I’ve grown to love looking at interior design magazines/catalogs and window shopping for furniture as much as I love shopping for shoes and clothes. In fact, I’ve invested so much on furniture since I moved out 4-5 years ago, and now that I’m moving back to my parents’ home (and to a smaller room space), I have to let a bunch of my *cough* investments go.

Imagine how I drooled over the 2011 Ikea catalog that came out just recently (Thanks to Mariel for the blog alert!). I have yet to get my hands on the real glossy thing (I’m counting on you, Mae, for my copy!!), but I’m enjoying the online version in the meantime.

I like looking at home office inspirations as I have been working from home for almost 2 years now. I always believe that one’s working environment affects productivity big time, one of the reasons why I rented an apartment with an extra room I can convert to a work space. These are some of the my favorite home office layouts in the Ikea Catalog:

When I discussed with my mother than I’m coming back home, we talked about constructing a home office for me — not a bedroom — thinking I could just squat in her room with her. But upon realizing that I have too many clothes and shoes and stuff to fit in her extra closet space and cabinets, we decided that the home office would now double as a bed room with a huge closet that can house all my clutter as well.

I love Ikea’s organized closets, but since we don’t have Ikea here in the Philippines, my Mom and I had a floor-to-ceiling closet custom-made back home that looks pretty much like this:

And of course I already said that I want my walls painted blue, and I want it vibrant/dark blue, not pale (because pale just won’t work with the dusty and polluted Manila air). Also, I want vibrant accent colors everywhere, pretty much like this room right here:

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I’m moving back to Caloocan in about *counting the days in my head* two weeks (wow, time flies!), and with the construction of my new room happening this week, I had to pick a color to paint my walls with. Why thank you, Carrie Bradshaw, for having such a fabulous (fictional) apartment for inspiration. Yesterday, I finally chose my color swatches, deciding on a color that’s familiar and comfortable, not to mention I love: Blue.

Check out these photos of Carrie’s renovated apartment in Sex and the City 2. <3 (Segue: are writers in New York City really earn so much that they’re capable of keeping a pad as snazzy as this one?)

My love affair with blue.

Growing up with two brothers, my juvenile interests leaned towards boy stuff — watching PBA, collecting basketball cards, playing roller blades, championing at pusoy dos, wearing lose shirts and baggy pants, and preferring non-feminine colors like black and blue. I was 16 years old when, taking over my Lola’s room in the second floor of our house in Caloocan, I decided that I wanted to paint the room blue. To be overly redundant, I asked my Mom to buy me blue curtains and blue bed sheets and pillow cases. Turning 18 years old, my parents threw a debut party for me, and it didn’t take me a minute to decide my color motif. Perhaps the only blue thing that I wasn’t crazy about in college were UP’s blue books, lol, can I just say that those little exam booklets were the bane of my college existence??!

Blue books aside, it came to a point when blue, to me, became a safe zone, hence, when I started moving out of life’s little comfort zones, I started exploring a bit on my color preference too. Pink, brown, red, green, purple — my color dateline, in that order, representing eras of my life. Invite me for coffee and I’ll share my color story with you. ;)

And now it’s blue again.

You know how it feels like when you’re back with an old love affair after exploring and testing other options, realizing that he is still the love of your life, maybe you didn’t even stop loving him after all? Forgive me for the tacky illustration, but that’s how blue is like to me. Home, puppy love turned love-of-my-life, the color that I want to wake up to in the morning, surround me the whole day, the last thing I see before I close my eyes. I’ve seen all the other colors, but it all comes back to blue. I can’t wait to see how my blue room is going to look (and feel) like.

I’m getting to know a whole new version of myself lately.

That version of me who welcomes the idea of settling down, who chooses the warmth of the familiar over the thrill of taking risks, who prefers being surrounded by family rather than party-loving friends, who labels things according to whether they’re temporary or eternal and chooses only those which will last.

Choosing blue, somehow, feels like a representation of all that.

And and and.. I’m doing that thing again where I over-analyze on trivial things like color preferences and being all melancholy again about getting old(er) and wondering again about things like, if they say quarter-life ends at 27, does this mean I’m, at this point in time, having mid-life crisis?

What’s my point again?

Whatever.

Oh, and thanks, Carrie Bradshaw.

Ahh, there are a lot of things, but this is definitely at the top of my list: Take lots and lots of Polaroids, something that Andrew Faris did back in 2003, and what was later on called the New York Polaroid Project.

I think I’m gonna dream of Polaroids and New York in technicolor tonight. <3

Anyway.. I managed to score 10 packs of One600 Polaroid films back in December after a loooong and winding quest to find suppliers here in Manila (which was, for the record, a failure, because we’re in a third world country and life’s not fair like that) and after finally succumbing to the fact that ordering from Ebay was the only way to go. So yeah, given that that acquisition cost me an arm and a leg, I’ve only used up 3 packs of Polaroid films so far, sparing the rest from impulsive, trigger happy shots and keeping them in the top shelf away from my itching hands.

I can’t wait to use up my remaining stock of Polaroids the way Andrew Farris did. Surely, New York (and Sydney) is worth saving up these overpriced boxes of expired films for.

(Via Design Vagabond)

New York, care free days, and blue skies.

Someone please give me an excuse to go back and see New York again.

Summer is here, I can hear Donna Summer singing in the background again.

The past weekend was life-changing. I got to unwind and chillax with the bestest best friends in the world, and we parted knowing that things are never gonna be the same again in a melodramatic but exciting sort of way. What a way to start summer, yeah? :) (And what a way to start another chapter in our lives.)

Gone are my dark and twisted days. I think I’m starting to fall in love with life again. :)