Music from the Tea Lands

I'm downloading new music again, and to add to my "cool" music collection (Milka will comment on this I'm sure hahaha), I downloaded three Putumayo World Music albums and so far, my favorite is this one, Music from the Tea Lands. It's time for a tea party!

I was first drawn to the charm of Putumayo because of the cover art designs. The artworks are created by Nicola Heindl and the style features a fusion of folk lore and contemporary. For those who are strangers to Putumayo music, Putumayo World Music is a record label which specializes in featuring upbeat and melodic music from different parts of the globe. They specialize in African and Cuban music but they are also great in selecting music from all over. According to the Wikipedia article, a large portion of their target market are people with an interest in culture, travel and the arts. People like me! Amazing!

Music from the Tea Lands particularly impressed me because of its melodic Asian sound. It contains music from China, India and Turkey (only to name a few). I really enjoyed the music because I feel transported through time and space. Asian culture has been a growing interest of mine and this music makes a great accompaniment! Makes my room feel like a cozy little tea house. I love it.

I've been thinking up of a concept for my future store (thinking WAY ahead, Sheena, what the hell) with a cultural, artsy kindda theme and for sure, Putumayo Music will be playing in the background.

Barbie Silkstone Collection

When I was a little girl, I loved Barbie dolls, not because it was a great toy, but because I loved the different outfits. Dolls served more as a display for me rather than a toy (except when cousins or friends would come visit and ask to play with them), and I loved them that way (Here we see the beginnings of my obsession with pretty things haha). Recently, I have been surfing the net for new references for different costumes when I came across a Barbie website arranging dolls according to collection. The Silkstone Collection was the first thing that struck me and I was completely drawn to the unique style of the dolls.

The facial features of the dolls is the most impressive detail in this collection. They all look so sophisticated and elegant. Reminds me so much of Audrey Hepburn! The costumes also feature a wide range of outfits with the theme of high class society women.

The elegant midnight gowns are so entrancing and even the casual outfits were so well designed! There are times when I wish I lived a life as such, and these dolls only heightened this desire! Such lovely lovely costumes! So vintage and so classy!

As some of my close friends may have already guessed, my favorite among the dolls is the Equestrian doll, officially known as the "High Stepping" Barbie, simply because I have always been in love with the culture of old style tea-parties and polo matches on a Sunday afternoon.

I think I'd post more entries about other Barbie doll collections which I find wonderful!

Maggie Parr

I was first introduced to Magie Parr's artworks during my visit to HK Disneyland, and back then, I wasn't aware that she was the genius behind the paintings. I distinctly remember walking inside Banquet Hall and seeing the Snow White painting, I squealed like a little girl and rushed to it to take pictures. Then I noticed that there were other paintings beside it with the same art style and I felt like I was gonna die of excitement. Haha.

What struck me at first about her paintings was the colors and lighting. It gave out an air similar to that of old renaissance works of art. I love how she made the Beauty and the Beast artwork most especially because it's so early century-ish! Belle looks a bit huffy here though at first glance, hehe.

I was lucky to have come across a website once which accurately provided the artist's name, since I really had no idea who did these paintings. So I researched more about her works and found out that she was in fact commissioned to do a lot of portraits for the different Disneyland Resorts. I was able to gather some samples of her works as well.

Probably my favorite series is the one where she imitates the styles of famous pieces like the Mona Lisa (which she wittily named Minnie Lisa) and one of my personal favorites, The Swing. I have already had ideas of creating a similar set (actually I've already started before, with my Last Supper drawing), but I wasn't able to push through with the plan, partly because I felt that my flat colors wouldn't do the paintings justice. But maybe I shall get around to continuing that idea next time.

Funny London Pics

I was browsing through our pictures a while ago when I came across these! I don't know if you'll find them funny but when I was trying to remember those particular moments, it really made me laugh. Haha!

So first, this set. Me in front of the Royal Albert Hall! Uh, I don't know why we took three pics? Hahaha! But this was just really funny. I don't remember this much, like why I took off my jacket in steps, but I did, so there! I look like an Eskimo in the first one, haha I love it! This is one of my favorite jackets. So comfy!

This second one is another silly picture which I remember very well! I was squealing because of the cute squirrels all over the park and I was bugging my brother to take my picture with a squirrel. But the problem was, the squirrels ran away every time I tried to get near them (I think they were scared cuz I was too hyper, boo).

So my 'brilliant' plan was to move slowly, one step at a time, sideways, so that I can fool the squirrels into thinking that I wasn't going to take a picture with them. -.- Don't know what I was thinking! HAHAHA!

Anyway this pictures shows me, trying to exectue my plan, but as you can see, the squirrel got away. :( Damn. I need a plan B.

Hahaha ok, that's all! I was just so amused at the pictures. I think I'll go find other funny pics from our other trips!

January Celadon Events!

The Ateneo Celadon is an organization that I actively participate in at school. I really love my org and I'd like to give the entire story why, but that's another story. For this entry, I'd like to share two Celadon events which I participated in this January; the Business Fair and the Spring Film Festival.

The Biz Fair took place last January 19-20. I was there even before the event started and got the opportunity to use Retcher's DSLR and be our official amateur photographer (haha) for the day, beginning from the ribbon cutting! Heheee! I took most of the pics that day with the DSLR (which I wish I had instead!). I also tried helping out as much as I can the entire day from 9:30 am to 9:30 pm! I had tons of siomai which I absolutely adore! I had such a great time helping out for such a great event. The heads have done a very good job with this and I am very proud to have been part of the event, even if I just played a small role.

It was also a very memorable experience because of the funny fact that I was at the advertisements! One of the four 'models' haha! I honestly didn't expect that it was going to be that big of a deal until I saw posters hanging above the escalators. Freaky. Fed my vanity though. Hahaha! But it was really funny because obviously I'm not really a model of any sort and this was my first, er, shoot, I guess. But it was fun! My friends were teasing me about it. For the first time, I wasn't the one designing, I was the model! I think I prefer designing though... haha!

Spring Film Fest was one of the most interesting projects for me which is why I immediately signed up for this. It's our annual film festival wherein we feature 4 Chinese movies subtitled in English. As I am a big fan of foreign films, I already knew from the beginning that I wanted to participate.

I submitted a design for the promotional materials and luckily, the project heads liked what I did and used it as the official design. I'm very honored. This is my most widespread design though and again, I was surprised at how much of a big deal they made this! This is the largest tarp design I've ever done, it was as long as three floors, I think, and at Trinoma too! Huge mall! o.o And the posters and flyers were distributed everywhere inside and outside school! I worked very hard on them, editing the format dozens of times because of the different layouts needed and after all the revisions (Da knows... haha!) , but in the end, after I saw everything at Trinoma during our Gala Night, I realized it was all worth the pain.

Speaking of Gala Night, I was also there and I served as an usherette! It was really fun cuz we got to dress up in semi formal dresses and suits. I was also the one who held one of four scissors for the ribbon cutting. HAHA ok, that wasn't a big deal, but it made me happy. Funny! The movie we watched was really nice, it's called "Getting Home". I already had a bias for this because I'm totally in love with foreign films (as you might know already) and I've recently been having a love affair with Chinese culture (I must write about that soon). But really, it was a funny movie and I loved it. The people I worked with the entire time were great people too so great job everyone! My co ushers (they were all guys) made the night really fun and it was all great!

I love Celadon very much (I just have to stress that fact) and I'm looking forward to more events in the future! Yey!

The Travel Book

As one of my favorite quotes go: "The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page." And whenever I feel the need to travel but find it impossible to do so, I suffice myself by reading a very good book because sometimes, a book can carry the world in its pages.

The Travel Book by Lonely Planet is one of my favorites. It provides a condensed profile of every country in alphabetical order. It is easy to read, fun and very light (not literally, as this book is REALLY big and heavy). It gives you a good glimpse of every place with the witty remarks and advices on what to do and when to go. And of course, the photographs are breathtaking. Definitely not the usual tourist photos, the selection is amazing.

Coincidentally, I first encountered the quote I mentioned above by St. Agustine from this very book, but that was long ago, before I bought my own copy (And the fact that I bought it form my own hard earned money *from doing commissions* makes it even more special to me). I got the paperback edition because I thought that the hardbound would just be too heavy, and I was right. The paperback is already 4.6 lbs. Very heavy. I had to pay extra at the post office because of some stupid reason but it was very worth the trouble.

I haven't read through all of it yet, and I don't plan on doing that in just one sitting anyway. I read as little as one country from time to time, and in a sense, I feel like I am visiting places, one step at a time as well. I like flipping through the pages and just glancing at the different pictures. My greatest dream in life is to travel the world so I guess it's not surprising that whenever I'm not traveling, it's what I'm thinking about most.

One of the things I love most about this book is something that many may not have even noticed, and that's the message from Simon Westcott which can be found in the front flap. The introduction is perfect and you have to read it in its entirety. It is brief but nevertheless inspiring and he ends it with this line: "We offer you this book in hope that you will travel more, travel well and travel safely, thereby coming to read as many pages as possible of the greater, richer book that is the world."

Along the River During the Qingming Festival

I now officially have a new favorite painting, and this is it : "Along the River During the Qingming Festival". Goodbye, Starry Night. Zhang Zeduan is my new Van Gogh.

Along the River (as I shall now refer it as, since the title is extremely supercalifragilistic) is a panoramic painting sizing at 24.8 x 528.7 cm. It is super long! The picture I placed there is just a TINY part of the entire painting. Look at this picture of the full sized version and see for yourself what I mean when I say LONG.

The original was created during the Song, but there have been remakes of this painting, most notably, the one from the Ming and Qing Dynasty. The one on the left side is a scene taken from the Song original and the one on the right is from the Qing remake. I really like the Qing remake because it has a bit more life into it, like more color and more action. Of course, nothing beats the original, but this Qing version is also a masterpiece on its own. This remake is at Taiwan and the original one is at Beijing.

This painting depicts life at Kaifeng (the capital then) during the Song Dynasty and supposedly during the the Qingming Festival. But scholars have debated on whether the city depicted was in fact non-existent but merely an idealized one and that the season then was Fall. Nevertheless, its intricacy and excellent execution is still very awe-inspiring.

And speaking of inspiration, the reason why I love this painting so much is because the first time I saw it, it suddenly gave me a lot of wonderful ideas. It's never easy to find inspiration (though they say that inspiration can be found anywhere) and this is one of those rare things that really inspired me.

I first saw this painting in my Asian History Class with Ms. Lailani Gotao (I love her class very much, it's so fun! If given a choice, you HAVE to pick her class). Her class is what I look forward to every Tuesday and Thursday (despite the shitty time 12-1:30?! I haven't eaten lunch yet!). As good friends know, I used to love Europe very much and thought that they were just the greatest. I love reading about kings and queens, the French, watching those movies with huge poofy dresses, etc. I got really sad when I couldn't get Western History for this semester. But truthfully, I'm so glad I got into Asian History. I have a deeper appreciation now of my Asian heritage and now I want to go back to China! I can't believe I missed so much when I visited China around.... 3 years ago, I think.

I have changed No. 26 on my list of 70 Things to Do Before I Die, from Visiting Starry Night by Van Gogh to visting the original "Along the River" painting at Beijing! Seeing the Qing in Taiwan will be just as good too!

Amelie Prints

As I was reading all these really neat design blogs, I came across an entry at Casapinka which featured Amelie prints hanging on their staircase wall. The prints are from this Etsy store called Almost Famous. I haven't written about this movie yet, but as many people who know me well know, Le Fabuleaux Destin de Amelie Poulain is my all-time favorite favorite movie! Yes, I love it more than Lord of the Rings and Science of Sleep and Love Actually. Haha.

Anyway back to the prints. They were so retro and I loved it at once! It truly has its own charm to it... much like the charm of old movie posters. Beautiful. The scenes they chose were also very cute, I love the one with the polka dot umbrella. She looks so mischievous yet innocent. And the The green one is also wonderful because of course, it reminds me of creme brulee! (If you haven't seen the movie you won't get it, and you are missing half of your life)

I can just imagine it at my future home (or actually at my room right now). It will not be hanging so explicitly at my staircase wall, like theirs did, but mine would probably be hanging at some smaller room, on top of a red, intricately designed wallpaper. Yes, I have planned it all. Haha. I haven't blabbed about my thing about wallpapers. I already know the wallpaper designs my future home will have. You know the wallpaper on Amelie's room? Designs similar to that, yes. Much like the wallpapers of the rooms inside the Palace of Versailles (I almost died of joy being inside those rooms). More about this in future entries. So why do I plan my future home? I don't know. Stop me if you can.

Milka is probably going "My god, Sheena, your weird things again. Crappyness..." HAHA.

Happy New Year!

A little bit late by a few days, but still... happy new year! :D One of my favorite days for the year is new year's eve. It has been a tradition since I was little to go to hotels after dinner just for some pastries and to chill at a coffee shop. We used to do it with my extended family, including cousins and all, but it sorta stopped. Nevertheless, we still do it, as a family, and I always love it. It's always very fun, relaxing and nice.

I wore a dress this year, just cuz I was so in the mood to. Haha. We first dropped by at Edsa Shang, but for many reasons, one being that they were pretty full, we decided to transfer hotels. So we went to one fo the nearest ones, Crowne Plaza for a peaceful coffee and pastry time with family. We had nummy cakes and drank tea and coffee. I had this exotic (haha) south african orange blend and it was soooo good.

We got funny hats and took pictures the entire time. Dad loved the funny hats most I think. He went to the CR wearing the hat. And he was so game when I was taking pictures of him. Haha!

Then we went home at around 11:30, just in time to catch the countdowns on TV. I wore my new pajamas, because according to Chinese tradition, you have to wear new pajamas every new year (though I really believe we ought to be doing that during Chinese New Year instead...). I got this tank top and shorts ensemble which honestly didn't look like pajamas to sleep in at all. Haha. It had a cute design actually, which is why I got it, and I plan to wear the top on casual days. Hehe. It says "Forget love, I'd rather fall in CHOCOLATE".

Didn't come up with a specific new year's resolution this year, because like most people, I never get to keep them anyway (because I forget them after a few months). I was just very thankful for the past year and looking forward to a new one full of surprises! Here's to us!

Disneyland Gifts

Milka just wrote something in her blog about how a friend saw something cute and instantly reminded him of her. I then remembered these! Hehe.

These are gifts from three different friends who went to Disneyland and brought me home something because as they said, these reminded them of me. It's really funny cuz all three of them gave these more or less around the same time frame, it feels as though they talked about it, haha but of course they didn't cuz they don't know each other or anything. Anyway... blab over.

The one on the left is a black Minnie Mouse pen from Juy. I love the super cute ribbon on the pen!! I have this thing about not using pretty things. So this pen is just standing there in my pen stand, hehe. It's so cute. The one in the middle is from Abs. It's a really nice keychain. It looks so vintage! I'm using it right now for my house keys. And the last one's from Harold. A very cute and funny Minnie Mouse umbrella. Beats me where I'm going to use it, haha but I still love it anyway.

Thanks super for these, Juy, Abs and Harold. I love them very much. Heehee. Just like what Milka said, I'm very honored that people remember me when they are in nice places, like Disneyland! Yey!

Still Enchanting

"I've been dreaming of a true love's kiss, and a prince I'm hoping comes with this...."

One of the most delightful films this year, Disney has proved that they still have it, with Enchanted. I'm so glad that Walt Disney Pictures has decided to return to 2D Animation. Although I did find Meet the Robinsons fairly cute, Chicken Little was just really bad, so let's leave the 3D thing to Pixar for now, ok?

When I first heard about the plot, I really thought it was gonna be bad. I expected nothing more than the average cliche twisting of fairytales kindda thing. But when I first saw the trailer, it was so funny and it got me all excited! It was what I've been waiting for for forever. And it did not disappoint me. This film is just so cute, witty, funny and very VERY DISNEY! I hope they continue to produce princess films again. And I LOVE THE SONGS!! My friends were laughing when they asked me if I knew the songs (as I do with the other Disney films) and then I started singing "When you meet that someone, who was meant for you!..." haha.

One of my friends was squealing "Sheena! You should've watched with us! It's such a "you" movie!" after he saw the movie (yes it's a he) with my other friends (I had classes that time). And a few days later, another of my friends texted me and asked if I had already seen the film because according to him (yes it's another he), he could just imagine me singing in our local park, just as Giselle did at Central Park. It's was so funny! Haha. And I'm so proud that my friends thought of me while watching this movie! Hahaha. I'm such a Disney girl.

So, in relation, I've been trying to draw Enchanted fanart since last month, but I've always failed. I've done two drawings with Giselle in a her ball gown but I could never get the background colors right. So I decided to change costumes and did this instead, one of her in her adorable blue dress. Heehee. It's so bright (the color of her costume) and I love it. I wanted her to look extremely delighted, but one of my guy friends pointed out that she looks extremely scared of the squirrel HAHA so I don't know... I guess I still failed.

If you haven't seen the movie yet, go see it now! It's really really adorable. And if you love Disney, you'll surely love this one. I can't wait for the Princess and the Frog and Rapunzel (though Rapunzel is 3d, I'm glad they're back to fairytales). Hope they're even better than Enchanted.

Love Actually

Watching Love Actually every holiday season is my personal Christmas tradition.

If you're one of those people who know me very well, you'll know that I go to great lengths to emphasize just how much I hate cheesy, romantic, chick flicks. I love fairytales, yes, and unique love stories, but just not the average everyday stupid romantic comedies. Ergh. Anyway, when I first heard about this movie a few years back, I was very hesitant to watch it, and the only reason that I did was because Keira Knightley was part of the cast.

I can honestly say, that watching it, was one of the best choices I've made in my entire life.

People often ask me why the hell I'm so in love with this movie. To others it was just an average film and to some, it was just too damn confusing. But to me, it was perfect... in every way. It's funny, it's cute and the stories are just too heartwarming.

(This paragraph will be full of random thoughts about random parts in the movie) Probably being the biased person that I am, my favorite story is that of Keira's and how her husband's best friend fell for her. The doorstep moment is one of the best parts in the movie. Their story made me very sad and when he said "enough now..." after everything... *sigh* it broke my heart :( . One of the cutest was the little kid who was very in love with the most popular girl in school. Hehe. That was so cute... especially when he was so convinced that his drumming would actually win the girl's heart. Aren't we all that silly sometimes...

I will forever be watching this movie once every year, during the holiday season. I've done it for three straight years already. It's something to look forward to everytime to get me into the holiday spirit!

And each time I watch this movie, I am always reminded why I fell in love with it in the first place. Love Actually showed me the different faces of love. It wakes you up, gives you hope and makes you wonder, if love actually is ... just around the corner.