Where Are You, Olga?

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Let the coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness :) Talk to strangers and take wrong turns, read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful - make tiny interesting choices to find adventures. Dream dangerously and outrageously and make something that didn’t exist before… because there is nothing like a dream to create the future!

Image by Olga

It’s almost time for me for another trip (next week), which I start really looking forward to… it’s home this time! (and by ‘home’ I mean the place where I was born and lived until I turned 17) I’m excited!

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Does it often happen to you that you grow a bit tired of the place where you live and need to go somewhere for a change to get new impressions and learn something new? As for me, I do need to do that very often. If I didn’t - I would grow very restless…

I like the complete change of surroundings (no matter if it’s for work or fun), the change of the country, the culture, the language - the experience is always very enriching and worth the trouble of being ‘on the road’. The further I go - the better, and travel definitely makes us more open-minded. I try to travel as often as every 1,5 - 2 months (some say it’s too much, but not for me) and I was lucky I was able to do that both in ‘08 and ‘09. I keep hoping for the same in 2010, I need to put this on my wish-list for Santa :)

Imagination and fiction make up more than three-quarters of our real life.
— Simone Weil

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Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius, and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.
— Marilyn Monroe

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I love these lazy holiday times with lots of candles, good food, winter decorations, spicy aromas, when it’s so great to stay at home and watch the bad weather from the window… I hope you are enjoying yourselves as well…

I have changed Where Are You’s ‘look and feel’ a little - I wanted to make it slightly more personal and get away from standard things Blogger offers. I’m very much enjoying the bigger pictures :). There are still some things left to change and I’ll do that gradually, but I really want to ask you for your opinion..

Ok, I’m gonna go and make a cup of Christmas coffee with cinnamon now…

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I would like to wish you all a very Happy Christmas!

Thank you for your interest and for sharing your views here, I really enjoyed getting to know many of you!

Hope you all have a wonderful time with friends and family full of warmth, cosiness and cheer and may these mystical moments stay with you for longer than just a few days…

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In my thoughts I very often come back to one topic…

It’s about the goals we set in life. We all have our dreams and aspirations, but also we try to live up to expectations of others. So it is a big conflict - living up to someone’s expectations very often interferes with things we really want to do or achieve, things we quite often dream about. Has it ever happened to you?

What if we leave everything behind and follow a DREAM? Is it too childish or too egoistic maybe? Is the final goal worth making a sacrifice this big? Does leaving all behind mean one is strong? Or is it on the contrary a weakness - the ability to make sacrifices for others being a strength?

As we get older we limit ourselves to certain things within our comfort zone, we conform with our reality and we stop striving for more, or even thinking what we’d really like to be in this life. We are too ‘experienced’ for believing there are no limits, that we can climb Mount Everest, that WE CAN CONQUER THE WORLD…

This is sad, isn’t it? Are we too afraid of making mistakes? But without them what would shape our lives? When we are children all our life’s about the pursuit of fun… But then we grow up and learn to be cautious… So when has it stopped being fun and started being scary..?

‘Revenge’ video by Lernert & Sander

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Again, I’m quite curious about your opinions :)

Time to relax and sleep sleep sleep…

Time to wake up late, peep out from under the covers, look out of the window onto the cold and snowy street softly lighted by the midday sun… Time to stretch your legs and go to make a coffee, see it boil in a little coffee pot, listen to its squelching noises, smell the spreading brisk aroma…

Time to be lazy… think of this and that… read a book… enjoy the silence… lie on the sofa… not look back… enjoying every minute of the day…

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Image by Olga

I’ve been planning to share my impressions after visiting Danish Museum of Art & Design for some time now.. I was able to go there when I went to Copenhagen for a quick 1 day visit during my week’s stay in Gothenburg in late November. I love Scandinavian design - very simple yet brilliant, ecological and very functional, so the museum kept me amazed for entire time I spent inside and I found the experience very educational. This is a place definitely worth visiting if you are interested in art & design.

Image by Olga

Image by Olga

The most interesting for me was the exhibition of classic Danish design and furniture from the permanent collection. I have learned that many things I considered ‘classics’ were designed by the Danes and surprisingly a long time ago. For example the very well known Egg chair by Arne Jacobsen was actually created in 1958(!) for Radison SAS hotel in Copenhagen. And it still looks super modern! And so does his Swan chair .

Image by Olga

Image by Olga

This is how the hotel interiors with these chairs looked like back in 1958.

Image by Olga

Some more chairs I found interesting…

Image by Olga

Image by Olga

Image by Olga

Image by Olga

The museum is full of many more interesting and whimsical objects - various unusual lamp designs and a huge collection of posters ranging from the times of Toulouse-Lautrec till present. I’m going to devote another post for it soon - it’s definitely worth it!

Image by Olga

Image by Olga

I was totally surprised to find my old phone there in the museum! And then I thought maybe I don’t have to worry that much about my bad habit of choosing things based on their design rather than functionality… :P Do you also do that sometimes?..

Image by Olga

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I love this movie. It is so real.

…and that final whisper…hmmm…

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Video via You Tube

The Rotating Kitchen by Zeger Reyers was put into motion during the opening of the exhibition ‘Eating the Universe’ at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Germany. It will keep rotating slowly till February 28th 2010.

I am very curious to learn your thoughts and opinions about this installation. What do you think of this?

Video via Vimeo

Cardin Hat over Paris. Queen, 1960

One of the great pioneers of fashion photography, Norman Parkinson is famous for his sense of style. Distinguished as one of the true innovators in his field, he pushed the boundaries by bringing the model out of the studio and onto the street. He set the model against unusual and daring backgrounds, such as the gritty working-class districts of London, and was a seminal influence on subsequent generations of fashion photogaphers.

Vogue 1955

Times Square, NYC, September 1949

1938

Vogue, march 1951

Vogue, February 1950

Vogue, February 1948

Vogue, January 1949

Queen, August 31, 1960

American Vogue, October 1, 1949

Vogue, April 1 1950

Vogue, November 1956

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Amazing video. And song.

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I’m going through some bad luck with my external hard drive… The drive with ALL my pictures stopped working for no reason at all and I’m left ‘pictureless’ with only some latest photos left on my PC…:( I am taking the drive to the company which recovers the data from broken hardware hopefully some time this week (no, I don’t have copies - very stupid, I know), and I keep hoping… And we do learn on our own mistakes. But better to learn on the mistakes of others! So please make copies of all your precious pictures (and blogs) before it is too late!

All this brought me to thinking of how dependent we are on technology these days… But the robots below are kinda cute and do not look as threatening as hard drives…

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Plus a really great robo-boogie video can be watched here.

Image by Olga

I haven’t recently posted anything much about my home - this is what happens when you travel too much I guess :) But when I come back from my travels I always want to come to a very warm and beautiful place I call home and I like to do all sorts of things to convert it into this cosy, colourful and comfortable place to live in. Below are some of the things I created or added a personal touch to - to make them less boring.

This is a small stool which I decorated using decoupage technique, which looked like this and this before.

Image by Olga

Image by Olga

Image by Olga

I sprayed this clock silver, then added the new background and the round elements to its lower panel and sides.

Image by Olga

Image by Olga

After adding the knobs brought from India to the wooden desk and the chests of drawers they definitely started to look better - slightly more exotic and now they really stand out. I love those Indian knobs - such a simple yet exquisite invention! Here is how the desk drawers looked before.

Image by Olga

Image by Olga

Image by Olga

This simple IKEA tray started to look much better after I covered its bottom with wrapping paper and a layer of transparent acrylic lacquer.

Image by Olga

And the last but not least is the old broken lamp found in the attic… We had to remove all the old cables and replace them with new ones. I was lucky to find a couple of old lampshades in a second hand shop, one of which suited well the recovered lamp.

Image by Olga

Image by Olga

Image by Olga

Giving things the new look and feel is quite easy - sometimes it costs nothing to create an absolutely unique thing for your place. I really have fun doing so :)

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