Film photos around Makati

If you're reading this, I'm at the beach. Yay! I don't like taking anything fancy or expensive to the beach so I decided to take my little film camera. I haven't used it for a long time so I got some film to do a test roll to check that it still works and I still remember how to use it. I took most of these around our building and our neighbourhood because I was keen to use up the film fast. I'm hoping we get clearer, sunnier days in Palawan because this camera LOVES bright blue skies (see this post). Unfortunately there weren't many blue sky days in the week that I was taking these photos, but that just makes them all moody and artsy, right? Yeah. Artsy.

La Cocina de Tita Moning

A couple of weeks ago, we went on a walking tour of Intramuros, the historical heart of Manila. At the end of the tour, the guide told us about a special restaurant that served delicious home made Spanish food in an old historic mansion. We were told that they don't take walk-ins, you have to make a special booking - unless of course, we wanted to go that night. We thought it sounded interesting, so along with two other girls, we followed the lady dressed in a black & white maid's uniform to a van that would take us to the restaurant.

We figured, after doing the Intramuros tour, that the restaurant would also be in Intramuros, probably just around the corner. After driving for about ten minutes it became clear that we were leaving the walled city and headed across town. This was about the point we all started to question whether it was a good idea to get in a strange van without any idea of where it was going...

The streets started to get quieter and quieter until we ended up driving past a lot of big walls and gates with mansions behind. We even passed the Presidential Palace. We eventually pulled into a long driveway and drove behind the house to a beautiful outdoor dining area.

This wasn't even the actual restaurant - we were served drinks and hors d'ouvres and told to order our meal from the menu while they prepared the house for us - every group dining at La Cocina de Tita Moning gets a tour of the house!

The house was built in 1937 for the Legarda family.

Dr. Legarda's library

I loved all the old furniture in the house and it has been preserved very well by the later generations of the family, who still own the house.

Dr. Legarda's home clinic. The big black thing is an antique x-ray machine, and the skeleton is real, from the cadaver used by Dr. Legarda in medical school. Apparently in the old days, cadavers weren't provided to medical students by the university, students had to 'find their own'. I hate to think how that worked!

My favourite room was the girls' dressing room. Dr. Legarda's daughters were ballerinas and this room has been set up to display some of their costumes. I fell in love with this beautiful dressing table!

I love this lamp base decoupaged with old liquor bottle labels

This photo was taken looking from the living room to the dining room. We were asked to wait in the living room until our dinner was ready, and entertained ourselves looking at the family photo albums on the coffee table. I didn't take any photos during dinner because I never think to do that - the food was too good and we were loving the experience of being served delicious food in a formal dining room on family heirloom china and silverware. It was all so fancy!

It was a very surreal night. Not at all what we had expected to do for dinner that night, but everything was... delightful. Not a word I use often, but I think it perfectly describes our evening at La Cocina de Tita Moning. Delightful.

Intramuros Walking Tour

Last weekend, having realised that we haven't really left our neighbourhood in the 3-4 months we've lived here, we went out and did some good old fashioned sightseeing. We decided to start with Intramuros, the oldest part of Manila. It was settled by the Spanish in the 16th Century and was mostly destroyed in World War II. Some of it has been rebuilt since then, but the evidence of damage is everywhere.
We read about a very popular walking tour run by Carlos Celdran and decided it would be the best way to get an introduction to the area. It was great because until now we have only really read or heard snippets of Manila's history, and Carlos' talks serve as a great crash course - at least up until WWII (apparently he has another performance that covers post-WWII and the Marcos era). It was also nice to see a much older, prettier part of Manila in contrast to the modern business district we live in.

This is the gate to Fort Santiago - it is mostly a reconstruction as it was damaged in the war.

I'm not sure what this building's story is, we walked past it on our way out of Fort Santiago. Looks like it was under attack at some point.

Pasig River seen from Fort Santiago

The St Augustin Church was turned into a Red Cross Centre during the war and so was spared from damage in the Battle of Manila.

The tour ended in this lovely courtyard with icy Halo-Halo (Filipino dessert) for all.

Carlos Celdran has been in the news this week - you can read about why here. Obviously I don't know enough about Philippine laws and culture to be able to comment on this, but let's just say I was pretty shocked that there is still a law hanging around in 2013 that can send people to jail for 'offending religious feelings'...

 After the tour we went to a very mysterious (and delicious) dinner in an old mansion that was so good it deserves its own post. To be continued!

Hmm... what can I show you?

I haven't had much to post lately, because I've been working on making my wedding dress (!) and I don't want to show any photos of that process until after the wedding! I've also been working on some bridesmaid dresses for someone else's wedding, so that's another project I don't want to share until it's all done. So... what can I show you?

My March 2013 collection rack is starting to fill up... don't worry, it's not ALL tie-dye. I just haven't finished the other stuff yet. I'm a little bit behind my original schedule, because I made those plans before I got engaged so didn't factor in the wedding dress! I think this collection will be called Angie. I'll be starting to list items in the Etsy store over the next few weeks.

This is my favourite piece so far. I've called it the Countess top because the neckline and flutter sleeves were inspired by a dress worn by Cora on Downton Abbey. I love that show!

Speaking of collections, I've got a bit of a moodboard going for the next one. The map was painted by my mum for our storybook inspired wedding invitations. I had already decided on the colours for the collection before I realised that the map fits in perfectly!

A couple more things from around the apartment:

I'm very much liking this corner of the living room. The whole room needs more plants and more books.

This world map, with black dots for places visited, has been on my wall in four different apartments now. I thought I'd fancy it up with some fairy lights.

It's been nice and cool in Manila lately, and raining on and off all day today. I realised that I can get a bit of a panorama shot by taking photos from different windows! The area we lived in Sydney was very residential so I'm still getting used to seeing so many buildings in every direction. It's never boring.

Inside: Our living room

 

  Our shipment from Australia arrived a few days before Christmas, and one of the first things I wanted to do was get the apartment looking nice. I was a bit sick of it looking like a boring old lady's house and I was really excited to get out all our stuff from back home.

The photo on the left is what the place looked like when James first saw it - nice, but not really our style. We asked them to paint the creamy-pink walls white and it makes the place look SO much brighter and more modern. Also - we didn't remove the little chandelier, it just didn't make it into any of the newer pictures. I like it, it's so sparkly!

I love the floors in this place. We definitely got lucky with those! They are also much less stress than the floorboards we had at our old place as they don't seem to scratch much at all. The coffee table above is one of the only pieces of furniture we brought with us, because the legs screw off so it hardly took up any space. I'm really glad we brought it because it makes such a difference to the feel of the place and makes me so happy! I got it about four years ago while on an antique hunting road trip with my parents - actually the purpose of the trip was to go visit my brother, but my patient Dad let Mum and I stop and look in pretty much every antique shop between Sydney and Adelaide. It was a very successful trip.

The quilt on the back of this chair (purely decorative, in this weather!) was made by my friend's mum, who I know reads this blog - Hi Andrea!
She made one for all of my friends and I around the time we were all turning 18-21. I love going to each of their houses and seeing that we all still love and use our 'Andrea quilts' despite the amount of times we've all moved since getting them. They're like friendship blankets!

 

I should have moved the dinner table away from the wall, but we keep it there when we don't have visitors because it gives us more space in the centre of the room. Any eagle-eyed IKEA fans would be noticing a lot of IKEA fabrics and other bits and pieces around the place - I used to work there in Sydney so before I left I went on a bit of a shopping spree to get fun new things for this apartment. That's the Bjornloka fabric on the chairs, and Tradklover on the table.

My Mum did the painting on the wall after a family trip to Italy - I raided her art collection before leaving so I could take some pieces of home with me. I've got another painting of hers in the bedroom and a linocut above the TV, but neither of those spaces are pretty enough to share yet!

More IKEA stuff. I feel like everyone on Pinterest has that lappljung ruta cushion cover! It used to sell out pretty much every week at our store. So of course I joined the masses and got one for myself.
My mum gave me the old map above the couch - she and Dad are both teachers and she's always finding fun old school stuff around the place. When I was living in Australia I probably would have had second thoughts about hanging a huge map of Australia on the wall but now I love it -  I'm also learning lots about Australia's exploration history. Bonus!

I'm slowly filling the place with plants. In Sydney I loved having lots of plants all throughout the house and on the balcony, but of course with the move I had to give them all to a friend and start again. Luckily there is a guy at our local weekend market who sells lots of plants for super cheap, and even pots them and delivers them to us for free! We've been getting a few new plants every week. In fact he just dropped off some plants about an hour ago, so these photos are already out of date!

Mum gave me this cute London map scarf for Christmas (we both love maps, as you can probably tell). One day, before our shipment arrived, I was talking to her about ideas for what do do with the cushions in the lounge room and she told me I could open one of my presents early. It was the perfect size for a cushion cover! I love it because you can see Cartwright Gardens on it, which is my favourite place to stay in London (it's the crescent shape just under the words 'St Pancras').
The 'magic lamp' on the side table was a present from my brother when he was in Dubai. The picture was bought at a flea market in New York and has been waiting about five years to be framed. Apparently there's cheap framing shops here so I'll have to find one!

I made this cushion cover with the scraps leftover from covering the dining chairs.

I took the instagram photo on the left the day we moved in. The room felt so... heavy. I love it now!
I'll share more interior photos as I finish each area. My work room looks like it's going to be finished up next.