Stylish Spaces

I have a confession to make - I have always found it hard to follow a recipe, any recipe for that matter. Nine times out of ten, halfway through a recipe for a delectable dessert that I really want to try - I will start doing the what ifs - what if I add orange juice instead of pineapple (and nine times out of ten that is out of necessity as I don't have pineapples in my fridge) or what if I add maple syrup instead of brown sugar - you can imagine how these recipes turn out - sometimes heading straight for the bin or sometimes so good that my husband and kids want the same again - but alas! it never turns out the same next time as by next time I have completely forgotten what I had substituted what with! So you can say I am a bit of a hit or miss in the kitchen, but secretly I think that's because I have some deep rooted problem with conformity. Anything or anyone trying to make me be or do just so, awakens the rebel in me - and I always t...

In my last post about Lebanese furniture designer  Nada Debs  I mentioned how increasingly over the years young people have turned their backs on their ancestral heritage and traditions, choosing instead to emerge themselves in an alien culture and traditions they think are more suited to their liking -  but there is also a very small (and steadily increasing) number of young people who are finding the value in their ancestral heritage too precious to ignore or discard lightly. I have tremendous admiration for these young men and women who see their heritage not as shackles that tie them down to a particular way of living and thinking, but as an opportunity to present themselves to the world uniquely. Summaiya Jillani, is one such very young Pakistani artist, who rose to modest fame in the art circles from virtual obscurity last year after she painted and exhibited her interpr...

We all subconsciously grow up surrounded by the history of our ancestors and traditions enveloping us in an embrace that sometimes, for young people on a quest to find their own identity, can get oppressive - some try and break free, move to far away places, adopt customs more to their liking, pushing their old age traditions to the far recesses of their memories.  But as they grow older, into their late thirties and beyond, something strange happens - those childhood memories, smells, sounds and traditions slip through the attic door of their brain cells and start a nostalgia of all things home. A pattern on an old fabric, a faded photograph, a whiff of cooking that reminds them of childhood - they end up reaching to the past, embracing, even devouring  age old traditions and seeing their beauty afresh - all the while watching with a wry smile as history repeats itself and the younger generation turn their backs on their heritage. I have s...

Quitting I think, is highly underrated. Ask anyone on the street, they will most likely tell you that quitting is a bad thing, you should never quit - winners don’t quit and quitters never win. I believed that for a long time as well – I believed you could achieve anything if you just kept going in the face of all niggling hardships -   I remember some ten years past, I passionately tried to talk my son out of quitting cello which he had been playing for a year and a half. I ended up upsetting him so bad that my husband had to intervene and tell me to back off. Oh yes, I was one of those mums, I wanted my kids to succeed in everything they did. I have since realised that it is simply impossible to be even  passably good at everything and neither can your kids – and the sooner you teach your kids that the better (without killing their sense of exploratory adventure, ofcourse) - so they are still keen to try out new things but if things don’t work as expected, they know it ...