Cocktails, Shopping and Snow

This weekend it has been freezing in London! But my friend Nina was here with her friend Jessika so I've had lots of fun. On Friday night we went to the Ice Bar, sounds crazy when it's so cold outside but we didn't actually go into the ice bar, it's in a special room, so the rest is a normal bar and restaurant where Nina used to work when she lived in London.

We had the best cocktail ever for when it's cold outside: a hot chocolatini!

Complete with marshmallows and everything, so yummy!

Nina and me.

James had an expresso martini which was also very good, and very stylish!

The next day we went to an outlet village outside of London called Bicester Village. I bought an adorable Cath Kidston apron that I'll show you another time. At about 5pm it started snowing and didn't stop! Today when I woke up it looked like this outside, for London it's a lot of snow because the English can't handle it :)

Design Goodies From Sweden

Hey everyone and happy Friday!

What are your weekend plans? I'm very excited to see my good friend Nina who's coming over from Sweden, we're going to have dinner and drinks tonight and go shopping tomorrow, fun!

Today I received a package with some super lovely products from a Swedish designer called Emma Sjödin, hooray! I saw her booth at the Formex design fair and loved her stuff, she's so talented.

Emma applies her paintings and drawings onto her products, these are cloths and coasters.

The coasters are like mini paintings...

This one with the leaves andd bug is my favourite, so beautiful.

Ps. If you 'like' Emma's facebook page this week you can win a pretty kitchen tray with one of her designs. I so wanna win!

Me and My Sweets

Today it is a new month (the month of the semla!) and I would like to introduce to you my new sponsor: Johanna from Me and My Sweets!

Johanna is a new Swedish food blogger that loves baking but also enjoys travelling and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Her blog is full of recipes for tasty Swedish treats, I may be biased but they are the best! I would love it if you'd check out her blog and say hi, cheers sweeties!

Website Preview

I'm nearly there with my new website! Below is a preview of my navigation buttons and logo, I'm trying to keep the style quite minimalistic yet colourful. What do you think so far?

Sunday Tip

Sundays are perfect for snuggling up in bed reading your favourite magazine or blog. Today I found a new favourite blog - Lemon Fire Brigade by Sarah Bolla. If you like food and beautiful photographs you have to check it out. I was drooling as I read her recipe for Mango Sabayon Pie!

All photographs by Sarah Bolla

I'm Nominated For a Blogscar!

Today I found out I'm nominated for a Blogscar - hosted by Janette the Jongleur - in the category "Best Foreign Blog" (Non-US Resident Blogger). Yay, I'm so thrilled! And what a fun initiative, thank you Janette!

If you'd like to vote for me, hop over to Janette's blog here or vote in my right sidebar. Please guys, I've always dreamt of this honour! :) Voting ends on the 20th of February and the winners will be announced on the 26th.

UPDATE: It seems like the vote box for my category doesn't always show up on Janette's page, so here's an embedded one that you can also use to vote... Cheers!

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Tags : blog

Cake Photography in Sweden

Another thing I did in Sweden was a cake photoshoot for Sugar Ed Productions. I got my parents involved; we set up a "studio" in their living room and they acted as my assistants!

My mum was the Art Director and dad was the Lighting Technician :) It was perfect because my mum has a lot of nice things that she dug out to use as props: lovely table linen, pretty crockery and cake stands.

This beautiful cake was made by a patisserie called Eclair in Stockholm, they were so helpful and their cakes are wonderful!

The reward for our hard work!

Formex Favourites

I'm back in London after an intense but very good visit to Sweden. Like I mentioned in my previous post, I went to a design fair in Stockholm with my mum. The fair is called Formex and is the largest one in Scandinavia for interior and surface design. It was so inspiring and interesting to see all the new design products and talk to the designers and exhibitors. I especially liked the section with young Swedish designers.

Here are my favourites from Formex:

KD Konstig Design by Emma Sjödin was my favourite of the fair. Emma makes beautiful home products from her art; drawings and watercolour paintings inspired by her childhood on the Swedish West Coast island Tjörn.

I love these pillows with a print inspired by the shape of a seashell, and I also adore the green coasters with the three leaves.

Emma was incredibly nice, me and mum talked to her for ages and mum even put in an order for some of her products!

Emmas product range includes tea towels, trays, coasters and textiles, you can buy them in her web shop or check out stockists here.

Another memorable exhibitor was Jenny von Döbeln with her design company Mini Empire. Jenny is a graphic designer/illustrator who studied and worked in Barcelona for five years before moving back to Sweden and starting Mini Empire.

Jenny's owl wallpaper really caught my eye, and the more I look at it the more I like it! I find her illustration style so charming, I love when designers incorporate a bit of humour in their work! To see more of Jenny's illustrations, click here.

These amazing ceramic chandeliers are made by Créme de la Créme.

They also showed lovely cake stands made from odd pieces of vintage crockery.

I also like the summery glassware and jars by Lisbeth Dahl...

And these lovely lamps and pretty paper products by Danish design company Rie Elise Larsen.

Graphic Design company Format presented a very cool wall sticker, it's a tree that you can change depending on the season. Would be a fun thing to do with your kids!

Puzzled by Art was another interesting young designer, behind the products is oil painter and illustrator Lisa Ling.

This stand was so cool, I love the funky wallpaper! The company is called Isak, they had lots of cute products.

There were also a section of bathroom products, these bath melts from Bomb Cosmetics looked good enough to eat!

Sthål is a company consisting of Susanna Theander and Helena Åkesson-Liedberg, two graphic designers who has created a collection of beautiful ceramic dinnerware.

Arabesque is Sthål's first collection and will be launched in May this year.

Lastly, I love these mugs and carafe from Maria Liliegren, fresh and retro at the same time!

Mauritius...

Is the honeymoon destination we´re looking at! It looks beautiful and my friend who's half Mauritian cooks the best food, so we really want to go there!

But right now I'm in Sweden, at a huge design expo called Formex. It's great, there's a variety of big companies showing new products, as well as small independent designers with really unique ideas. I'm enjoying meeting lots of young, cool designers, but I'm also looking around for companies that might want to buy my own designs. Full report coming soon!

Photo: Maria Soxbo/Husligheter in Elle