88 : paris

Both of us have been to Paris once in our lives and we can tell you that once was definitely not enough. It is an intoxicating city full of a beautiful and mysterious character. From the museums, to the people, to the food, down to a simple picnic with bread and cheese what is not to love in the "city of love". We revisit the memories we have of this beautiful city often and long for the day we are there again, which we hope is sooner rather than later. In the office we'll often joke about leaving that night and heading off to the airport to await a standby flight to France... and one day it won't be a joke.

87 : the garden of earthly delights

There is something about Hieronymus Bosch's painting The Garden of Earthly Delights, that has intrigued me since the minute I saw it. The painting is triptych (three panels) and features the biblical scenes of the joining of Adam and Eve (left), the garden (center) and hell (right)...not a subject matter that I would necessarily tend to gravitate towards.

The brightness, complexity, imagery, and immense amounts of symbolism are pretty remarkable...and many of the people depicted are in poses that are rather...interesting.

Like the strange bird headed creature in hell that eats the tormented and then defecates them into the transparent chamber pot on which he sits.

For an indepth analysis of the painting and it's symbolism, check out Wikipedia.

FYI: The painting was featured on The Simpsons as Bart's idea of hell.

86 : fmylife

Ever have one of those days when you feel crappy, and wonder if things could get any worse? Well, check out fmylife.com and see that yes, things can in fact be much, much worse.

One of our guilty pleasures involves the occasional browsing on fmylife. A website where anyone and everyone can post embarrassing, shocking and sometimes down-right disgusting "events" (we use this term loosely, as we don't really know if all these stories have actually happened). Each post starts with "Today..." and ends with "FML".

Whenever we need a good laugh, or to remind ourselves that what we're currently dealing with, just isn't that bad, you know where we come.

Here are some of the top posts of all time... Let's just say, we're glad none of these happened to us.

85 : nervous system

Recently on one of the blogs we frequent, we came across Nervous Systems. Weird name, we know. But we were pleasantly surprised when we saw some amazingly beautiful jewelry inspired by complex natural objects.

The earring above, are part of the new xylem collection, which is based off the vein formations in leaves.

 

We also love the collection inspired by coral, dendrite. The one-of-a-kind necklaces are absolutely amazingness. If the necklace below wasn't already sold, it would be mine. Simply beautiful.

If you love these as much we do, click here to view more.

84 : old piano

Last week on one of our many dog walking adventures, we stumbled upon an old, thrashed piano behind our office building. It looked as though someone had taken a hammer to it and then left it outside for who knows how long. With camera already in hand, obviously we snapped many pictures.

We have no clue what many of these parts are or do. But they're oh-so-pretty.

83 : wisteria

Color is something that makes us both happy. The colors of leaves during fall, the sky during sunset...we could go on and on. One happy part about spring is that certain seemingly ordinary trees start transforming right before our eyes. For most of the year the giant tree behind our office building looks like any other tree. But in the spring, it becomes full of purple hanging flowers. Yes, we're talking about wisteria. It brings some much needed color to our already "colorful" building.

In addition to the pretty purple flowers, the vines wrap around themselves. <3

82 : zoe

In 2008 stray cats seemed to gravitate towards us. In one year, we either tamed, rescued, or found homes for 6 cats...crazy but true.

One day in my grandma's backyard, three little kittens emerged. I got the lovely job of taming them. Lucky me. Two of them were incredibly sweet and found homes quickly. The third? Not so much. I couldn't walk by her without getting hissed at, and she'd try to bite me whenever I tried to give her food or water. Not to mentioned she'd cry non-stop, day and night. One night we left her on our enclosed porch in her carrier (with food, water, a litterbox and blankets) with a towel over her. The next morning we discovered someone came on the porch and either took her, or let her out.

A week later she was at the back door hungry. She still wanted nothing to do with me. But the plate of food in the house was too much for her to bare, and when she came in the house, she was caught.

After 3 weeks at home, she was brought to the office. For the first week, she still wanted nothing to do with either of us. If you'd look at her, she'd run. We left her there over the weekend, going to check on her periodically.

Monday morning we were in for a shock. She suddenly wanted to be pet and loved. Umm...wasn't this the cat that tried to bite my hand off two days ago? Yup. Completely transformed. She'd sleep on my desk and want to cuddle non-stop. She was the only one we had long enough to actually name...zoe.

 

 
Far too soon, the day came that we needed to find her a home. The man that adopted one of her sisters, took her as well. It was one sad day for me. I still miss that little girl like crazy. Who would have thought?

She even helped with projects...

And one of her sister (which we didn't name) because she's just so darn cute.