Hello July and Happy Birthday Frida Kahlo!

Can you believe we are already in JULY!? July of 2010, wowzers! Mom was right, the older you get the faster the years fly by, scary!

I hope you all had a wonderful Fourth of July weekend! Today is the first day of the week for me since I was off yesterday... I had a nice weekend relaxing, on the fourth my boyfriend and I went over to my mom's house for an amazing barbecue! Ohhhhh... the homemade coleslaw and potato salad, the baked beans and the burgeeeerrrssss.... Darn, it's 8:00 am and I'm starving! It was all incredibly delicious - thanks again mom!

Anyway, my man and I managed to roll each other home (like stuffed piglets) by ten o'clock or so, and that's counting the extra 15-20 minutes we spent inching along in Sunday night Fourth-of-July-in-Miami-traffic! There were so many people flooding into Downtown Miami and over the causeway to Miami Beach (at 10pm) that there was bumper to bumper traffic as far as the eye could see, creeping allllll the way over the causeway. It took us a couple of minutes to exit into downtown along with all of the club goers and then to make it through the few "Wild Wild West" (see this article) blocks of clubs and busy parking lots bustling with annoying men waving flags risking their lives in the street of crazy Miami drivers, competing with each other to try and lure the most clubbers to their parking lot! These lots jack up the prices according to the events that are going on that day or night.... sometimes as high as $40 (that I've seen)!

So whatever, we endured a lot of traffic before finally getting into our building, then we plopped onto the sofa and soaked in the rest of the night with some Diners, Drive-ins and Dives (love that show, love Guy Fieri! Is it just me or is that guy always stoned? I swear he is!). As for the rest of the weekend, it was a combination of: being lazy, cooking, cleaning, Law and Order, doing laundry, HGTV, sorting through boxes of stuff separating things to sell in an upcoming garage sale (more on that later), folding clothes, Law and Order, watering plants, Food Network, surfing the web and so on. As predicted by the abominable weather on Friday, most of the weekend was dark and rainy - like most Fourth of July weekends in Miami. My theory is that these days Mother Nature is not about to let us enjoy perfect weather on holidays, oh no, why should she? What have we done to deserve it? Hmmm...

On another note, today is Mexican artist Frida Kahlo's birthday - she would have been 103 years old today if she were alive, hehe! Born in Coyoacan, a suburb of Mexico city, Frida Kahlo survived polio at fifteen and soon after began a premedical program at Mexico City's National Preparatory School. Unfortunately, a few years later her training came to an abrupt end when she was terribly injured in a bus accident. For the rest of her life Frida Kahlo endured agonizing pain and multiple surgeries as a result of this accident, however it was during this difficult time that she began oil painting. Most of her art consists of self-portraits and still lifes which strongly reflect her personal struggles, including her love for and tumultuous marriage to Mexican muralist Diego Rivera and especially the pain of her injuries.

Despite her many hardships, Frida Kahlo was a strong and beautiful artist whose passion transcended overwhelming pains and struggles and flourished in the world of art. Like many artists, Frida Kahlo's success and popularity has grown enormously following her death in 1954. It's sad that a talented and vibrant person like her passed away at such a young age, but we will always remember Frida for her colorful and creative artwork and for the strong passion that propelled her through seemingly insurmountable troubles! Cheers Frida Kahlo, you are an inspiration!

For more information on the life and artwork of Frida Kahlo check out FridaKahlo.com or watch the 2002 movie 'Frida' with Salma Hayek.

Some black and white photos of Frida that I love.....

A few of Frida's self-portraits...

"Personda en la Muerte"

Self-portrait with Monkey and Parrot

Self-portrait with Monkey

"Autorretarto con Collre de Espinas y Colibri" 1940

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I love this gorgeous vibrant oil painting of Frida Kahlo by artist Jerrold Carton, you can buy a print in several forms or even the original painting here.....

(All images via a Google image search unless otherwise noted. All information from FridaKahlo.com and Wikipedia)

Hello hello

Summer days are here again.... at least here in Miami! After all that complaining during that long bout of winter weather we sure got what we asked for, it's been blazing like an oven outside lately! WI really like the vintage image above that I found on the blog Coco+Kelley and it has a nice warm fuzzy feeling to it, makes you want to get all glamorous like her, put on a hat and go to the beach. And frankly, we all better go make the best of our beaches now before the oil starts washing up! :(

I know it has been a while since my last post, I feel guilty about it but there has been so much going on for me that my ability to concentrate on a blog post has been temporarily plagued. Today's post is purposefully spontaneous because I'm still working on getting a slew of posts about my recent trip to Europe up on here. I am truly baffled by the over 2,000 photographs that I took on my trip, and with that comes the indecision over which ones to post, how to organize them into topics and so on. Argh.... soon....soooooon! How are you all doing?

In other news, this past weekend I went to the Carole King and James Taylor Concert in Sunrise with my mother, my aunt and my cousin who came in from Georgia last week to visit! The concert was great, we had so much fun! It rained and stormed like the end of the world while we were eating dinner beforehand, but thankfully it cleared up for the rest of the night. James Taylor sounded way better than Carole King (she may smoke because her voice sounds a bit raspy)... but we still love her! She was dancing around the stage and jumping up and down, what energy! Anyway, the music was awesome and I feel privileged to have heard them both in concert! Now, if we can just get Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and The Beatles (John and George that is) back from the dead to go on a kick ass group tour!!! Wouldn't that be something!? Hey, I can dream!

The sunset while walking in to the concert

The stage

Cool spaceship-like light orbs outside of the Bank Atlantic center!

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And since I mentioned oil washing up on our beaches I guess now is as good a time as any to come out and say how sad/angry/hopeless I feel about the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The spill is a sore subject with me, as I'm sure it is with many others, and if I were to begin to voice all of my politically and environmentally charged thoughts this blog would stray from its cheery topics. Let's just say this oil spill is an environmental disaster of such epic proportions that I believe most people don't even want to acknowledge or believe what the true scope of its impact on our earth will be.

Up until this point I have refrained from making politically charged posts so as not to muddy the overall mood of my blog and possibly lose readers who are perhaps not interested in seeing all that amongst design, garden and art related posts. With that said, I have been thinking about starting a sister blog for Inspire Bohemia that will cover politics, environmental issues, world issues, social and religious issues and so on, this is something my boyfriend has suggested to me several times as well and I think it's a perfect idea. To date I have six or seven incomplete blog post drafts on issues ranging from the last presidential election to issues on the quality and safety of our water and food, to the very issue of the Gulf Spill which I feel terrible for not sharing with the blog world! You see, I have a great many interests and am passionate about endless topics beyond design, art and travel, hence my college education (nearly complete!): Double Bachelors in Sociology/Anthropology and Women's Studies with minors in Religion and Art History!

So anyway, I'm beginning to get anxious about suppressing all of these other rants and ideas, therefore the Inspire Bohemia sister blog will most likely be coming soon, I already have some perfect names in mind! Stay tuned!