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DIY mobile with paper ornaments

Tala’s nursery is a work in progress, and it’s finally starting to come together. When I have a bit of spare time and energy I work on little touches here and there. And I’m having fun!

I’ve been looking for ways to help Tala develop her visual acuity, so one of my recent projects was a DIY mobile to hang over her changing mat, for her to look at during nappy changes. After window shopping for baby mobiles online, I realized that many of them are made for adults to look at—that is, pretty from the side but not from below, which is the baby’s perspective.

Luckily, one of my baby shower gifts was a pack of pop-out paper ornaments by Dutch designer Jurianne Matter. Putting together a DIY mobile with these was super easy. I simply popped out the ornaments, folded them as per instructions on the package, and strung them with varying lengths of embroidery thread from a wooden embroidery hoop, which I then wrapped with washi tape.

Not only are the ornaments cute, colorful (love the touches of neon!) and graphic, but they also fold out into 3D shapes, making them interesting to look at from the underside—not just for mommy, but for baby too.

The ornaments are still pretty thin and low-contrast for Tala at this stage, but she’s started looking at them more and more. I blow gently at the top of the mobile to get the circles moving and draw her interest. I love seeing her try to focus on the shapes, knowing that they are getting clearer as her vision develops.

I have a few other projects in the works, so more nursery details to come!

3 Comments
Posted on May 7, 2013
Category: Creative Projects, House & Spouse · Labels: baby, color, design, nursery

Before & after: Living room

Though I had hoped Little Mango would come early, I have to admit there are quite a few pluses to her taking her sweet time. One of them is having the luxury of easing into our new home—figuring out storage, shifting furniture around, and putting some essentials into place. For a while, it seemed the configuration of our home was changing every day, but Marlon and I have finally settled into a layout that we like.

So here’s a little before-and-after to show you how we’ve traded the pristine emptiness of a new apartment…

for something a little more lived in… a little more “us.”

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Posted on March 5, 2013
Category: House & Spouse · Labels: color, furniture, home

Baby room basics

In a blogger’s ideal world, by this time I would be posting pictures of my beautifully styled, meticulously arranged nursery. It would have everything my baby could possibly need, plus a few (dozen) things that she actually doesn’t. It would be perfectly color-coordinated with a carefully curated selection of quirky little touches and charming little toys.

Well, this is reality. And in reality, there is no nursery… yet. That’s because Little Mango isn’t the first occupant of this space… Grandma is! My mom arrived this week and will stay until Easter, so our second bedroom first needs to be a guest room before it can become a nursery.

That hasn’t stopped us from laying the basic foundations for our future nursery. The first step: tearing down the huge built-in closets that took up nearly half the room.

Marlon and I agonized for weeks over whether or not to keep these closets. It just seems funny to me now! And when I remember how these closets became the subject of a hormonal meltdown (“That room is practically a closet! I don’t want our baby to grow up in a closet! Sob sob sob”), it’s even funnier.

In the end, we chose space for our daughter over storage for our things. Because our daughter is our daughter, and things are just, well, things. So out went half these closets, as well as the recycled train tracks that the previous owners used as shelves.

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Posted on February 22, 2013
Category: House & Spouse, Pregnancy · Labels: baby, color, home, nursery, pregnancy

Making it our own

It’s been over two weeks since Marlon and I moved into our new apartment. Every day is an opportunity to chip away at the chaos with little tasks, like buying toilet roll holders, as well as big ones, like assembling the most complicated sofa bed ever (Ikea PS 2012, I’m looking at you).

Though the list of tasks seems endless, none of it feels like a chore. Instead, they feel like the movements of our small family squirming into place—a turn here, a wiggle there, until everything fits just right. It’ll take a while, but in the meantime, every day I see our home starting to take on the little personal touches that make it ours. It’s a subtle, but wonderful satisfaction.

I loved how the previous owners decorated the place, with clean lines, a spacious feeling and minimal clutter. But as much as we wanted to do the whole minimalist Scandinavian thing, color has made its place in our home. I can’t stop it; it’s in our personality.

Books and art… can’t have a home without those. None of our paintings or prints are in their final place yet, though.

By the way… Marlon painted these!

We’re reconfiguring some things, like the old crates that used to be a TV console and are now hallway storage…

and finding new places for others. For example, my desk used to be in the guest room, but now sits between the living and dining spaces. There’s more pressure on me to keep it neat!

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Posted on February 1, 2013
Category: House & Spouse · Labels: color, furniture, home

The Alhambra: Colors and patterns

From yesterday’s post, you would think the Alhambra is all pale stone and gleaming serenity. But in reality, it’s full of two of my favorite things: color and pattern!

The most eye-catching surfaces are tiled with rich colors, and the Nasrid Palaces are full of them.

I’m loving these many-pointed stars; I’ve been obsessed with stars lately and this is an unusual way to do them.

Color and pattern are everywhere: on the walls, ceiling, floors, doors, windows. I can’t be sure, but it almost seems like no two patterned surfaces are alike.

Even without much color, the carved surfaces compete for attention. Including inscriptions in praise of Allah, repeated over and over, the level of detail is just mind-boggling.

To think that these were carved by hand, before there was a way to light spaces sufficiently—more than one master carver must have gone blind creating these works of art.

Of course, why do just tiles or patterns when you can combine both?

I mean, if you have an empire, more is certainly more.

And heck, if that that’s not enough, just throw in a few kickass doors with an awesome nail-head pattern. Just because you can.

Graceful serenity on the one hand, an explosion of color and pattern on the other. Can you see why the Alhambra is one of my favorite places in the whole world?

2 Comments
Posted on November 20, 2012
Category: Wanderlust · Labels: Alhambra, baby bump, color, Europe, Granada, Spain, travel

Planning the nursery: Color inspiration

Choosing colors for the nursery is something I’ve been itching to do for months. And it wasn’t just me—one of the first things Marlon asked me when we got home from the 20-week ultrasound was “So what color will we paint her room?” Excited much?

I’ve been drawn to baby rooms with a serene, restful, cocooning feel. Most of these spaces used lots of white and soft pastels. But I’m also attracted to nurseries that are modern, have room for a little fun and quirk, and are not too cutesy—spaces that can grow with the baby. Many of these use high-contrast colors like black and white.

I wondered if there was a way to combine the softness of pastels with the strong contrast of black. As she often does, Nature provided the inspiration I was looking for.

I love the beach at sunset, and this photo by Matt Hilvers on Flickr perfectly captures a deep black silhouette against a soft pastel sunset. I especially like that these pastels feel natural, almost dusty, and are not sugary-sweet.

I’ve also been thinking about stars and the night sky. The Hubble Site’s image gallery is filled with amazing photographs of space from the Hubble telescope… all available to the public online. (They even have images big enough to print as wall murals!) The photo of the Orion nebula on the right shows gorgeous shades of pink set against the universe’s midnight blues and deep blacks.

It was easy to get husband approval—Marlon loves the idea of being inspired by space (geeks rule!) and using black to offset the girliness of pink and pastel. Plus, it gives us the flexibility to create a black chalkboard wall when Little Mango gets older, which is an idea we both love.

Once we agreed on this general direction, I started seeing pastel and black everywhere—in places and objects that look both feminine and modern.

1 – Color palette by Bright Bazaar
2 – Icosahedron pendant light from ABC Home
3 – Lolita, a bar in Slovenia
4 – Night Peonies art print by Cozamia
5 - Jar No. 3 via Present & Correct
6 – Neon stars garland via April and May Studio

So, Little Mango’s nursery is slowly taking shape in my mind, and already I’m having so much fun planning it. It sure beats thinking about labor!

Related reading: The Junior is a gorgeous kids’ style blog that uses these colors in its blog design. Looks so fresh and yummy!

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Posted on November 12, 2012
Category: Creative Projects, House & Spouse · Labels: baby, color, home, nursery

Notebooks from LikeStationery

Before things get lost in all the baby excitement, I wanted to show off a few goodies that I picked up from Kleine Fabriek. It was a trade event, so I couldn’t buy any of the adorable children’s clothes and things on display from the exhibitors. However, that doesn’t mean my wallet escaped scot-free!

Not when a funky pop-up shop from Dutch webstore LikeStationery was on site to tempt me with its irresistible wares. LikeStationery is the online store of Amsterdam-based graphic Sanne Dirkzwager, a.k.a. Strawberryblonde, who, as her shop name implies, has a passion for stationery. Something I’m sure lots of girls can relate to… like I do.

I love paper, but notebooks are my true weakness. My mom loves them too, and my growing collection of unused notebooks—which grows after every trip—is one of the things that makes me realize that perhaps we are all destined to turn into our mothers someday. (My penchant for red lipstick is another.)

So I just couldn’t resist picking up these adorable notebooks at LikeStationery’s pop-up store. I’ve been craving for color during this (mostly) drab gray summer. Since I couldn’t choose between something pastel or bright, I got both. The Swedish words on the pastel one pushed my wanderlust button.

I also couldn’t pass up this sunshiny yellow notebook with a library card slot in the front. This reminds me of a childhood pleasure: borrowing books from the school library! I was a voracious reader as a kid, a true librarian’s pet and nerd-in-the-making who always filled up several library cards each school year.

Aside from the notebooks, I also bought a smart little earphone winder. It’s just a simple strip of suede, but it keeps things tidy and (the most important thing) I have managed to somehow not lose it yet. Sometimes the simplest things work best.

LikeStationery offers worldwide shipping and has a fun, colorful blog chronicling the inspirations behind the shop’s wares, as well as Sanne’s own design work.

Do you find stationery irresistible too? What form of paper can you absolutely not resist?

3 Comments
Posted on August 16, 2012
Category: Shopping & Finds · Labels: color, notebooks, paper, shopping

Reykjavik: Color me charmed

Iceland is a small island with a small population: exactly 320,044 people as of June 30, 2012, in fact.

A running count of the population at the Hamburger Factory in Reykjavik

So it makes sense that Reykjavik, its biggest city, is a capital with a charming, small-town feel—kind of like Amsterdam (pop. 800,000). Although two-thirds of the Icelandic population lives in and around Reykjavik, many head to the countryside during the summer to work in tourism. (One such Reykjavik resident was our Zodiac boat captain, whom you met in a previous post.)

Still, Reykjavik felt far from empty during our visit. That’s because this city is packed—with style, creativity, and color. Just check out these houses in downtown Reykjavik!

Neon. Love!

One striking similarity I found between Reykjavik and Manila: the use of corrugated iron (a.k.a. GI or galvanized iron) sheets as a building material.

In Reykjavik, the choice is dictated by the harsh weather; back home it’s simply a matter of economics… which makes our GI homes look ~~totally third world~~ quite different. How I wish Manila could pull off this look!

That similarity aside, the pristine white trim, clean lines and enamel house numbers give Reykjavik homes that distinct Scandinavian vibe.

In addition to the houses, much of the color in downtown Reykjavik comes from street art, which is everywhere.

[Read more...]

13 Comments
Posted on August 9, 2012
Category: Wanderlust · Labels: color, Europe, Iceland, Reykjavik, travel

Oranje boven! Please?

The Euro Cup fever has penetrated even my thick, football-immune, self-protecting bubble. It’s hard to ignore, because here in Holland, football fever wears such a loud color.

Orange is the national color, after the royal House of Orange-Nassau. The rallying cry is “Oranje boven!” which translates to “Orange above” or “Orange on top”, kind of like saying “Orange is the best!” These days, orange is everywhere: in the streets, on heads, in cars, you name it.

Here’s how I, a football-clueless girl from a football-clueless country, understand what needs to happen: Holland needs to win against Portugal today, and a bunch of other people need to lose, so that Holland can qualify for the Euro Cup and all this oranje fever can continue.

I’ve never been into football; I’m ashamed to confess I don’t even know the rules. But the sheer enthusiasm of the Dutch makes me want to get into it. It makes me want to put on my orange feathered tiara and shriek along with the rest of them… just because they make it look like so much fun.

If Holland loses today, there will be no more omnipresent orange banners, no more silly orange hats, no more crazy orange outfits, and no more packed bars for this curious expat to invade. The oranje fever can’t end, because I haven’t gotten into it yet.

So, in the interest of fun … I’m rooting for you, Netherlands! Oranje boven! Tuloy ang ligaya! HUP HOLLAND HUP!

5 Comments
Posted on June 17, 2012
Category: Life in Amsterdam · Labels: Amsterdam, color, Euro Cup

Paint it black

Spring is finally here, and my own personal travel “season” is about to start. Since I’m going to be away often over the next two months, I didn’t want to start a new watercolor project (which normally takes a few weeks). So the objective of my last class was to finish something fast.

My subject of choice: a certain black cat named Rogue.

Her proportions are a bit wonky, but you’ll have to forgive me as I didn’t even do a sketch for this one. I pretty much started splashing around with a big brush, as my teacher wishes I would do more often. But I think this captures her cranky/evil look pretty well; it’s the one she pulls when she’s sleepy and I’m trying to play with her.

It’s an interesting exercise to paint black without actually having black in my palette: I used indigo, brown, and a touch of red. I plan to use it as a study for a bigger, more carefully considered portrait of my pet (cat-rait? Pet-rait?). But in the meantime, I have some traveling to do! #excited