The winter living room

Some time ago at the end of summer I bought a handful of pink decorative pillows and filled our living room with pink objects. 

Then, I remember saying that this was going to be the look I wanted for our living room for the entire winter. 

Well, you all know how it goes… yes, pink is one of those colors that can add more style and serenity to any home décor.  It will also always appear as something that will light up a room, yet, although I love pink, I get tired of things real fast, and winters are way too long around here to leave things just as they are… 

...which it can only mean one thing! I went back to my silly love for this crazy mixture of patterns, geometric forms, grays, blacks, whites and golds…

So I changed and swapped things around again! We shape our lives we shape ourselves and our dreams, so why not also shape our homes the way we want it to be, or be seen and feel?

This is what I did:  I replaced all the pinks of summer bouquets by the greens of new plants to add a bit of an organic feel to the room... 

Of course, not that nature doesn’t already rule this roost you know… so when I say 'adding new plants' I'm only saying 'adding more’.

A new monochrome throw to mix with the monochromatic pillows on one of the sofas, a white furry rug over the rug, a black and white table runner for a decorative touch on the other sofa and everything else put away.  Simple, clean, natural; a crazy mixture of patterns, all soothing colors, dear to the heart and a happy place to be!

It’s been really cold and gray for weeks and weeks around here, and they said that it snowed profusely while we were in Albuquerque, this past week.  The garden is a dear, but strange place to me these days too, and I hardly go outside anymore, or don’t go at all.  I only observe and visit it from behind the windows, and the sky is a rendering of yesterdays in deep grays, and it looks like an old canvas of monochromatic colors, just like what it looks on the inside of our nest…

Edwards is already pre-ordering roses. I want a climber, or two—a “Kiss me Kate”, or a “Zephirine Drouhin”, and I want the English “Abraham Darby” I always had, and two or three more—“Boscobel”, with its beautiful flowers of rich salmon coloring and an “Ambridge Rose” and a “Carding Mill” too.  I’m a dreamer, and even if I don’t get these many roses; and I probably won’t, I’ll still keep dreaming… dream of a garden filled with all sorts of roses and big lush trees that can finally make me feel surrounded by only nature in my little world; ever again having to see that awful two-story house on the back…

What are your dreams and plans for spring!

My gypsy jewelry and the magic in us

Necklaces and pendants, bracelets, anklets, rings, earrings and birthstone jewelry...  

I love them all!

I call this amalgamation of trinkets and charms my “gypsy jewelry”, simply because they’re cheap and because they possess no other value than the value my own body and personality bequeath them every time I wear them.

If they jingle the way they jingle, or if they move or dance or change color this way or that other way, it is totally because of me, and the magic that flows from me, and not because of the jewel in itself; it is because of how I embody my femininity or how I move and take and conduct my life… so they’re like a magical bunch only I could give it life… and so is with you, and you and everyone of us.  Nobody is like us, everyone is unique and we all posses our own king of magic...

Each individual is unique because there is nobody else like him. Comparison would have been right if we all were alike; but we’re not.  Even twins are not absolutely alike; it is impossible to find another soul who is exactly like you.  Thus, no jewel no pair of shoes no dress or skirt or hair style are always going to look the same on everyone; not even the food we make taste the same, even when everything is the same.  Isn’t that such an amazing thought!

Do you like shiny, sparkly, glittery things?   I do! I love all sorts of girly blings and sparkly things...  but jewelry isn't just good for dressing up an outfit, you know... it can also serve for dressing up a bedroom, or a bathroom, like I do around my house!

I like to display my gypsy jewelry in unusual and unconventional creative ways. Like stacked on a broken old lamp found in a dumpster!

Or placed together on a vintage plate, or hanging from a tarnished teapot or an old vintage cup...

Add some lace and silk roses to your vignette and in an instant you'd had created a lovely spot that will bring much happiness to your heart.  Little things, small things, unimportant and inexpensive things are always the best to me!

Be happy, be cheerful, be you!  Nobody is exactly like you, so go out into the world and bewitch them all with your uniqueness and own special magic!

Hasta pronto!

Winter at this old house in the roses

Is anyone here? Anyone at all? Lately, it seems to me, as if I’m the only living single soul floating above this lonely planet called “That old house in the roses”. You all know how it feels. It is like walking in the air all alone, or like floating in the moonlit sky while seeing the people far below sleeping as I fly… far, far across the world the villages go by like trees, the rivers and the hills, the forests and the streams… and I’m still the only one floating on this sky… yes, just like the old song says. But really, is anyone here? Do people read blogs anymore?

I’m sleeping more than I should and waking up much later than I want.  I’m reading three or four books at the same time and really not reading any; I’m baking what's suppose to be heart-shaped puff pastries, and instead getting something more like mushy stuffed flounder. I feel inadequate, and lacking; I’m lighting up candles and hibernating—like a she-bear without her cubs, like a wolf deprived of her instincts and a rose without her soul; one-part water and one-part dust. And how impermanent we all are, our bodies made of remnants of stars, massive explosions in the galaxies and dreams.

My green thumb has turned black too, so it seems… blame that to winter too, for some of my plants had to finally be discarded.  Overwatering was probably the reason why they weren’t thriving, and of course all those tropical ones--indoor heating, lower humidity in the air, the struggle to find a proper window, not enough light and so on.  Still…

 
...Still, the ones remaining look so pretty, and I so love each and everyone of them!

By the window in the gypsy room one of the geranium has started to flower...

This little tree here was a Mandeville tree this summer filled with beautiful crimson flowers, but now it is my all year around little Christmas tree. 

The Mandeville didn’t survive, but it gave me the perfect platform to turn it into a kind of a natural little Christmas tree.  I added some baubles and fairy lights, and then covered the soil with pinecones.  I love it so much, it will continue to sit here all year!

Now tell me... how do you fight the winter blues?