decorating in the urban jungle

This past Saturday, the three of us took advantage of the cooler early morning temperatures and headed out to the Chatuchak Weekend Market. We were on the hunt for a specific type of pottery that Chris really wanted to check out. I enjoyed this visit to the market quite a bit more than our first, which was during our house-hunting trip to BKK in May. The market was far less crowded and less unbearably hot first thing in the morning!

We wandered around for about an hour and a half, but never managed to find the pottery section that we were hoping to. I was again amazed at how everything and anything was for sale there, though - beads, wicker goods, fake Crocs, flatware, pets, garden decorations ... Some of the statues were so large that I'm not sure that they'd fit back through the narrow paths between the vendor stalls for transport!

We were heading towards the exit when we walked into the art section, and came upon a stall filled with original paintings of whimsical cats, giraffes, dogs, and elephants. I was happy to part with some baht to bring home this painting of a row of colourful and chubby elephants for Madeline's room. 

The tricky thing with purchasing artwork for our apartment is that the majority of our walls are concrete. Impervious to our usual methods of hanging up framed photographs and art. The hardware store that we frequent has nothing in terms of picture hanging hardware, so I am wondering if Thais make do with a simple nail in the wall for their decorating needs? One of these days I will pop into a frame store and see if they have some options. For the time being, I've been securing our art and framed photos to the walls with 3M Command Hooks. I have some regular hooks, some of the hangers for wire-backed frames, and some of the velcro-like picture hanging strips. Those ones are the coolest, IMHO ... so strong!