Happy news for Currystrumpet

I'm thisclose to accomplishing something I set out to do late last year: bring this blog to a new and better home on the Web.

It's more than just a new look. I've been working on it with some pretty talented people and I'm just counting the hours until it's ready. It was stressful at first, and things really came to a head late last week. Only when I saw that everything was finally coming together did I allow myself to get excited at last. Now I am really excited!

Currystrumpet will move to its new home very soon. I'll park my Italy posts for now, and pick up over there. Stay tuned... and I hope to see you on the other side! 

New year, new pages

Last fall, I enrolled in Blogging Your Way, a blogging e-course by Holly Becker of Decor8 and Leslie Shewring of A Creative Mint. The four-week course was packed with information and inspiration; months later I'm still digesting everything! It sparked ideas for new projects, new directions and even a new blog (stay tuned!), but also made me think about this old blog in a new way.

When I started blogging seven years ago, the blogosphere was very different. A blog was an online journal, a diary. If you had a lot to rant about in real life, your blog would be full of rants. If you had nothing going on in your life, your blog would be full of meaningless blather. The average blogger didn't give much thought to presentation and promotion back then. It was always about what you had to say.

Things have changed. Today, blogs are carefully curated, prepared, promoted—ironically enough, whether or not you even create your own original content. There are simply things you need to do, that I hadn't been doing. Some things make perfect sense to me; other things, like reblogging and reposting, just... don't (yet).

So consider this a bit of housekeeping that's been long overdue. I've put some new things in place, first of which is the About page. Even if you've been reading my blog for a long time and feel you know me pretty well, read it anyway! You just might find out a few things you don't already know about me. Like what the heck a Currystrumpet is, for example.

It was hard to write an About page for myself! To describe myself as a "lifestyle" blog or a "travel" blog would have been very neat and handy, but I don't think I quite fit into either of those categories. Still, I've written something I'm happy with, and that I think sums up me and my blog pretty well. Holler if you agree!

It was fun choosing a picture. This was taken shortly after my 30th birthday, in Istanbul. Our host Suzan had this gorgeous traditional Maltese balcony with a leather wing chair that just screamed to be posed in.

The second new addition is the Welcome note on the right-hand column, essentially a shorter version of the About page. Below it, you'll now find links to my Twitter and Pinterest accounts. Follow away!

Finally, I've organized my Blogroll and moved it to a separate page. I've realized that I have a) so many fun and interesting friends who blog, and b) great blogs that I've discovered but kept to myself. So starting this January, I will feature one blog per month from my Blogroll as my "blog of the month." Just sharing the love, y'all.

Do you like the new About page and the "blog of the month" idea? What kind of things do you want to see more of on this blog in the New Year? Hit the comments and let me know.

Design Folder

Dutch Design Week is the kind of event that makes you go all home TV shopping and say... "But wait! There's more! It's an inexhaustible treasure trove of inspiration, and it was hard to select just a few things to blog about for the posts that I did here and on MangoJuiced.

That's why when the kind folks at Design Folder invited me to blog a couple of guest posts on DDW, I couldn't pass up the opportunity. In this week's guest post, I focused on home furnishings and lighting that are great examples of the Dutch knack for curiosity, simplicity and playfulness in design.

Check out my roundup of home furnishings and lighting from DDW at Design Folder, and be sure to check back for another post from me soon!

Design Folder is all about design—from the latest in architecture and interior design to the trendiest furniture and interior accessories. 

Design Folder is a Manila-based website dedicated to sharing design ideas and inspirations through its different sections such as Space Matters (interior design and architecture), Conscious Living (green design), Spacelift (makeovers), Design Speak (styles and themes), Design Trail (travel), DIY (design-it-yourself) and more. Every post is geared towards helping readers spruce up their lives by improving their own little space. 

New look

Lately, I've been feeling the need to post bigger pictures on this blog. So to be able to adjust the width of my blog, I had to migrate to a Blogger template. And so here it is.

It was hard to find a background image I liked that worked well with the template and didn't show too many "seams." To get a full background image, you need a 1800x1300 image... that's smaller than 300KB. That's hard! I wish the Blogger folks had thought about that. Even a 500KB image limit would help. I suppose this is already an improvement over how difficult it used to be to customize Blogger templates.

Anyway, I ended up using this lightbulb installation from SF MoMA. It doesn't have any real significance to me (unless the lightbulbs represent all my brilliant ideas, har har har); I just wanted something that looked almost like a pattern or texture, but clean and a little bit more grown-up.

Thoughts?

The sari that launched a template

The sari that started it all

update: is it just me, or has everything on this page -- except this post -- gone italic? is it a firefox thing? gaaah!

back to our regular programming.

the inspiration for my spanking new template (care of the supertalented rina) came to me amidst a flurry of gorgeous silks and a hum of rapid bengali. that december afternoon, my indian relatives were taking me shopping for indian wedding garb, and my still-jetlagged head was a-spin traipsing about the crowded intersections and buzzing sidestreets of gariahat market.

there i was, sitting disoriented in a shop called “the silk house”, while aunts gabbered on about fabrics and colors (well that was my guess—it was all greek to me), the shopkeepers pulling out ream after ream of richly colored fabrics for my perusal.

then a flash of chameleon shimmer caught me. it makes me chuckle to remember muniya being taken by it too, and helping me protest against more silks being piled in front of me. “you like this one, right?” she asked me conspiratorially. after receiving a dazed nod from me, she erupted into a stream of tart bengali that ended in my lovely, pink-chameleon sari being rung up at the register and packed neatly into a long, flat box.

then we tumbled out into gariahat again, this time in search of sparkling goodies to drape my lobes, neck and wrists with – all matching, of course, the shining colored green-and-pink sari i held in my arms.

i’ve wanted to turn my blog green and pink since coming home from india with the sari tucked safely into my suitcase. it’s a reminder of the part of me i found there, among my family. i can still remember my grandmother saying, with unabashed pride and pleasure, “you look like a bengali girl”, the first time i modeled a sari for her.

it’s also a reminder of one of the most memorable times marlon and i have shared together. i will never forget the first christmas we spent on our own, or discovering my family with him by my side…
...or the panic that rose up in me as i realized, on the day of the wedding, that i had completely forgotten how to make the series of deft folds and tucks my aunt taught me. my mind was an utter blank, and i honestly thought i would not make it to the wedding. after over an hour of twirling futilely in yards of silk, i gave up. we called upon our resourceful muchachos to get a local girl from next door to do up my sari for me. marlon made sure to document the whole affair on video, should i be called upon to wear a sari again sometime in the future.

… or the first time i stepped out of the house swathed in all that silk. it was, to say the least, an interesting play of contrasts. the slightly unreal feeling of being utterly beautiful and regal was by the gripping paranoia that the sari would tumble around my ankles at any moment and leave me stark freaking naked. i glided down to the street only to tumble gracelessly into the four-wheel drive sent to pick us up.
so here it is, my newly sari-fied blog. eye candy (i hope) for you, and wonderful memories for me.