March 8th, 2010
Posted in Art/Craft, cute stuff | 3 Comments »
February 25th, 2010
Hello
I think this just might be my favourite brand at the moment Nesessaire (look here to find shops that ship internationally). Such a beautiful blend of the old and the new and all that gorgeous delicate detailing, lace, pintucking, embroidery, there is so much I love I never know where to stop.
Details:
Doesn’t this look just like something the Bloomsbury set would have worn?
I so wanted this mad polka dot number
and this 1920’s sailor looking one
The embroidery on these is divine
I did cave in and buy this one and the lace is just as fine and beautiful as it looks, the velvet bows on the sleeves are such a cute touch as well
I loved the necklaces that came out at the same time
And these odd little sash things that came out, such high romance
Well, I guess I had better stop, take a long browse at their website, its full of much more loveliness, I often find my prints are inspired by these clothes, just to finish off though, I think this may be the perfect bag for my JamFancy brand!
Posted in Clothes, Japan | 9 Comments »
January 28th, 2010
Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
January 22nd, 2010
Posted in Art/Craft, cute stuff, Japan | 6 Comments »
January 12th, 2010
Posted in Uncategorized | 12 Comments »
January 6th, 2010
Hello
Paul made a huge amount of chocolates this year as Christmas presents, they are much more complicated to do than I ever knew, so much work, but they really were very good, tasty and pretty as well.
We looked everywhere for white boxes with plastic windows, but had to settle on this for the packaging in the end
There are two different types here, the filled and the ones that are dipped and then you put a transfer on the top. It all starts with melting, then tempering the chocolate, this forms a particular kind of crystal in the chocolate so that when it hardens it will be nice and shiney with a crisp bite to it.
Tempering involves a lot of shoving about of the chocolate with spatulas, it looks quite fun
For the moulded chocolates you then fill up the moulds and tap them out, should have seen all the chocolate all over the place! Then after a day they are ready for filling, these were caramel. He did raspberry ganache, passionfruit ganache and an orange cointreau as well
Somehow we missed out pictures of the dipping ones, they are solidish centres that you fill a square of plastic with, let them set, cut them into squares and dip. The fillings were lovely, based on a hazelnut praline, all crispy caramel with delicious hazelnuts, we still have a tub of it that I keep dipping into. The transfers are amazing, you press on a little square of pattern after you have the dipped chocolate, then next day peel them off and voila!
I completely missed out on getting my share of these too as I was home on Christmas day babysitting our cat as he had just had surgery on his ear. Paul was in such a panic to get all the food in the car that morning not a spare was left!
Posted in Uncategorized | 15 Comments »
December 29th, 2009
Hello
Well, Christmas is pretty much over and if you are lucky and generous relatives gave you cash for Christmas, your thoughts may be turning to……shoes, naturally!
Here are some of my current favourites:
Mina Perhonen, I saw these in Japan, but they were way out of my price range, Im never certain about Western boots, but these had butterflies
More Mina I think
these are from Poti, very cute and extremely well priced
Jeffry Campbell
Gold shoes from Cledran
These adorable boots from Cocue, that I am struggling not to buy
and these strappy but Im hoping infinitely practical and comfy shoes from Birkenstock as seen at Clevernettle that I did cave in over and buy
and just in case any of these seem a bit tempting to you, they can usually be found by doing a search at Rakuten, which wonderfully allows for us international shoppers to get access to Japanese goodies.
Posted in Clothes, Japan | 5 Comments »