Saturday 31 August 2013

Alhambra Love Letter Discovered After 92 Years In Spanish Palace

Each year, millions of visitors flock to the Alhambra, the Moorish palace in Granada, Spain. Pilgrims gravitate toward the palace's poetry-lined walls and secret gardens, each with its own legends and stories, some lost to time. But recently, researchers discovered an unexpected missive of another kind: A 92-year-old love letter, hidden in the ornate woodwork of a palace door.


A photo of the nearly century-old love note, posted to the Museo de la Alhambra's Instagram feed.
As part of a project to document and catalogue the site's history through high-resolution photographs, archaeologists moved a massive door composed of wood that once belonged to the now-defunct church of San Gil de Granada. While moving the massive wood frame, the team discovered a note folded and buried inside the surface's intricate latticework.


A team of archaeologists discovered the long-lost love letter hidden in a wooden door.
Unseen for decades, the love letter bears the date Aug. 29, 1921 from the town of Sorvilán, a municipality south of Granada along the Mediterranean coast. According to the museum's website, the letter was written on a Monday by a man named Pepe who intended for a woman named Emilia to read the letter the following day. Pepe wrote that along with some grapes, a man named Don Antonio would bring a letter for her on Wednesday. Pepe insisted, before giving an emotional goodbye, that if the transporter did not bring the grapes on Wednesday, that she not ask about the subject, reassuring her that he would go Thursday.
According to EFE news agency, the note, written with poor spelling on plain paper, goes on to say:
If on Wednesday they do not arrive, don't speak with the man with grapes on Thursday... Tell me if you received the grapes and you can send the letters with the man bringing grapes... With nothing else today, kisses from the one who loves you.
The provenance of the note remains something of a mystery to museum researchers. No one knows who Pepe or Emilia are, or if Emilia ever read the original letter or its mysterious sequel. Researchers have determined, however, that the letter would not have been hidden while the door's wood was part of San Gil de Granada, as the church was destroyed at the end of the 19th century to make way for a wider main street to run through the city's center.

source
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VOGUE: The September Issue


When it comes to style, and dreaming, I shall call reading VOGUE 
"Visualizing my better self". 
And that is what VOGUE is all about. 


(I know, this is the August issue, The Age Issue. Unmissable)


This is the US VOGUE September 2013 issue.
As read by
...
 Anna Wintour

Caroline Sieber, whose wedding is featured in the issue


J.Crew


Carolina Herrera (chicissima)

Aerin Lauder


My sweet Zac Posen

Reading the September issue with Estee, from Estee Lauder

To see more September Voguestagrams, visit here.



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Friday 30 August 2013

Friday's Fabulous Finds:Scandinavian, b/w and colorful photoblogs

 
 
 
This silk shop has some lovely prints, and I love the way the lady wraps her scarf!
From Oh Joy!
 
 
I love these chairs as architectural elements. From here.


 
 
A boutique opening at Mobel Pobel.
I'd actually like to incorporate large, modern paintings like these in our new home.


 
 
 
Beautiful, personal black and white photography at Honeypie Living etc.

Friday's Fabulous Finds is where I share the most noteworthy new blogs I found this week.
You are most welcome to join me by adding your own favorites in the comments.
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Brooklyn according to VOGUE US

What is it that makes Brooklyn so iconic? 
What's the charm?

According to Vogue,

"Models, writers, actors, and artists have been flocking to 
New York’s Left Bank for its destination restaurants, bustling farmers’ markets, Parisian-style parks, and passionate dedication to l’art de vie. Welcome to the new bohemian chic".

Vogue has prepared the perfect spread to match.


Lily Aldridge and daughter Dixie Pearl are ready for their table for two at Rucola, a Boerum Hill restaurant whose wrought-iron facade and farm-to-table menu recall a neighborhood Parisian bistro.

Read more here. And here.

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Thursday 29 August 2013

In the mood for...feather light

I fell in love with these soft images. 
I am in a mood for softness and lightness. 


I love everything in this photo. The wedding dress, the lace curtain, the color turquoise.


Feathers...and that turquoise again...


I like that cushion in an otherwise plain chair.


Paris, raw wood and ah! those lillies!



I can imagine the fried zucchini and spring onions, the pasta and cream...yum!
Summertime!

All images via decor8.


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Wednesday 28 August 2013

Inspiration: An (old) interview by Anna Spiro

A few days ago, I featured a picture of an Anna Spiro room that I love.
I found an interview of her 



Source: The Sunday Mail (Qld)
INTERIOR designer Anna Spiro has built her Brisbane store Black & Spiro into a successful international brand with a wallpaper line, a book deal and a popular blog - but she is still plagued by self-doubt.
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Anna Spiro can walk into a room and know what needs to be done. She exudes confidence and authority. Her eye for piecing together the many layers and textures to make a beautiful, sophisticated home is envied.
Brisbane-based Spiro, who has established herself as a leading interior designer nationally and sparked the attention of style- setters abroad, is perhaps most at home in her cherished inner-Brisbane New Farm store, Black & Spiro.


Established in 2000, it is the place Spiro has come of age as a designer and the place she freely admits she is "obsessed" with.
"I work all the time," Spiro says.
"The hardest thing in my life - and everyone knows it - is that I do what I do here without interruption. Unfortunately, everything comes second to this.
"I put my heart and my soul and my everything into this place. A lot of stuff gets pushed aside because of it. That's hurt a lot of friendships - I've lost friends - and that's hard, but this business, as well as my children and my family, is the most important thing to me. Between them and this, there's just no time for anything else.
"People don't understand my obsessiveness over being here (at work) and not going and having a coffee with them or ringing them . . . I just want to be here or at home. I just don't have the time to go and sit and drink tea."



Spiro, 34, has achieved plenty. Her blog, Absolutely Beautiful Things, has registered some 12 million hits and been cited by American style queen Martha Stewart as one of the top 10 design blogs to look out for.
Then there's the recent line of wallpaper designs for Porter's Paints and her brand new Penguin book deal. She's also been married to Brad for almost 11 years and has two sons - Harry, 9, and Max, 2.



But Spiro is still plagued by self-doubt.
"I'm a worrier, a stress-a-holic. I'm very emotional," she says.
"I'm a control-freak, a perfectionist, and it's very hard to live with. I am obsessive about this place. I leave at night and if those cushions aren't sitting straight on those front chairs I'm demented. I ring the girls (who work here) and tell them. You are on show 100 per cent of the time. You've got to be perfect. With my work I'm an extrovert and everyone thinks I'm so confident and bold and brazen, but I'm the most self-conscious scaredy-cat, nervous, shy creature you'd ever hope to meet.
"I'm not confident and not good at anything public or meeting new people. I hate it. I just get so caught up about what people think about me.
"I can get moody . . . it's not good when I get moody. Everyone suffers and my husband hates me. If something has gone wrong with a job or a client is upset with me . . . I like to please everyone."


In the cut-throat interior design world, Spiro knows she had a lucky foot in the door, landing an "unglamorous" junior position straight out of school with established designer John Black, a friend of her grandmother. The pair eventually went into business together, forming Black & Spiro, but went separate ways in 2006. It was shortly after that Spiro began her blog and, she says, really began to shine in her own right.


Spiro grew up in Brisbane's bayside of Manly and Wellington Point.
Her parents were, and still are, lawyers in their family practice, Macfie Curlewis Spiro.
She credits her mother as her "true inspiration". Her wallpaper collection is inspired by her time spent as a little girl with her mother in their garden, in what she says were "the happiest days of my life".
"My mother is certainly a very creative woman. She has great taste," Spiro says.
"She's the person I ask. I wouldn't trust anyone else."



Spiro's relentless work ethic has meant little time away from her store, even to have her sons. She was back at work within three days of being released from hospital after son Max was born.
"We have our routine. I'm very lucky," she says. "My mother-in-law is just amazing. She picks Harry up from school, she takes him to all his after-school sports, she does all his homework with him and cooks him dinner. It's awesome and that's why I can do this here without interruption. If I was interrupted I don't think I could do it as well.
"Then we have someone to help with our little one because I figure they are two different children. One is nine, one is two, they have very different needs."
Spiro, who lives at bayside Birkdale in a "rambling old homestead in need of renovating", says her bucket list includes decorating a boutique hotel and perhaps opening a second store in Sydney.
"Even up till last year, I would say to you: 'I'm not that good at this'," she says. "It's hard for me to say: 'I'm good at this' but . . . I do have to, for my own self, acknowledge that I am good at it because if I don't, I'll just keep beating myself up."
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Create the right balance:
- People struggle with colour, but we should embrace it, says Anna Spiro. "It doesn't have to be garish. To achieve a successful balance when using bright colour, I always suggest the use of natural rugs or dark-stained timber furniture to ground the colour scheme.
- When selecting cushions, choose a varying colour palette and mismatch the patterns. Mismatched cushions look best on a plain fabric sofa or a stripe or small pattern.
- When selecting furniture for a room, I usually suggest to my clients they invest in a good-quality sofa with a classic shape that won't date and that can be recovered over time.
- Invest in a beautiful antique dining table that will stay with you for your entire life.
- I love using lamps in a room to give beautiful ambient light.
- Mix antiques and modern furniture to create a lovely layered, interesting and unique look.
- Invest in beautiful paintings.
- Create unique tablescapes on coffee tables, hall tables and sofa tables using your collections, for example family photographs, books, old boxes, ginger jars or vases of flowers.
- Most of all, just buy the things you love because once in your home they will have their own very piece of unique thread that joins them altogether."
-------
Spiro's favourite style blogs:
Ben Pentreath - benpentreath.com/inspiration
Style Court - stylecourt.blogspot.com
Habitually Chic - habituallychic.blogspot.com
Sanctuary - houseofbliss.blogspot.com
Pip Shining - pipshining.blogspot.com
Read Anna's blog at: absolutelybeautifulthings.blogspot.com.au


I hope you enjoyed Anna Spiro's interview. She is an inspiration. So real and talented.

All images via web.

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Olivia Palermo's Greece

Because it is Summer 
and because I kind of like Olivia Palermo's style
who, 
by the way,
 is definitively a style icon.








Olivia Palermo with Tamara Beckwith Veroni and daughter Violet,
Johannes Huebl,Valentino,Giorgio Veroni and a friend.




With big Greek 
Thank Yous


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