Finally! The Japanese room decor arrived!

Customs had me waiting for more than a month to get my stuff!  I even had to submit a lot of documentation online for the package to be released.  Just crazy!

But finally, it's here!  I painted the shelf units immediately, as I was eager to put them in place.  A simple sanding and black paint did the trick:

Love the modern, simplistic style

 And this is how the room looks now, with everything in its place:

Wow, a lot of new things!

The picture if finally in the wall.  I used the big unit to display a battery operated lamp, an orchid, and some boxes - they hide objects inside when not in use, such as the food when the table is being used for other purposes - like studying, writing or playing.  I still have to put a couple of pictures on the silver frame.  You can also see the aquarium:

A tray with sushi waiting to by munched, and a tea jar with painted goldfish (from Reutters).  Also, new plates and a sake set:

I designed and made the floor lamp, and printed it on vellum paper, and used a balloon light inside to ligth it.  The beautiful katana and stand come from the talented hands of Manu, and the set of pictures from Ana Circea.  The books are the work of Véronique:

The outside walls are still not printed - I am lazy to go to the shop, LOL!  I have a vase and a smaller set of teapot and cups that need to be painted.  Hopefully I´ll do that soon...

A macabre addition...

Have you seen the movie "The Others"? Are you familiar with the Victorian tradition of post-mortem photography? Well, this is the new addition to my mourning line: a box full of post-mortem pics.

I did not know of this tradition, but I was quick on researching it, and I find it fascinating. We see pics as something so natural that we do not consider the money that cost producing a single picture years ago. So much money that families did not spend it in capturing images of the living. After all, they did see their family everyday. But when Death took a loved one, not only they did pictures of the deceased, they posed them as if they were sleeping. I have seen many pictures of parents with their dead babies, and there is a lovely beauty and melancholy to them...

Most of us have Victorian homes, and these pictures were definitely part of them. Maybe a forgotten box could be found in an attic or at the bottom of grandma's trunk...