Those Mixed Metals

20 MINUTES IS NEVER QUITE ENOUGH TIME to spend at home on a Sunday afternoon, the only real time you see the house washed in daylight and hence, the only real time you actually see what the place looks like outside of the bedroom.

Two very long weeks gone by and I had neither done anything special for my blog's 2nd anniversary nor caught up with friends online and off. I did, however, catch up with Jaime, eating way too much food and spending way too much money on way too much shopping. A bit wasteful but what the heck else are weekends for?

Yes, Kitty finds it just as strange that my new replacement pumps -finally!!!- are on the console.

Kitty Bang Bang, Zara pumps and random items at home. Photos by Lady San Pedro.

That Fanfare

WARM WEATHER DAYS LIKE THESE remind me of childhood, spending afternoons at home watching soaps with my grandma and the helper. The air would always smell of banana leaves toasted from lubricating the flat iron and the room was always noisy with the rackety sound of an old metal desk fan.

They eventually got replaced, those fans. We started having those plastic ones everyone had in the 90's, in white, with either baby blue, pink or green blades.

Thank god the vintage styles have resurfaced!

Portable fans by Arcadian Lighting, www.arcadianlighting.com

Those Murs Végétaux

HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW? For over fifteen years, gardener extraordinaire Patrick Blanc has been artistically planting and pruning walls and walls of gardens in almost every continent on the globe.

Created with equal parts creative skill and scientific knowledge, the Vertical Gardens or Murs Végétaux are soil-less vegetation growing on a lightweight construct consisting of three components: a metal frame, a layer of PVC and a layer of felt. The metal frame serves as an air layer to the structure while the PVC keeps it rigid and waterproof. The felt, on the other hand, is rot-proof and works in place of soil for holding the roots.

Blanc's Vertical Gardens provide aesthetic appeal to various interior and exterior surfaces while also aiding to decompose pollutants. The structures also aid in conserving energy by providing insulation to buildings in the winter, and keeping them cool in the summer.

Museums, shops, hotels, banks, restaurants, parks, commercial centers, even private residences and of course, Blanc's own home, serve as living spaces for his work.

Looking out the window, our garden has never looked so lame.

Has gardening ever been this fascinating?

Vertical Gardens by Patrick Blanc, images from www.verticalgardenpatrickblanc.com

That Folio of Delights

AFTER A 3-DAY WEEKEND OF ALMOST FULL DOMESTICITY, we emerge with a new tall boy, a new upholsterer and a prospective king-sized poster bed!

I guess this marks the beginning of another home-improvement phase that will -hopefully- result in what the house should fully and finally be. For good!

An addition to our inspiration list is Trowbridge's Folio Collection which gives a gentle nudge for me to have our art prints framed, make my own artworks to have framed and borrow some paintings from Daddy to put up on bare walls.

Excitement!

Trowbridge Folio Collection, www.trowbridgegallery.com

That Hard Light

WE HAD TO BE TAUGHT IN SCHOOL that feelings are fleeting and are not to be trusted. However natural our feelings come to us, we must always rely on our reason to determine our every action and perception.

It's tricky though. Things never quite appear the same to us at every given time. In the same way the sun casts a different shadow on a face at different times of the day, so does the mind cast a different understanding of something at different points in life. What may have seemed right back then may not be quite right now and what doesn't seem quite right now may be right again tomorrow.

Maybe the trick is to choose which light we'd like to see things in. And hope in our inherent goodness that we choose the right one.

Carolina Fontoura Alzaga sees beauty in bike parts. Fashioning them together to form decorative pieces, she proves that even the most lifeless and functional things can be illuminated into something very precious.

When it gets tough, try it in another light.

Chandeliers by Carolina Fontoura Alzaga, www.facaro.com