The clues are coming thick and fast and I’m really liking how this one’s shaping up. The pattern is reminding me a bit of Turkish carpets and I think the two bead colours work well with that idea.
There are apparently three more clues to come, so it should all be done and dusted this month.
Look here for clue 2 and clue 1.
I thought you might like to see how nice the Missoni for Target cube looks in situ.
I am so pleased with it. It’s sturdily built and covered in printed cotton canvas with a cool contrast piping detail and provided a useful extra bit of seating at a recent dinner party. If Target manages to get more in stock it seems well worth the money. In fact I’d go as far as to say that it might even be worth braving eBay to get hold of one (or one of the other fabulous designs). Apartment Therapy agrees with me.
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Unfortunately there’s nothing like putting taking photos of a corner of the house to highlight stuff that still needs to be done. Highest priority currently is replacing the ugly-ass front door and I still need to do something about the jellyfish light fixtures and find a striking bit of artwork for above the sofa. I’ve also been looking for a throw to cover up the huge telly (given that our basement with TV room remodel is not looking like it will be done any time soon). This could be the perfect opportunity to actually start crocheting the Babette blanket, instead of just hoarding yarn for it.
Still, it’s looking a heckuva lot better than it used to.
I seem to have been making rather a lot of chocolate brownies this summer, which is strange as I’m not supposed to be eating them on this diet (though one or two might have accidentally fallen into my mouth on occasion).
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They were my contribution for the Food Bloggers Bake Sale and the Husband also requested some for his birthday, where I copied Nigella’s idea of piling the brownies up in lieu of a cake.
After extensive taste testing, I have found no better recipe than that for Chocolate and Sour Cherry Brownies from Unwrapped – Green & Black’s Chocolate Recipes which is a fabulous and much underrated cookbook. (I can’t get Nigella’s brownies to be anything other than dry and cake-y)
These brownies have just the right gooey interior and firm, crusty, satisfying edges, while the cherries impart an extra chewy dimension. And the sultry dark chocolate and sweet, tangy cherries are of course a match made in heaven.
It’s not surprising they’re so good, since the ingredients are insane. If you’re on any sort of diet, I suggest you walk away from the computer now and go get yourself a nice cup of cottage cheese.
Ingredients
300g (11oz) unsalted butter
300g (11oz) top quality dark chocolate
5 large eggs
450g (1lb) granulated sugar
1 tbsp vanilla extract/essence
200g (7oz) plain (all purpose) flour
1 tsp salt
250g (9oz) dried cherries*
Extra chocolate chips for topping if you’re greedy like me
*dried sour cherries are easily obtainable in the US but maybe not so easily in the UK, though I’ve definitely found them at Waitrose. However, I’ve successfully substituted dried cranberries and you could also use any other dried berries, nuts or just leave them out altogether.
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Method
Preheat the oven to 180 C/ 350 F. Line a 34x25cm / 13x10in rectangular baking tin with baking parchment.
Melt the butter and chocolate together in a bain-marie or heatproof bowl suspended over barely simmering water.
Beat the eggs, sugar and vanilla until thick and creamy. Then beat the egg mixture into the melted chocolate.
Sift the flour and salt together and stir into the mixture until smooth. Stir in the cherries.
Pour the liquid mixture into the baking tin and then bake for 25-35 minutes until the whole thing looks like a giant brownie with a slightly cracked surface. When you start to smell them, it means they’re almost done.
Try not to overcook the brownies. If they seem too squidgy after you’ve taken them out, it’s not a problem to put them back in the oven for a few more minutes. But if overcooked they get cake-y.
Just after you’ve brought the huge brownie out of the oven, sprinkle the whole thing with chocolate chips. They will partially melt in the heat and slightly embed themselves into the mixture but then cool back down into chocolate chips again, imparting an extra chocolatey crunch to the surface of the already perfectly textured brownie. I got the idea from the brownies served at Pret a Manger, and it’s well worth the extra calories.
Leave the giant brownie to cool for about 20 minutes before cutting into large squares in the pan.
I’ve just finished clue two (of five) of the Mystery Shawl knitalong and very much like how it’s shaping up.
If you remember I was thinking of knitting it with three different colours of beads, and with the pattern becoming clearer I swapped out the orange seed beads for larger coral Swarovski pearl beads (I’m lucky enough to live 10 minutes walk away from here).
I tried to incorporate the copper beads, but they seemed a bit too blingy for what I’m intending to be an ‘everyday’ shawl and not a glitzy evening affair. My plan now is to try and find one more place for the coral beads in the bottom lace section of the shawl, and also try to incorporate them in the lace edging which there apparently is along the top.
Next clue is due in about five days time. If you’re interested in joining the knitalong, it’s not too late. Full details here (Ravelry link).
It also looks fabulous next to our new Missoni duvet cover.
So have you got over the much-hyped, much anticipated PR-disaster, retail extravaganza which was Missoni for Target? If you ended up disappointed you may want to stop reading this post now.
Given the exuberant pattern, colours and Italianness of the Missoni aesthetic, you would be right in thinking that the collection was right up my alley, and I made a resolution to get up early on the 13th and get in line. I even went through the lookbook carefully to plan my shop, with the fabulous espresso cups at the top of my list.
Of course I forgot all about it (I’d be such a crap fashionista) and only remembered when I got on Twitter at 8.30 am. I decided to make an unprecedented effort, MISSED BREAKFAST, and chased up the freeway to my nearest Target. When I arrived at 8.45 am the whole place was picked clean. No womenswear, no homewares, no menswear, no. espresso. cups. Just long lines at checkout of women with their carts piled high with thousands of dollars of Missoni stuff. I picked up a couple of skirts and sweaters for the Minx, two pairs of socks for me, nearly had a fight with the woman in the check out line who tried to pinch my meagre pickings and returned home feeling that being a shopaholic really is much too much like hard work.
I halfheartedly opened the website and was of course greeted by the irritatingly cute dog. So I thought no more about it and got on with grumbling about Target on Facebook and Twitter. And then my habit of not closing a browser window paid off, when the Target website flickered tantalisingly to life around 11 am. And there was still lots of stuff left because no one else could access it either. Not much womenswear, not much dinnerware, no. espresso. cups, but bedding and towels, and kidwear and poufs.
So I may have got a little carried away.
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It’s all surprisingly well made and extremely good value for money. I hope Target can find a way to restock in a month or so, as there are still a few bits and bobs I wanted (women’s ballet flats, tumblers and loopy pillow). Harriet likes it too.
Did you wait in line that morning? Did you get what you wanted? Do you think this has been bad PR for Target? I have to confess to doing what I never do, and resorting to Ebay for the espresso cups which are apparently on their way.
I’ve featured her before but I can’t help loving Greek designer Mary Katrantzou’s gloriously colourful prints, shown at London Fashion Week, which this season are inspired by flowers and crushed car parts (natch). I just want to take all the models home and hang them on my wall. I obviously also need to rush out and buy some turquoise lipstick.
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In her eyewateringly hilarious neo-feminist diatribe How To Be A Woman, UK journalist Caitlin Moran mentions in passing that ‘yellow shoes go surprisingly well with everything’. And, though I’ve never owned a pair of yellow shoes in my life, I can see that this may very well be the case.
I’m also wondering if that is also case for interiors, but I suspect that is mostly so I can have an excuse to buy this – the IKEA Trollsta sideboard (which is apparently now only available in black instead of yellow, seriously guys, the yellowness was by far the best thing about it).
Perhaps fortunately for the people who have to live with me, we have absolutely no space for this – otherwise I’d be sorely tempted to drag home the black version and a pot of yellow paint.
So is it true? Does yellow go with everything? Should I buy yellow shoes? Do you want to sell me your yellow sideboard? Got any other examples of fabulous yellow accent pieces?
I daresay I’m too old for them, but I really need to knit these socks as a matter of urgency.
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Why am I still only thirty in my head? I think I’m starting to veer into mutton dressed as lamb territory.
Ken has finally made an honest woman out of Barbie! (When did he start looking like someone out of a boy band by the way?)
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Fortunately wedding photographer Beatrice de Guigne was commissioned to record the occasion. Check the album out to see Barbie getting ready – close ups of her dress and shoes, the bridal party, the flowers and and the table decorations. All the details of how Beatrice coped with such a famous and temperamental bride are here.
I love how this set features (as is only appropriate for Barbie) every wedding album cliché in the book. How many of these poses do you have in your own album? (Beatrice dG really is a great photographer though. I loved this Parisian wedding album on her blog).
There’s quite a lot of self-reinvention going on around here. I’ve lost 26lbs and counting since June 1st on the deadly but effective Dukan diet and am the thinnest I’ve been for about eight years (and yes, I will blog about it early next week).
This time I’m determined to see this thing through to the end, and as a result am holding off on buying too many new clothes as I’d still like to lose another 16-20 lbs. Instead I had to find another way to up the glamour factor round these parts – I’m feeling better about myself than I have in a LOOOOOONNNNNNGGGGG time – and give myself a bit of a reward. And this treat fits whatever size you are.
I’ve been a fan of Julep ever since entrepreneur Jane Park opened her first salon about ten minutes from my house. They now have a presence throughout Greater Seattle and have launched their line of nail polishes online throughout the US. These are beautiful polishes in glorious colours with lots of seasonal changes, all named after Hollywood stars. I’m shallow enough that I find this occasionally problematic – I don’t care what colour it is, I am not wearing ‘Keira’ or ‘Gwyneth’.
They’ve also launched a monthly subscription service called Julep Maven. You do a fun quiz to find out your style and they email you every month with personalised colour selections. You can choose whether to take the colours, request another ‘shelf pull’, have the box sent to a friend as a present or just skip the box altogether. And for around $20 a month, they guarantee at least $40 of product, including two nail polishes in either new seasonal colours or cult favourites, together with other hand care products. Shipping is free and you also get 20% of other products on the website.
The quiz decided that I was an ‘American Beauty’, somewhat amusing as I’m neither leggy, nor blonde, nor even American, and the website said they’d be sending me ‘Alfre’ – a cool dusty lilac and ‘Carrie’, a useful innocuous pink. Since I have no idea who ‘Alfre’ is, and since I still have some residual affection for ‘Carrie’, despite SATC2, I thought these sounded good.
Everything arrived beautifully packaged, with a letter from the owner. As well as the two polishes, I received a bottle of Nail Therapy nail strengthener (which has been GREAT for my brittle nails), a full size 3 oz glycolic hand scrub and a couple of little samples.
The only problem was that they weren’t the right two polishes. I’d been sent ‘Zoe’, a gorgeous autumnal copper and ‘Molly’ a true red, which isn’t really me.
I emailed instantly to inquire after the whereabouts of cool and beautiful Alfre, to be told that I’d signed up just as the monthly colours were changing. However they did offer to send Alfre to me free of charge, which was rather nice of them. So here are my three ladies (plus nail protector) in all their glory.
Here I am modelling Zoe and wishing that I wasn’t such a f*cking amateur when it comes to giving myself a manicure. I love her as she is glamorous, yet neutral and seasonal, and not a colour that I would necessarily have picked out for myself, which is sort of the point of doing this sort of thing.
I find myself strangely excited to see what colours are in my next box (I’m such a sucker for good marketing). If you live in the US and want to give yourselves a little monthly treat then here’s where you can sign up.
(FULL DISCLOSURE: I get $15 in store credit if you sign up through the link above. However, as usual I haven’t been paid for this review, nor have I been sent free stuff, it’s something I decided to do for me).
