5 design trends that need to stop..now

When I am not reading political blogs I am reading interior design blogs.  This morning I was looking at one such blog and the post was a house tour of a designer’s home.  Parts of it were gorgeous but my eyes started bleeding at the sight of the “Keep calm” poster.  Its a nice sentiment and I get the historical context but it doesn’t need to be manifested in fashionable colours and nifty frames and used EVERYWHERE. There is one in the waxing room at the salon I go to….  It got me started on thinking about other over used elements that can ruin an otherwise beautiful interior .

Cowhide rugs.  First I must say that we have them in our homes in Argentina, in all shapes and sizes (the most coveted here are baby cows that weren’t born alive, small and so soft and so sad).  Cowhides are used all the time in so many ways here as a result my perspective is a bit different.  While they are practical and can be beautiful when I see them used among french antiques and other uber refined elements they appear a bit precious  and affected to me. I like eclectic but this combo doesn’t work for me.  African animal stripes on pillows and fabrics are also over for me although I want  this purse in my dreams.

Mid Century 24/7.  There are mid century pieces that I love.  I have several reproductions of  the requisite Northern European designers. I inherited a beautiful 1960’s low slung Baker leather sofa from my parents.  And when flea marketing I tend to focus on some of the funky lighting from that era.  What I don’t like is a pure mid century look.  It looks dated, uncomfortable and kind of dead.  There is no energy. Like a vignette in a museum.  Maybe I don’t like it because some of it just ugly to me.  Too much plastic too much veneer etc.  What I do like is to see some of the best of mid century integrated with other pieces of quality.

Painting furniture/painting it turquoise.  I am not a purist about keeping a wood’s original finish.  I have painted furniture on occasion and own lots of Saltena furniture that features a beautiful patina due to layers of paint being added and removed. But a crappy piece of furniture doesn’t always emerged transformed in a good way after a coat of paint, especially turquoise.  This strong aversion to this particular color is due to having a 6 year old who adores turquoise, especially if  it is in the form of  a heart and has tons of sparkles.

Garden Gnome Furniture and other wee things for sitting on First I hate the idea of garden stools as a real piece of furniture.  If you are honest, you will admit that they are not comfortable for sitting or putting your feet on. They are not functional furniture unless you count being a giant drink coaster.  I don’t find them horrible to look at (especially the blue and white Chinese version) so I see their decorative value.  However, they are overexposed.  While I haven’t sighted one in the waxing room at the salon,  I did see them for sale in a rainbow of colors at the local Bolivian-run vegetable stand.

So after having totally dissed toad stools….  one of my most favorite pieces of Argentine design is a mate chair.  Mate deserves its own post but in a nutshell its a tea like substance (with digestive and stimulant proprieties) that you drink out a of gourd and if you are a cowboy or “gaucho” you drink it all day long.  These low to the ground chairs were used by the gauchos to drink their mate.  They are cool looking and comfortable.  The frame is wood, often algarrobo, a beautiful hard word with lots of knots and holes.  The seats are usually made of cow leather.  Sometimes the leather is woven like cane or stretched flat in a sheet.  Either way, it is a comfortable seat.  To make it extra cozy you can add a sheep skin.  They are great around a coffee table and double as a comfortable foot stool.

I do have a pair of trends I have more ambiguous feelings about.

Skirted tables I have see a lot of these lately.  Some are done with box pleats and have a clean look to them.  I am reminded a banquet buffet table and its not a look I am looking to emulate in my home.  I think they have to be extremely well made and maintained to pull off.  Otherwise it will just look like a dumpy banquet buffet table.

White Subway Tiles They may be the most pervasive trend in the design world right now. I think it is safe to say that almost any new kitchen has white subway tiles.  I wonder if the early 2000’s white subway tiles will be the 1970’s avocado green appliances? Will they  date your kitchen?  I guess I am also influence by the fact that there are so many great looking tile options, why pick white rectangles?

Despite all this critical analysis, I do actually believe you should surround yourself with what you love and makes you happy.  If you love sitting on a white subway tile toad stool, writing at your skirted desk, reveling at your Keep Calm wall art, wondering if you should paint your skirted desk or perhaps cover it and your Barcelona in a cowhide, go to it.

Mi Casa

This is going to be a  more than usual self-indulgent post.  While my posts are generally personal,  I hope that sometimes, they are observations or stories that touch on something relevant to the reader.   This post might not.  Its about me and my house project.  Now that we have closed the store, and Barbara has left, I have all sorts of time on my hands.  So I have been spurned on by some very organized and design oriented life style blogs.  One of my favorites is Chez Larsson.  Very simple clean and efficient aesthetic.  I also like her very practical ideas for organizing all the stuff in your life.

So I am ready to get my house in shape.  Fortunately, I don’t have to do tons to the house to live comfortably.  But I do want to make it our home.  So that means painting, some decorating, and throwing out a lot of crap, and organizing what is left.  We live in a 1922 Spanish Colonial Revival.  The house has 18 inch walls, terracotta tiled roof and lots of original iron work.  It has great bones.  Lucky for me.  I get to do the fun stuff.

Here are some photos of my first organizing project.  A coatroom.  I don’t have a before. Original to the space is the large Brazilian armoire, and the stainless steel hat rack/coat hook apparatus.(see last photo)  I hated it when we first moved in and wanted to replace with floor to ceiling built in coat closets with shelf storage above and below.  But the hooks work so well for the kids.  They are able to have three or four coats available, see them, and the best part, they can hang them up all by themselves.  Yeah!

I had the shoe bench made that runs the length of the left wall.  There are four dividers so it doesn’t become a shoe fest and evolve into a unmanageable pile of shoes.  On the right side I had two shelving units made.  One is a cubby box, so that each kid has a place for their backpack, swim bag and shoe bag (for futbol).  The other is a two shelf unit where we store smaller sports equipment in metal boxes (without the tops).

There is a box for balls, baseball gloves, and futbol shin guards and gloves.  There is a metal basket for knit caps that rarely get worn, a picnic blanket and etc…  In the big armoire there are tennis rackets, baseball  bats and misc other stuff. It does a pretty good job of keeping it all contained.  Of course the challenge is getting the kids (and GM, who is the worst!) to put their backpacks away, shoes under the bench and coats hung.  I say we do well 75% of the time.

There are a few things I would like to do to finish off the space.  It will be painted soon, a sort of adobe red, or pepper color.(SW 7589 Habanero Red)  I would like to hang three pendant lights like these in this long narrow space (its 12 feet long) and I am going to try to do a project I saw somewhere with colorful striped 2×3 rag rugs.  You you darn several of them together with a fun colored yarn to make a runner, cheap.  So there is my little story of domestic activity for today.  I know it might not look like much (the photos dont help) but I am pleased with it.

You take the good with the bad

I am exhausted.  I haven’t slept well in the last week.  Its has been a week full of late dinners, afternoons full of children’s parties and on Sunday it all culminated in one last asado.  It  was a last supper of sorts, I know that may be hyperbole and offensive to some, but it was more sad and final than celebratory.  Why so glum?  A dear friend has left Argentina.  I am tired and sad because finally after lots of parties and dinners, I said my final goodbye.

Will I see her and her family(my family now) again?  Yes, I will.  Probably in September and in November for sure.  This of course makes her leaving tolerable.  But it is not the same.  This is a person who I saw everyday.  This is a person who I shared my children with, we visited our respective homes outside of Argentina, we exercised together, we drank (a lot) of coffee together, we dieted together, we shopped, traveled and cooked together.  She has a husband that my husband more than tolerates, they are friends, good friends.  Our children are like family, they fight, they play and sometimes they just are..in the same room, doing nothing.  You get the picture.  My life here will never be the same.

But this is the life GM and chose.  I remind myself that if it wasnt for the nature of the expat life, I would never have met her and I am grateful that we have the means to be present in each others life going foward.  Its all good except the part were I take it for granted that after a punishing workout together with Juan, we can sit at a bistro table on the sidewalk, have a badly executed (all around) cafe con leche (for me) and a cortado (for her), talk about nothing and have a good laugh over it.

I have been thinking…

I have been thinking about really committing to writing.  I have thought making this blog part of the process of writing better.  I have thought about how to make this blog more fun.  I dont know how exactly you would characterise this blog.  Political, cultural, and personal.

I thought about what blogs I enjoy reading.  I  read expat, house, political and mom blogs.  I also read several newspapers and new magazine websites. I am thinking about broadening what I write, perhaps this making it easier to write everyday.  We will see.  It is worth a try.

Just because this will sooth my need to make things whole

Most who know me would describe me as relaxed, laidback, unflappable or in my husband’s opinion, sleep-walking. I am in reality, anal and neurotic about a few things. There needs to be the appearance of order, it doesn’t have to be real, but I want it to look nice and neat and have continuity. Its has been months since I have written and I cant pretend tons of stuff hasn’t happened but I also don’t want to get bogged down in a ponderous blog entry about lots of unrelated events, hence bullet points!

• I am still soaking up the beauty of a democrat being in the White House again, Yeah!!!
• Had a big birthday party for GM and two friends at new house… Was successful in that a lot of booze was consumed, several lambs and suckling pigs eaten and we were up until 7:00 AM. Although, GM I think is right when he says when you stay up that late, nothing really compelling is happening, you are just staying up for the sake of staying up.

Happy Anniversary Crappy Blogger

Its actually been a bit more that a year since I started writing this blog in earnest, and its an effort that leaves something to be desired. I guess I am a bit disappointed that I haven’t written more consistently and more creatively. There were times were I really enjoyed the writing, and was happy about what I wrote. I guess inspired would be the word. But more often, it was part of an exercise of writing everyday in order to flex my writing muscles. But I guess those muscles don’t come naturally to me nor am I motivated to build them. That’s disappointing, to me personally, because that was what this was all about. I am doing this for me.

Living here in Argentina, I spend a fair amount of my free time on the Internet. I am addicted to certain mega blogs that are political. I stream a lot of radio (Stephanie Miller and the Young Turks) and get all my news from reading the NYT, WaPo and LAtimes online. I also read a half a dozen personal blogs. Several are friends and it is a way to stay in touch with the daily lives of friends that live far away. But there are two that I came across on the Global Dashboard at WordPress that I have been reading for the last several months. They are both written by women, both well written, and both express ideas and values so diametrically opposed to me and interestingly enough, each other.

One is written by a women who was a passionate Hillary supporter and is among the minority that came out of the primaries a vehement Obama HATER. While, I would argue with her reasoning and the”facts” she provides to validate her perspective, she does present her opinions effectively. I have made comments contrary to what she has to say and the response is pretty ugly. Let just say she is very passionate about hating Obama and she is a bit of a mama bear about anyone who disagrees. She is entitled. Its her blog.

The other blog is written by a young mom who is writing from Texas where I gather her husband is a farmer. She is a committed Catholic who is focused on the pro-life issue of abortion. I tried to engage her a conversation opening the dialog to the other pro-life issues like poverty, war and the death-penalty. She was having none of it. Each time we conversed, she presented me with more and more obscure theological arguments for why abortion was the biggest evil. She has subsequently moved on to the “socialist” tact, which I find extremely naive and not worthy commenting on. I wonder if her husband receives farm subsidies?

The point of all this, is that these women are committed to their blogs. They write daily, if not more, and are consistent in their voice. They know what they want their blog to be and are doing it. And while I couldn’t disagree with them more, I respect them and if I was honest, am a bit envious of their successful blogs. Something to aspire to I guess, or not.

I am very fortunate that my life is full of happy (if not demanding) children, a spouse who has provided us with this amazing and exciting life through travel and adventure ( and who I do love so much) and friends near and far that make me feel whole. So why am I feeling sorry for myself? Because its a luxury I can afford, but I need to get over myself. OK. Done.

I am Sick

Not because this is disgusting, but because my body has failed me.  I have a head full of snot and a family of bacteria that seems to be traveling right into my Achilles heel, my sinuses.  Wish me luck and a good night’s sleep.

My head is back above water..

I am ashamed to say that my lack of writing has little to do with my very complicated life of multiple children, a retail concern to be managed and grown, and big logistical issues to resolve concerning our living situation here in Argentina. My lack of blog entries has everything to do with my compulsive, obsessive, maniacal, entirely unhealthy myopic focus on the democratic primary elections in the US. Because we have only regular cable television that affords me only CNN international Asia edition (don’t have any idea why), all my information, news and opinion comes from the Internet and the 12 or so blogs/news portals I get 85% of my information from. While I am reading blogs, I am simultaneously streaming progressive talk shows and on occasion, a Yankees game. If I am just listening to the radio, I play spider solitaire.

Highlight of Summer Vacation – Haircuts

Its been a month now..sad to say in two weeks I will be returning to Buenos Aires with two of the kids that want to go back and start school with their friends. Funny, that is not one of my childhood memories, wanting to cut vacation short and go back to school.Its been great. We have had a lot of guests, great weather and the kids are happy here. I have been doing a lot of cooking for the family. Kids suck to cook for. All my kids eat, but they eat entirely different things. So I am basically a short order cook. Its not very fun or satisfying being a short order cook. However, I do like cooking for grownups. They tend to be less picky, have better table manners and are always gracious with the chef..with kids I am a cook and with the adults I am a chef.

Detox

 

I have been happily ensconced in Patagonia now for a week.  It has been lovely.   We have had hot weather for so early in the season, but beautiful nonetheless, hot days and cool nights.  Perfect for swimming and sleeping.  There has been the usual chaos around the holidays in combination with setting up the house after an absence of nine months.  But it has been really quiet nice and relaxing and couldn’t be more different than our life in Buenos Aires.

It might be awhile

We are headed down South for the holidays and then some. Our interconnectivity is not a sure thing, so I don’t know if I will be able to post much. Anyway, my priority will be the kid’s blog which if I can get online and download photos I will be doing that. I will be playing it all by ear.

My gift to you is a suggestion. Buy this book on tape. Its very funny in a weird twisted way.

Peace and Joy

Happy Birthday Jerry

A special kitty for a special guy…

Introducing…b.madison

Come visit if you are in the Southern Hemisphere.

Day one and $68p later

Today we opened the store. It was a lot of fun. We had quite a few people walk in and look around, despite the rain. I think there were a fair number of people shocked by the prices (it is expensive) but almost everyone told us how beautiful everything looked and and several neighbors, many of them gay, where very welcoming and complementary and just happy to have us in the neighborhood.

I have to go to work tomorrow..at least it is not at a bowling alley

Its been a long time since I have had a paying job. When I worked, I was reasonably capable at my job and I had pride in what I accomplished and found great pleasure in what having a living wage afforded me. Its been 12 years more or less since I have been involved in a commercial enterprise and tomorrow a friend and I are opening a store in Buenos Aires.

I feel like I have NO FUCKING idea what I am doing. In fact, I am fairly certain that I do not know what I am doing at all. Not a clue. No relevant reference point, no reason to think I will succeed. I have never done anything in the retail world except consume. So as we get closer to our opening (Tomorrow!?!?) I am finding myself in a incredibly uncomfortable yet weirdly exciting place in my life. And I guess that is what living is all about.

Yeah !!!!!Spring has arrived

After what has been the longest and coldest winter on record in Buenos Aires, I am happy to report that today really feels like winter has departed until at least next year. It is fresh with a breeze but the sun is doing its job. Big plans today to take the kids to the patio at school and take a nap in the sun with a book.

Why I shouldnt be depressed…

My Baby is going to be 5 years old tomorrow!! Hard to believe.

Happy Birthday, Georgi you incredibly high maintenance force of nature. Our family hasn’t quite recovered from your arrival 5 years ago. You are kind of like the dog, it is hard to remember our simpler life that preceded you. Thats not to say our life hasn’t become richer, louder and pinker since your arrival. You have taught me that sweaters can be worn on your legs and that my jewelry is really yours. You have taught your three brothers that strong women are to be feared and catered to. And you have taught your dad that too much teasing has a price to pay. I hope you get everything that you want for your birthday (I know you wont) and that you get everything you want out of this life. (I am betting you will)

Why I am depressed about the state of the world

1. After 6 years we are still in Iraq and Afghanistan
2. After 9 months of a new Congress we don’t seem to be leaving Iraq and Afghanistan
3. Its looking more and more like we are going into Iran
4. Bush can inexplicably say “the Mandela is dead” in the middle of a press conference and no seems to think its odd, a concern, or maybe fucking insane!!!
5. Everyday there is more and more news and studies showing that Al Gore is right about the environment and our policy as a country and citizen of the world is to do NOTHING
6. HSM2 was even worse that HSM1, and you know I will be seeing it over and over again with my 4 year old tone deaf daughter accompanying all the musical and dance numbers
7. Jena6 is less newsworthy than Britney Spears
8. It looking more and more like we are going into Iran..oh yea I said that before but you know what its really getting me down…it would be a disaster. Someone has to stop him………….

I am going to try this again

It has been awhile. I guess I was too ambitious when I originally started this. It wasn’t really a blog but more a series of essays about expat life in Argentina. The burden of making them perfect made me stay away. Also, I think at some point, everyone stops being a self conscious expat and just starts living without looking at each encounter, event and cultural awakening as something worth commenting on. At some point you just start living and inculcate the differences.

That is not to say I dont have moments when it is so painfully obvious that my expectations and the reality of how things do work (especially in business) exist in different worlds. But I have learned to take the good with the bad. While it is maddening sometimes to do business here, the trade off is that my non-professional life here is full of genuine kind people who get it that family and friends are more important than making a buck (and apparently any transparency when doing it).

So what will be blog be like now??? I think more of a rambling stream of consciousness, a journal of thoughts that will allow me to practice my writing. My idea is to make this more political and current. Lets see how this works…

To the one reader of my blog

This is for a reader who wanted to be in contact. ewogirl@aol.com

If you are a direct marketing company..from best I can tell every commercial entity that does business on the internet has my email address, so don’t bother. If you are lonely, sorry but I have my hands full with my four kids and wouldn’t be a very attentive virtual mate. And everyone else…please I don’t need anymore SPAM.