Random

Resolve

I’d like to think that here on Red Nails, content is occasionally less-than-predictable and to quote my Mother ‘fresh and funky’. Light projections that look like ET is attempting to visit? Naturlich, meine freunde. Inspiration for all your indoor camping urges? Saddle up. The odd haiku? I live to serve.

But you know, there comes a point when you have to go with the flow. And in keeping with all other bloggers, I’m doing a New-Years-Resolution post right here, right now. With handy photographs. I warn you now: there is a gym-related post there. If only to remind myself that my gym membership card can’t visit it’s mothership without me, somewhat tragically.

So without further ado, and any more links (actually, make that one), here are mine.

1. I will totally put my wardrobe to better use. I will wear my good basics well, and make sure they are nicely ironed and well-organised so I have no grounds for complaining I have no clothes, and if I did they wouldn’t fit, and that because of it all my relationships with friends / family / other half / general public is likely doomed.

2. When I do buy clothes, I will buy well. I will buy nice prints that can be paired. I will buy some more dresses and skirts rather than just relying on jeans the whole time. I’ve done denim. I’m going to do something crazy and branch into hemlines. That’s right chicks: Gaga’s got nothing on me.

3. I will do some more travelling. I live in London. Europe is a fart away. I will get stamps on my passport this year. Or I won’t actually: EU countries don’t stamp your passport because we’re EU. You just breeze through customs wondering if you’re guilty for anything and avoiding the strip searches (that European ‘thing’ for nudity goes as far as border control).

4. I will cook more mad things. Like lavender hot chocolate. And other non-pasta based dishes. I’ve ordered new pans (my brother is not impressed. Apparently, this is the saddest thing ever), and my Mother has decided every spare crock and pan and spatula she doesn’t currently need can be stored at my house so there is no compelling reason why I cannot be the next Heston by next Christmas. Metaphorically speaking: I don’t want no bald head.

4.a) I will balance this by a fleeting visit to the gym three times a week. And I promise that’s the last time I ever use the g-word.

5. I will sort out my taste in music once and for all. I will go to more festivals (below’s carousel was at Lovebox last year) and I will make sure I update either my iPod or iPhone – at least one goddammit – with all the cool new music I see other people talking about. And I will, I faithfully promise, listen to albums all the way through.

6. I will put all my art up. And read more books. And find a kilim rug for my kitchen and my bedroom because in a wood-floored flat, they are the salve to any lint vines. And I will altogether make my bedroom a little more of a nest because I’m still working out what exactly I want to do with it, even though it’s been three months since I moved in. Decor needs time, dudes.

7. I will blog more, and blog better. I’ll make sure all my pictures are cropped properly and that I get an editorial schedule going. I’ll also get a cool new writing opportunity off the ground, more of which in due course…

Design

She’s A Rainbow (Freak)

Here’s the thing about being a girl. We have lists. Hundreds and hundaruds of them (turns out, you only make more when you age – last time I went home, my Mother had spent the previous fortnight compiling a list of 17 things we needed to discuss). I have lists of things I want to buy (this jacket features, as do these jeans if they ever come back in stock), lists of things I want to cook that extends beyond the most basic pasta dishes, list of things I should be technically concentrating on (Council tax! Phone bills! Procuring a bedside table!), lists and lists of favourite songs, lists of monthly resolutions I never ever keep and lists of blogs I’d like to write… you get the picture. I’ve just made a list of lists.

Anyway.

One such list is a list of things that is titled thus: I-Know-It’s-Weird-To-Like-These-But-I-Do. The following things, in no particular order, feature:

Slices of apple with peanut butter (try it)
The smell of Kiwi black parade shine boot polish
Jack Black (everyone likes Jack Black, few admit to actually fancying him)
Toast with Marmite… and a sliced up boiled egg on top
Aqua. Not the water
Sorting Smarties and Skittles and Lovehearts (and any other coloured sweetie) into rainbow order

It is this final point that brings me onto the crux of this post. In short (because the rest of this post has, you know, skirted): it gets to me astoundingly if multicoloured things aren’t in spectrum order. Niche, I know. To the point that, as a seven-year-old kid (and younger) I obsessively sorted my coloured pencils into order when I put them away (yes. That weird. Who’d have thought) and that when I buy Smarties (or Skittles – this OCD knows no bounds), I still sort them out into a complimentary colour grid before eating them. The following shots of things either arranged in colour order, or doing a good job of looking multicoloured and pretty, prove that while sorting sweeties is odd, pulling together a full palette of colour can be cheery, pleasing and chic, particularly with interior details. It can even, as this awesome post proves, be art.