the real thing

I love this love.
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I'm obsessed with you, I think about you constantly.

I have loved you since kindergarten and often I can't believe you're really mine.

Sometimes I forgot how amazingly hot you are until you walk through the front door, I've never been so attracted to anyone in my life.

I love the rereading the box full of letters you wrote me while we lived apart.

I love the way you make me feel amazing about myself.

You have such a cute butt.

I love that you make me laugh every day, and often so hard I cry.

I loved when you were so excited to find out we were having a baby, when I was totally freaked out.

I love when we fall asleep holding hands.

I adore how romantic you are.

I love the way we share almost every meal.

You are my favorite person.

I loved that summer after high school before we moved to different places, spending every waking minute together.

I even love that we can argue and fight, and then how we can make up...usually very quickly.

I love how you wouldn't complain when I slept from 6pm to 8am when I was pregnant.

I loved going to Senior Prom with you.

I loved that you followed me to NYC.

I love how you were able to calm E down the first night after he was born in the hospital, when I couldn't.

I love it when we snuggle every morning.

I loved it when I came home to you reading out loud to E, when he was only 3 days old.

I love how excited you are to get me to bed...

I love how I can hear you smile in the dark.

You are the only one I ever wanted to be with.

You are my perfect other half, you make me the happiest I've ever been.

I want to take care of each other forever.

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Le Love

another perfect place

I really need to escape and find a place to make my own.

Best of all in France.

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found at Haute Design

white perfection

This perfect, flawless white home left me gasping for air. Oh, would I love to live there, in this pure sanctuary. I would brighten it up with tons of peonies and hydrangeas and maybe some original artwork, as the all-white might become scary after some time.

This is the home of Style at Home design editor, Ann Marie Favot's, who says: "I waited until I knew exactly what I wanted and had the money to have it all custom-made. Never buy something just to fill a space."

and

"I'd never buy a matching bedroom suite. I'd much rather select different pieces and make them my own."

I couldn't agree more.

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The kitchen with the glossy brown wooden floor and the lovely cabinets is my favorite.

found at Plush Palate and escapade

did you know III

The strangest moon in the Solar System is bright yellow. This picture, showing Io's true colors, was taken in 1999 July by the Galileo spacecraft that orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003. Io's colors derive from sulfur and molten silicate rock. The unusual surface of Io is kept very young by its system of active volcanoes. The intense tidal gravity of Jupiter stretches Io and damps wobbles caused by Jupiter's other Galilean moons. The resulting friction greatly heats Io's interior, causing molten rock to explode through the surface. Io’s volcanoes are so active that they are effectively turning the whole moon inside out. Some of Io's volcanic lava is so hot it glows in the dark.

astronomy picture of the day

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Pockmarked with sulphurous pits, bathed in intense radiation and shaken by constant volcanic eruptions, Io is the fiery hell of the solar system.
Despite being cold enough to be covered in layers of sulphur dioxide frost, this large inner moon of Jupiter is the most volcanic world known, spitting out 100 times as much lava as all Earth's volcanoes can muster, from a surface area just 1/12th the size. Io's surface is dotted with bubbling lakes of molten rock, the largest of which, Loki Patera, is more than 200 kilometres across.
Elsewhere, magma suddenly forces its way out of fissures in the rocky crust, creating lines of lava fountains that can stretch for 50 kilometres or more. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft picked up the heat from one of these great curtains of fire in 2007 as the probe passed by Jupiter en route to Pluto.
Some of Io's eruptions are violent enough to hurl giant plumes of gas and dust 500 kilometres into space. This can happen when a lava flow vaporises the surface layers of frozen sulphur dioxide, or when dissolved gas turns to bubbles inside rising magma and blasts high-speed debris out through the moon's surface.
All this volcanic violence results from a tug of love between Jupiter and Io's two siblings, Europa and Ganymede. These moons have orbital periods exactly 2 and 4 times as long as Io's, which results in the three moons lining up every so often. Over time, the gentle gravitational tugs of this periodic conjunction have gradually nudged Io into an elliptical orbit.
As Io moves around this orbit, the grip of Jupiter's gravity weakens and strengthens, flexing the moon's rock. These stresses and strains warm the moon from within in a process called tidal heating. This effect is so powerful on Io that it can melt rock, creating the volcanoes.
Such extreme volcanism may be common in the universe. The recently discovered planet COROT-7b, for example, orbits very close to its star and so feels a very strong gravitational pull. If its orbit is only slightly elliptical, there will be enough tidal heating to plaster the planet with volcanoes. So Io may be giving us a glimpse of conditions on a million hellish exoplanets.
Io itself seems to be cooling, probably because its orbit has become less elliptical than it once was. Tens or hundreds of millions of years from now, the orbital resonance with Europa and Ganymede is likely to grow out of sync, letting Io settle into a nearly circular orbit with almost no tidal heating. Then Io's fires will finally fade.

newscientist

weekend

My sister had her birthday last week, so on Saturday we had a little family get-together. My parents and I had been working on her desired presents for two weeks, my dad making a box for her extensive range of sewing things, my mom crocheting white flowers for the necklace and me putting it all together and decorating.

Saturday also turned out to be the great food day. From codfish in the day to sushi and the Kurland's characteristic carrot pies, that melt in your mouth, in the evening. I managed to put on 2 kg.

My sister had something for me as well. Ever since she finished her sewing course, her wardrobe has been growing in the geometric progression. But now my long-awaited fur vest is finally finished! It looks just the way I expected it to and has an amazing light pink lining. I also got my new leopard print scarf. Isn't it great to have such talented siblings?

Did you turn off your lights and electronic devices on the Earth Hour (Saturday March 27th 8:30 pm)? We did. The world looks so much different in the darkness and you wouldn't believe the amount of things you can discover. Like that my sequined top is even cooler in the darkness and in the light of a flashlight. Boy, was it fun to be emitting hundreds of pink and purple colored dots of sparkling light on every surface around me.

Sunday wasn't as busy as the rest of the week. I went to the market and had a look at some amazing vintage stuff, like this lamp right here. It's been a while since I last visited the food market and I didn't know they had a fashion of sticking fish in buckets like flowers. Such curious installations could be seen everywhere.

I spent a lot of time at the mall, fawning over Hello Kitty cosmetics and these wonderful metallic drinking bottles perfect for hiking. I'm waiting for this stuff to go on sale. I thought the Hello Kitty craze-phase had passed, but whenever I see something new I just feel like getting it and storing underneath my bed in a big box. Just the feeling I get when I see beautiful dishes and towels and other home things.

I'm definitely going to make my 6-day-old cousin's daughter love Hello Kitty. I already got her this blouse originally from H&M that I spotted in a secondhand store. I just couldn't leave without it.

word of the week IV

ritzy adj. (ritzier, ritziest)

highclass, luxurious, ostentatiously smart

(from Ritz, the name of luxurious hotels,

named after C. Ritz (died 1918), Swiss hotel-owner.)

oxford paperback dictionary, 1988

topshop wishlist

knitted bead lace shoulder top

knitted lace and stud top
knitted lace swear jumper
butterfly print skirt shorts
roll up hem shorts
vintage lace prom skirt

multi stud pyramid clutch bag

tap lock fold over slouch bag

printed lace floral tights

filigree flower ring

hyacinth jewelled sandals

martine tassle trim flat pumps

topshop

océans le film

This is definitely the one movie I am seeing next.

I saw the trailer yesterday and on the big screen this looks spectacular.

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Océans un film de Jacques Perrin et Jacques Cluzaud

alice in wonderland

Finally I managed to find the time to go and see Alice in Wonderland. I had expected something insanely awesome. Well, it certainly WAS a little bit insane, but to be honest I wasn't all that excited. Visually it was beautiful, of course, but the entire thing was a bit messed up and confusing. I think I should go and re-read Alice now, so I can remember how it happened in the real thing. But still ... I loved it, because Tim Burton is a genious and Tim Burton + Alice in Wonderland = a tremendously fascinating match nevertheless.

Oh, and I particularly enjoyed the
charming Chesire Cat and the perfectly mad March Hare.


"You're entirely bonkers. But I'll tell you a secret.
All the best people are."
"Sometimes I've believed as many as
six impossible things before breakfast."
"Off with their heads!"
"Why is it you're always too small or too tall?"
"It is far better to be feared than loved."

mood today III

georgianna lane {Jenn} ohbabyitsnatalie

did you know II

Neptune may have eaten a planet and stolen its moon Neptune's Largest Moon Triton

[astronomypictureoftheday]

NEPTUNE may have polished off a super-Earth that once roamed the outer solar system and stolen its moon to boot. The brutal deed could explain mysterious heat radiating from the icy planet and the odd orbit of its moon Triton.
Neptune's own existence was a puzzle until recently. The dusty cloud that gave birth to the planets probably thinned out further from the sun. With building material so scarce, it is hard to understand how Uranus and Neptune, the two outermost planets, managed to get so big.
But what if they formed closer in? In 2005, a team of scientists proposed that the giant planets shifted positions in an early upheaval (New Scientist, 25 November 2006, p 40). In this scenario, Uranus and Neptune formed much closer to the sun and migrated outwards, possibly swapping places in the process.
That would have left behind enough material just beyond their birthplace to form a planet with twice the Earth's mass, according to calculations published in 2008 by Steven Desch of Arizona State University in Tempe.
Neptune's peculiar moon Triton may once have been paired with this hypothetical super-Earth, Desch and colleague Simon Porter now say. Triton is larger than Pluto, and it moves through its orbit in the opposite direction to Neptune's rotation, suggesting that it did not form there but was captured instead.
For Neptune to capture Triton, the moon would have had to slow down drastically. One way to do this is for Triton to have had a partner that carried away most of the pair's kinetic energy after an encounter with Neptune. In 2006 researchers argued that Triton was initially paired with another object of similar size that wound up being gravitationally slung into space after the pair ventured near Neptune (New Scientist, 13 May 2006, p 8).
But Triton could have slowed even more if its former partner were a heavy super-Earth. That's because a more massive body could carry away more of the pair's kinetic energy, Desch calculated in a study presented earlier this month at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas. "It would be a lot easier to capture Triton if it were orbiting something bigger," he says.
Neptune may have engulfed the super-Earth. Heat left over from the impact could explain why the planet radiates much more heat than its cousin Uranus, which is similar in mass and composition, Desch says.
But Douglas Hamilton of the University of Maryland, College Park, one of the authors of the 2006 study proposing that Triton had a long-lost twin, points out that smaller bodies would have been common in the early solar system, before planet migration cleared many of them away. Neptune would therefore have had many opportunities to snag Triton from one of these punier objects, rather than from a much rarer super-Earth, so that explanation may still be more likely, he says. Even so, he is not ready to rule out Desch's idea: "It's worth pursuing to see where it will lead."

newscientist

cool kids

Ok, I don't really like children,

but these two are so cool I couldn't resist.

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hanneli mustaparta via house of milk and stockholmstreetstyle

the epitome of "heartbreaker"

Oh, dear, yes. This made my heart clench, because I so know this. Thousands of girls around the world do. Damn, those fabulous, good-looking, always-smiling, making-you-laugh-and-fall-in-love, somewhat-damaged, setting-your-senses-on-the-edge guys. Where do they come from?

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Everything about you draws us in, until finally we're head-over-heels in love with you and - bang! - we realize it's never going to happen.

You've made pathetic fools out of all of us.

I don't know if you even truly respect anybody in this world.

Because I wanted you to want me and I knew I wasn't good enough.

You motivated me to become a better person in every way.

And in the end, I'm the same as everyone else.

So I'm sorry I don't have the magical combination of qualities it takes to make a girl worth it to you.

Le Love

goodbye, see you next year

photographer: hedi slimane

Go and explore hedi slimane diary if you want to see lots of wonderful

black & white photography and lots of cool guys.

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the creator: thevamoose

I adore these super-lovely whimsical and oh-so-perfect-for-spring necklaces. The little pom poms are an ingenious invention that look particularly good with sheer vintage blouses and dresses.

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thevamoose flickr and blog / found at luphialoves

did you know I

Scientists have found evidence of a catastrophic event they believe was responsible for halting the birth of stars in a galaxy in the early Universe. They report their results in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The researchers, led by Durham University’s Department of Physics and funded by the Royal Society and Royal Astronomical Society say the massive galaxy, SMM J1237+6203, underwent a series of blasts trillions of times more powerful than any caused by an atomic bomb. The blasts happened every second for millions of years, according to the scientists.

The explosions scattered the gas needed to form new stars by helping it escape the gravitational pull of the galaxy, effectively regulating its development. The Durham-led team believes the huge surge of energy was caused by either the outflow of debris from the galaxy’s black hole or from powerful winds generated by dying stars exploding as supernovae.

SMM J1237+6203 lies in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major and is so far away that we see it as it appeared 10 billion years ago, or three billion years after the Big Bang, when the Universe was only one quarter of its present age. Properties seen in massive galaxies nearer to our own galaxy, the Milky Way, suggest that a major event rapidly turned off star formation in galaxies early in the history of the Universe and stopped them from expanding. Theorists, including scientists at Durham University, have argued that this could be due to outflows of energy blowing galaxies apart and preventing further new stars from forming, but until now evidence for this has been lacking.

Using the Gemini Near-Infrared Integral Field Spectrometer (NIFS) to measure the speed of material in the galaxy, they found huge outflows powerful enough to help star-forming debris escape the galaxy’s gravitational pull. They believe the colossal energies generated by these outflows of energy were enough to suppress any further star formation in the galaxy.

Royal Astronomical Society

mood today II

weheartit easymurder

Hollywood kids IV

Alexa Chung and Alex Turner at the Glastonbury Festival 2008

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They're cool alright, but this name-matching trend is beginning to annoy me. First it was Paris and Paris, then Alexa and Alex and now Taylor and Taylor. It's ridiculous.

word of the week III

grandiloquent (gran-dil-o-kwent) adj.

1.inflated, pompous, or bombastic in style or expression.

2. using pompous language.

dictionary.com and The Oxford Paperback Dictionary 1988

vintage festival

The sunny days are gone and snow is back again. Dressed as a hiker, I visited a little Vintage Fest. The place was jam-full with dresses, shoes, bags, ties, brooches and other peculiar stuff. The topic being Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, the people had tried their best to dress up appropriately, some of the looking utterly bizzare indeed. I, needless to say, did not look like I've just stepped out from the aforementioned movie, if only I looked slightly like Burton himself.

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The tiny dark premises were so crowded that I could barely navigate, without knocking something over or nearly falling over myself, but I did manage to find one good dress for myself. It does need to be altered though - made shorter and taken in seriously, but I love it. Just the thing I've been looking for. It is pictured below with a thrifted vest I found a few days ago and a belt from Lindex.

louis vuitton fall 2010

Phew! I must say that I am relieved, because I was waiting with horror what would Marc Jacobs come up with again for Louis Vuitton. Well, it seems he's calmed down a bit as there are no crazy afros nor hideous clogs with tassels. *shudder*

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Pay attention to the special LV monogram lace on this dress!

I'd really bite and scratch to get my hands on that.

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