Friday, May 14, 2010

What's On Your Plate This Weekend?


For your weekend delectation, via amazing Sophie Munns who, from her little corner in Brisbane, OZ finds the most intriguing and wonderful things, here a post 


Houseoforigin_color


about the newly formed Dutch food and design group "House of Origin" who are developing inventive and beautiful ways for people to rediscover food and reexamine their eating habits.  You will be dazzled and charmed.



HAPPY WEEKEND EVERYONE!







Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Corner View - Statues and Fountains

Happy Wednesday and it's that time again!  Here's a re-post of something I did last fall.  Somewhere in there you will find a fountain!  Not much in the way of statues though.  Apparently there are not so many statues on this side of Paradise!  (How to remedy this hmmmmm?)

Funny to see it again, I think I started this blog out in a much more lyrical, reflective frame of mind.   I guess that mood kind of comes and goes.  But moi, personellement, I find these photos quite gorgeous (even if I took 'em!) so hope you like them too.  It seems o.k. to drag them out again.  For those of you who didn't know me....."back then".  Anybody else ever been to Burghley House?

I've been away from home for about a week.  And the week was so not about the kinds of images that follow.  They seem apropos to the time of year though, when colors are fading, some are ripening, all are becoming richer and mixing with many more grays.  And then, aren't there some of you who are still nostalgic for summer (as I would so be if I were in colder climes).....?   Here's a little nosegay to ease the passage.

A couple of years ago, I went to visit this house with my mother-in-law.  It is in Stamford, a graceful and gracious old town in Lincolnshire.  Parts of this house had just been used in one of those English costume dramas. Anybody recognize it?  It is one of the true treasure houses of Britain.

Burghley has been in the Cecil family for over 400 years.  The original Lord Cecil was a Treasurer of England.  And he made sure he got "some".  The house interiors are fairly distinctive in that they are quite dramatic, dark, baroque, and grandiose in an Italianate way.  It is all about scale. "Younger" "English""houses" tend to be a little more French in their style with paler, more delicate and feminine decoration.  This is pretty much a guy's house.  Don't remind my MIL that English style actually did originate "over there".  She will not hear of it.  Unless you mean to say that English style is a hodgepodge of everything and then she will agree that that is certainly true.


Go to: http://www.burghley.co.uk/ and you can find out more if you are planning to be in that part of the world. We went in late August and it was not too crowded.

Photo taking is not allowed inside but I seemed to find things to snap. Outside.  This series seems to be all about blues, textures, patterns.



I don't know about you, but I want to stick my hands right into these pictures and swish them around.  Just to see how the elements might rearrange themselves in artful combinations.  I love the mystery of the dark water and how the fish and the reflected colors slowly reveal themselves.


How the water takes on the color of the sky, and so an added dimension.


How beautiful black can be when it is swathed in blues and studded with orange and green.


How grey makes it more into a COLOR vs. it just being a space filler.


In nature, every color exists already in all the best combinations.  We humans try to be so clever and put it back together in original ways.  But the universe will always have gotten there first.


This could have been made into a William Morris fabric pattern.



And what could be more beautiful than hydrangea blue, forget-me-not-blue, robin's egg blue, cornflower blue?


Even the windows are blue.  See?  Nature got there first.


Here's where you will find even more Corner Views, and meanwhile Thanks! to Joyce for keeping us all on track and nice to have you along at Passage Paradis!  (xo)






Monday, May 10, 2010

Long Ago in France


Oh Hello again everyone!  So sweet of you to leave nice notes Carol, Krista and Kenza.  You three  brighten up MOST of my days, everyday!  It was nice of you to take time and say something thoughtful and encouraging when apparently it was looking like a doubtful day!!! Thanks again

So in the relative realm of goodnews/badnews it was largely technological uncertainties that were making things seem a little dim and daunting and somehow just beyond my reach this weekend.  A little tidying up around the edges having been performed and, barring the certain fact that my "help desk" will be operating from an "undisclosed location" for the next near term (now I know why "Dubya" had that face when Cheney checked himself into the bunker....) things SHOULD return to normal here soon, soon, soon!

Until that fuller confidence in the techno-universe has been more convincingly restored, it feels reassuring to linger here in that "half-light" kind of mood, so I thought I'd share a couple vintage Paradise pics.   I guess you could also say that this might be my penance made to the Cyber Gods (which is apparently due) as, shameless Francophile that I profess to be, so little of this blog reflects it in any more concrete pictorial form (not that others don't do it terribly well! - hello again Carol!)

Luxembourg Gardens

Earlier in the story of Mr. Paradis and Me, we used to go to France at least every two years.   


Coulon,  Marais Poitevin

And then it became every year....and then it became several times a year.......

Trouville

and then we moved to Hawaii and well, everything changed.  These are some very early pics, with the mist of time and nostalgia on them.  Real photo album relics.  

A simpler time.  Aren't they always simpler, the further away they are?


Sunday, May 9, 2010

Life Has Been a Little........


bit like this lately



I hope to be back more as normal with all of you as the week goes on. 





Saturday, May 8, 2010

Happy Mothers' Day!





To those who've given us so much!  Have a wonderful wonderful day!





Friday, May 7, 2010

Window Dressing and........Life

Had to share.  Found this photo at Paris Apartments, Claudia's wonderful blog which is always so full of energy and surprises.  This is a photo taken in the '60's by Italian photog  Ormond Gigli .  She found it  on Artnet.  This photo, and variations on it, have sold at auction for molto thousands of dineros (if I may mix my lingos!).  And what a surprise, it's literally packed with style, fun and wonder.  No?


and below, via Rohini at "the beat that my heart skipped" who found it at "we heart it" -

We Heart It


I searched for rather awhile but couldn't find the photographer.  To me, it should be entitled:  "Life is But a Dream".

Along those lines, my computer has chosen to take an as-yet-undetermined extended fantasy holiday to parts I  know not!  Good thing I had a couple posts saved up in Blogger (Ya learn something new everyday!) 

So I will bow out of this first week of May wishing you a Great Weekend and hoping that I can be back early next week with better news and fresh goodies to amaze and delight....

Hope it's sunnier and less slippery where you are!   Cheers!



Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Huntington's New Chinese Garden, San Marino



So here's a little post as promised of the new - well approximately 2 year old -


Chinese Gardens at The Huntington Library and Gardens in San Marino just outside of Pasadena


and spitting distance from where I live - lucky me!


It's actually quite beautiful and well realized.  I wasn't sure the first time I visited it


because it does tend to be more about the structures than about the plantings.


But it's filling out beautifully and is a graceful charming place to sit quietly and relax.


There are pavilions to sit with family and sip softdrinks with eggrolls (!)


I must say I would have LOVED it if they actually served


full multi-course Chinese meals here, or a selection of dim sum.  To get you really in the mood.


What a change that would make from those noisy garish dumpling palaces that prevail these days.


How nice it would be to pick at tender steaming fragrant morsels of yeasty dough and glistening pork and shrimp.....mmmmmmm - mmmmmm!


While gazing out on these gorgeous spaces.  And sipping steaming but delicate cups of tea?


There would be a light waft of jasmine - from the tea, or the plantings?


Somewhere wind chimes would be softly clattering in a gentle breeze.


And a poet would be napping after his morning's labors.