AT HOME FOR CHRISTMAS

Vacations, family, gifts, trips, huge meals, parties and a list of resolutions. Christmastime must be here

Our blog is taking a little break until next year! We won’t be publishing new posts for a few days, but we’ll be back rarin’ to go on the 13th of January, and we’ll welcome in the year with a recipe for a detox breakfast – we’ll all need it, so don’t miss it! We all wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

We’d like to leave you with an idea: to have a special, personal Christmas created just by you, because handmade is definitely “in”. Here are a few suggestions:

- Love and cookies: make gingerbread cookies with imagination or a message. It’s fun – even better in company – plus afterwards you can give them away.

- Make your own Christmas cards to ring in the New Year, then send them by email, snail mail, courier, whatever you can come up with yourself.

- Think of original text messages to send at midnight on the 31st so that you aren’t just sending the latest tired joke.

For anything that you want to make/cook/set up/build at home this Christmas, let yourself be guided by others at the huge, fascinating website:
www.instructables.com

NEW YEAR’S PANTIES AND OTHER LUCKY RITUALS

The last night of the year brings to the fore all the dreams we have for 2009. Talk about pressure! Such excitement deserves an effort in your preparations. Note to self: a surprise with special, fun details can help make this night unforgettable.

What are your lucky rituals going to be for 2009? Here are some of the most popular ones, plus we’ve added a few just because they’re fun and original.

Obviously the first one is panties! Word has it that wearing red panties on New Year’s Eve helps you find true love and passion in your life. At women’secret we’ve designed a small collection to seduce on New Year’s Eve . You can find them at www.womensecret.com, but a word to the wise: you have to wear them for the first time on the 31st of December, and if they’re a present, so much the better!

[…]

LES VALENCIENNES. SEASON SNEAK PEAK

Fashion brands keep introducing their collections for the next season earlier and earlier. The time will come when one winter we’re showing you the collections for the next winter… No! We actually won’t go that far, but we all like to know what’s in store, what colours will rule in future fashion so we can buy the newest trend before anyone else does. So… here’s our proposal.

women’secret gives a sneak peak at spring with pastel colours that are inspired by those first days when the sun begins to warm up a bit more: green, crystalline blue… Timid floral prints that put the first notes of colour on your lingerie. Highly suggestive yet delicate sets – lace, transparent tulle – to go with the lighter garments that we don in fine weather. The collection oozes springtime all round. We love lingerie-like dresses that you can begin to wear with high-heeled boots over your cigarette pants. And don’t forget the wool jacket in aquamarine, which will be like your second skin as soon as you put your coat into storage. You’ll see how you can’t resist them.

You can see and purchase the entire collection here.

AN ALTERNATIVE CHRISTMAS

Our wish this Christmas is to enjoy an experience which will live forever in our memories. It occurred to us to search out unusual, but nevertheless totally Christmassy, travel plans and we came up with:
(No offence to the Rockefeller Center and Laponia, but that’s not where the magic of Christmas is to be found…)

1) A White Christmas in Trans-Siberia, 2) An island called Christmas 3) A visit to Italy to see a Christmas tree the size of a mountain 4) Sleeping in an igloo in Andorra

1) Christmas in Trans-Siberia: just the thing for anyone not scared of the cold. Spend Christmas in Moscow then travel up to Trans-Siberia, cross the Volga, enjoy the snowy scenery and celebrate New Year’s Eve in Irkutsk, “the Siberian Paris”.
www.adventurecenter.com/Sundowners/trip/tsxs&var=tsxs

2) Christmas Island: an island with a tropical climate! It’s a coral atoll in Micronesia, with coconut palms and crystal clear waters. It was so named by Captain Cook, no less, on discovering it on 24 December 1777.
lonelyplanet.com

[…]

BAC! FESTIVAL ‘08 IN BARCELONA

It’s worth taking a stroll around the CCCB to see the 9th edition of the BAC contemporary art fair. What is it about? The consumer society seen by emerging artists from different countries, from Chile to Poland. What will you see? Interesting vision of the culture of excess and their narcotic power that distorts reality. A freedom of formats – photography, painting, installations, videos, etc. – and more than a handful of fascinating propositions, like the photograph series by Romain Laurent used for the fair’s poster, the installation I Am Super (portraits printed onto tetrabrik containers) and the powerful images shot by American photographer Mr. Toledano.

And that’s not all, there’s still more: the students of the IED will show their own visions of the subject in the IED vitrine; the students from the IDEP will present a display of posters about low cost design in Espai Gran Vía; and there are sessions showing video pieces. More information in the BAC catalogue or website:
www.bacfestival.com

Other related links:
www.cccb.org/es/
www.lasanta.org
www.romain-laurent.com/
noquiet.blogspot.com/
mrtoledano.com/

TODAY I DON’T WANT TO GET UP…

OR, HOW TO SPEND THE ENTIRE DAY IN YOUR PYJAMAS

There are days when you don’t feel like getting out from underneath the covers. But there’s one day, just one a year, when not only do you not feel like it, you just refuse to do it. You’re not ill, you’re not tired, you’re simply not in the mood to get up and go to work (obviously this only happens on days when the alarm clock rings!). You decide that today you’re staying put under the pillows, in your pyjamas, not thinking about anything in particular and eating ice cream in bed. Come on, what kid hasn’t faked a high fever every now and then by heating up the thermometer with the light on the night table? So, this is the same thing but a few years further on and with more awareness. That’s why it feels much better than when what you were skipping was school. For this reason, and because of the little white lie and the telephone theatrics that you have to perform to get “today I don’t want to get up” past your boss disguised as illness.

Long live pyjama day!

THE END

It is difficult to resist the charm of being able to bring something to a close – a story, a day, a sensation – before it loses its magic, before it can turn sour, before it becomes commonplace. This is why the contents of The End Pool are so evocative, a collection of images of the ends of old movies: different variations of the magical words “The End”. A variety of compositions, fonts, colours and textures that brought film stories to a close. All you have to do is let your imagination soar and reinvent each of the stories that these films conceal inside. The only rule is that you start from the end.

www.flickr.com/groups/400716@N22/pool