It's all about books and photographs.

Last week before going to the cinema we went for a while to the Central Library. There was this event "Give books a second life" which was giving away books from the library for free. Those books were either books the library didn't want any more and some were donations from various places and people.
I was happy to see so many young people waiting eagerly to get their free books. We waited with hubby and a couple of friends and here's what we got.

Yes, I know what you are going to say. That I got too many books. Each person was entitled to three free books. Hubby and I got ours but then they brought English books that seemed that no one was interested in so I had to take them home with me!
Then on Saturday we went to the Merimna charity bazaar at the harbour.
The views of the city from the harbour were fantastic!

In the entrance there was this strange creature! It's an exchange library! You leave a book and you get a book.

I didn't have any books to leave so I simply didn't take any. But as I went to the bazaar the next day too I left a couple of books and got these.

I got the funny book for hubby as he would probably find it interesting and could get some ideas for shadow puppets through it. I got the English book for me. I also got the 84, Charing Cross Road because I had seen the movie and would love to read the book. That book is a Bookcrossing book so I joined in the Bookcrossing site too. Bookcrossing is a good way to leave books around for the people to find and read and keep or circulate around too. I am planning to free some books myself since I found this now too.
The Merimna bazaar was excellent. There were lots of activities for children to do and lots of books, clothes and accesories for people to buy.

Here are the books I got.
On the first day. Each book was half a euro or one euro.

 I couldn't leave a shadow puppetry novel of course.

 And on the second day you got two books and one for free so I got lots more. In total for 15 euros I got 26 books. Can you tell I was happy? I will be reading all summer at the beach house.

 I also got a couple of bags and scarves.Again you bought two plus one for free.  The Cute as a button is an Accesorize bag and was 2 euros. I am already using this at school.

There was a lot of jewelry too and although I don't wear much I could give these away as gifts.

After the first day at the bazaar we visited the Photography Museum which is inside the harbour too.My niece is a volunteer there.
There was an interesting exhibition called Recorded Memories-Europe Southeast.
Here are a couple of photos from the exhibition.

We also walked all around the harbour taking pictures.

Can you see the rainbow?

And finished off with some great coffee.

Lurk

Last Wednesday hubby and I went to the premiere of the film "Lurk" by Vassilis Katsikis.
We met Vassilis during one of our theatrical performances a couple of months ago and wanted to see his new film.We had already seen his previous film "I-4 Loufa &Apallagi"
You can read all about Vassilis Katsikis' CV here.
His new film is a horror movie. It is called "Lurk" or in Greek "Paramonevondas".
It was really very good. It had a good story, great cinematography by Dimitris Stabolis and music by Antonis Sousamoglou.
Starring Tess Spentzos, an excellent Peter Gerald and Aris Athan.
If you like horror movies you will realise that we don't have many in Greek cinematography
and Mr. Katsikis has made a great effort to fulfill the genre.
The film is in English with subtitles.
We really enjoyed it.
At Vakoura cinema.

 With Vassilis Katsikis.

Vassilis Katsikis with another famous Greek director Costas Ferris.

Blooming flowers and beautiful views.

Last week (20th-26th April) was lovely. At last spring has sprung!
Sunshine, blue skies and flowers everywhere!
I had to buy a violet from the open market on Monday. It smells wonderful!

I also bought a blooming flower scarf.

Of course we walked the seafront as usual.

Last week I also had coffee with my crafty girl group at this new cafe in the city centre.

 It's called Marmalade!

I loved the industrial look in the cafe.

 And the beautiful lights too.

At school a colleague brought a great strawberry cake!

There was a lot more last week that I did but I now have to go so will tell you about it in another blogpost!

An exchange (Ah kounelaki=little bunny!)

You might remember one of the exchanges I took part at Christmas was Secret Blog Santa organized by Zina of Efzin Creations.
This Easter Zina organized again an exchange called Ah kounelaki (referring to the Easter bunny).
I was the lucky recipient of Thalia's gift from this blog. Thalia is such a sweet artist and has a lovely blog where she shows her art and her town Distomo which has a tragic history. And of course all that with her sweet talented daughter Georgia.
Thalia sent me a beautiful gift but she showed great trust to the Greek Postal Service which unfortunately failed her.
Her beautiful hand painted pot arrived broken. She also sent me a lovely card she made along with her daughter and some freesia bulbs to plant. All in all a lovely gift.

 I managed to glue the pieces and the pot looks lovely!

But Thalia wasn't happy and wanted me to have something beautiful from her and not to be broken. So she surprised me with a lovely painting a few days later!

 Here is her painting and her pot along with Ahtida-Georgia's gifts. I will take them all to the beach house when we go there in summer.Don't they all look gorgeous together?So many sea colours together!

Here's what I sent to my recipient Dimitra of DimitrArt. I made her one of my stones and added some chocolate and a lovely soap from Karalis soap. As Dimitra is expecting  a baby I stitched her a little baby picture too that I found on pinterest in her favourite colour blue. The picture is by creativita and the frame by Tiger.

When she received the parcel and told me she is expecting a girl I made her another one in a more girlie colour!

Great exchange!Thanks Zina for organising this again!

The second week of the Easter holidays.

As we were busy with the doctors' appointments all this week, we didn't have time for much else. Apart from doing house chores,
we walked the seafront promenade a lot, us and thousands of others, enjoying the magnificent views,

I made egg salad following a recipe I found in this blog.It is a good way to use up Easter eggs, Add boiled eggs, shredded carrots, red pepper, dill, green onions, mustard, mayonaise, salt and pepper, olive oil and apple vinegar.Delicious!

I prepared some mail to post next week,
I got prepared for school that starts tomorrow,
I put away the Easter decorations and decorated my big table for spring,

we went to IKEA for some frames we needed,one for this oil painting a friend of mine made for me,

 and one for the watercolour I bought from Dimitra of Decorasylum, and her etsy shop,

I made some soap following this recipe by Zina of Efzin Creations here,
I used olive oil soap base, lavender essential oil, lemon essential oil and yellow food colouring as well as a bit of lavender flowers from Portugal.

 I liquidized the soap base in the microwave, added the rest of the ingredients and poured into the soap molds.You have to do the pouring very quickly!

 Here they are, so easy, great looking, smelling wonderful!

We went to the beach house,

and had coffee with the family.

Whoever starts school tomorrow, have a great new start!