Snowflakes

Still happily busy this December. The last few months have been good for our little studio. We are on the cusp of a new project and are racing to get all our Christmas shopping done before all the material starts to come in. I love Christmas for what it stands for, but personally think Halloween has more fun design possibilities. C. thinks I am just taking all of the Christmas holiday visuals for granted, and I am close to agreeing.

Yesterday we cut snowflakes out of parchment and architect’s tracing paper, and taped them to our office windows while our decidedly limited selection of Christmas songs played on a (very short) loop. I loved every minute of it. When I was little we had procured a can of spray snow (which back then was not easy to find locally) and began gleefully spraying the glass doors at home. My dad walked in, snorted and said something about the foolishness of simulating December frost in a tropical country. Since then I have shied away from snowflake and snow-related décor altogether, not because I agreed with him, but because it reminded me of how embarrassed his remark made me feel. Fast forward to Nini’s adulthood: she notices that Philippine shops have continued to dress their windows with snow, snowflakes, snowmen and frost, and so she decides to go easy on herself. Don’t get me wrong, I sincerely, truly love the parol and the million design permutations it goes through every holiday season. But this year, finally, I have paper snowflakes on the window and a snowflake screensaver because they make me happy too.