IKEA Catalog 2012 is here !

IKEA Catalog 2012

 I never mentioned it but I love, love Ikea for so many reasons. Each year I'm patiently waiting for the new catalog - it's like this old crazy habit of mine, can't help it. Looking trough the new Ikea catalog=joy!
So click on the picture and flip trough the pages chock-full of inspiration...enjoy! 

IKEA Catalog 2012 is here !

The Love Story About Two Dirty Socks

As I'm starting to write this post I'm not certain how it will turn out. I've been wanting to write it for quite some time now but, to be honest with you, I hesitated because of the person involved in this story. You guessed it: it's my better half. I've been working him for weeks and I think I finally wore him down. This post  may be even considered as the continuation of my post about beauty of imperfection. I was inspired to tell this story by young girls, like my daughter, who found themselves in the somewhat serious and longer relationships, usually with guys who are "almost" perfect. Those girls believe firmly that they can change their man once they live together under the same roof. To DIY a perfect husband or partner so to speak. Husband improvement project. Now, I've seen things and lived long enough to know it doesn't work that way. So whenever I hear something that let me believe this particular girl might think she can change her partner or his bad habits, I tell her my story about two dirty socks.

It all started insanely long ago when I studied at the university and got to know this young boy with the most beautiful  hair, lips and eyes in the world. We were only nineteen years young. Aside from not being able to repair home appliances (very big deal as I come from a DIY family!), he was a very nice guy and I was madly in love with him. I couldn't wait to live with him together. Four years later we married and moved to our first apartment. As many of you may already know, dating and actually living together isn't the same thing. I knew my young husband was always very orderly, sometimes even excessively so. Luckily for me, he continued to be that way and from the beginning on we did our household chores together (thank you, dear mother-in-law!). But there was one thing that drove me nuts each day! He used to leave his two dirty socks inside-out on the floor beside the bed each evening and forgot to put them away in the morning. So whenever I looked there they were: two dark stains on the floor. In the beginning, I asked him nicely to put them away in the laundry. Didn't work. At all. Then I started being upset about it and not too rarely we had a fiercely dispute because of that. One day it all escalated and I was so mad that I didn't want to speak with him. But the socks were still on the floor beside the bed. We didn't speak so I couldn't tell him to put his damn socks away! So as I was cleaning the bedroom and putting things away, I grabbed his socks and put them in the laundry. Thing I refused to do till that day. It took me 2 seconds. Everything was calm. 

It might seem dumb to you, but it took me more than one year to understand that he's been putting up with my flaws (open books and magazines literally everywhere) while I raged about his socks. We were still madly in love. So we decided to not take this matter too seriously (apparently people freak out and divorce over a toothpaste?!). It was so easy and so simple: to love each other for all the good reasons and to accept each other's insignificant flaws. The secret is to not sweat the small stuff. There is no need to ruin the whole marriage or relationship over the toilet seat and the toothpaste! You can't change another person, you can only love them for who they are. So you have to be ready to love, accept, respect and tolerate the person as a whole, with all his good and eventually bad sides. That's it!

As for my DH's two dirty socks, they still live on the floor beside the bed. Occasionally, I make a joke about them and my husband put them away and promise me in all seriousness never to leave them there again. We are still madly in love.

The Love Story About Two Dirty Socks

Do You Feel Orange?

Yeah, why can't I feel orange? Or yellow? But I'm allowed to feel blue?! If you're anything like me, you feel colors and colors influence your feelings and moods too. When talking about orange there are no two ways about it: either you love it or you hate it! Either way, you feel passionate about it. And passion is one of the words associated with this color. There are also: heat, joy, energy, fall, harvest,  fire, warmth, sunshine, tropic... Orange combines the energy of red and the happiness of yellow. It is said that it produces an invigorating effect, and stimulates mental activity and appetite (not so happy about the last one). Vibrant and glowing, orange can add a punch of energy to any space. Orange is also often overlooked in home decor because of its intensity. But when balanced correctly, orange will add a happy, stimulating and even healing atmosphere to your home. I especially love the combination of orange with white and everything in bluish-grey direction. I could never paint an entire room in orange though, details in small doses infuse already lots of character. How about you, can you handle this color? Here are some vitamin C pictures from my inspiration files:

You like the pillow with rosette clusters in the last picture? You can find a complete instructions to make it yourself  here.

You also have to visit How About Orange blog - awesome! 

To learn more about the psychology of the color orange visit this website.

Do You Feel Orange?

Beautifully Imperfect Life

Curiously enough, it was a picture from a book "Organic and Chic: Cakes, Cookies, and Other Sweets That Taste as Good as They Look" by Sarah Magid that made me think about imperfection in life. As I turned the page and saw this picture I couldn't help but ask myself why the objects in this photo weren't prepared and arranged to perfection as is always the case with this kind of books?

It struck me almost  immediately that my reaction came from this profound, insecure, vulnerable place that pushes me to strive to perfection and tragically enough never achieve it. This place was created very early on by the people that influenced my life: parents, teachers, even friends. "This is not good enough! Why didn't you try harder!? You can do better!" were some of the phrases I heard often, even when I was good - but apparently not good enough. The oddest thing of all is that I continued to beat myself up trough my entire life and showed no mercy for mistakes. Talking about a masochist! 

Maybe some of you already know  that imperfections  make life beautiful and interesting. I can't get  rid of a feeling that I should apologize all the time for my oh! so imperfect self and life. The pressure is even bigger nowadays with all the technologies that one should use and master perfectly. It's all too much: education, job, relationships, children, house, car, gadgets, looks, parenting, money, even blogging. Yes, blogging too. And I'm not going to go in the details about it, you already know what I'm talking about.

By searching on the Internet to see what other people think about imperfections, I stumbled upon Yasmin Ahmad, a  film director, writer and scriptwriter from Malaysia whose video, actually a TV commercial, made me laugh, cry and think. She once said about imperfections: "I wept recognising that no one was perfect, and that if we expected to be loved for all our imperfections, why are we so reluctant to accept and forgive the imperfections of others?" Be sure to watch this video from the beginning to the end.

Beautifully Imperfect Life

I Wish I Had A Secret Double Life

OK, it's not what you think...or is it? I'm talking about having a double style life! Normally I like simple, clean, modern and stylish lines in my clothes and in my home - nothing to busy, please. But since I discovered Swedish designer Gudrun Sjödén and her work I wish my name was Alice and I'd had a magic mirror that could take me in a wonderful colorful Gudrun Sjödén kingdom where I could live (secretly) happily ever after... 

Swedish designer Gudrun Sjödén has been designing her colourful, bold clothes and home wares for more than 30 years. She opened her first boutique in the Swedish capital of Stockholm in 1976 and has worked outside the parameters of conventional fashion ever since. She now has stores in Sweden, Denmark, and Germany. But you can also order her products or catalogs online.

Her clothes and home wares are rich and colorful, different and so beautiful. She gives a modern twist to traditional patterns. Her work is inspired by Scandinavian folklore and rustic interiors as painted by Swedish painter Carl Larsson. Gudrun works with a few simple shapes, the peasant blouse, the full folklore-inspired skirt, the simple grandfather shirt or bodice, the T-shirt, leggings and work trousers. But she also travels the world from Africa to Nepal, visiting suppliers and drawing inspiration for future collections. “The way I design clothes has always been influenced by three main sources – nature, Scandinavian design tradition and meeting people,” she says. Gudrun started having clothes made in India at the beginning of the 1990s, and, now, as she is making the company eco-friendly, she has sourced organic cotton from India. The best part is you can wear her things with a good conscience- Gudrun has a 'no child-labor' policy and uses no chemicals in the manufacturing process. Another interesting thing is that she uses models of all ages and sizes which work very well with this  brand.

For more information visit her website:  www.gudrunsjoden.com

I Wish I Had A Secret Double Life

10 Truths You Wish You’d Known Sooner

No excuses! I promised to myself to make no excuses for the entire week without a post on my blog. I could give you a nice, long list but it wouldn't change a thing. So I'll just continue...

This week I'm preparing for two exams in my series of eight  seven, I have one this Saturday and the other next Monday. I'll be glad when it's over. Even if I'm really curious and I love to learn new things, learning for an exam is different. But there is also another sort of learning: learning trough life about life and for life. Even if I'm really good in learning, I'm a truly lousy learner in real life. It took me ages to learn certain things about life and even more about people. You can call me naive but I love people and I tend to see the best in everyone. Believe me, I would like to change but all I'm capable off is to be more cautious. 

Recently I stumbled upon a wonderful article "10 Truths I Wish I’d Known Sooner" written by Amy Bloom in my favorite woman magazine Real Simple. It's so worth reading it! 

Picture from Sunny on Flickr

1. Events reveal people’s characters; they don’t determine them.

Not everyone with divorced parents has terrible relationships. If two people are hit by a bus and crippled for life, one will become a bitter shut-in; the other, the kind of warm, outgoing person (cheerful despite everything) whom everyone loves to be with. It’s not about the bus, and a dreadful childhood is no excuse. You have the chance to be the person you wish to be, until you die.

2. Lying, by omission or commission, is a bad idea.

I cannot shake my dependency on the white lie, because I was brought up to be nice. And I’ve never figured out the nice way to say, “I’d rather stick a fork in my eye than come to your house for dinner.” But the meaningful lie, the kind that involves being untruthful or deceitful about important stuff to those you love, is like poison. Telling the truth hurts, but it doesn’t kill. Lying kills love.

3. Sex always give you an answer, although not necessarily the one you want.

It’s possible to have very good sex, a few times, with a person who shouldn’t be in your life at all. Have fun, and hide your wallet and your BlackBerry. On the other hand, it’s unlikely that a grown man, however nice, will become much, much better in bed than he was the first five times you slept with him. And if you sleep with a man who is unkind to you, there will be more of that; long after the sex is humdrum, the cruelty will be vivid.

4. Most talents are transferable.

If you can raise toddlers and teenagers with relative calm, you can be a CEO. If you’re a good driver, you can probably steer a cab, fly a plane, captain a boat. My years as a waitress―serving food to demanding people in a high-stress environment without losing my temper―served me equally well as a mother, a wife, and a short-order cook for my family. And if you have the teaching gene, you can teach anything. (I mean it. All you have to do is be one lesson ahead of your students. Sole meunière, Latin and Greek, algebra―you can teach it!)

5. Fashion fades; style is eternal.

Not only do you not have to wear torn jeans, a barely-there tank top, and a fedora, but you probably shouldn’t. The point of fashion is to indulge briefly in something fun. The point of style is to have one―whether that’s a sheath and spike heels or slouchy jeans and your husband’s T-shirt―and it should last you a lifetime. All you have to do is think you deserve to look and feel your best and spend some time figuring out how to do it. Don’t know? Find a woman whose style you admire and ask for a little advice.

6. You can’t fake love.

Staying in a love relationship when love is not what you feel isn’t likely to end well. If you know that what you crave is security/disposable income/child care and not the person next to you in bed, do the right thing. It’s true that one can learn to love someone over time and often through difficult circumstances. But unless the two of you agree to wait until you’re old and all the storms have passed, in the hope that love will kick in, it’s better to bail sooner rather than later.

7. Mean doesn’t go away.

Some people get better looking with age; some don’t. Some people soften; some toughen up. Mean streaks tend not to disappear. A person who demeans and belittles you and speaks of you with contempt to others is probably going to be that way for years. The first time it happens, take note. The second time, take your coat and go.

8. No one’s perfect.

I knew that I wasn’t perfect; I just didn’t realize that this also applied to the people I fell in love with. The object of your affection will always turn out to have huge and varied faults. The smart thing is not to look for someone flawless (which is why Elizabeth Taylor married eight times), but to look for someone whose mix of strengths and liabilities appeals to you (which is why she married Richard Burton twice).

9. Ask for help.

It’s possible you’ll get turned down. It’s even more likely that you’ll feel vulnerable and exposed. Do it anyway, especially if you are the helpful sort yourself. Those of us who like to offer assistance and hate to take any are depriving other people of the opportunity to be generous and kind; we are also blinding ourselves to the reality of mutual dependence. You wouldn’t wear pink hot pants and pretend they were flattering. Don’t pretend you don’t need help.

10. Keep your eye on the prize and your hand on the plow.

It’s easy to lose sight of what you want, especially if you haven’t gotten it. I know it’s less work to put the wish away, to pretend that the wish itself has disappeared. But it’s important to know what your prize is, because that is part of who you are. Whether it’s financial stability, two children, a collection of poetry, or a happy marriage, take Winston Churchill’s advice and never give in. Never give in. Never give in.

What truth have you learned about life?

10 Truths You Wish You’d Known Sooner

Is Blue Your Favorite Color?

Blue may be the favorite color for the majority of the population but I have to admit: I have a problem with it. I know, this is very strange, I don't understand it myself. I might even be afraid of this color and I really don't know why. This feeling goes way back to my childhood. Being a little red-haired girl with freckles I remember vividly shopping for clothes with my mother (it was in Trieste, Italy, sigh!). The nice lady wanted me to try out a blue sweater and I refused saying that I didn't like blue! She was very surprised and said to me: "If I had your hair and your skin I would wear only blue!" I went trough many color phases in my life but I never had a "blue phase". I've been trying lately to incorporate more blue in my wardrobe and I ended having some nice pieces. Mind you, people who know me noticed it and gave me compliments - I guess it was so obvious that I never wore blue! But I still have nothing blue as decorating element in my house with the exception of my sons's room where he could choose for himself. You can find here a nice explication of the meaning of blue color, and other colors as well. Here are some pictures from my decorating file named "Blue Goes": 

Is Blue Your Favorite Color?

Make Your Own 'Keep Calm and Carry On' Poster For Free

Tell me something: do you beat yourself up over mistakes made? Well, I don't know how to stop sometimes! I just had my third exam tonight and I wasn't able to respond to one question, only one, but two other responses were related to this one. I felt my blood pressure going up while I was trying to find the answer. I was on the verge of tears when my husband came to pick me up after the exam.  How ridiculous is that? As if life isn't demanding enough already...

Anyway, back to the blog title: I saw in my Google Analytics report that some visitors came to my blog searching for a "Keep Calm Carry On" poster as a  free download, probably because of this post. It looks like the frenzy over this poster isn't over yet so I decided to share the information about a Keepcalm-o-matic Website. You can enter you own text and choose between several interesting options (color, font, image, size). So go on and try it out, it's definitely fun. You can save your poster as a jpeg image if you like, and do as you please with it after that. Enjoy!

Make Your Own 'Keep Calm and Carry On' Poster For Free

Very Special Family Portrait

I woke up one day and my children were gone...somebody took my little princess and my smart little boy and left me with two troubled teenagers I didn't recognize at all. They were not bad in pretending to be my children so I played the game and pretended to be their mother for several years. Nightmare! I'm so glad it's over... I'm now a happy mother of two wonderful young adults! My princess lives in her own castle far, far away from us. My smart big boy still lives with us for the moment but I can see his wings getting bigger and stronger. They're both working, studying and dreaming... Soon I'll be left with memories and photos wondering where the time went. We actually don't have so many family photos, we have lost almost all of them fleeing from the danger of war in our country. I learned only much later that that was the most prized possession we had. Even after that, we  didn't take so many photos. I guess we humans have this fascination for capturing moments in our lives, whether by camera or paint. So I was very pleasantly surprised when my son gave us a very special family portrait, made by him, as a Christmas gift.

Several days before Christmas, I couldn't help but notice that something strange was going on, my son was very busy with something. Any attempt to learn what was going on failed miserably. Till the day we saw a very mysterious big package under the Christmas three. What a nice surprise it was! My very talented son created a "warholish" family portrait of our family using individual pictures, framed it nicely and made a gift for us. We just instantly fell in love with it and decided to expose it permanently in our living room. We placed it strategically  in our home, so we can all constantly be reminded of each other as we hectically chase through life. The value of the portrait my son made for us can be measured only by hearth. 

"A heart is not measured by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others." — Wizard of Oz

Very Special Family Portrait

Coucou, c'est moi !

Isn't that cute? Yes, it's in French and if you wonder what it means it's a very simple " Hello, it's me!"

So, here I am again. I've been busy last week and in the beginning of this week preparing my second exam in the series of eight. It must have been 15 years since I've had my last exam. I'm always very nervous before an exam  no matter how well prepared I am. To be honest with you, I'm very demanding of myself and I can't help it, this is the way I've been brought up. I had my second exam last night and it went very good again, I was actually very pleased with myself, if I may say so. And the best of all, I received the result of my first exam and it was 95 %! Well, yes, that's what I was looking for! Even better, as I was bragging about my note in front of my son, he told me that this means A+ at his university! I'll take it any time!

 I must come over as an incredibly arrogant person, sorry, but I'm soooo excited about it. And I love being good at things I do. Following these exams,  in April 2010 I should have my diploma that will allow me to find a better job and eventually earn more money. I'm so looking forward to it after many years of stress and work under pressure in chaotic conditions. But on the other side, I'm also very grateful for these years because I've learned so many incredible things that are hopefully going to serve me in my next job. Change is good. Change is chance. Chance is hope. Hope is life.

Coucou, c'est moi !

Love Everyday - Free eBook for Married Couples

While everyone is preparing for the official Day of Love, Mandi over at Organizing Your Way is offering a free eBook on everyday love in relationship and marriage. I'm a fan of Mandi's site for many reasons but I really loved this eBook that she prepared in collaboration with other editors and contributors.

You can get a free Copy of the Love Everyday eBook HERE. As Mandi said, feel free to share the eBook with your friends, family and blog readers.

Love Everyday - Free eBook for Married Couples

Ideas For Decorating With Leftover Wallpaper

After my last visit to the Home Depot I came home with two beautiful wallpaper samples. Actually I wasn't even looking for wallpaper, I'm not really a fan, I'm way to lazy to put it on and I would be even lazier to eventually remove it. But as I was looking for new paint for my second bathroom, I spotted some beautiful wallpaper rolls in the corner of my eye. There were so many new and beautiful  designs to choose from. Finally I decided to ask a salesperson for a sample from some of them. It should be enough for a little decorating project, I thought of a lamp shade for the base I already have. I also did some research on the Internet for other ways to use wallpaper samples or leftovers. So many intelligent, surprising and beautiful ideas crossed my way that I decided to share them with you. Here are some of them:

Isn't it obvious why I chose the pictures above with loads of pink? No? Look at the calendar...

For more new, lovely, surprising, inexpensive and DIY-doable ideas please continue looking after the jump (click on 'Read more'):

Ideas For Decorating With Leftover Wallpaper