Today I wanted to just give you a quick little update. January has brought some exciting new ventures. I have been working on a lot of different things and I am so excited to share them with you in due time. Today I had a few photos taken for my website and promotional materials. I am hoping to do a few more again soon but today’s shoot turned out pretty good. But more than just posing pretty I am working on making things and writing things and offering some services as well. I have added a “Hire Me” page to the website and will soon be adding a shop! I have found some colleagues and begun collaborating in both the practical and creative and I can’t wait to show you some of my super-talented friends’ work in the future. It has been an honour and an adventure creating this website and I am so thankful to all of those who read anything I write. You are the heart of this website, not me, and I would have stopped without all of your encouragement. I get excited about making things to share with you and I take great joy in showing you the things I am working on. You are the reason I do anything on here. Thank you for being a part of my journey and I hope you are excited about some of the places we are heading as well. I hope you stick around to see where this thing goes. The future of this blog, and more importantly our lives, is bright and exciting. We are all learning and growing and improving everyday, so tomorrow has to be better than today. I just know it will be. Truly. Tasia.
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Happy Monday! Usually this blog would have been put out on Sunday, but in all honesty, when I went to write it all that came out was “grump, grump, grump.” We all have those days and yesterday nothing I would have written would have been authentic. So today I am coming at it fresh, and oh, the difference a day can make! Today I wanted to share with you the Christmas present I made for Karl. He and I never really buy each other big fancy gifts. We buy each other small things but big purchases are done together and not in secret. We do, however, put loads of time and effort into handmade gifts. They are a) less expensive — which is important when student debts are huge, and b) more personal and meaningful. This year the two of us spent a lot of time reminiscing about where we were one year ago. In January of last year we were just arriving back in Halifax after half a year spent living abroad. We had the incredible experience of staying in 10 different places during that half-year alone. To commemorate all the incredible places we have had the pleasure of visiting together I made 12 images that chronicle our journeys together and hung them above the bed. Havana, Cuba — the place that started it all. The first place Karl and I ever travelled together was Cuba. We had survived the first two semesters of architecture school together as well as one horrific winter. But this is Halifax, so in April there was still lots of snow on the ground. I wishfully begged to go somewhere warm together on one particularly cold and stressful day and within a matter of weeks we were getting passports and buying plane tickets. I think our souls needed this escape and I could not be more glad that we did it. Aside from Havana being an incredible city to explore and the beaches of Cuba being utterly perfect the trip was perfect in even more meaningful ways. We discovered we travel really well together and that we both like to explore. We awoke to the reality that the world is teeming with cultures and climates we have yet to see and we realized, there in Cuba, that we want to see as much of it as we can together. For us, Havana is where it really all began. Victoria, British Columbia is my home. It is where I was born and raised, but before we set off for Europe we had the opportunity to spend a month living there together. We explored the land, soaked in the sun, and wandered the city. We went up the island and off the island visited my friends and family. It is a place that is forever home in my heart and could be home for us both in the future. British Columbia has good reason to boldly claim that it is the “Best place on earth.” After Victoria our Europe travels began and we arrived in our new home of Copenhagen, Denmark. I can spend days telling you all about that magical experience but all I will say for now is how that embracing city was the perfect home base as we ambled around much of Europe. Stockholm was our first weekend trip but not the last. It may be my top city-I-would-most-like-to-visit-again. The image above is of a path through the Woodland Cemetery, my favourite place in Stockholm. The park-like cemetery boasts beautiful vistas and incredible architecture. It was so serene and yet felt so culturally rich. Those Scandinavians sure understand how to say so much with so little. Simplicity at its finest. Visiting London felt like a dream as we walked past iconic sites that we had seen dozens of times on screen but were now seeing in real life. In this city we had disagreements as we both had expectations of this place but it was here we learned that we are capable of compromise in our travels and I think we both got all we wanted out of London. We had the pleasure of visiting a friend in Amsterdam and having her show us around. We so enjoyed our visit and adventures and now associate Amsterdam with Erin and and the special times we had. Zurich marks the beginning of our weeklong European road trip that was the a whirlwind of many different cities, cultures, and countries. Seeing the Swiss alps for the first time was something neither one of us will ever forget. Venice was a movie set, a painting come to life. The entire city is perfectly distressed, impeccably lit, and incredibly staged. Every picture was a postcard and with every step we felt the importance of the place. Vienna was my request. We went because I insisted. And I’m so glad we did. This city feels royal and important. It is elegant and intricate and a place I would like to visit again. The Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial pictured above was something Karl and I had seen in movies before and studied the symbolism of but the moment we rounded the corner into the square and saw the statue we were overcome by all it represented. Imagine a room, lined with bookshelves, but the shelves held only ghostly shells of where books should be. Now fill that room entirely with concrete to immortalize it. When the room is removed and the concrete is all that stands you are left with a cube wrapped in hundreds of concrete books with the spines of the books facing inward, of what used to be a room, you can’t read them, you can’t even read their names. The imprint of the doors makes you think for a moment you may be able to go inside, until you realize it is just an imprint and no one will ever be able to go inside again. The books are the lives we can never see the contents of, and the room is the Jewish-Austrian culture we can never visit. This reality crushed me, and I could hardly stand. How can we explain to people how a highlight of our trip was feeling broken for the Jews of Europe because we finally understand it a little bit more now? Prague, and the Czech Republic as a whole, felt like a connection to our roots. Karl’s grandmother crew up in the Czech Republic and while my family has no ties there, they hail from Belarus and the Ukraine. Prague was the most Slavic city we visited and it felt “like the old country” that gave us our grandmothers. Germany was like a home-coming for Karl and it was an honour to be beside him as he discovered some of his Gruenewald heritage. We met family he had written to but never met and had the ironic joy of comparing being a Canadian architecture student and a German architecture student with a distant cousin of his, tied together in genealogy and profession. After returning home to Canada, Karl was relocated to Cape Breton for school this past summer. While the time apart was hard, camping on the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean was an experience I am glad I had and probably would not have had were it not for school forcing him to be there. It proved to us that we know how to make the best of a trip even if we didn’t choose to take it.
Our travels are a real part of who we are as individuals but they are also a very real part of who we are together. Having images of them reminds us of how fortunate we each were to visit the places we have but also how lucky we were to be able to do it together. I hope you adorn your house with things that remind you of the specials times you have had and the memories that tie you together. May you never forget how much your life experiences have shaped you as a person, and may you be forever grateful for all you have learned through them all. Your life is a song, full of high notes and low notes, I hope you are dancing to the melody. Truly. Tasia. It is time to get back to it! 2017 is in full swing and it’s most likely your schedule is back in full swing as well. It is over here. And so, it’s time to get back to some decor and the tour of my apartment. Today we’re in the kitchen, not cooking anything up other than big ideas for the new year. Do you ever have days where you just refuse to cook? About once a week (or more…) I just can’t handle the idea of having to cook, AGAIN! Doesn’t it ever end?! I’ve been told it doesn’t. So on those days it’s nuked leftovers or something frozen. Luckily after having a lovely date night out in the snow storm last night we have delicious leftovers from the restaurant. The only reason I do any cooking at all is because I have a beautiful kitchen. That being said, I prefer to look at it than to use it. So let’s do that today. First things first, I do live in a rental so I can’t take credit or blame for the countertops, cupboards, or appliances. All I have done in this space is accessorize. I had a nice slate to work with, which helps, but it doesn’t mean that if you have shabbier countertops, cupboards, or appliances, that you can’t have a beautiful kitchen too. In here, I started with a palette: black, white, and grey. This is my favourite palette, and having warm cupboards was enough colour for me. The countertops and appliances were black, white, and grey so my favourite colour scheme didn’t fight with the existing fixtures. The three stools were a gift from Karl’s parents and a staple in probably half the homes in North America. It just so happened that these matched the cupboards perfectly! I swapped out the traditional light fixture with this simple pendant without any shades. For one, the light is great for working in the kitchen, and two, it makes for a more industrial feel. The colour scheme, along with the industrial lighting, graphic prints, and cake stand give the kitchen a bit of a French bistro feel that elicits scents of fresh baked bread. Now that’s a kitchen I want to be in. Speaking of the cake stand...I have spoken about it before but I love my cake stand for anything and everything, not just cakes. Today we have bread in it, at Halloween it was full of candy, and occasionally there is even a cake in the cake stand. It is the most beautiful and functional piece in the kitchen. It keeps things fresher than I previously thought possible. If you don’t own one I highly suggest you go get one. The muted colour scheme in the kitchen helps it to maintain a clean look. The dark and light contrast keeps it alive and fresh without being overwhelming. It allows it to be a peaceful space, and believe me, the kitchen is the room that I have the hardest time remaining peaceful in. I keep the things I use all the time handy; knives, oven mitts, dish towels, etc. all live within reach. No need to open a drawer or door. I also keep a ladder handy. I don’t know if you noticed but my kitchen doesn’t have a ton of cupboard space. This means that even the high shelves are important shelves, so instead of constantly dragging over a kitchen chair I invested in a folding ladder. This one if from IKEA and it folds up and lives at the end of the kitchen. It also doubles as a stool to sit on while in the kitchen for extended periods and an extra surface during times like Thanksgiving when counter space is limited. It was a worthy (and small) investment for how often it is used. If vertical space is as valuable for you as it is for me a folding ladder just might be the solution. A few more items I keep handy are cooking utensils (because do they really belong anywhere other than right next to the stove?) the coffee pot, cutting boards (next to the microwave) and the sugar dish (which just wouldn’t fit in the jam packed tea cupboard above it). In an ideal world I would have less on the counters since I already have limited counter space but unfortunately I just can’t find the toaster another home. And if the toaster is going to live in plain sight it is important to set up a little vignette so that these things can look attractive on the counters. If you are swimming in a sea of countertop space cluster items together, don’t allow them to sprawl the full length. Arrange these clusters in a way that you think looks cute and limit yourself to as few clusters as possible. At the sink I have another vignette that includes the dish soap, scrub brush, and dishwasher packs. The are such essential and frequently used items that just have to live within reach. Knowing that they would be out all the time, I bought cute containers for them to live in. The soap dispenser did come with dish soap in it but I deemed it cute enough to be kept and reused again and again. I now transfer any dish soap I buy into this container (which also means I can buy in bulk and store the big container somewhere else. The white container is one that I had and was unsure what to do with until one day genius struck and now instead of tucking the dishwasher detergent packs under the sink they are within easy reach. Conveniently my dishwasher is right below so the placement worked out wonderfully. Have you ever seen dish packs stored a cuter way? Finally, the dish brush. We all have one, we all use one, why do they have to be ugly? The answer is: they don’t. Find yourself a cute dish brush that you don’t mind having on display because whether you like it or not that litter bugger will be on display. And now to a room I have been dying to show you! This is my dining room, duh. I adore its simplicity and the few pieces it holds. Now before I get too far ahead of myself let’s take it bit by bit. The table is a piece of maple plywood from the Home Depot on top of a metal base from Ikea. Karl and I sanded, sealed, and assembled the table ourselves and we are so proud of it. The bench really is just the same. It is a plywood top on four metal legs that came from the Home Depot. The chairs are the modern European chair I’m sure you have seen everywhere. They help to keep the room modern and just so happen to match the table (and kitchen) wood excellently. The fixture was again swapped out for a simple pendant and a round bulb, I wouldn’t mind a shade in here but I haven't found the right one. And now, the best for last! This stunning wall hanging and gorgeous pillow are the handiwork of my very talented friend Andrea. She has started a modern quilting company called 3rd Story Workshop (<——check out her Instagram here). These are from her debut line entitled Gemology (<——check out her Etsy shop here). The pillows and quilts received wonderful attention and even won her an Etsy award for best new talent and a mention in Flare Magazine! How cool is she?! Even cooler than her work, that’s how cool. This diamond set is obviously my fav seeing as it perfectly fits my black, white, and grey scheme. It really classes up the room and adds to the cozy bistro feel.
I hope you enjoyed your visit to Chez Tasia, and I certainly hope you’ll come back again. The kettle is on and the treats are plentiful. Thank you for making this blog a joy, I love hearing from you all so drop me a comment in the comments below. I’m cooking up some really exciting things over here at tasiacraig.com, I hope you’ll love them as much as I do. Until next time, shine bright like a diamond. Truly. Tasia. |
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AuthorTasia Craig recently graduated from Dalhousie's School of Architecture with a Bachelor of Environmental Design Studies and now hopes to showcase her design work on her very first blog. She is currently living in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Archives
June 2017
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