deondergangvanmijnouders

Happy Saturday! This week we've sunk into the Shanghai winter... a few extremely chilly days, with bad pollution and my son home with hairlice from his kindergarten! Urgh! We'll get through, lots of shampooing here at our house! Today I'm sharing some photos of our winter streets here in Shanghai, some ordinary corners as we've been walking around. Slowly, it's starting to be too familiar here, the shops, the bikes and the people... I went to a new area for a voice over job and was quickly reminded to talk more photos because of the different decorations and perspectives again. Maybe it takes about a year to get settled into new surrounds and not find meat hanging outside on a coathanger to be strange. It still is strange, but I'm less likely to stop for a photo perhaps? Wishing you a relaxing weekend!

Well, today is our one year anniversary of being in Shanghai! I am absolutely shocked with how fast the days and weeks fly by here. I know that naturally time speeds up as we grow, or it feels like for me. Some times with motherhood, I feel the time really slows down again though... some days last forever. I feel very lucky that we've had the space to learn about our new lives here in this city... and in turn I've had so many funny days with Felix. He'll be three years old next week! For me, there's so much to say about living here... personally I feel challenged without my regular day job in radio (14 years long & fun career)... I have felt in flux; inbetween times. I do think about the Cure a bit with the Inbetween Days phrase... I'm often just floating around trying to find who I am and what I do (outside of the parenthood thing)... I like it but it feels very unlike me. Of course, having my blog, my writing and sewing has kept my even keel and that balance ...

For my Scenes from Shanghai, I like to collect up similar photos from my time here and group them together to show you a different take on China. The city is full of contrasts, full to the brim but quiet as all hell... glamourous and charming on one corner and then really gross and stinky down the next street. I take my good camera everywhere (the GX7 Lumix one) and just snap away at whatever really, sometimes bikes loaded up with chairs, sometimes buildings that could be straight outta France, or sometimes food drying on the street. We don't know how long or short our time here will be... so I'm just soaking it up. I have noticed a few times in the last month things have kind of felt normal... and I'm keeping busy with my life and my son's life all while our darling one works long hours for us to save for a holiday and pay the bills. My last street patterns blog post featured some more gates and motifs and lovely things like this one if you're into patterns! It...

My Scenes from Shanghai blog post today is about the patterns I see around town... I have another set to post next week as well, because there's so many and they're quite graphic all at once. Walking around some parts of the Former French Concession is never boring, but all streets can look the same unless you pay attention to the details. The details are my favourites! Wishing you a lovely Sunday!

Hi there and happy weekend! It's our last few days with my folks visiting from Australia, so we'll be out and about in Shanghai seeing a few more sights! Today for you in my collection of Scenes from Shanghai blog posts, I've found all the green colours this year (Chinese New Year fireworks right by our 18th floor apartment!) for you! I've really loved collecting the colours of Shanghai together for you, it helps me get a sense of order in a choatic city... but also pleased my virgo-esque neatness... you can see my other colour collections here: Red Blue Pinks & Purples Yellow Hope you have something lovely planned for your weekend, talk soon. xoxo

Happy Friday! What a beautiful week in Shanghai... I hope it's been lovely for you wherever you are. These photos are a collection of pinks and purples... showing you some more colourful parts of Shanghai... ordered to a colour scheme as I am a virgo and I shall order my things here in the blog how it feels lovely and ordered in my brain. I have green next for you, but for today... enjoy! And the purple spinach was absolutely delicious! Everything in Shanghai is delicious (I am avoiding durian & stinky tofu though) and so pretty! Have a lovely weekend xoxo

My last Scenes from Shanghai post was about the red colours , and it seems apt to keep my People's Colours going, and showcase yellow (as the nation's flag is red and yellow!) because there are great yellows around town and even more if you're a two year old who can spot the bright colours! You can probably gather by now that I'm taking a LOT of photographs of our time here, and talking to a few people recently about our time here, I have started to really think that what I create here (through the blog and sewing) will be just such a brilliant archive and a storybook of our lives. I forget that I've done this here, and I forget that I've blogged for so long without really see that in 20 years I can (hopefully) look back on all this ... I forget that this is a web-log. This whole internet thing just comes so naturally to everyone these days, it's such an extension of our lives. Anyways, hope you enjoy a brightness from this collection of photies this week......

Some reds for you today, as I find all the colours in my photos from the last 6 months of living in Shanghai. Red is a very Chinese-y colour... at Chinese New Year the town was covered in red lanterns, and you could even buy red underwear because it's lucky to wear it over the new year... I think it'll bring good fortune. Lots of things bring good fortune! I was at an event last week and the performance included a gigantic cabbage, for that's also a good fortune icon here! I love it! Hope you've had a lovely week! Enjoy your weekend! We're loving the warmer weather and spending it out in the parks! xoxo