Illegible

Nice ghost sign in Walthamstow, near the William Morris Gallery.

I played around with it in Photoshop in an attempt to make it legible but to no avail...

While we were peering at the sign, the owner stopped in his car and wound down the window, to see if we'd deciphered it. He thought it had been a barbers or beauty parlour. This building stands alone on this corner of Forest Road, amid sixties council estates, lone survivor of what must have been pretty devastating blitz damage.

Any ideas what it says? Please post in the comments if you can make it out!

Moving house

Not so fun bits ...

And fun bits ...

Words to live by

"Cultivate a healthy attitude to time ... Don't get hung up on what has happened or will happen. You can't control either. The present is all you've ever got."

"All life is paradox. Nothing can ever be finally worked out ... Embrace ignorance brightly – not knowing is what makes life worth living. To know everything would be hell."

"... don't judge others, or yourself, too harshly ... Be good, but don't try to be better than you are."

Wise words from Guardian columnist Tim Lott in 'In the company of women', 14 July 2012

Kitchen Inspiration

Apparently, my dream kitchen has lots of shelves and cupboard space. Oh and metro tiles...

Kitchen Inspiration on Pinterest

Savouring

From Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project:
"Happiness has four stages. To eke out the most happiness from an experience, we must anticipate it, savor it as it unfolds, express happiness, and recall a happy memory. Any single happy experience may be amplified or minimized, depending on how much attention you give it."
Isn't that nice? I suspect that I tend to undermine my experience of good things in the moment by anxiety about what comes next or critiquing what happened before. Who wouldn't want to wring every drop of joy from something good? I'm going to practice savouring...

Balance

Image originally uploaded to Flickr by moriza

Lovely podcast from Design*Sponge on achieving a work/life balance. Funny how a very individual tale can teach more than all the generic platitudes in the world.

Dutch interiors

On a work trip to Dordrecht, I picked up this rather lovely Dutch interiors mag, Ariadne at Home

Of course, I can't read the articles nor understand a single caption, but the pictures are really pretty. Cool, calm blues and greys, and vintage furniture everywhere.

I also stayed at a charmingly quirky hotel/fairytale castle complete with market garden cafe, ate delicious stroopwaflen and rode some impressive double decker trains. All in all , I am very taken with The Netherlands.