I have had a great weekend, it has been really relaxing - something that doesn’t happen very often. Miles and I spent Saturday strolling for miles around London. We went to the very lovely Borough market which is really near London Bridge. The market primarily sells food to buy, but it also sells cooked food that you can eat there - all so yummy. I opted for a roasted vegetable, couscous mint yoghurt wrap and Miles had a parma ham and mozzarella Portuguese roll. Today I spent the day baking, which is a real treat as I literally haven’t baked in over 3 months. I had forgotten how much I love it, and how relaxing  I find it.

Mileswas my faithful assistant, he did really great and his icing skills were boarding on pro. I had to post a picture of these cute cake cases when I lined the tins I looked at them and saw how well they match the radio which was keeping me entertained. I had to capture them in all their colourful glory. They are a new line that the supermarket offers, I usually order unusual ones from the internet but these made great substitutes until I get some others. I hope everyone else had a lovely weekend. x

It was recently my 23rd birthday and Miles and I ventured off in the car to Antwerp for the weekend. It was lovely and armed with my Birthday present of a Nikon D40X (digital SLR) I was able to snap lots of pictures that previously I wouldn’t have been able to due to the fact that my old digital was a little lacking. One of the highlights for me was visiting the Mode Museum of Fashion where Bernhard Willhelm was exhibiting his collections since graduating from the city’s design university. The exhibition was so visually amazing I had to post about it. This picture is from the ‘Protest Room’ exhibition - it was incredibly vibrant.

I also wanted to write this post after reading a post about Bernhard Willhelm over on Scout Holiday about how she really wanted to go the exhibition. I have been reading her lovely blog for a while now, it’s also been on my blog roll too - I love it! So ‘hello’ and I really hope your enjoy this Scout Holiday!?. The photo above is from the more recent Willhelm collection titled ‘Tirolean’ all the models have computers for heads, it is very futristic yet the clothes have a classical element mixed with modern hues.

This photo above was one of my favorite scenes, his attention to tiny detail is amazing and all the tiny details really add to something great when you see the overall composition. These tiny figures were glued near to the famous collection titled ‘A Girl with Mobile Phone’ I am a big fashion fan and the slightly unhinged nature of the exhibition really appealed to me with it’s bright colours and surreal detail.

This photo is the actual ‘Girl with a Mobile Phone’, that is all the photos I am going to post on here about this I don’t want to bore any of you non-fashion fans out there, anyway I hope you have enjoyed the vibrant colours all the same?So many great things have happened over the past week, I have so much to talk about and share but for now I will tell all one blog post at a time. x

Happy New Year! This post is a little late coming but time has been scarce lately. Plus waiting a week has given me time to gain clarity on what I really want to get out of 2008. It has also given me time to put some of my well thought out resolutions into practice. My resoultions this year are: 

1.  To comment on all the lovely blogs that I read. At the moment I check in but never seem to have to time to tell the authors how much I love their writing, photos etc, so look out I am ready to get commenting. 
2. To read much more, I am a bit of a non - fiction fan so I am making a big effort to enjoy fiction more. I have already finished one book this week - On Chesil Beach (get me).
3. To keep learning in every area of my life, I want to learn new craft skills including cross stitch. I also want to learn more with regards to my work and just everything….. I have a huge thirst for knowledge. 

I hope the new brings happiness and health to everyone, I have a feeling 2008 is going to be great… fingers crossed! The picture above is of my Christmas present letter H bought by my lovely sister from Re-Found Objects, my lovely Cath Kidston star tins were a secret santa gift from my boss at work - and he is a man, what a great choice!

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! 

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!

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!

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.

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 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?)

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!