Friday I'm in Love - Whistle & Flute

This week my Friday I'm in love post is about a small clothing company from Victoria BC, in Canada. Whistle & Flute creates a range of "fine clothes for dapper families".
I love the fact that their kids clothes are unisex and their screen printed designs are so unique and really cool...sometimes you need a break from H&M!
All their clothing is made of luxuriously soft cottons and washes really well.
Here are a few items I got Elliott in the past, I wouldn't mind the 'je t'aime' t-shirt for myself, I have to say.

All images are from the Whistle and Flute website.

Have a wonderful weekend!!!

Friday I'm in Love - My Home Bakery

It's crazy how quickly the week passes! I work Monday to Wednesday and i usually have to work in the evening so I am always looking forward to Wednesday night. I know I can relax a bit and focus more on my family and the house. I had grand plans for this Thursday, my to do list is huge and thought I would be able to tick most things off by the the end of Thursday. However, nothing straightforward hey? E woke up at 3 am, he had vomited all over his bed, after that he decided he just wanted to watch telly and refused to go back to bed. Z woke up and was sick straight away too... this was going to be a fun day!! So here we are Friday already I have completed nothing from my list, I am feeling pretty nauseous myself, I am walking around with a bottle of disinfecting spray as I do not want to be ill but I know it's coming my way:((

Ironically I had planned this post long before the sickness bug. Yeap, what I want is to stare at food right now...not.

But nevertheless if I weren't ill this is what I would love to have, a treat from My Home Bakery!

I love this place, so much so that when A and I got married, we ordered some of the cakes in mini sized version for our cake table. They were sooo cute and the perfect size for someone like me who can't commit to one cake and just want to bloody try the whole lot!! Price wise it was very reasonable too.

So here is a run down of some of our favorite cakes:

THE ORANGE CAKE

Oh my this is a very very good cake, it has a bit of chocolate in it but not much and it's very orangey, the cake is the perfect texture and super moist, The glaze on top with the orange is delicous. Would highly recommend it even if you aren't a big fan of orange in cake, this would change your mind.

PASSION FRUIT AND MANGO VOLCANO CAKE

This is one of my favourite and they usually have a deal on, buy 2 for £3 I think, I usually end up buying this one and a chocolate one as I know I won't be disappointed. The icing is super yummy and again the cake is moist and really light.

LEMON DRIZZLE CAKE

It's funny as it's not cake I would normally choose but this one is really really good. Again they aced the icing, it's sharp and not too sweet and really balcances the cake. Unfortunately A loves this cake so I never get more than a sliver:(

CARROT CAKE

 

Elliott chose this one and although I do like a carrot cake, purely because I believe I am eating one of my five a day, I have never been blown away by one. But once again My Home Bakery have nailed it, perfect tangy icing and super moist and tasty cake. Both A and I were surprised by how nice this was. 

What I love about this place is that although it is a small bakery, they have plenty of different cakes to choose from. They always have the usual ones they make but also have one or two new ones each time I go. They also have a lovely selection of breads.

If cakes aren't your thing then don't fret as they also make awesome sandwiches and rolls like a sausage and black pudding roll or a lamb and mango roll.

So if you are tempted you can find more info on their Facebook page.

Friday I am in Love - OYOY

photo: oyoy website

Friday I am in Love is a new feature that will get posted on...Fridays of course. I will showcase any product or brand I love. Simple as that!!

Today I'll to talk about OYOY, a newly established Danish interior design company.
Their vision is to "design functional products in high quality materials with beautiful colours and shapes."
“The simple things should have one colour stroke, which should be seen and give the product edge. The things we surround us with should make us happy and give us energy.”

Here is a selection of some of my favourite products from their current collection:

1. Very cute penguin with leather wings / 2. Black and white cutting board / 3. Colourful hook  / 4. Polar Bear cushion / 5. Storage bag

How cute is that penguin, it would make such a great gift for a new baby! Plus it's gender neutral which I love!
I have been looking for a black and white chopping board for a while and this one is perfect!!

You can find the rest of the collection on their website: www.oyoy.dk or you can buy some of the items on skandivis, which I am just about to do:)

Enjoy your weekend! xx

Dining Room part 2

I found more pictures of the dining room last night and thought I could share these with you.

Here is a before photo, quality is awful but you can see something needed to be done, right?

For the fire surround and the  actual fire I used Farrow and Ball pitch black. it is a really true black with no undertones, really pretty against the white. For the woodwork I used Farrow and Ball Whimborne white. I sound like I am addicted to Farrow and Ball paints but the truth is...I am!!! They are really good quality paints and have the advantages of being all water based even the wood or floor paints, which means they are odourless, great when you suffer from migraine or asthma. Plus I am super lazy and washing a paint brush with white spirit is just too much for me:)

The cardboard deer is from Cardboard safari on Etsy. I bought the large one is oh my it's enormous but perfect. My gran always had deer's head etc in her house because my papie was a hunter. When she moved out into a home she wanted to give me one but I couldn't get it back to the UK because of regulations and stuff. Plus there's no way Zoe would have let me have a real deer's head in teh house, she would have freaked out. So this was my solution to my lack of animal's head in my home!
The mirror is vintage, I got on Gumtree. The black and white poster is from One Must Dash, a design duo from Sweden.  The Cat Power print is by Tara McPherson, we got it mounted on mdf.

Voilà!
Have a lovely weekend!

New/old Dining Room

Lots has happened since my last post, which is why I haven't posted anything!! I find it so hard to keep on top of everything sometimes that this blog doesn't get much attention:(
First, A and I got married back in April. We had such a lovely day and everything was exactly as I wanted it. However, the week after our wedding our landlord decided to sell our flat. This was a huge blow for us as we had been told we could stay long term when we moved in! We obviously redecorated the flat thinking we were in long term, One of the room we re did was the dining room.
A small reminder of what it looked like when we viewed the flat:

Oh my just describing this picture makes me cringe, it was dark and all in the same tone. The walls had an horrible yellow flowery wallpaper. Obviously when our landlord moved out they took their pictures with them ( thank goodness!!) and that meant the walls had holes and were badly marked. The carpet was damaged in lots of areas. I hate carpet, my asthma isn't great and I would rather have wooden floors everywhere as it is easier to clean. But a carpet in a dining room for me that's insanity!! so gross...
We actually didn't use this room for about 6 months, purely because it needed so much work done to it and we needed a room where we could just dump all the boxes until we sorted out the rest of the flat.
First we removed the heavy curtain, they were so thick and blocked out the little light that came in. plus they had a valance at the top...my worst nightmare.  I painted the walls white and all the woodwork white, you can't see it from the picture but the room had waist high paneling stained quite dark. This wasn't an original feature, it was added in the 80s I think and was a bit of a botch job so I didn't feel too bad painting it. Then up came the carpet, I already felt better:)

We hired a guy to do the job. It just seemed much easier, I had sanded floors before, crazily when I was pregnant with Zoe but there was no way I was doing it this time, too lazy! The guy was amazing he did this floor and the hallway in a day. He didn't take a break at all, t'was crazy.

this is the floor before we varnished it:

You can also see from the above picture that I  painted the old fireplace. The surround was dark wood, the tiles were brown and the fire itself was brown. Yummy! I painted the tiles white and the rest black. It looked sooooo much better and cleaner!

I loved this room, it was great to have a big table next to the kitchen. We had loads of family and friends over as we were able to have a huge table.

Sorry for some reason all my photos are blury!

Voila...so we used the room for about a year and then had to move...gutted. That's the one room I do miss as it had a really nice feel to it. Probably because it was a room we completely decorated.

Fortunately we found a new flat and we love it. Ironically it is in the same street as a flat I lived in when I met A 10 years ago. It's big and has lovely views over a park. So thumbs up!

Gift Guide for that cute little baby or that crazy toddler of yours!

This is the third post on this series (woophoo I am doing quite well having not posted for months before that!!).
So here is a two part gift guide that might give you some last minute idea for you baby or toddler.  I am fully aware that I am biased here having had a boy last all my ideas seem to be geared more towards boys' pressies rather than girls'. But I am sure you will forgive me:)
Here we go:

1. I used to have a wee Fisher Price wooden dog when I was young and loved him. This dachshund is perfectly cute for a wee baby.
2. How can you go wrong with this colourful shape sorter? E loved his when he was younger, he sometimes still plays with it and proudly looks at me as he can sort the shapes out in no time:)
3. This is awesome classic from Fisher Price. The vintage version is much better than the new one as it operates like an music box. We bought one last year for Christmas on Ebay and when it arrived it was working but was very slow. A found this crazy step by step tutorial on how to restore it and now it sounds really good. E loves it!
4. Cute puzzle, can't have too many.
5. I love cuddly toys and this raccoon is really sweet.
6. I have actually bought this book for E's Christmas. I love the illustration and I am sure both babies and toddler would love this colourful book.

1. A cool wooden garage/car park will amuse boys for hours.
2. I love love love this mini piano, somehow it reminds me of Charlie Brown even though isn't a mini grand piano:)
3. Super funny hand tattoos
4. For a rock and roll vibe a really funky ukulele will be the best pressie ever, E has a red one but I do love this one in green.
5. A classic London bus, it might not park in the car park but it is so pretty!
6. E and I have been playing a memory game and oh my that boy is good, he beats me hand down every time!! I love this one with its super cute wild animals:)

Gift guide for Him

So after the last post about what we, well I might like, I thought it would be a good idea to do a post about what our lovely gentlemen might like.

1. This wee speaker is amazing. It is small and easily moved from one room to another. It is wireless but comes with a cable if you need to recharge it and it has bluetooth so again no need to plug in anything. The sound is really good as well. I bought for £49 on amazon but it's now up at £99 - something I don't get with amazon prices constantly change!! A loves his as he is always listening to podcast while cooking.

2. A few weeks back A and I bought Adrien Tomine's Scenes from a impending marriage in a second hand book sell for £1! We had a good laugh over as we are getting married next year there were lots of scenes we could relate to. A already owned Shortcomings but the reviews for Sleepwalk seem really good so it is one that both of us would enjoy.

3. A actually suggested that one he particularly liked the fact that both Keith Richards and Johnny Depp spoke on this audio book.

4. This stand is beautifully simple. It comes in different wood but I like the black walnut.

5. This is a really cute gadget. Projecteo is a tiny Instagram projector. You select your favorite Instagram photos to be printed on the mini wheel and that's you, you've got your very own mini slideshow at home.

6. A loves  Graniph's  t-shirt but after looking on their website I really like their knitwear too. This bike jumper is pretty cool. It also comes with a skateboard which I really too.

There you are! Gone are the days of rubbish presents for our lovely boys at Christmas:)