shoes attack

Another affectionate reader or mine (my friend Barbara again) asked me how to solve the problem of shoes at home. The question isn't absolutely to be underestimated, I mean, normally a woman has so many shoes that she would need a storeroom, not to speak of the great collectors such as Imelda Marcos that had 3500 pairs.
The mythical scene of Carrie (the protagonist in the tv series “Sex and the City”) comes to my mind, when she's looking for a new apartment and, as they show her a tiny closet with no space for the shoes, she's at the point of fainting!

It is to be said that with shoes you can not just walk, but you can do a lot of intersting things; recently I happened to see Chiharu Shiota's work, that is an urban façade; beautiful indeed!

If you have too many shoes, think of how to eliminate a few, perhaps transforming them.

But pay attention at what shoes you're going to eliminate, there are some “historical” that the collectors would pay thousands of dollars for; the mythical “red shoes” that Judy Garland was wearing in “The Wizard of Oz”have been remade, completely covered with rubies and are worth 3.000.000 dollars. 

Not to speak of Cinderella's shoes: they have been remade by several designers, among which the Martin Margiela Maison, that has realised them like in the “original design”, all in glass, and by the great fashion designer Louboutin in a more comfortable version!

If you own these kinds of shoes, you are definitely ready to use a system of “show” organization, various kinds are proposed, with small bars, ribbons and frames. If you don't know where to start, the website www.framesbymail will suggest you what kind of frame you can use!

 

A semi-visible organization system has been studied as “do it yourself” and proposed by Ronique Gibson in an article published by stagetecture.com; plain pvc pipes cut and glued:

 

In case you want order and cleanliness, there are plenty of sites that propose the classical shoe  racks revisited  with a touch of design

http://fashionforhome.co.uk/shoe-racks
http://www.johannaeliason.com/skorderl.html

 

 My solution? A mirror that hides a whole shoe rack!!

It's by Kristalia and you can find it on the website http://shop.mohd.it/it/
Nice!!!

 

Stay tuned

beach design

Here's the summer, at last! 

After the long wait we can enjoy the warmth and relax lying down; at the seaside, in the mountains, by a lake or in the countryside, everyone wants to rest under the hot sun rays. I was just lying on the beach, when I smiled watching two ladies fighting for a deckchair (“I arrived first”, “I had put my towel on it...”).

Even if I love the contact with  the sand, I have to admit that the interest for deckchairs is very high!
First of all, where does the deckchair originate from? If we want to dig in the past we have to go very far  because deckchairs dating back to the Bronze Age and others from Ancient Egypt have been found (but I don't think they were used for suntanning). 

At present, on the contrary, deckchairs are the symbols of summer resorts, vacations and historical movies!

Definitely worth remembering are the Titanic chairs, a symbol of what life was like on board of a transatlantic liner! From the famous shipwreck a few have been recovered and will be auctioned on the hundredth anniversary, and the starting bid will be 125.000 pounds!

 

This symbology is so deeply rooted that deckchairs were chosen as the image of the towns of Weymouth and Portland, venues for the water sports during the London Olympics in2012; to welcome visitors and sports fans, hundreds of chairs painted and interpreted by artists.

 

If you feel fascinated by the classical deckchairs, but with a touch of fantasy, you can personalize them on the website http://www.bagsoflove.co.uk

while you can find the most traditional, with stripes, double or wooden on
http://www.deckchairs.co.uk

If you are thrifty or very creative, on the site Dumpaday.com you can find a deckchair made with old pallets!

if for you deckchair means water, here's your ideal chair; you'll feel like diving all the time in a white sea!  www.yankodesign.com

 

For those that have no garden, but anyway want to feel in contact with the lawn, the chair proposed by the Chinese site 1984 is a good compromise!

Original indeed !!  Http://since1984.cn

The most comfortable of all? Of course a cloud; “cloud sofa” is a cloud floating in the air thanks to a system of magnets, great idea studied by the Chinese designes David Koo and Zheng Yawei.

Http://kootouch.blogspot.it

 

The realization of the cloud/chair might make me decide to leave the sand for a deckchair; what a pity  at the moment it is just a project!

Meanwhile stay tuned

projects on vacation!!!

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Breakfast kit!

Breakfast:  a very important moment, where the day's mood is often set.

No jam left? It 's going to be a hellish day for all the colleagues.

No milk left for the cereal? Better for a wife to emigrate.

As for myself, I just need five minutes for a coffe and a cookie to munch,
but this simple wish of mine brutally clashes with the schedule I have to keep and the tasks of the hungry troops I have to wait on; to and from the kitchen and when you sit down it's time to go.

So I was wondering: will there be a breakfast kit? Not a tray to fill up at random, but  a specially designed element!

A “breakfast box” ready to be set on the table and from which any kind of delicacies come out: cookies, jam, chocolates, toasts and the ever-present croissants. Even if I have recently found out that the very French “croissant” didn't originate in France, but it is bound to Budapest's destiny. In 1686 the city was besieged by the Turkish and many ferocious fights took place; the besiegers, wanting at last to conquer the city, decided to dig tunnels during the night to penetrate  behind the defence lines, but the bakers, that worked at night, heard the noise and immediately alarmed the soldiers. As a reward, the city made a special cake to honor their courage; the bakers created a cake that could recall the crescent moon in the Ottoman flag, “croissant”exactly!

Apart from the flag, for the breakfast box there are plenty of proposals!

You might propose the use of a picnic basket; very elegant but, normally, of the  size of a transoceanic container and difficult to park in a kitchen, not to mention that as a picnic purist I should get a lawn to eat my lavish meal on; maybe a lawn table like the one designed by Haiko Cornelissen!

A romantic and easily applicable idea: a wicker basket. You can choose an incredible quantity of baskets and couple them with Provençal style cases of any shape and color! Without going too far: “maison du monde” has beautiful kitchen elements!!!

An example of  the “breakfast box” is proposed by Jenny Steffens in her blog even as a gift for a relaxed moment!

 

My personal solution is a very colorful basket, to which you can add various elements, colored and decorated, to be filled up with cookies, cereals and morning tidbits! For the boxes I draw my inspiration from the Nordic tradition; on the website http://scandinaviandesigncenter.com you can find many interesting ideas, but I discovered a few rarities, including the basket, on www.madeindesign.it.

 

For those that are in a hurry, really in a great hurry, and can't eat at home, there's a bike tray. But however spectacular it might be,  it's plain that at the first bend you would drop all the cookies, and at the second pothole all the coffee! Not practical but 100% design.

 

Enjoy your breakfast!

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