Home For Christmas
I am slowly but surely recovering from Christmas – I ate far too much and suffered for it. I think the amount I must have consumed on Boxing day alone was enough to feed a small army. I have spent the last few days detoxing, sushi, fruit tea and lots of soup. It was really great to finally be home, and back with my family and Miles after being away for the best part of 3 months. I was very lucky with all the lovely presents that I received this year, they were all so pretty – just how I like them!
My Mum hand knitted me the best scarf ever, I love it. It is over 6 feet and I love that it is one of a kind, she is so clever – I am a terrible knitter! I got so many great things I have so many things to do and make. Miles got the prize for the most innovative present when he found me this unique paint tube door stop from the London Graphic Centre. He also managed to hunt out Rice products in London and got me a fabulous floral oven Mitt and cometic case – too cute for words. I hope everyone else had a great Christmas, also ate too much and was very merry. Almost the new year, exciting stuff!
Yuletide Greetings!
This post is a little greeting to everyone out there. I hope everyone has an amazing Christmas and a fantastic new year!
The above illustration was made my my very talented designer boyfriend, Miles. I am so pleased with how it came out he made it especially for me to post here on my blog. All I said was ‘I would like a Christmas image with some snow flakes and maybe a deer’ and this was the result – I love it so much, I almost cried! I love how he always gets it right, and I never need to tell him what I like or want – thank you Miles! I am completely in awe of your ability to create things that I really can’t. As you probably guessed I am quite taken with the picture, I hope you all enjoy it too – even if it makes you smile just once.
Also a really big thank you to everyone who has read my blog and supported me in my first year blogging, I have met so many lovely people – with lovely things to say and share. I hope next year will be just as much fun!
Happy Christmas everyone!
Present Time
Its happened again! This is a snap of mine and Holly’s Christmas presents – to each other. Yes, that is right we managed to get each other exactly the same thing! It’s mental we live together, but we spend most of our time apart and we still managed to end up buying the same thing. It’s getting creepy. Holly has gone home for Christmas so yesterday we did presents and this is what emerged, we had both bought each other these rather fetching and super cute Petra Boase mugs. Mine is the one at the back with the two big birds, though they look so lovely together. We went shopping in Liberty and both spotted them and ‘Oohh’ and ‘ahhhed’ over them but I really thought I was the only one who had remembered them, turns out I was wrong!
This is the tag that came with the mugs, I thought I would jazz it up a little with the cool mini stamp set Holly bought me from Muji - I love it! I also went to the London Design Grotto yesterday at Somerset House. It was pretty cool with stalls by Tatty Devine, Beyond The Vally and many more. I managed to win a canvas shopping bag in the tombola and a canvas shopping bag from the tatty Devine Stall. It was great so see some of London’s fine craft talent all in one place.
9 days until Christmas!
Meeting John Bird
I very rarely blog about things to do with my work on here, but meeting John Bird (the Founder of The Big Issue) was a too exciting for me to not mention. On Tuesday I attended the Wedge Card ’Shop Local Challenge’ day. The event was hosted by Wedge Card and welovelocal.com was one of the supporters. The event was kicked off by a really moving talk from John about the benefits of shopping locally. He spoke not only of the economic benefits but also of the benefits to the social fabric of our communities. The idea that local shops help to keep our communities together, and without them we would lose a huge part of not only our community, but also our identity and consumer choice.
As a graduate of Sociology, and a big fan of The Big Issue meeting John was a pretty big deal. It was just great to here some of his and Wedge Card’s ideas about shopping locally. It is very inspiring stuff. I know I carry around my Wedge Card with pride – the discounts are good! Money off in most of London’s best independent and unique shops is too good to be missed.
So, I can’t believe it is so close to Christmas, I am totally unprepared. This is most unlike me I haven’t even managed to get round to opening the last three doors on my yummy Thorntons advent calendar! Oh just a little girls tip here, I have recently discovered (well with help from Holly) a magazine called Lula, it is divine – take a peek you’ll see what I mean.
The Hummingbird Bakery
It has been a great weekend, really busy, but I have managed to pack so much in it has been really satisfying. On saturday we headed north to Crouch End to pay a visit to a restaurant that serves up the best American/Californian breakfasts this side of the Atlantic, called Pick More Daisies. The food was to die for, it was seriously worth the 1 hour trek. Crouch end also has some great shops, it really is an independent shop honey pot. The icing on the cake, quite literally came when Miles and I decided to head over to South Kensington to The Hummingbird Bakery for some Sunday afternoon tea and cupcakes. Well, diet coke and cupcakes.
The Hummingbird Bakery is one of my favorite places in London, it is so damn cute! The colour scheme is bubble gum pink and brown and it does shabby chic very well. It is much more than just aesthetically pleasing – the cakes are totally dreamy. The vanilla frosted cupcake is yum, very smooth and really fluffy sponge. I love all the cakes, I love the shop, I love the displays, basically I just love everything about it..
So if your in London Hummingbird is really worth a try, their sponge is hard to beat for fluffiness. Plus the guys and girls serving you get the best uniform. They get little pink sweat tops with Hummingbird written across it – super cute!We finished our afternoon off with a 3 mile stroll around Hyde Park, it is so beautiful. The sun was setting, and the Serpentine was shimmering a gorgeous slate blue hue. The ducks were out and the leaves were all off the trees it felt like the perfect warm up to Christmas. Ice skating at Somerset House soon, I can’t wait…. now that will be Christmassy.
I couldn’t Agree More
I saw these over at Keep Calm and I couldn’t resist sharing them. I am already in love with everything Keep Calm make and this print really tops it off. It sums my life up in one statement. I love tea and I find great comfort in drinking it. Not just any tea though, I drink green tea and Jasmine tea (by the bucket load). I have been drinking this type of tea for about 3 years now and it never fails to sort me out. I suffer with poor digestion and constant stomach aches and all I need is one soothing cup and I am good to go. The same soothing effects can ease a head ache, PMT and general stress. It has been working wonders on my awful cold that I have at the moment, well as much as a cup of tea can (she types one handed clutching a huge mug of hot tea). I am so British I take my tea away with me on holiday, and carry it around in my handbag (because other people’s tea just isn’t the same). I will be purchasing one of these lovelies just as soon as I get a pad of my own to hang it in (I hope they don’t sell out before that happens?)
Lazy Sunday
The weather is getting gloomy outside and the daylight is disappearing rapidly. I thought the perfect anecdote to the darkening evenings would be to throw so colour into the mix. After a long afternoon walk in the park spent kicking around the leaves with Holly we decided to go home and have tea and biscuits in style. Between us our assortment of Cath Kidston and Greengate is large enough to open a small shop, so we decides to get it all out and eat in style.
Ok, so we didn’t have any real cakes so we improvised with the knitted cupcakes my mum made us. They added to the effect. Cookies and strawberries had to make do, next time it will be cakes from The Hummingbird bakery or Crumbs and Doilies. I was lucky enough to spend last night in the very cute and comfortable Greenwich Picture house I saw the very moving and powerful Once by John Carney. A great film and a really lovely cinema. Lastly I wanted to say ‘thanks’ to little Lj over at littleljbigapple for her kind words about my blog. Lj is a friend of mine who writes a super cool blog about her adventures in New York (she has just moved there) – and she is rather entertaining!
Excitement and Change
These are my new Orla Kiely mugs they were a kind of moving in present type thing from my now flat-mate. They are just so pretty I rarely drink from them due to not wanting to damage them in any way. Things have been pretty crazy of late and I am really lacking time in which to blog. I am also having a bit of bloggers block, I have moved away from my inspiration (my home town) and now I am a little stuck! I am not going to let this or London beat me, I am going to get out there with my camera very soon and hunt down some shabby inspiration.
Wow! So, I really have to say a great big thank you to Yvonne over at Yvestown who wrote the most lovely and heartwarming post about me and my little blog the other day. I was so excited when I saw the post, I phoned my Mum, boyfriend and rushed round my flat like a mad woman. The excitement that finally knowing someone likes my blog and, that person is Yvonne! Iam very proud to me a member and reviewer in Yvonnes book club. My recommendation was Independent London a great little book all about the most exciting and unique independent shops that London has to offer. I wrote a full review over on the welovelocal blog. So life is changing and I am slowly learning to adapt, I have a major lack of free time, coupled with too much to do. I am off now to go and book my tickets to the London Country Living Christmas fair (I hope their are tickets left), maybe this will provide some much needed inspiration!?
Humble Abode
So, this post has been a very long time coming, sorry it’s so overdue. Busy does not describe what I have been of late. I have started a new job, moved house and left my family and boyfriend behind – all in the space of a month! I thought to appease my siblings I would do a photo post of my new abode. I now live in Greater London and work in East London on a website called welovelocal.com
Ok, so the above picture is my sorry ‘our’ (being me and Holly’s) living/dining room. Notice the Cath Kidston inspired oil cloth.
This is our little window feature of a Claire Nicolson card in a frame with a salvaged John Lewis metal H, because we are both H in this flat.
This is our prized corner, featuring my bargain £5 reclaimed 1960′s wicker chair and stone spot cushion. It is just a corner of pretty things, like my pink Roberts radio. Also it has Holly’s Christian Ward painting propped up like a colour explosion. Please excuse the biscuits in the picture!
Ok this is the kitchen, well, a snippet of it.
This is a real taster of the kitchen, it’s not the nicest, but hey ho we are only renting.
This is the outside in all it’s aged glory, it is quite adorable really. Well I happen to really like it.
Ok, so that is everything. I thought I would add a pretty picture on the end. These are just some of the lovely flowers that miles bought me, I put them in empty glass Diet Coke Bottles to make a bit of a feature. I must end this post here as I am so tired, and need to resign to bed for some much needed sleep.
Plumo
Ok two posts in one day this is an new record. However I have only just received my new Plumo catalogue in the post today and what was inside really needs some mentioning. I don’t usually find many things in Plumo to fall in love with as it’s quite fussy – this is not the case with their new collection. There are so many stylish and pretty things. I adore this Babushka cushion, it is so cute in all it’s embroidered glory. I try not to only post about Russian doll related items but they seem to be everywhere lately (due to autumn colour schemes) and even harder to resist.
I admit the cushion wasn’t the only thing that really caught my eye, this enamel tea set caught my eye and kept it for about 5 minuets. The best thing about this tea set is the unique questions written on the inside bottom of the cups. It playfully asks; another cup?, wash up? or go for a walk? I could see me sipping my jasmine tea from theses on a cold winters day. I think I’ll have to keep dreaming until richer days. Plumo is great for inspiring things. The catalogue is also great as it’s small and compact but perfectly formed. The Christmas decorations are very beautiful too – well worth a look.