Natural History Museum - NYC

I felt today would be the perfect day to share photos of what we did last Sunday. We sent a better part of the day at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The museum is impressive and you've for sure seen it featured in movies and TV. It's been featured in movies like Night at the museum, Miracle on 34th Street and Spider-man 2.

As much as I'd want to share everything, I'll stick with some of the highlights (and some of the photos that turned out well, it's pretty dim in there).


The main entrance is already pretty impressive.


There are dioramas everywhere. Those are the large 'display cases' with animals in their natural habitat and in action. They're frankly quite impressive. And pretty large too. Obviously the size is often correspondent of the size of the animals displayed. These things are hard to take photos of though.


Leading up to the Ocean hall, was a wall of all sorts of creepy crawlies. Not my favourite... Chris seemed interested enough though.


The hall itself was impressive and not least by the gigantic whale hovering over the two story hall.



A few other impressive marine dioramas.


We decided to see one of the special exhibitions and chose (shockingly) "Our Global Kitchen". When you get tickets for the changing exhibitions, you'll get a time to go there. It makes sense since this one at least was fairly small and any more people would've definitely made it near impossible to actually enjoy it. This was actually the only time in the entire museum it felt crowded. There was a chocolate making stop along the way, which was constantly packed full of people.


The best parts for me of the exhibition were example meals of people all through history (yeah, I'm sure that wasn't a surprise for anyone). With the dim lighting, it was hard to get photos where both, the explanation and the food were properly lit. I found this one of ötzi pretty neat, but I loved the details on some of the others. The displays were set as the dining spaces of the period they represented and meals built specifically for the historical characters, like Jane Austen (ice cream) and Kublai Khan (the first fusion kitchen).


The most impressive things were all the skeletons.



Dinosaurs! Not going to lie, the dinosaurs might have been the deciding factor when Chris and I decided which museum to visit. MoMa doesn't have dinosaurs, just saying...

There were exhibits on Polynesia...


...Africa...


...and Asia.


I took a few hundred photos easily and would've loved to share them all! Once I gave the camera to Chris for a bit, I continued taking photos with my phone. And towards the end I was exhausted and ready to go to sleep, but kept on going after brief break amidst all the exhibits. What a nerd!

I loved this place and will happily go again one day.

I have a ton more photos from NYC, I'll show them to you soon and maybe a few more from the museum too...

Friday Inspiration - Oriental Rugs

Did I warn you about me going into a home decor frenzy this time of the year?

After coffee tables, mixing old with new and abundance of wall art, there's another thing on the list. And this as well has been there for a while. I want a rug, and not any random one either. I have my sights on an oriental rug. If I could have my pick of any kind, I think I'd choose a Persian carpet.

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I'm sure you've seen them, the richly colored, usually symmetrical designs.

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The Persian carpets go back a long while. I love the idea that I could have something in my home with such a long and deep history.

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Naturally, the idea of the beautiful patterns appeals to me as well. Even though I'm fairly experimentative at home when it comes to colors, I haven't really inserted too many patterns. I feel a rug like this would be exactly what this place needs.

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In all honesty, I feel there would be space for 3, or even 4, area rugs in this place. I'm not a huge fan of the North-American wall-to-wall carpeting (could be just because I'm not used to them), but area rugs are another matter entirely.

I would love to have a rug in the living room and one under the dining table, those two are the first priorities. I would also like one in the office and another on the bedroom. Now, I'm not planning all of them to be this type, but at least one for the livingroom would make me very happy.

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I'm keeping my eye out for one, but as this has been on the shopping list for a few years, I don't assume to find it necessarily anytime soon. I'm convinced I will find the right one eventually. I think I'll need to look at other options as well.

I feel like there is another related post coming up in the future...

What kinds of floor coverings do you like or do you prefer to keep your floors bare?

Secret Penpal Scavenger Hunt

There's a new, awesome-sounding mail-related project coming your way! Fab, a.k.a Wreck This Girl, is starting a Secret Penpal Scavenger Hunt.

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It sounds like fun, maybe you should take a look if it's something you'd be interested in!

Are you going to take part?

Cards for Chinese New Year

The year of the Snake is fast approaching. I've never celebrated the holiday (well, not being Chinese would probably explain why) until I met Chris and, subsequently, his family. They are not particularly traditional, so the celebration really just consists of eating a lot, which often is the case with Chinese celebrations, a fact I wholeheartedly approve of!

This is not, as far as I know, a card giving holiday (red envelopes are another story) but I will use any excuse to send out a few! I also really felt like trying my hand at collaging. I only made a couple and sent them out to a few people I thought would either appreciate it and/or needed an additional snail mail-y surprise. Let's not forget the fact that I bought appropriate stamps too!


I don't have exact instructions for you on how to make something similar, these were the first full-on collage cards I've made. I snapped some photos along the way, so maybe they'll inspire you to try something similar out as well.

I basically cut the cards and the envelopes out of red poster-board. I took out a bunch of paper in the appropriate theme (I collect paper in themes, did I ever tell you that?) and then covered the front of the card with a larger piece of paper, I used gold-leafed paper I found in Chinatown and a few book pages. After the background was down, I started adding the embellishments.


Once the cards were done, I stuffed them in the envelopes I made and wrote the addresses on with a gold marker (stay true to the theme, right?). Since I had year of the snake stamps, I obviously used those. (My post office only had a few international ones left. It's a shame as I kinda liked them. I would happily use them on my regular mail too.) You can see the outgoing envelopes here.


I will for sure make more with the same technique. It was actually a lot of fun. I'm glad I got to try it out and I will continue improving my technique.

Have you made collage cards?

Back home from NYC!

As you might or might not have known, Chris and I were in New York City for the weekend. We only got home late last night. The trip was a whole lot of fun and I am now tired and sore from all the walking. I have a ton of photos and other New York-y things to share with you guys! (I took around 400 photos, so I'll need to go through, and edit, those)

Here's an unedited peek:

I will need today to regroup my thoughts. I have an event coming up at the McGill university next week, I need to prepare for that. I also have some new plans for the shop. And not to mention some more tutorials! I really got into those as the ideas just kept on coming!

Right now I need to get organized again, so I shall return soon with more coherent posts! In the mean time, how are you guys? Tell me what you've been up to recently!