DOWNTON ABBEY

Dvije sezone čekaju u kompjuteru da ih odgledam, i ja još uvijek odgađam! 

Why?

Via here

KRISTINA DURAN - MAKEOVER IN THREE DAYS

A new issue of D&D magazine is a good Sunday read over a morning coffee.

Kristina Duran, a designer from Zagreb, made a makeover of her flat in just three days.

It must have been a dream team of handymen and a very organized logistics, to get things done in time.

I wish I could have a makeover of my place by the same dream team,

even though, frankly speaking, I would settle with quite less.

 A good  spring cleaning  would also be a great face lift for my home.

I imagine a team of cleaners,with hoovers and washing powders, marching into my home 

and leaving it immaculate and pristine after three days!

Anyway, who pays for such a makeover and how much did it cost all together?

How the flat looked before you can see on her blog Miss Decor or on her facebook.

Why am I doing this?

 Let's celebrate a little anniversary of my one year blogging, over a nice cup of coffee, as usual.

In this bistro.

I've  just remembered the day I started writing a blog. It's been a year now, and I am still here. I haven't given up yet , so it means I like doing it. I have probably found some sense in putting  words and hundreds of pictures on line. 

A year ago I asked myself a few questions about the purpose of doing this stuff.
After a year has passed, I could maybe give a more accurate answer to that question.

Door

WHEN DO YOU OPEN A NEW DOOR?

Today, a friend of mine told me that she is about to change her life. She is going to  leave her job, leave her friends, pack her belongings into cardboxes and put them in friend's garage, move to another city, actually - move to another continent. She is 55. She is divorced and her only son, who is 32, moved to another side of the world a few years ago. He found a job there, got married. She visited him a few times and she liked it there. She doesn't speak any English, although she has been trying to painstakingly learn some phrases. She has no savings and her son doesn't have a steady income or a secure job. But she sounded so enthusiastic about the whole thing, not a bit worried or scared. She has spent her whole life in this little town of ours working as a hairdresser, and now she is ready to move on and leave everything so easily. In her thoughts she is already far away, making  plans, looking forward  to the day her son is going to send her a plane ticket. She said she had always known that eventually one day she was going to leave this place. And the moment has come, she says. So, she is going to close the doors of both her hairdresser's salon and her tiny flat, ( and btw return the keys to the landlords as she doesn't own neither of these places) and she is going to open a new door somewhere else. Behind the door, I wish her to find something she deserves, something to make her happy.
Anyway, it got me wondering when is the right time to leave everything behind and open a new door? Some people never have courage to do that.

SUITCASE

This is how it looks like every Friday afternoon when Filipa, my daughter, comes home from a nearby town, where she attends school.

 

And on Saturday morning...

... and on Saturday afternoon...

 

...and the next day...

... and a little bit later...

on Sunday...

 

and then on Sunday afternoon she leaves and there leaves her suitcase as well.

How could you disprove a teenager's philosophy that there is no point unpacking or moving away your suitcase, when you will need it again very soon?

This or that and why?

Each time we start with an inspiring picture. Today, it is something to remind us that the spring is getting closer.

Question No.21 in the questionnaire I did the other day was very interesting to me:

1. Are you Consistent? – One of the common reasons that I see bloggers getting into trouble with their readers or other bloggers is that they change the way they approach their blogging midstream. Bloggers that are constantly changing the topic of their blogs, or who increase their expectations on readers suddenly, or who change the ‘voice’ that their blog is written in can end up losing the respect of their readers. While no one likes a boring blog – people do like to know what to expect to some extent.

Since I started writing this blog I have been changing templates (yes, I've changed it again, I don't think I will stick to this one for a long time, but for the time being, it will work), fonts, even the name of the blog. I have been rewriting my posts, changing my voice, deleting pictures, trying this and that.... But most of all I've been trying to figure out why I am doing all this "blogging" or better say, talking to myself, imagining I am addressing somebody else
 After I've done some thinking, I came up with this:

• I want to see if I am capable of doing something regularly.
• I want to prove myself I am willing to learn.
• I want to become well organized and consistent blogger (person).
• I want to inspire two close persons to start writing their blogs as well                                              (my daughter Filipa and my best friend Ivana). 
• I want to collect all the things I find interesting at one place.
• I want to practice a little bit of English - that's why I am writing posts in English.
• I want to cheer up a few good friends of mine who I know would appreciate me doing this.
• I want to cheer myself up, as I am the only reader and visitor of my secret space (apart from some accidental onlookers from faraway countries that stay on these pages for a couple of minutes anyway)

Well, enough reasons to keep on writing this blog.

And there is also some music for you (ha, ha...me!) to enjoy: MUSIC 
 And music is - Master's Hand - Charlotte Gainsbourg

BACK AT WORK

The weekend zoomed away, It's Monday again! Another weekday, 4 more to go till Friday afternoon. It is snowing here. I had tried to dig out my car to go to work, but at the end I ended up using my husband's car, because mine was completely frozen ( I couldn't open the door).I answered about 20 questions that I found here, to find out if blogging is the right thing for me. Why have I started writing this blog in the first place? After questioning myself I realised a few things:

It's so difficult .....!

It's so difficult to edit blogs! It will take me ages to learn the basic things. My younger daughter made six blogs when she was nine years old. It was so easy for her! When I watch her doing things on her computer, typing 1 million words in a second, opening new windows, inserting pictures, banners....I get so frustrated! How could she possibly know all that? It just comes natural to children, as they have grown up with all this modern technology, I suppose. As I don't have computer logic I am annoyingly slow. She tried to show me some things, but she actually has no patience with me. She gets so annoyed with my silly, stupid (for her) questions, rolling her eyes in astonishment at my computer illiteracy. And when she saw me sweating over editing my first post, she commented: "Why are you bothering doing this? What do you need a blog for? Blogs are for young people...I will be completely embarrassed if my friends get to know that my mother is writing a blog! Gross!"

Well, I won't take these comments from a teenager very seriously. Just you wait, you daughter of mine, and we'll talk about it in two years time. By then, my blog will be full of banners, photos, inscriptions with various fonts and other fancy things. I will edit my blogs with such an ease, enjoying the process as much as I am dreading it now!

Well, let's try to put another line of nice photos into this post. Let me see.. How do I do it?  I know I did it somehow yesterday, but I somehow forgot how I did it ...Uf!

                                                       Via http://highclassproblem.blogspot.com/http:

I found a lot of nice designs for blog titles, such as this one above. I probably have to put the link to the blog where I have found it. At least I've seen other bloggers doing this. Let's try to do it now. How on earth do you do that? 

Well, I have tried something, but I don't believe it will link to anything!

Anyway, here comes another nice design.

I don't know whether I prefer designs with pictures,  letters, fancy photographs or some gaudy  scrap work designs. Have a look at these  ones. Found them at 

                                   
                                                     Fabulous-k  

Yupiiiii, I found out how to link to the page!!!

This one above is a little old fashioned, I  think I prefer more minimalist, Scandinavian type of design. For instance this one:  


scandinavianretreat 

This one with photographs is also nice:

Mammas Hus  

 or this one is very simple, just letters

 dosfamily 

 It will be really difficult to make a nice, eye-catching, sophisticated, witty, memorable, original title design. For the time being I will have to put up with the ordinary, boring one that is already set in blogspot.com. My next lesson will be how to create an original and stunning title design. I don't know how long it will take me, but just watch me!


Let's practice again. My patience has no limits.... Just kidding
Here goes another picture, a little bit of red colour, just to brighten up the page.

 

I know there is a cyberspace law/rule not to go around stealing pictures and pasting them to your blog, but I kind of have a folder full of nice pictures with no URLs, that I have saved in the past months, and it would be  pity not to use some of them. Do I risk being caught by cyber police for stealing nice pictures?? Here goes another nice pic. Red colour is really refreshing. The only thing missing in this picture is me, resting on the striped sofa with a cool glass of wine and a nice magazine. No company, please.

I think I am getting better at inserting pictures, but still ... how do you arrange them to look nice? I want them extra large, but then, just half a picture appears on the actual post. The nice thing though is, if you click on the picture, it enlarges. How long will it take me to learn some basic things in Photoshop? Do all the blogers design their blogs by themselves or they pay an expert to get the design?   

Do people design their rooms all by themselves or they pay a designer? 

Do you prefer bright rooms or dark and sexy ones?

Are you a minimalist or you like a lot of details?

Shall I make my blog bright or dark, with lots of details or minimalistic???

I hope, I will soon find out what I like.

 

So, this post is all about practicing and me being frustrated by not not knowing so many technical things ... which could obviously help me make my design ideas for this blog come alive.. So, to make a long story short, I really have to learn so many things. It will take me months, days and many sweaty hours to get to know how to make my blog look nicely designed. Pretty daunting. 


By the way, my dear hubby is really curious to discover what I am up to with all the typing and surfing. Luckily, we have two computers and a laptop. So the younger daughter is facebooking on the laptop, my H is warcrafting at the computer in another room, my older daughter is not at home and I am writing my post here...


Maybe it's time to go to bed. Enough learning for today. I am so proud of myself, but too much intellectual, brain stretching stuff is not good for anybody. And I am just overloaded for today. And even worse... I made pancakes and have just eaten four of them. So I am overstuffed as well. 
So, that's all folks for today!
xoxo  Secret Girl  

isn't it?

PS Just to mention. The grey living room above belongs to Gemma, a lucky girl from England whose sister is a famous designer Abigail Ahern. They spent only 6000 GBP to achieve this out of world space that has been in all magazines. This is the result when you are not afraid to experiment with dark colours (Abigail says you should use the same dark colour on your floor as well as on your walls - it wipes off the line between them). I wonder how it feels to live in this old grey Victorian house. It looks great in photographs and magazines, but is it that nice in real life?