My favourite design details embodying femininity

Femininity and feminism don’t need to be antonyms. Now that’s a mouthful, yet there is no better way to put it. Identity is so important. Aside from belonging, humans need to know who and what they are and who do they resemble. We need assurances, constant check-ins that what we do and how we do…

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Three tips for a healthy home during seclusion

Get ready to self-assess how healthy your home is and what you can do about it. While some feel that the terrifying situation at hand is paralyzing, there is nothing better than carving your own pattern of normality to get you thru it. So take action and use these tips as a positively practical distraction. From the three tips for making your bedroom a relaxing oasis to how to properly declutter, use your home to the fullness and make it part of you, not just a hotel room to spend the night.

How to set up your study area for successful home learning

According to science, we’re better off having designated areas for learning. As the Ontario students have made their decisions to either go back to school or continue the remote learning, having a proper place for them to study at home is now crucial to a good education. By setting up a learning hub at home that is conducive to concentration and even more, helps create a healthy pattern of concentration in the day, you not only offer physical help and a great place for education, but you help shape a lifetime of good learning and brain curiosity.

Why constant learning is important and what it does to your brain

We typically think of school age as learning and all that follows, as something else. That ‘something else’ is the honing of more or less repetitive tasks that make up our lives. And as we increasingly enjoy the pleasure of getting better at them, we tend to spend less and less time acquiring new activities,…

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Living through a pandemic and how a laid back attitude can take you through it

As someone living in the first world, I’m not accustomed to having my movements restricted, or my social appearance directed by the use of masks, nor am I accustomed to the sparsity of activities that I so cherished to do around my own city, Toronto. But not being a lingering pessimist, this type of thought does not last long; so I figured that instead, I would get a little perspective and look at where some of this has been imposed in much more nefarious circumstances. That ought to perk me up!

A newly found nostalgia of travel

As if we did not have enough nostalgia in the world, now we’ve been exposed to more, through deprivation. Nothing like something being taken away, making us want it more. As we now move to a new year of school and gear toward the shorter days of winter, most of us carry a sense of…

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The mighty family of online shoppers

Are you part of it? The increasingly astute buyers navigating comfortably through millions of products, vendors and options, scrutinizing carefully listed criteria and making determined choices? It is the new “walking”. It is not the knowledge of the few but a necessity similar to knowing how to type or use a phone. The zesty, tingly…

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How much space you need when everyone is working and studying from home

Ok fine, we’re working from home and learning from home. We figured it out: kids in the basement, one per room, mom in the den and dad in the office on the second floor. 

But what if you do not have a basement, or a den, or a second floor? How many rooms do you actually need to have in order to be able to do this properly, meaning, protect concentration sufficiently so that you can do what you need to do, and still live happily ever after? And what if you do not have them? 

Healthy eating and good cottage appetite

In order to have a healthy appetite and develop proper eating habits, stress is the number one enemy and relaxation is your best friend. And what better way to quickly relax, truly relax, than get yourself out there in the country-side and enjoy country-everything with its greens and soft sounds, the birds, the water and all those basic little pleasures that make for instant nature-therapy. While nature plays its part, architecture and design have an equally big role that is crucial in achieving a relaxing state. A break from the stress, a true break that has positive effects does not need to be long, but it does need to be effective. And that takes just the right design, the right people, or sometimes lack of, the right meal and the right sunset.

The last days of summer, wrapping up the imposed leisure and what we did with it

As summer dwindles to an end and leaves the tumult of this year’s events settled, I cannot help but wonder if without them would we have ever had the pleasure of lazy purposelessness. The kind of boredom a lover seduces you with, wrapping you slowly, so slowly that you do not recognize the exact turning moment when you’ve left your swirling daily routine and gave yourself to healing calmness. It is a different form of wellness, a self-induced yoga of the mind that you yourself are able to summon, a self-healing ritual that should be periodically performed.