Daily Candy Sold

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Right at the top of the list of ‘brilliant business ideas I wish I’d thought of’ is Daily Candy which has apparently just been sold for $125 million.  Not bad for a company that employs just 55 people and relies principally on the archaic delivery method of email. 

A brilliantly simple idea, brilliantly executed, and whoever decided to have the emails illustrated by the fabulous Sujean Rim deserves genius points. I do hope Sujean is getting a big cut of that $125 million.

One of my dearest ambitions for ‘mirrormirror‘ is to get it into Daily Candy.  Which probably means I need to pull my finger out and focus more on developing it as I have been sorely neglecting my baby of late.

 

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Separated At Birth

I was amused to note from the recent Elle Deco feature that Englishman Simon Doonan, who is the Creative Director of Barneys New York and Jonathan Adler’s partner (and therefore, we must suppose, an International Design Guru of Some Standing) exhibits a very similar taste in clothes to the Minx.

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Creative Director Barneys New York                                                   My daughter
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Those Summer Nights

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Come  twilight, on a crisp clear day full of sunshine such as today, I love sitting on the roofdeck and watching the setting sun bounce off the downtown buildings while the lights come on in the streets below.

An hour or so later, the whole scene looks like this.

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Just playing with the ‘bulb’ setting on my camera.

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Serendipity, Rings and Termites

Writing a blog is a bit like throwing stones into a pond – you throw something out there, but are never quite sure what is going to come rippling back to you.

When I wrote about my new coffee table back in the Spring, what came rippling back was a lot of rude comments about my furniture placement 🙂 and a very nice email from MaryT enquiring whether my old coffee table was for sale.

So MaryT came round one afternoon with her husband DaveS and an envelope of used notes. It transpired that said MaryT is the temporary editor of the ever fabulous Shelterrific and we have since become friends, which is altogether the best reason for starting a blog.

DaveS is also hugely talented and Mary recently sent through photos of Dave’s beautiful resin rings, which showcase interesting found objects such as beach glass, shells or fossils, or, if you prefer, real gemstones which seem to hover over your finger.  These rings are all unique and handmade – hand cast, hand coloured and hand polished – and I’m somewhat regretting that the ruby red one below has been sold.

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Mary also writes a personal blog Straight From the Container which today featured horrific pictures of her termite infestation problem (houses shouldn’t be made of wood, it just ain’t natural), so please do all hurry along to Dave’s Etsy shop and buy lots of things, so they can afford to sort out the problem.

 

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Come Into My Garden – July

This month has been all about the flowerbed at the front of the garden, which is the only place that gets any sun when the cherry tree is in leaf. 

It started off looking like this at the beginning of the month, with nary a flower in sight after one of the coldest and wettest Junes anyone could remember.

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And ended up looking somewhat parched and bedraggled after five weeks of soaring temps and hardly any rain.

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In between it’s been all about the lilies, the oak-leaf hydrangeas and the lavender, with the echinaceas coming through in the last week or so.  

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I’ve been so pleased with the lilies in particular.  I’ve been nervous about adding stuff to the designer’s original base scheme, but these have been fabulous, have fit perfectly into the colour scheme and have provided loads of colour and interest when there wasn’t much else going on.

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I paired the orange rose in the raised bed we made with a hot pink salvia.  

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This lily Chambertin is named after one of my favourite wines.

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Being the organised person I am, I can’t find the bit of paper with the name of these chocolate-throated lilies, nor for the hot pink ones at the back of the bed.

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Somewhat amazing to remember that this time last year the garden looked like THIS.

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