramics.

Not so soft & a cool name, Small Spells.

Hello Haar! Image Wikimedia Commons.

Happy vernal equinox to you all. Image via 2headedsnake.

Time for my annual pre-birthday round up of stuff I would like from Etsy! Big comedy villain laugh, the wonderful painting above by Cathy Cullis is already mine, couldn’t resist a little brag.

Little printed coin purse from Caitlin Hinshelwood, yes please.

Articulated Zebra from Faye Moorhouse.

Yummy gloves for next winter from Sarah McNeil.

Antique toy army tent from Every Eskimo.

Ahhh, creepy but fabulous canvas print, Antigonus the fox by Beaumont Studio. The dark hues are great, so sick of the hegemony of white in our place, I have dyed the sofa charcoal, not only because of the chocolate button stains!

The boy on the left is Ishi’s Great Great Uncle Moris, he is the reason for our recent trip to Istanbul. Moris has just turned 90 years old. The boy on the right is Great Great Uncle Marcel & the little one in the middle is Ishi’s paternal Great Grandpa, Dario. I love the matching pajamas & the boys’ thoughtful faces here. We are in Istanbul, it is 1928.

A little earlier I would say, the boys are in the garden of the family summer house in Büyükada, one of the Princes’ Islands in the Sea of Marmara. The boys would have needed their scooters to get around, motorized vehicles are forbidden on the island!

The brothers as page boys in 1933. Great Great Uncle Moris on the left and Ishi’s Great Grandpa on the right. We are lucky that many images of the Gabbay family have survived the intervening years . Many of us collect vintage/antique photographs, there are Flickr streams, like Crafty Dogma, & blogs devoted to them, the images I am sharing with you today would enchant me even without the family connection. How wonderful that Ishi can glimpse a little of his Great Grandpa’s (whom he never met) childhood with his brothers in Istanbul in the 1920s & 30s.

On the train during the first leg of our journey, Ishi looks so expectant. It may be my imagination but I catch something of his Great Grandfather, Dario in Ishi’s face, perhaps it is the hair!

Even more wonderful that Ishi had the opportunity to meet one of the boys from the images above. This is Moris on his 90th birthday with Ishi, I can see the boy there still.

When we returned from Istanbul I was expecting to feel that defamiliarization with my surroundings I usually experience after a trip. This time our flat seemed all too familiar, in need of a freshen up and a rejig. Time to go and score some paint charts!