Get rid of the pain: get a piercing!

I think today I discovered one great remedy for any kind of bad day: get a piercing! All the pain leaves your mind as the piece of metal enters your skin - and will stay much longer than the pain itself that you had before. I can say it really turned my bad day into a good one.

The wooden chest I show you here was a present from the girl who got this earring from me. She made it for tea filters but as I never drink tea we decided to use it for my supplies. Nowadays it is hard to even close it as full as it is, no wonder that last time I broke the glass when I wanted to pack my things up after the fair. It has small sections inside and smells of wood. Lovely, isn't it?

Unfortunately Kata, the maker does not have a blog or website which I could link here which is a pity as she has already made plenty of useful stuff worth showing.

3 Blogs to Read in July

1. (Still in love with tribal) Jewelry: Jewellery India

Again I will start the monthly collection with a jewelry-theme blog. After the African jewelry I recommended for June this time you can dive into the rich Indian treasury which many of us admire from a distance but know very little about it, so here is the chance to learn and discover. Unfortunately this is also a less frequently updated blog but still worth visiting once in a while.

2. For all the wonderful creatures: Animal Science Blog

You may have noticed so far that I am a big fan of nature, especially of animals. I was looking for a website which is for people like me. I mean, there are loads of blogs and sites where you can smile over cute photos of puppies and such and this is also a lovely thing but it does not satisfy my need for knowing and understanding more of the animal world. At the same time, I am no biologist. So I needed a site that explains precisely and deeply in a way that even ordinary fans understand.
This blog is just what I was looking for. I have been following for a while and it always contains articles that are interesting – hopefully for my dear readers too.

3. The odd one out: A Blog that Doesn’t Exist – Yet!

It is summer holiday season so I was about to recommend you something on the topic. I have been trying to search for a blog that is for people who love to travel and see the world. So far, easy. But by traveling I mean something more than going to the closest Croatian beach and be on your back for seven days or to pay for a luxury vacation in a Spanish wellness hotel. I wanted to read about authentic spots, wildlife tours, hiking, discovering places and things like the mountains of Romania, the people of Laos or the history of Uruguay. No such blog exists as I had to learn. I found a couple which are sponsored by travel agencies (veeery independent, yes), some that are updated once a year, or others that offer content that could as well be written by school kids, all of them very nicely designed but that was the last aspect that mattered to me.
Bottom line: La Kukac is now considering opening a new blog for this niche topic. Well, until just recently I did not think it was niche at all.

Work learn play

There is a relatively old (1990) American movie called Awakenings, with the stunning performance of Robert De Niro and Robin Williams. Even though the main characters are played by these popular actors the film itself is not very well-known, though it should and deserves to be.

I won't tell you about the story as you should definitely see it yourself but the bottomline is that we can give value to each and every day of our life by "working, learning and playing". I think that this simple sentence tells us so much about the beauty and the meaning of life that most of the longer kind could not.

If we keep this in mind (and all of them, only one of the three does not work without the two others) we will not stray too far from what we really need to do here on Earth.

SOLD

Apples

Every fair is a lesson at the same time, a lesson from your customers - and also from those who did not become your customers.

One of such lessons from the last fair was that I need to make smaller, shorter earrings too, but I need to make them in the way that at the same time I do not lose sight of my own style.

This pair of earrings is one of those I made based on this pattern. Not too short though - you will later on see that I made some shorter ones too. It has the mark of my stlye on itself I think: the wooden material, the green color, the touch of nature in the form of an apple.

I hope you will like it!

Lazy Kukac... or not?

I know I haven't posted anything since last Thursday and it's a shame and all of that I know. But it's not because I am lazy.

I just have been focusing on different things during these days: our friend's hen party (it was grrrreat!), my friend's after-hen party, and a lot of sports. Last Friday was the first time I have ever tried yoga - hm, I guess I will stay with Pilates and Callanetics... I feel like I could work out every day and I do it as much as I can now, I am fed up with sitting all day in my office chair and becoming a muffin!

So I promise I will soon update the blog again with some jewelry, all I need to do is uploading the photos and have a rainy weekend just as it looks like it will be again.

But if you feel like reading a blog featuring some hand-made stuff, check out Viki's blog here. She is more diligent than me these days :)

3 Movies for a Rainy Sunday

1. Ordinary boring quiet rain - What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993)

Small town America, family, loss and love - what more do you need when it is raining outside. Moreover, this film presents Johnny Depp, Juliette Lewis and Leonardo DiCaprio at their best, especially Leo shows us what he really means by acting here. I am not a big fan of American movies so you can imagine how much I like this piece if I recommend it.

2. Warm shower - Les Amours Imaginaires (2010)

A French-talking Canadian movie by an incredibly young talent, Xavier Dolan, who is also playing one of the leading roles in the film. He uses all the power that music can lend to a movie which results in an extremely powerful effect. You pay attention to every moment, every move and every grin on the face of the actors, and if you haven't heard about the Swedish band called The Knife so far, now you will surely make a search for them on Youtube. Must be one of the best films of 2010.

3. Raining all day long - Sibiriada (1979)

If you really get stuck in the house for the whole day then this is the time to play a long movie. With a runtime of 275 minutes this piece will keep you entertained all afternoon. Be careful, time passes by very slowly in the Russian far north but quickly indeed when you watch this film full of wonderful sceneries.

Shamal

It is funny how certain things can bring people closer, not only in the sense as men and women but in the sense as people in general.

I was born into a car-loving family so it was almost sure that I will either hate or love cars when I grow up, no other way. The first happened.

When I step on the balcony of my flat I love looking down and watch people passing by or parking with their cars. I can spend a lot of time with that.

Ever since my childhood I have had funny stories with car-enthusiasm. Cars (especially a certain brand) brought my boyfriend and my best friend into my life. That brand has always been my number one but I never thought it would determine so much in my life, and here we are. Just funny.

My Weekend in Pictures

Yes, our Marvin learnt how to pick cherries from the tree and Indy learnt how to look for the best opportunity to collect the cherries falling off thanks to Marvin. (Do you remember my story here from two years ago about Marvin and the cherries?)

The bird cage was my idea. I was looking at it all the time during the fair because I had this idea in my mind: to hang it from the edge of the roof outside the house with a cactus and some stones inside. So I sent Peter to go and bargain for it and then all that was left was for me to bargain for the cactus.

The cherry pie was made today - I am sure it is not only us having a tree in the garden full of cherries these days.

And the car... The new best company on my trips (see my old one to which I was really sad to say goodbye here).

I hope you all had such a great weekend too!

Caretta

Today we browsed photos of Zakynthos, the island where I used to work and live for a while and I showed one taken of the Caretta caretta, the giant turtles which lay their nests at a southern beach of Zakynthos. If you are lucky enough you can see them swim next to your boat in the sea.

This key charm I made yesterday at the fair is my version and tribute to these wonderful animals.

Auction at Liliomkert

Today we went to the same fair in Káptalantóti. It was the best way to forget all the dirt of the week and clear up our mind.

The fair started a bit slowly for everybody, we made our first sale later than usual but then things started to speed up and in the end we closed a good day. Not with the usual turnover but still a good day financially, and what is more important, from a human point of view.

In the meantime I was making jewelry at the table and somehow the new pieces were the most popular ones. I sold three pieces of which I did not even have the chance to take a photo in order to showcase them here on the blog.

So instead today I show you a sculpture for which you could bid on among a lot of other things (the photo was taken at the beautiful fair site). I hope they succeeded to sell everything as the income was needed for developments to be made at the market. I wish I has known about this auction before so I could have advertised it here.

More space, less stuff

I am sure I have talked so much here about being against collecting property without any sense that it might even be boring by now. I even dedicated a post called Piles to this.

Those days we organized an evening with my friends when everyone brought their clothes they don't need anymore. We had fun and everybody was happy to get rid of their unneeded stuff and get some new for free.

Now I am making the next step and put some more on sale on eBay (you can take a look at them here). I like these clothes and they are in very good condition but I feel like they are strangling me.

I guess I need more space and less stuff.

SOLD

5 Things You Can Do When Your Job Is Eating Up Your Life (And It's Not Too Late Yet)

This list might seem to be a good joke which lacks any seriousness but don't get misled by the funny way I put it. This is bloody serious: you have only one life and nobody else will have fun in it or discover your limits instead of you.

So what are your options?

1. Be a Waiter/waitress or Tourist Guide in Greece

I was lucky enough to try both and it was one of the best periods in my life. I left a serious job with a promising outlook for months of complete freedom and full of discovery. It cleared up my mind and I came back knowing exactly what I wanted to do - and it was not what I had left behind - so I put my life on a completely different new track.
This was years ago and by now Greece is not the best destination so you can replace it with Mallorca or Phuket upon your wish.

2. Sell paintings in Portugal

If you work in sales or marketing, this is your chance to get back to the roots and see things from a different perspective. You will literally work for every cent. But your office will not be neon-lit anymore: you will change it for the beach or the avenue where lovers stroll in the evening. If you are lucky, singles will also stroll your way.

3. Become a zookeeper

Not the cleanest job, we must admit. But just imagine all the kids looking at you with envy and respect when you feed the penguins! Be careful, being a zookeeper for more peaceful and harmless animals is much funnier than feeding the polar bear so you might get a good use of your networking and negotiation skills you had developed in the multinational environment before.

4. Volunteer!

If you are as lucky as to be able to afford this. Use the internet, discover the opportunities and get on the road! There are so many fields that need volunteering work: disabled kids' camps, saving endangered animals, day-care of AIDS-infected, and so on, but there are also programs that offer consulting and free know-how to developing countries' rural people in the field of agriculture or small business management.
The choices you can make are countless but the result will be only one: the most useful time of your life ever.

5. Self-employment

This needs dedication just like any of the mentioned options but here we must also consider dedication in financial sense.
Make a good plan, prepare, save money, research your market - in a nutshell, use all the skills you use in the office every day. You can open a private nursery or make goat cheese - there is no limit to what a person's creative and entrepreneurial side can achieve when it is used to all its effectiveness. Probably this is the one of all the above listed ways of escaping that needs the most preparation. You will be taking risks and might not have a single day off for the next couple of months or years to come. Think about all this, discuss it with people you trust and when you get really excited - jump!

And for the rest of us, whose lives are not eaten up by our job: be nice to waitresses, tourist guides and zookeepers! They might be your boss next year!

Theoretic questions about going on a holiday with your dog(s)

We are back from holiday but I promised myself that I will share one impression with you on the blog.

The subject is: where can you go with a dog?

The answer could be simple: anywhere! This is what I see in Austria for example - it is totally normal to go shopping to the mall with your dog by your side. In Hungary you just cannot do this. Malls are forbidden area for dogs, but to make you happy some of them organize one day per year when they open their doors to your best friend too. Wow, I should be impressed I guess...

But I know, I might be wishing for too much so let's just stay outside and discover our beautiful nature together. But forget about lakes, even the most remote and empty ones have huge signs at their entrance: dogs are not allowed! Well, first of all, we wanted a holiday to spend with our little "family" together so leaving them in the car is out of the question, just as leaving the lake is. This is what happened to us at every lake during our break.

Funny thing is, in the end we could enter all of these areas with our dogs and also swam with them in the cool water. So if the people who are there or even who take care of the lake don't bother, why the warning sign?

This all also leaves a theoretic question in my head just as the "dogs forbidden" parks of our country. What is the real reason behind? Dogs are dirty? Well, I travel on the tram with a lot of people who are much dirtier than our dogs. Dogs will piss in the water? They don't even do it in front of us when we go for a walk but they search for a hidden place. Dogs spread diseases? And what about men who forget to wash their hands after going to the restroom?

So the end was happy as you see: we were not forbidden. Only in theory. As long as it stays like this, I will leave my questions theoretic too.

SOLD

Country holiday

Your La Kukac is leaving for a 4-day escape to the countryside today. We will stay in a house at the end of the world: no streets, no fences, no internet. We have been planning this for months now and I could hardly wait for this short break to come.

We will do the following:

We will drive there and then around from lake to river, from river to fields, from fields to forest...

Then we will walk and have fun in the forest:

Then we go for a swim:

Then we just rest together on the shore:

And when all of that is done, we go back to the house and finish the day off like this:

Yeeeeah!