Titan (The SiL archives vol. I)

Sometimes I write stuff that I never publish for various reasons, most of the time because the post is not good enough, but other times because I am damn lazy.

This story never saw the light in a timely manner because I did not bother to upload the pictures. More fool I.

But since it's being a quiet week at the office, and I have a bit of spare time at the end of every day, here it goes.

The SiL archives vol. I

"Let me tell about an epic war that has been fought behind the walls of my little castle, a story of defeat and sawdust. A story that will survive the passage of time and the rotting of wood.

Titan

I should have been informed that when you get your own place, everything that looks oh so perfect isn't really that perfect, and that you can't go directly to Ikea and buy all the furniture you like and have your home ready in a fortnight.

No, that is not true.

Lighting, painting, plumbing... by the time I looked at my to-do list, it already had 20 items, time and money consuming (specially the second).

And then... then came Titan.

Who is Titan?

This is Titan:

Titan is a mass of wood made up of two parts, one stuck to the floor and wall of my living room, 4 meters long and 70 centimeters wide. The second part is a smaller, screwed to the wall and also stuck, set of six wood boxes.

By stuck to the wall I mean stuck, the kind of stuck that means either destroying the wall or leaving wooden pieces on it trying to justify that it is some kind of avant-garde artist's work.

I think what made me hate it so much was the fact that I knew it was stuck to the wall, and that removing it would mean not only paying an interesting sum of money to either a carpenter, a lumberjack (chainsaw has been one of my favourite words this last month), or even the SWAT, it would mean starting a chain reaction similar to this: remove Titan --> fix walls --> fix floor.

I was determined to keep it at first, to use it until I could get back on my feet economically and buy a nicer piece of furniture, but every minute I spent in Titan's company I hated him more and more, until one day I couldn't bear it any longer and sent prudence and common sense off the window.

"I can't live here with that thing in the living room" I told my mom. No sooner had I said it that... three days later Titan looked like this:

And finally today, I went to see the results of the fight of man against wood, and the result was this:

Titan, may you rest in peace."


And this is how you pull two posts in a day ;P

Such is Life.

P.S.: After that, the wall was fixed and painted and the memory of Titan completely erased for good. Btw, I hereby present you my new place!

It's going to be fine

Today I dropped by Agnes' blog and saw this:

It has been two months since I last posted, and that makes me feel guilty. The reason why a person feels compelled to keep telling a story in a blog still escapes my understanding, but the truth is it happens. You start to tell a story in a website and by the time you run out of ideas you have created a bond with the anonimous entity formed by readers (if any) which is very difficult to fully break.

2012 is being a busy year, I got my own place and I am getting it ready to move sooner than later, my sister finished her PhD and now she's being taken away to a cold place up north. Now my heart is devided between the sad and empty room that will be left only to myself on Sunday (when we spoke about moving out of the room I never intended you to move so far, sis) and the thousands of happy musings about visits and video chats (and cute-stuff-shopping).

WTF, my heart is broken. I am going to miss you like hell, sis.

But, if I already am a drama queen and I let myself fall in this spiral of self pity I may as well pop my eyes out to have a real reason to complain. The world is clashing down and here I am crying over my sister moving on to a better place, a better job and a better life.

I love to make promises in this blog, my favourite one is: Posting regularly,  but as it is, I never keep that promise. There is always something better to do, A L W A Y S. But now my sister is going away and I feel this blog may become a nice little cozy place where I can tell her about the stupid daily stuff that comes to my head.

I am starting a new section - yay! In which I will post (almost daily, at least for the next few months (maybe weeks, ok)) a (bad quality) bb pic of my day to day life, and tell you a few lines about what the Life in Such is Life stands for.

This is for you, sis.

Love you to pieces, to you I dedicate this section.

Coming soon (maybe too soon for my liking) in Such is Life:

 Such is Life.

STAR BLOGS EPISODE II - The attack of the Origami

A long time ago, in a Galaxy far, far away...

I owed you this post for a long long long while.

Why a person should put on the hand break of her car while refueling may escape her, but when it comes to arts and crafts my sister and her infinite patience out do everyone I know. By far.

She may not be able to choose which t-shirt goes with which pair of identical jeans but she can put together the most awesome origami ever. And if you give her some glue, then she will blow your freaky mind away, like she did on my birthday:

These three gentlemen are now part of my office decor (which may get me fired one day) and have added up to some other papercraft marvels:

 

Its hard to stay normal when all the force is with you!

 Other wonders handmade by my sister can be seen here and here. She may even take order if you leave a comment in this post (won't you?).

Two posts in a day, I am going to cry with joy.

May the Force be with you.

Such is life

Second time's the charm (the secret is in the cup!)

I am not a quitter, I hate it when others do stuff that I haven't or can't. I just can't take it and have to try, and try until I do it.

It started some years ago when I lied about knowing how to dive and I spent a whole summer splashing my tummy on the painful water surface of the swimming pool, then followed by that time when I pushed myself to read the Silmarillion just beacuse a girl in my english class had read it (and I couldn't be less of a Tolkien fan than her) -then I may have created a monster but it all started that moment...- and now if I ever see her again I may be able to say "suck it you sissy, I can write in angerthas and tengwar and have the one ring, and read the Silmarillion thrice and made an awesome summary with pictures and all so everytime I want to read the Silmarillion I can do it in half an hour. Ha Ha Ha". Because of course anyone would (i) remember some girl you went to English class with for a month in Ireland and (ii) not run as fast as you can when a crazy lady screams some ununderstandable stuff at your face.

So when I produced my poop looking cake (like this one) some weeks ago, I just couldn't admit my defeat and declare myself a helpless cook, but had to try again.

Guess what, I tried again, and this time...

It was awesome:

The secret was choosing a smaller cup instead of the gigantic mug I chose for my previous attempt, and this time... delicious!!! The ice cream did help but the cake was actually a cake, and not brown sticky goo.

Success!! I can't wait to cook this in my brand new place, and serve it my brand new coffe service.

Isn't it cute?

If you were wondering... YES, the rest of the house is still empty, but I have the cuttest cupboard (check those washi taped jars :)) and can make the awesomest tea party on earth (although sitting on the floor).

Mr. Wonderful desreves all the credit for the cute advice on the left of my collage. Check their website, blog and online shop if you have a chance, cause it is wonderful.

And yes, I know I've been going a little too much "oh I love pretty stuff" lately, but such is life will be back to its normal self soon.

Promise.

Such is Life!

Minor differences invisible to the human eye

Thursday night, back home from work before midnight! That deserves a celebration, doesn't it? What to do? What to do? Bake!!

Of course baking is easy, it has to be, specially when you follow a recipe that is meant to help those who, like me, are a step beyond helpless in the kitchen.

There I was, reading the recipe eagerly, telling my mom it was really simple and the results yummy... How could I say otherwise when it was published in one of my favourite blogs which only publishes lovely stuff?


If Mr. Wonderful's results were impecable, mine would too. No doubt of that.

So there I was, nearly midnight, baking while having dinner, stir stir stir, pour pour pour, microwave and...

The difference is so teeeny tiny that the human eye can't see it:

Difficult to decide huh?

if these cakes were people the BBC would have to study them in their documentary about identical twins (very very interesting, btw).

For lots of nice stuff visit muymolon.com Mr.wonderful's blog. If you also stop by their online shop and get mi something for my birthday I really won't mind...

Such is Life (the cooking genius)



of course mine is the one in the left side of the screen... I just felt I needed to say it.

The pretty part of pretty stuff (sorteo blog Holamama)

There I was, lazy afternoon, bank holiday in Madrid and I had no plans cause someone had to work, much to my dismay.

I was lucky all my washi tape arrived yesterday, filling my head with decorating ideas for my little new place, also know as "el pisito".

Ahí estaba yo, tarde vaga, día festivo en Madrid y yo sin planes porque alguien tiene que trabajar, para mi desgracia.

I started to surf my lately discovered new favourite websites (which are putting me in some serious economic problem... yeah, my ugly part of pretty stuff ended bad, or well, depends on how you look at it) and there I saw it, the way to brighten up my not so happy afternoon:

Empecé a navegar por mis recientemente descubiertas nuevas páginas favoritas (que me están poniendo en algún que otro aprieto... si, mi ugly part of pretty stuff terminó mal, bueno, o bien, según como se mire) y ahí estaba, la forma de alegrarme la tarde:

Oh Joy!!! A giveaway! And such nice stuff involved I had to give it a try, right? Hope floats, and I may get some very very nice things for writing this post! Also it is helping me to post more regularly, which is always good, and makes me learn some blogger discipline. I read the instructions eagerly, and first person I thought of was my friend Agnes, so I sent her a message and here we are, newly made fans of Blog Holamama of Facebook, and now writing this post! They have the loveliest stuff in their online shop, I may have fallen for their party straws (I may be or may be not planning a brunch to use them) and of course their washi tapes!!! I ordered them last week and they arrived yesterday and I have gone totally crazy with it, just have a look.

 
Oh felicidad! Un sorteo! Y con cosas tan bonitas que tenía que intentarlo no? La esperanza es lo último que se pierde, y en el intento puede que consiga unas cosas muy muy monas por escribir este post! Además, me viene bien para postear más a menudo, que siempre es bueno y me enseña un poco de disciplina bloggera. Lei las instrucciones con avidez, y la primera persona en la que pensé fue mi amiga Agnes, así que le mande un mensajito y aqui estamos, nuevas fans de Blog Holamama en Facebook y ahora escribiendo este post! Tienen unas cosas ideales en su tienda online, yo ya he sucumbido a sus pajitas para eventos (puede que haya un brunch rondandome la cabeza para usarlas) y porsupuesto sus washi tapes!!! Hice un pedido la semana pasada y llegaron ayer, por supuesto me he vuelto completamente loca con ellas, mirad.

 I know this is not the usual Such is Life post, but I hope you like it too. Iwill go back to my washi tapes now, this is madness!

Ya se que esto no es lo habitual de Such is Life, pero espero que también os guste. Yo me vuelvo a mis washi tapes, esto es una locura!

Such is Life.

The ugly part of pretty stuff

I paid the first installment of my mortgage yesterday.

Ouch.

I had declared myself broke a month and a half ago, but it didn't hit me until yesterday.

What pains me most about this is... being unable to buy washi tape.

Dreadful thing to admit, but the truth after all. I could do so many things with washi tape.

I could decorate photo frames, bottles, notebooks, gifts, boxes, tins, my iPad. I could have a room decorated with washi tape.

Washi tape is pretty. And I hate pretty things when I can't buy them.

Only a couple minutes ago I visited three different online stores, filled three different shopping carts with crafting stuff and left all three websites before checking out because stupid Jiminy cricket keeps telling me I shouldn't because I need to save.

I don't like Jiminy criket, well, maybe if it looks this cute I like him a little bit.

Why have I become so twee?

These last few days have been a nightmare, I hadn't seen so many pretty things online ever, mugs, gift wrap, tags, kraft paper, boxes, baskets, ribbons... crafting is a big issue online, and there are millions, thousands of websites insisting on showing and selling us pretty things for... no purpose actually. I got ribbon, kraft paper tags, a blackboard and grey and white paper straws for I don't know which party... And I need more!

Crafting is totally unnecessary but totally addictive, and of course I have fallen in the twee trap of crafting. Huh, I may go see if I can do some DIY stuff and get rid of this need for pretty things. I may even show you. If it is worth it, of course.

It doesn't help that my sister is an origami genius and has filled our house with beautiful origami flowers.

I need to find my something to best her at. And I think washi tape will do the trick. Soon enough I'll have a washi taped fan. Even if I don't need one...

If anyone cares, I would be totally happy if I got a few rolls of washi tape for my birthday, which is coming yet too quickly.

I may have a few ideas on where you can get me my present this year ;P

Care to have a look?

http://mrwonderfulshop.bigcartel.com/

http://shop.holamama.es/

http://allwashitapeshop.bigcartel.com/

Please. Click. Buy. Send to M.

Such is Life.