longest i have been away...

...since i started blogging again...i have been having blog withdrawals and thought i should drop in a line and say hello to all my friends here.
i ve had some crazy busy past 2 weeks and will continue to till this weekend is over. i shall return next week and share all the happenings, the thoughts and the fun filled up in this little niche here!
till then i will sneak preview into whats been keeping my occupied...

a wedding designed, planned & executed

(more to follow on my website blog shortly)
my first photography project
preparing for the IVS Alumni show II 2009
exhibition starting December 2, 2009
&
some traveling plans

see you next week with more!
have a great weekend

sneak preview: grey design

when an opportunity comes along to work on a renovation project, my excitement is unbearable. here's a sneak preview of what i put together for my client.

Tomorrow, he will be seeing textured grey slate tiles, with more grey in smooth finish glass, splurges of orange on white walls and stainless steel vanity along with a stainless steel bench, humanized with a wenghe tray.

All of this just so his guests can feel extra special. dont you just love such hosts!

a balancing act

the last few months have been about new beginnings for me. i like new beginnings. i find they are exciting, refreshing, motivating and they keep you going. my new beginnings have been in my personal life, my professional life and my online presence, to name a few. some beginnings have been experimental and some more serious. some merely for the self like this blog and some a creative outlet.

and i see more to come soon, like another blog,(shhhhh, still in the works) that will be a creative outlet on a more impersonal and less narcissist level then this blog. my first real, photography project that will show itself next week, and some more professional growth, also in the works since it requires some pre-req exams that i will be writing for the next few months. and in less then 3 weeks i will also be hitting the 31 mark! wohoo!

last week was another new beginning as i launched my website and am now officially open for business. this has been an interesting experience with all kinds of goodness and weirdness that has come my way from all directions be it family or friends. a lot of oh i was thinking of starting the same thing or oh how will you run your own business with a baby, or most favorite are you getting any paid projects or are these all favours for friends!! and the worst kind what if it doesnt work. God knows thats been my biggest concern. but i guess i ll never know till i try, now will i....

what is also exciting to see is that so many mums i know are suddenly pushed to do something with their lives. a sudden momprenur-ness is in the air. i guess you need one doer around to create a ripple effect. i have been getting phone calls asking for tips and guidelines on how to start a business, the legalities involved, the time management, the work-home balance, is it worthwhile, how much capital this, that, the other .

and for this i would just like to say one thing I DONT KNOW, I HAVE NO ANSWERS! please dont make me anxious, please people if you have nothing good to say dont say anything at all. please back of and let me breathe, let me enjoy my very short lived celebrity moment of the ohh and the ahhs. please dont get me wrong i will help and i have already taken on a few on my little work ventures and am guiding a few others with whatever little knowledge i have. but geezzzzzz im no rockstar!! i just started, how do you expect me to have the answers when im still searching for them myself. give me some space, give me some time to grow, give me a chance and let ME give ME a chance as well!!(phew, there i said it aloud and felt mighty good saying it).

maybe im being intolerant towards my surroundings, maybe people are just expressing their excitment. but the newness of this is quite overwhelming for me. and i dont know where this will take me. maybe this is an experiment, maybe i will fail or maybe and hopefully i will succeed and eventually achieve my very simple retirement dream #14. who knows. its something i have always wanted to try and that's what im doing. and her i CAN say something, that its totally worth following your dreams, because in the end and whatever the end may be you know you gave it a shot. and that for me is a life lived.

i know there are some very successful momprenuers out there, some women who work hard to achieve the work-home balance and some others who dedicate themselves to building their homes. some inspiring women who are doing good just by being themselves and what they do best. and so many, so many more. and i admire them all just the same and aspire to be one of them. i want to be a doer and i want to have no regrets in my life. i want to achieve balance online and offline. and this balancing act is not easy, but looking at all these women around me is like a driving force. if they can do it why cant i...

so here i am this Sunday morning sharing with you some thoughts and some new beginnings and wishing all the women out there, all my friends in the blogosphere, and all of those performing the balancing act, the best always.

do check out my website when you get a chance and feedback is more then welcomed. spread the love, spread the word!

Project 365 @ one week

Today i have successfully and a little painstakingly, (due to little N's injury) completed my first week of Project 365. and here it is in a nutshell.

We bought our Nikon D40 in December 2008 for a Spanish holiday that we were off to. Bad idea! Never buy a new camera that too a DSLR that you’ve never used, right before a 2 week long vacation. Bad,bad,bad!

That is not to say we didn’t take pictures. Oh we took pictures. We took over a 1000 pictures that have not been sorted out to this day. But unfortunately only a handful turned out fairly decent. The rest make for a blurry stack of memories resting somewhere in F’s external hard drive.

Upon our return from a blurry and nauseous vacation we found out I was pregnant with little N, thus the nausea. Our silent disappointment at viewing what we were expecting to be a great work of art, (after all it was a a Nikon D40) we both made a silent resolution to never forget our point and shoot ever and to better acquaint ourselves to the Nikon. This of course was in preparation of little N’s arrival. The following 9 months, instead of reading baby books for parents F religiously read the manual so he could take better pictures and by the time N arrived he was officially the self-appointed photographer of the family.

Then mat leave happened, F got busy at work and we lost our family photographer to the corporatee world. It was time for me to take charge. And i finally picked up the camera and it was magic. And since then it has been impossible to put it down. Of course, all of last year has been about little N., Catching his every move, his expressions and all his firsts. This was reinforced by my free lance work with Art Strollers, as their PR consultant and event photographer, during my mat leave where I was surrounded with babies at all times.

But now finally after a year of trial and error, lessons from friends, short workshops and reading the manual thanks to Chez i can say the journey has begun. Project 365 is a great project for any self taught, self starter. It is a great exercise in practice makes perfect and forces you to read the manual, experiment with the camera every day, come up with creative shots and not to mention, creates a sense of commitment. I have thoroughly enjoyed the past one week and heres to hoping the remaining 359 days are just as nicheilious!

Therapeutic defiance

When i was expecting little N, people would come to our place and tell us how we will never be able to maintain the aesthetics of our house once we had a baby. But we had little N and yes it was challenging, we had to make adjustments and teach him how to adjust with our lifestyle. There were and are moments of frustrations. But all in all i think we have both made adjustments along with some sacrifices and i think it’s safe to say that we have reached a congenial understanding of each other. He knows and understands his limits and boundaries (at least we think he does) and we respect his space and let him grow.

This post however is not a confessional out pour of a design mom. It is however about a small challenge i put myself up to, who knows to even spite the above mentioned, self appointed advisory committee. I just recently sent some not so nice pictures of my space to one of my favorite websites, Apartment Therapy and much to my surprise got published. The exciting part was that we got featured but i have to say regretfully that I wish I had sent some more fun pictures and ones that were better photographed. It also felt good to be featured cause little N is an integral part of this house and it kind of felt like an achievement and a kick to all the negativity that people fill you with when you are expecting a baby.

So here we are in our home exactly at 1.5 of Nyleness and still living our lives the way we imagined it to be or even better than we expected. Since expectations were scarred, i took it up as a challenge to prove people wrong. Having a baby is not a life ending experience. It maybe a life altering experience but one that teaches you to grow and learn as you go. True, life is not as we knew it to be when it was just 2. But the number 3 seems to be working out just fine. And our home is organically growing with us, one layer after another. Hope you enjoy our nichelious abode.

lesson 1: picture of the day

Project 365: 09.16.09

So i have officially enrolled myself in chez spuds fabulous camera club starting with her first lesson and the toughest of all i would think: READ THE MANUAL!
this followed by the grand opening of my Flickr account and of course one photo everyday. Practice, practice and more practice.

My photo each day will be posted on flickr, under Project 365. I will be committed and i will get through the next 365 days with one picture everyday. There i said it and now i WILL make it work!!

Wish me luck and join me on this journey. The more the merrier!