Mangiz Design

Last year I received a lovely gift for my birthday from my then boyfriend - now husband :). As any other lady out there I love handbags. I think I have about 30-40 handbags. I brought some of them with me to Columbus and I left a whole bunch in Turkey. Now, let me get back to the story of my present :).

My present was a hand-made school bag/laptop bag/ legally blonde style professional bag. Whichever name you feel comfortable with after seeing the pics. I started using the bag a couple of weeks ago and I find it very useful. Unfortunately, the bag is too cute to put my heavy laptop in it but if you have a Mac which probably is half the size of my current laptop then you can definitely use the bag as a laptop bag. I use the bag if I have a meeting with my adviser at the university. I generally put my folders in it but I have to say I did put my lunch in it once :). It has much more space then it seems.

The cutie pie bag

Yes, that is my finger. I'm trying to show all the features of the bag :)

The most special thing about my bag is that it was designed by my husband's friends from high school. His friends have established an online store, Mangiz Design. In the online store you can find cases similar to mine, sleep masks, pillows and wall lights. You can also send them pictures of your own creations and get your unique hand-made items. However, the website is in Turkish and they only deliver within Turkey.

I want to thank the creators of Mangiz Design because they gave the case as a gift to my husband and me. Thank you very much! Ellerinize ve akliniza saglik :).

Little Love Stars

I just joined StumbleUpon! In case you haven't heard of this site before let me explain it in a couple of sentences.

StumbleUpon Logo

You become a member and choose a list of things that you would be interested in, for example "clothing", "nutrition", "painting" etc then you get this add-on on your web browser. Whenever you have some free time and want to "stumble upon" great things that would be interesting just click on Stumble!, the add-on you installed when you became a member, then you will get the chance to see different websites that show something that is interesting for "you". You can also like or dislike these sites StumbleUpon gives you so by this way they can understand what "you" like or don't like. I just became a member but it is already amazing!



I stumbled upon a craft's blog, creative kismet. It is such a sweet blog, there are lots of colors, happiness and energy that you get to enjoy. I specifically came across "little guiding stars" on the blog and these little stars took me back to my high school years. I want to give a big shout out to my best friend! She used to make me these little stars and put inside the presents she gave to me during happy occasions. These little stars meant that she loved me and the smaller stars meant that there was much more love coming my way because they were harder to make :). Enjoy the little stars I found on creative kismet. I wanted to share my memories that made me so happy today! I hope you like the stars as much as I liked them. There is also a video that shows how you can make these stars. You can find more videos on creative kismet.
 

Little stars up-close

A jar of little stars

Istanbul Series Tea Glasses - Designed by Faruk Malhan

Faruk Malhan's Tea Glass-Tea Plate Design for Pasabahce

My husband's lovely cousin gave us two tea glasses and tea plates as a present when we were in Turkey a couple of weeks ago. These tea glasses have been designed by Faruk Malhan for Pasabahce who originally designs furniture.

Faruk Malhan

We love our new "not so traditional" tea glasses because the size of the cups are not small and the tea glass matches its tea plate perfectly. Turkish people will know that usually if you're carrying a traditional tea glass with its plate and if you're not careful enough you can spill some of the tea onto the tea plate due to the wobbly tea glass. However, with Faruk Malhan's new design it is very hard to spill tea onto the tea plate because the tea glass sits on its plate perfectly. The design looks modern and most importantly it is very convenient to use. They only ship to addresses within Turkey but you can have a look at an online store.

A more traditional tea glass-tea plate

Goodwill

Goodwill Logo

OK, I know it has been a long time since I wrote anything. It has been more than a month but I will try to write more often starting today :). The reason I haven't been able to write anything is that we've been very busy. We were in Turkey for about 3 weeks and when we came back we moved to a new apartment, got ourselves a car and started working on our research projects. In addition to all this I have a qualifier exam coming up so I just started working for that also. I have to study my notes from previous quarters for the qualifier exam.

Household items at a Goodwill store

Clothing section at a Goodwill store

Today me and my husband visited a Goodwill store, there is a store located within 5 minutes of walking distance from our new place. I recently learned the idea behind Goodwill stores. Anyone can donate to Goodwill's donation centers. I'm planning on donating some of my clothes in the near future. The stores sell these donated items and with the money Goodwill helps people by funding job trainings, employment placement services and other community programs. They actually have many different programs going on. To my surprise I learned that they celebrated their 100th anniversary in 2002. I had no idea that Goodwill was such an old establishment. There are so many different stories of people that have been involved in Goodwill that you can read here.

Reading books

At our local store we found lots and lots of reading books, and the prices are great! For paperback books you pay $0.99 and for hardback books you pay $1.49. The books were generally in good condition. In contrast to the above photo the books were on shelves and much more organized at our local store. I was going to buy Sandra Brown's The Crush for only $0.99 but I thought I'd go back and go through all the books and not just buy a single book. So, I'll be visiting our local Goodwill store again very soon and probably picking up many books. By the way if you check, Sandra Brown's book is $15.95 on Amazon.

We also liked a couple of household items such as photo frames and stuff. We'll be going back when we have more time for browsing. It is great that you get a deal and help people at the same time :).

Farewell Anatolia - By Dido Soteriou

I just started reading a new book. I've only read about 30 pages but I think I'll enjoy this one a lot. I read some reviews of the book on Amazon and they are pretty good. I am reading the book in Turkish though. :)

Dido Soteriou

The writer was born on 1909 in Izmir, Sirince. (Izmir is one of the largest cities in Turkey and is located by the Aegean sea.)  However, she migrated to Greece when she was only 13 years old due to the wars going on in the region at the time. She had to migrate because she was Greek. It was very hard for the writer to forget the childhood memories she had so she wrote Farewell Anatolia to somehow satisfy her longing for the lands that she grew up. 

Book Cover

I believe Dido Soteriou's book will help me realize how lucky I am that I have the freedom of choosing where to live whether this place be my hometown or somewhere that is miles away from my hometown. I would be devastated if someone told me that I was not allowed to go back to the places that I was raised in.

I believe the author went back to see the lands that she grew up after many many years.

Muhammed Yalçın: A mentally handicapped painter

Muhammed with his paintings and tools :)

This morning I was watching the news when I came across Muhammed Yalçin, a mentally handicapped painter. He lives with his family in Ankara, Altindag. Muhammed is 23 years old and does not know how to read or write. However, he attended Çagdas Egitim Uygulama Kulubü, where he learned how to paint and won the first prize among 150 other students with his paintings. His desire to paint is supported by his parents and Muhammed has nearly finished painting all of their house! Muhammed's father says that they cannot afford to buy canvas for his son and Muhammed had to satisfy his desire to paint by using the walls, doors, cupboards etc. Currently Muhammed is in need of financial aid from possible supporters. I think that his talent needs to be recognized and appreciated. The news about Muhammed can be found here in Turkish.

Muhammed with his father and mother

Macarons

It's been a long time since I wrote a post but I've been traveling a lot. We came to Turkey for our holiday and we've been doing a lot of traveling in Turkey too. We just came back to Ankara yesterday. I feel really tired and just want to rest.

Sweet and Colorful Macarons

Weddings are common during summer. Last night my parents went to a wedding and when they came back they brought a music CD and two macarons with them. The music CD had 12 songs and I guess the songs were played during the wedding. However, I was mostly interested in the small macarons; one was pink and the other one was cream. Macarons were given as wedding candy.

All my friends and family know that I love sweets so it is safe to assume that I will love macarons too. This was not the case, I don't know maybe a lot of people recommended macarons so much that I thought that I would love them and had high expectations but I tried them and I think they are reeaaallllyyy sweet and eating a single small macaron is enough to satisfy my "hungry" sweet tooth. However, I am still willing to try macarons so if you have any bakery suggestions in Turkey or in U.S. I will keep them in my mind and try them out.