Correspondence

I'm running out of these ultra cute Ladybug correspondence cards from Smythson and am thinking about something new to replace them...

How about the Paper+Cup Design 'Old School Flats'... I think they're really great!

Red Velvet Cake

Yesterday afternoon, I took a trip to Portobello Road, and whilst there I popped in to the excellent Hummingbird Bakery.

My reason was to pick up two slices of their Red Velvet Cake... it's a firm favourite with us. P and I chose this for our wedding cake, back in December, and it went down an absolute treat with everyone... the only problem being that on the day I didn't really get to have as much as I'd have liked.

Somewhere new to sit

Today P and I went along to the Our Showhome Midcentury.Modern Show and have added this beautiful banana coloured Eames DSW chair to our slowly expanding collection.

We bought the chair from the extremely charming Justin and Leanne of Pink Flamingos. Just have to wait for it to be delivered now...

Lars & the Real Girl

P took me to see Lars and the Real Girl tonight.

Love, love, love it. Ryan Gosling is brilliant. It's such a funny, touching, generous film. Wish I could see it for the first time again...

Read me...

P is currently reading me to sleep to Classic Victorian and Edwardian Ghost Stories... selected by Rex Collings, published by Wordsworth Classics and available for the princely sum of £1.50. Perfect!

Orla Kiely

It's exciting to see that the new Orla Kiely website is up and running... ooh, I can't wait to get my hands on her new stationery range.

I'm a HUGE fan of her handbags, and will post on my collection soon... it dates back to (I think) 1997! I'm currently drooling over the multi stem tote, but am torn as I know the very last thing I need is another handbag...

How's that chair for eye candy?

Fukuro bag

I have been trying not to accept carrier bags in shops for some time and carry two Reisenthel mini maxi shoppers in my handbag at all times.

I'll now also carry the eco-friendly Fukuro bag, which the wonderful husband and wife design team Eley Kishimoto have produced in association with British charity, Cancer Research UK.

I love the quirky owl design... Thanks for picking this up for me Mum! X

New addition to my book collection #3

This weekend I also treated myself to a book which has been on my Amazon wish list since before it was published... 'Mind Your Manners, B.B. Wolf' written by Judy Sierra and illustrated by one of my absolute favourites, Jotto Seibold. Take a look at his website... much fun to be had!

It's a cute story, Big Bad Wolf has grown up and is no longer the mean young wolf he used to be.

I have to be honest, my attraction to this book is the illustrations. I adore Seibold's take on the world... and can't deny that my favourite books are the ones he has collaborated on with his wife, Vivian Walsh.

This is the Seibold chunk of my children's book collection... my new addition prompted me to dig them out and have an enjoyable flick through them all today.

Seibold's pop-up 'Alice in Wonderland'...

and the wonderful pop-up grand finale from the 10th anniversary deluxe edition of 'Olive, The Other Reindeer'...

New addition to my book collection #2

This weekend I have finally added the 1951 Little Golden Book children's classic, 'I Can Fly' to my collection. The reason I wanted a copy of this book is because it's illustrated by Mary Blair.

Mary Blair is well known for her conceptual work for Walt Disney, on films such as Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan, which were, unfortunately, somewhat diluted for the final films.

This little book is a wonderful way to be able to view at first hand her whimsical and vibrant illustrations.

I have added The Art and Flair of Mary Blair to my Amazon wish list...

New addition to my book collection #1

While we were in Amsterdam, P picked up this little book for me at the Boekenmarkt, which is located at The Spui each Friday.

It's a book of lullabies in Dutch and is accompanied by drawings by Scapa, (Ted Scapa, a Dutch illustrator?) and is dated 1964. The simple pencil drawings are absolutely delightful...

Happy Easter

A very Happy Easter from our house to yours...

Joy of joys

I needed to pop in to town today because I wanted to pick up another set of grey dotty bedsheets from Cath Kidston.

Task completed, I made my way to one of my favourite coffee spots, Nordic Bakery, where I treated myself to a lovely cup of coffee and the best freshly baked cinnamon buns I've ever tasted. It was just out of the oven, and so was hot and soft and sweet and gooey in the middle, and deliciously crisp on the outside.

If this were not enough pleasure for one day, joy of joys, Nordic Bakery had for sale something which I have been dying to get my hands on for an absolute age... Tillmans of Sweden organic rhubarb cordial.

I bought some a few months ago from Raoul's Deli in Maida Vale, but it's a bit out of the way for regular visits. I absolutely LOVE it, and since then have not been able to find it closer to home...

Well this isn't strictly true. Living in London it's easy to fall in to the trap of paying over the odds for nicely packaged goods in cute independent stores, especially if the goods are hard to come by elsewhere.

A few weeks ago I spotted some bottles of this cordial in Verde & Co., a delightful grocery store and café in Spitalfields. Can you believe they were asking £12.90 a bottle for it! I was so taken aback that I actually laughed at the shop assistant when he told me the price, which in hindsight was a little rude of me, but really... I ask you!! Don't get me wrong, I will still visit Verde & Co. when I am in the neighbourhood, as it does carry such an interesting range of food stuffs. I am after all a sucker for a nicely packaged box of tea, or paper wrapped delicacy, or...

Anyway, here's to Nordic Bakery for coming to my rescue!

Postalco

I'm not sure what papers I would store in here, but I sure would love to have one of these Postalco leather envelope folders...

as well as one of their fountain pen cases...

and, a selection of their fabric covered note books!

A lovely trip...

We're home... we had a wonderful break in Amsterdam and were thrilled with the Cook suite at The Flying Pancake. It was a great place to stay and the proprietor, Claudia Veldkamp, donates a small portion of the room charge to charity. How great is that!

Lunch at De Kas on Friday afternoon was AMAZING. They serve a four course set menu at lunchtime -- actually you have three starters at the same time followed by the main course (we had grey mullet with a white bean cassoulet and blood orange). The restaurant, which is housed in a greenhouse dated 1926, harvest much of it's own produce on site, and also on it's own land in the north of Holland. The food was so good we couldn't resists ordering one dessert to share as well...

It was great to spend time with our friends, and on Saturday we enjoyed a lovely afternoon visiting the Dick Bruna Huis together in Utrecht, something I have wanted to do for quite some time. Despite having sold more than 85 million books worldwide, Dick Bruna continues to live in the same house in Utrecht he always has, and follows the same routine, cycling to his studio, every day.

We couldn't resist, this little fella had to come home with us from the museum shop... meet little black bear.

Amsterdam

We're off to Amsterdam on Thursday for four nights. I'm very excited, as it is such a wonderful place to visit.

We'll be staying at The Flying Pancake for the first time. I hope it's as charming as it appears to be on their site... I'm sure it will be.

We have a reservation for lunch at De Kas on Friday, and a visit to Amsterdam won't be complete if I don't have a tea and cake pit-stop at De Taart van m'n Tante in the Pijp area, and De Bakkerswinkel in Amsterdam Centrum.

Our plan for Saturday is to take the train to Utrecht so we can visit Dick Bruna Huis.

And, as well as catching up with dear friends, it would be nice if we can squeeze a trip to the Kröller-Müller Museum which is located in the huge Hoge Veluwe National Park... let's wait and see!

Krtek

Another illustrated character I remember loving when I was little is Krtek, or Mole, who was the creation of Czech animator Zdeněk Miler. The Mole first appeared in a 1956 animation about how flax is processed. He returned in 1963 and has appeared in around 50 animated stories since then. Although the first story of Mole was narrated, Miler decided that he wanted Mole to be understood by everyone. He settled on using recordings of short non-figurative exclamations made by his daughters to express the Mole's feelings. I'm glad he did...

I recently came across one of my favourite Mole animated stories on YouTube, The Mole and the Swallow, which was made in 2000.

This is a fridge magnet which I picked up when working in Prague last year. Aaw, isn’t he adorable...

New dots...

Today we enjoyed the afternoon with friends at a 4oth birthday party. The birthday boy is a very special friend to P (and me), and so P presented him with a new painting to celebrate the special occasion.

I can't deny that I had a rather open bout of jealousy over the gift giving, as with all of P's paintings... I wanted to keep it myself!

Things I need

Here are some things I really, really need... and by need I really mean I want these things and don't need them at all.

Poten Sofa by Finn Juhl , which he designed for his own home in 1941. Available from Skandium and The Lollipop Shoppe. It's a thing of beauty!

Ladies Raglan Coat from Old Town Clothing. I love the simplicity of this design and shape of the coat.

Charley Harper; An Illustrated Life by Todd Oldham. I am hoping that this will arrive for my birthday...

£1.98

This cheerful sight greeted me when I got up today. 2 bunches of British grown daffodils, 99p each, in bloom!

The larger vase is by the exceptional talent Karin Eriksson, which I purchased a few years ago at the Chelsea Craft Fair. It's dated 2003. The pattern continues inside the vase, which somehow makes it more beautiful when it's empty.

The small vase is by Anne Black, one of my favourite ceramic artists. This was a gift from my sweet and very stylish friend, Deerylou, and I simply love it!

World Book Day

We love books in our house, but we're nearly at capacity for storing them in our current home. P has a huge collection of art books which are mostly kept in our living room. Upstairs, in the bigger of the two bedrooms, we have many, many more. Given that it's just the four of us (me & P and Mab & Fanny, our two crazy cats) we use this room as a second living room because it opens up on to our deck.

And, so to the point of my post... Today is World Book Day in the UK and Ireland, and so P and I have decided to share these two books with you.

P's book of choice is Sketches From A Hunter's Album by Ivan Turgenev. He says that they're beautiful, luminous stories and one day he is going to read them to me... The book is a complete collection of 25 sketches dating from 1852. As well as being poetic stories, they're invaluable as social documentation.

I have picked Ant and Bee An Alphabetical Story by Angela Banner. The reason I've picked this book, which I don't actualy own, is that when I was a little girl I would hunt this book down at the library and spend what seemed like hours studying the pictures. I think this book is where I developed my love of illustration. I really want to have a look through it now, to see if it's still as special to me as it was to me then...

SIGG

SIGG is 100 years old this year. Despite being famous for their water bottles, I'd really like to have a few of their aluminium food storage boxes. Super stylish, don't you think...?

Stig Lindberg

Second up is a catalogue from the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm.

The catalogue is actually four articles on the work of Stig Lindberg, exploring the idea of him being a trademark vs. an artist. Sadly (for me that is) it's in Swedish so I'm unable to read it. The beautiful pictures do go a long way to make up for it however...

Odon, 1965-1970

Colorado, 1955-1962

Termos, 1960-

Salix, 1950-

We have a small collection of Lindberg's porcelain cups, saucers and plates for Gustavsberg. The extremely popular Bersa, Adam and Spisa Ribb. All available in London from the Scandinavian mecca Skandium.

My dream pieces? Have to be the Bersa jug and teapot...