Well, that's what best friends are for.
Even imaginary ones.
I have a question though: why is there a purple bench here?
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| https://www.flickr.com/photos/4nitsirk/3777749550/ |
It's not purple. It's lavender.
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| https://www.flickr.com/photos/27659024@N08/7588300240/ |
Very nice but why is there all this lavender in a blog about Christmas? Shouldn't there be some tinsel?
Or maybe some snowmen?
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| https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/PendragonFarm |
At the very least I'd expect to see a candy cane loveseat.
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| https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/MyTinyPurpleGarden |
Maybe. But I'm dreaming of a purple Christmas. I'm thinking back to the lovely lavender days of summer when you could sit on a garden bench reading.
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| https://www.flickr.com/photos/mklapper/19231200402/ |
All around you could smell lavender.
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| https://www.flickr.com/photos/-ebelien-/3952067837/ |
Or hollyhocks.
And in the springtime you can visit Paris where the Eiffel Tower is a soft shade of lavender and love benches abound.
The Eiffel Tower is not lavender. And anyway it's Christmas time; the seasons fly by.
Surely, if anything, you want to show the Holly and the Ivy.
The Red and the Green.
No, sorry. Christmas started too early and already I've had enough. I'm looking ahead to 2016 and a great purple year.
We've been all tangled up with Black Friday.
There's all that shopping and all the money spent on presents.
Maybe you could find something free?
And now the red benches are out and I'm sick of them.
That goes for green too.
There is nothing to look forward to except a phone call from Santa . . .
and another bag of Bench dot tee shirts . . .
. . . or another pair of stripey socks.
You're very grumpy, Seashell.
And anyway there are Christmas colours other than red and green. There's silver . . .
. . . and there's gold.
And there's purple! I'm clinging to that idea now.
The Eiffel Tower is not lavender. And anyway it's Christmas time; the seasons fly by.
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Surely, if anything, you want to show the Holly and the Ivy.
The Red and the Green.
No, sorry. Christmas started too early and already I've had enough. I'm looking ahead to 2016 and a great purple year.
We've been all tangled up with Black Friday.
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| http://www.pabloreinoso.com/en/Art-8-spaghetti-bench.html |
There's all that shopping and all the money spent on presents.
Maybe you could find something free?
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| https://www.flickr.com/photos/mikecogh/13139888185/ |
And now the red benches are out and I'm sick of them.
That goes for green too.
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| http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikecogh/ |
There is nothing to look forward to except a phone call from Santa . . .
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| http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Madrid_-_217.JPG |
and another bag of Bench dot tee shirts . . .
. . . or another pair of stripey socks.
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| https://www.flickr.com/photos/bunchesandbits/5278314242/ |
You're very grumpy, Seashell.
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| www.etsy.com/shop/runningwithscissors |
And anyway there are Christmas colours other than red and green. There's silver . . .
. . . and there's gold.
And there's purple! I'm clinging to that idea now.
Here's a great purple bus stop bench.
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| Burton on the Wirral, UK |
And here is Tamsin looking splendid under a purple mulberry tree.
Not very Christmasy.
What about blue? Blue is Christmasy any time of year.
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| https://www.flickr.com/photos/alwaysshooting/16089838791/ |
Blue is fine but here on Benchsite we're having a tiny little revolution - PURPLE for Christmas!
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| http://www.flickr.com/photos/25802865@N08/ |
We're going to paint the town purple.
Every hotel on Paradise Island will have a purple bench out front.
Every park will have a purple picnic table.
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| my photo, FRAC, Dunkirk |
Look how Fribble-under-Par lights up when it's purple!
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| https://www.flickr.com/photos/dlee13/7969995748/ |
I think you'll find that's Perth.
Is it? OK, maybe it is.
The purple benches in Fribble are more like this:
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Perfect purple!
Purple isn't always perfect though. Remember when Biff from the Fribble Agro gang vandalised all our bus stop benches?
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| https://www.flickr.com/photos/mikecogh/7573888470/ |
I think he's a reformed character these days. Here he is in Paris.
Apparently he fell in love with a pretty Japanese girl.
He's looking forward to a brilliant year of romance in 2016.
If you believe that, you must believe in purple cow benches.
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| www.omcdesign.com |
Some people say purple is the colour of madness.
Yes, there are one or two One-eyed One-horned Flying Purple People Eaters about.
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| https://www.flickr.com/photos/roadsidepictures/2490302361/ |
Sure looks strange to me.
When I am old I shall wear purple. And in the meantime, I'm going to light up the holidays with some brilliant purple benches.
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| https://www.flickr.com/photos/jek-a-go-go/ |
I hate to be critical but this bench is yellow.
I know but isn't it fabulous how purple sets it off?
For me this is a bit
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| https://www.flickr.com/photos/dorkymum/4444652857/ |
There's a shade of pinky lavender which makes very nice benches.
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| http://creativecountrymom.blogspot.co.uk |
Looks like we're back to garden benches again. But I meant something like this:
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| http://florentdegourc.com/ |
This is a wow, Migs! It's too beautiful to sit on.
Some purple benches are like that you know.
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| https://www.flickr.com/photos/gonmi/6009290574/ |
Look at this divine divan.
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| https://www.thepurplestore.com |
I've never seen a purple
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| https://www.flickr.com/photos/brimley/1573540338/ |
Well, there you go. Your Christmas wishes have come true.
There's just one thing missing though.
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| https://www.flickr.com/photos/tomsaint/15829794296/ |
What, the back of the seat?
No, my invitation to Lord and Lady Brassica's Christmas party. It's a great party and I love those drinks!
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| https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/SignFail |
Well, maybe Lady Brassica hasn't got round to it yet. She has lots of things to think about at Christmas, like what shade of purple to wear.
I hear Lord B is getting her a new car.
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| https://www.flickr.com/photos/purplegecko/195384999/ |
I'd love a car like this. But I'd settle for this.
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I agree. What could be more Christmasy than a snowy purple bench?
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| https://www.flickr.com/photos/alltheaces/11205078/ |
HAPPY CHRISTMAS!
Have yourself a ding dong little Christmas by going to http://benchsite.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/ding-dong-benches-for-christmas.html
Credits
The much-travelled Kristina Hoeppner from Wellington, New Zealand is a frequent contributor to Benchsite. On this occasion she photographed a lovely lavender bench at the Ali'i Kula Lavender Farm in Kula, Maui. That's Hawaii to you and me. The photo is part of her 2009 album of USA benches. https://www.flickr.com/photos/4nitsirk/3777749550/
The pretty bundle of lavender on a bench is by Laura Smith at https://www.flickr.com/photos/27659024@N08/7588300240/
The tinsel is draped around my swimming bench here at The Plunge on Paradise Island. I like the bench to look festive for my swim on Christmas Day. Well, that's my story anyway. For more about my swimming bench see http://benchsite.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/my-swimming-bench.html And for other people's swimming benches it's http://benchsite.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/swimming-benches-tribute.html
Pat French-Folk lives in Bucks County Pennsylvania and is the shop owner of Pendragon Farm, a treasure trove of vintage miniatures. I am fascinated by mniniatures and I fell for the Christmasy vintage miniature green bench with its Christmas Bear and snowman pillows. Had I a doll's house I'd love these for Christmas. https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/PendragonFarm
It's Christmas at Etsy and I had a great time trawling through stuff. Telena Brox from Branson West in Missouri has a Tiny Purple Garden etsy shop. It's called MyTinyPurple Garden https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/MyTinyPurpleGarden Just the thing for our purple Christmas! The purple garden includes miniature elves, gnomes, fairies, birds and animals, some which Telena makes herself. She didn't make the cute little candy cane love seat, which is just 2 inches wide.
For a miniature perspective on benches let Tamsin show you the big, the cute and the tiny. Here she is at Easter wearing the Wrong Colour Purple.
It was a sunny June day in Frankfurt. As Marco Klapper was strolling through Bethmannpark, he found the beautiful scene of a woman reading on a bench with a lot of lavender around her. The shot is his favorite from that day as it captures both the summer atmosphere and the relaxed state of mind he was in at the time. https://www.flickr.com/photos/mklapper/19231200402/ If you like reading benches you'll love a stack of books for World Book Day
The beautiful old bench and lavender plants were photographed in September 2009 by Ebelien, who is a photographer in the Netherlands. Her photostream is full of fabulous photos of a wide variety of things. I can recommend a look. https://www.flickr.com/photos/-ebelien-/3952067837/
The seasons fly by, so they do. The timely caution on an Oak Park bench was painted by Jonathan Franklin and appeared in the Chicagoist "Today's Weather" on December 7, 2013. I found it on the photostream of Ann Fisher at https://www.flickr.com/photos/yooperann/11245743103/
Lady Jessica Brassica and her daughter-in-law Innocent are the Holly and the Ivy. Lady B is a fashionista and former model with Studio Joop from Overbearing in Holland. Now she has her own fashion house at Ballyfrumpy in County Offhand in Ireland where she designs woolly warm fashions for autumn. She loves shopping at her replica mall and having poetry read by Young Male Readers dot com. She is happily married to Lord Brassica, Fifth Earl of Drizzly, a gentleman farmer and expert on both cows and picnic benches. Not so much on sheep benches.
Since her wedding to the Brassica's numpty son Root, Innocent has emerged from her convent nursing dress into something of a fashion icon. Now Lady B and Innocent are what you might call competitive in the fashion stakes. Warning: there was nothing sparkly about the silver/gold fashion debacle at new year's eve a couple of years ago.
The Spaghetti Bench is one of a series by Pablo Reinoso, a French-Argentinean artist and designer. Since 2006, Reinoso's new bench creations have multiplied and found homes in very diverse places. The black spaghetti bench is at Sudeley in England and dates from 2010. The fabulous benches can be seen on his website at http://www.pabloreinoso.com/en/Art-8-spaghetti-bench.html though these two photos come from Pablo's postings on Wikimedia. For more tasty Italian benches see http://benchsite.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/tasty-italian-benches.html
Mike Cogh lives in Adelaide and photographed the gnome bench and many other benches around the world, including the graffitied bench at Peterhead railway station in July 2012 and the Free and Used purple sofas https://www.flickr.com/photos/mikecogh/13139888185/ Mike has an extensive set of over 800 Humble Bench photographs at http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikecogh/
Santa on a bench making a mobile phone call is not something you see every day. Papa Noel was in Distrito C in Madrid when this photo was taken by M. Peinado in 2009. I found it on Wikimedia at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Madrid_-_217.JPG
I wouldn't want you to get the idea that I am in any way sponsored by Bench dot or any other company. Far from it. These are my very own purchases from the Bench dot outlet store. None of them fit me and they are all the wrong colours but never mind, they bear the Bench message and that's what's important. Shopping isn't my thing but shopping benches - well, here they are http://benchsite.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/just-x-shopping-benches-til-christmas.html
Stripey socks and standing on a chair. Bench Monday. Hmmm. Something about this tells me it's Bunches and Bits. And sure enough, it is. Another great Bench Monday, photographed back in 2010. https://www.flickr.com/photos/bunchesandbits/5278314242/
Stacy Scissors in Tucson has the best name of all Etsy shops: Running with Scissors. She describes her shop as emo, scene, rockabilly, kitsch, rocker, and hardcore bling, in other words, stuff for the sweet and evil side of every girl. There is all kinds of jewelry, including razorblade necklaces and the bright and blingy Bah Humbug necklace. If you have a look at her shop, you're in for a treat. www.etsy.com/shop/runningwithscissors
Taken on winter solstice in 2014, the trees are illuminated for Christmas and there's an illuminated, half-frozen lake. An airplane light trails in the sky, looking like a road for Santa. This is Always Shooting's Blue Illuminations 2014. https://www.flickr.com/photos/alwaysshooting/16089838791/
Choo Yut Shing from Singapore took the photo of the bench under a red star. It was in the pedestrian mall, Orchard Road, during the festive season in 2010. Choo likes benches and there are some brilliant ones in his photostream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/25802865@N08/
An hotel in Sandown, Isle of Wight did indeed have purple benches out front a couple of years ago. Where are they now when we need them? Sadly, no sign of the purple benches this Christmas.
The stunning purple and lime green picnic table is the cafe in the FRAC contemporary art museum in Dunkirk in France. I have to say, on my visit this time the cafe furniture outdid the exhibitions of art.
Daniel Lee photographed the Perfect Purple night in Perth 2012. He says: It was actually really dark and I light painted the scene with my 430ex ii Speedlite. https://www.flickr.com/photos/dlee13/7969995748/
Paul Sullivan is a retired long-haul tractor-trailer driver living in Albany, California. He took the lovely photo of the Western Scrub Jay Aphelecoma californica on park benches in the Don Edwards Federal Wildlife Refuge, sometime in June 2006. https://www.flickr.com/photos/pfsullivan_1056/5378794308/ For some great British Bird Benches, see what happened in January when we did the Great British Bird Bench survey.
Biff is one of the Agro gang here in Fribble. He excels in vandalism and especially likes breaking up bus stop benches. He may look frightening but he has a soft spot for a little Japanese girl he met on Benchsite a couple of years ago. What brilliant Japanese benches we saw! It looks like he has lived his dream to visit the Eiffel Tower in Paris and to travel to Japan. The Eiffel Tower and the Japanese temple are both from my colouring books.
The little purple cow stools are by designer Onar Cobanli in Como, Italy. Born in Istanbul in 1984, Onar studied design in Italy and got a PhD for his research into design competitions. He has featured in many magazines, including Milano Mod in April 2012 (that's him on the cover). Onar Cobanli's company is www.omcdesign.com, which has the most extensive range of products I've seen, including more than 100 benches, chaise lounges, sofas, and chairs. For the cream of bovine benches see http://benchsite.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/the-cream-of-bovine-benches.html
The One Eyed, One Horned, Flyin' Purple People Eater was very popular in the 1950's. This photo comes from Allen, who is from Kansas City, Missouri, now living in Idaho. He has enjoyed the hobby of photography since he was a kid and he has an amazing collection of cool stuff. I like photographing old neon signs, cars, motels, gas stations, roadside attractions and suburban life. I'm very old fashioned. I should have been born in 1936. https://www.flickr.com/photos/roadsidepictures/2490302361/
Jessica Wilson is a Bench Monday person who comes up with one brilliant photo after another. This time it's the yellow bench against a purple wall, photographed in 2009. At the time she had some travelling stripey purple socks which she photographed in action on benches for Bench Mondays. Oh, I can't explain it; just have a look. https://www.flickr.com/photos/jek-a-go-go/
Brooke Kroeger is the Creative Country Mom and she has a vintage home and garden from which she writes her blogspot. Each month she takes on a garden challenge sponsored by Lowe's Creative Ideas. In June 2012 she decided to make a bench out of picket fencing and what a great job she made of it! It cost just $69 and best of all, she painted it a nice shade of purple. http://creativecountrymom.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/my-diy-picket-fence-bench-lowes.html
The Wait a Minute bench is elegant seating for a waiting room, especially in this subtle shade of purple. It's made by Florent Degourc, an inventive French designer who takes a playful and practical approach to his daily observations. Wait a Minute was made in 2009 and there are many other sleek, minimalist bench and furniture designs on the website. http://florentdegourc.com/
The sillón is a pretty morado bench photographed in Oviedo in Spain in 2011. The photographer is Nacho, who is joyfully jubilado (retired). The bench is not for sitting: the sign says Please Don't Sit. https://www.flickr.com/photos/gonmi/6009290574/
The purple divan is from the amazing Purple Store in Seattle. Everything they sell is purple. Really. They believe that Purple is a lifestyle. Finally here's an answer for those who have cried for something to come in purple, to be able to buy "just the purple one" in a set.By shopping here you give us the buying power and clout to get manufacturers to make items in purple, make things just in purple, and package them so you don't need to buy seven pens you don't want to get the purple one. https://www.thepurplestore.com The vibrant purple microsuede divan sells for $695.
I love wild couches, especially purple ones. This one was photographed in 2007 by Jonathan Warner, who is a web developer by day, a slacker by night. He says he's not a professional photographer and doesn't have professional or even top-of-the-line consumer equipment, but he tries to use what he has to share interesting things he sees. Also, he takes a lot of pictures of his cat. https://www.flickr.com/photos/brimley/1573540338/ In fact, loads of people take pictures of cats. Try finding a bench without a cat on it.
The bench with the missing back is called Sanctuary. It was photographed in 2014 by Rennett Stowe, who is from California
https://www.flickr.com/photos/tomsaint/15829794296/
I'm a great fan of Sign Fail, an etsy shop at https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/SignFail . These are funny sign replicas inspired by real-life hilarity, the best of Chinglish & Engrish on handmade funny signs, cards & magnets. The signs are handmade to order in Melbourne, Australia by Michael Bancroft and there are many, like the Purplish Drinks sign, which are just right for Benchsite.
The brilliant purple gas guzzler car was photographed in 2006 by
Justin Frisch, who says such things are a rare sight in Germany where he lives. https://www.flickr.com/photos/purplegecko/195384999/
The closeup of a purple park bench is from the Indianapolis album of
Greg Wagoner, a retired elementary teacher. Words that describe Greg are: fun-loving, young-at-heart, stylish (if Target has it), enthusiastic, optimistic, honest, loyal, down-to-earth, Mac/Apple addict, funny, sincere, lifetime learner. https://www.flickr.com/photos/minidriver/4331725142/
The beautiful frosty bench at the end is called Ultra Violet. It was photographed in February 2005 by Alice, a Londoner currently living in Edinburgh and working for a video games studio. Her interests include awesome dinosaurs, glitch, Resident Evil, dancing, ink, stargazing, bikes, progress, shoes, footnotes, saints, DIY, freedom, gin, axolotls, nice cups of tea, beards, linguistics, the abolition of exploitation and oppression of man by man, that is, the abolition of private property and government; the destruction of misery, of superstitions and of hatred, light, foxes, football, scientific instruments, mixing memory and desire, wearing too much make-up, being completely awesome, and things that are brilliant. https://www.flickr.com/photos/alltheaces/11205078/
If purple isn't your colour, we've got a rainbow of colour choices here on Benchsite. Red benches? No problem. Orange? We got 'em. There are sunny yellow benches for spring and sparkly gold and silver benches for parties. There are 50 shades of grey and pink benches to coincide with the release of That film. We celebrate holidays like Black Friday. And there are some really depressing blue ones for Blue Monday. For more uplifting, upcycled benches see the green ones at http://benchsite.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/recycled-upcycled-repurposed-benches.html
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