Project 52: Freedom

 

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About six months too late I’ve just started doing something called Project 52

Every week awesome commercial photographer Don Giannatti sets a real life photography challenge via Flickr and then does a weekly live online critique of all entries. 

The most amazing thing of all is that it’s completely free, no commitment, no worries if you miss an assignment, nada. You just show up on Flickr with your picture and then tune in for the online critique later, together with a chat room full of hugely talented and hugely helpful fellow photographers. 

This week’s theme was for a single shot that sums up the words Independence, Freedom or Celebration.

The pic above was my first attempt – a random cute kid at Seattle’s Golden Gardens beach.

I also like this shot from the same afternoon.

 

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Come and join me on Project 52.  It would be great if there were more newbies in the room.

   
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Afternoon Tea at the Fairmont Empress

 

It’s the school vacation and although summer shows no signs of arriving in Seattle, the Minx and I have been having some fun adventures (hence lack of blogging).

 

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A couple of weeks back we decided to visit my friend Lisa in Victoria, on beautiful Vancouver Island. Victoria is the capital of British Columbia and a proud outpost of the old British Empire. Statues of Victoria, Jubilee bunting, manicured lawns and gaudy ornamental bedding plants abound, so of course I felt right at home. 

 

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Imagine an English seaside town, say Bournemouth, plonked into the middle of the magnificent mountains, islands and water scenery of the Pacific North West; graced with some beautiful old hotels and government buildings; and colonised by a strange combination of Canadian retirees and high-tech hipsters.

We were invited to take afternoon tea at the Fairmont Empress, the huge and beautiful hotel modelled on a French chateau that has graced Victoria’s waterfront for more than 100 years. Tea at the Empress is a Victoria institution and as an afternoon tea aficionado (a?) I was naturally hugely excited to attend.

 

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Tea is served in the hotel’s beautiful lobby in front of the Palm Court with its spectacular stained glass dome. Surrounded by gorgeous antiques, sterling silver teapots, screens and chintzes, and gazed upon by portraits of King George V and Queen Mary, it’s like stepping back in time a hundred years. Lady Violet of Downton Abbey would feel right at home here.

 

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First up we were brought strawberries and cream while we perused the tea menu.  Here is the Minx trying, and spectacularly failing, to eat with decorum.

 

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Tea itself is served from seemingly bottomless silver teapots in the extremely pretty ‘Crown’ tea service. We particularly liked the story of the tables, which are beautifully handcrafted from the original tea lobby floorboards. 

 

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After strawberries came the delectable three-tiered tea, which we were instructed to eat from the bottom up.

Firstly a selection of truly delicious finger sandwiches and savoury delicacies, including smoked salmon pinwheels, egg salad croissants, coronation chicken sandwiches and sundried tomato crostini.

The Minx was served the ‘Princess’ tea for kids under twelve and got her own personal little tiered tea tray, with kid-friendly sandwiches and slightly less elegant cakes.

 

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We then moved on to scones, jam and cream.  The cream was an excellent approximation of the true English clotted cream which is impossible to find in North America. I got the recipe from the chef and I’ll be testing and blogging it in an another post.

Finally we tucked into some exquisite little cakes – mini lemon meringue tarts, perfect macarons, Battenberg cake (squee! can’t remember the last time I saw one of those) and chocolate shortbread.

The Minx loved her kid-friendly meal, though she was still struggling with decorum at this point.

 

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In fact the welcome the Minx got was one of the very nicest things about the whole experience.  It’s not at all dumbed down for kids – there’s no shrieking or running about or cartoons  – but kids are very much welcomed and accommodated, with a choice of juice or their own un-caffeinated tea, their own tea plate and extremely solicitous service.  The Minx absolutely loved it and felt extremely special and grown up throughout.

Here we are among the teaplates.

 

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And here she is clutching her ‘Princess of Afternoon Tea’ certificate with a friend from Seattle who was also coincidentally taking tea with her mother.

 

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And here is the Princess of Afternoon Tea, having abandoned all pretence at decorum, sticking her finger in the jam pot.

 

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If you’re going Victoria, you absolutely have to do this. The food is scrumptious, the setting incredible and the service is beyond reproach.  It’s a treat for everyone from eight to eighty and one of those eating occasions which transcends being a mere meal and turns into a fabulous life experience.  I’m sure the Minx will remember this for a long time.

And so in fact will I.

 

Full Disclosure: The Minx and I were the guests of the Fairmont Empress for one night and for afternoon tea. I promise that they have had no influence on the content of this blog post and all opinions are my own.

   
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Pinterest Take 5: Colour Dipped Everything

 

It started with these, which you have no doubt seen if you have eyes and a Pinterest account.

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Dipped utensils by Little Bit Funky via Making It Lovely

 

Soon the whole world was dipping things in paint…

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Dipped cans by Maya via Anna Johanson

 

and posting up tutorials…

 

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Dipped chopsticks from Poppytalk via Martha Staples

 

Then the Etsy shops got in on the act.

 

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Neon dipped bowls from Wind & Willow Home via Anne DeOtte

 

And now everything is being dipped in colour.

 

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Cutest ever baby shoes from Schier Shoes via Oh Joy

 

Personally I love this trend. You?

   
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Red White Blue

 

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A world-class energy-efficient illumination system has been installed on Tower Bridge to celebrate the Jubilee and the Olympics and designed to highlight the crazy architecture. All sorts of different colour schemes are planned for the future.

Can’t wait to see this when we get to London this summer!

Tell us what the Jubilee means to you (if anything) below. I’m so excited for this summer in London.

   
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Easy Cake Decorating Idea

 

I’m starting to think that Pinterest has pushed back the cause of feminism by several hundred years.

 

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This weekend we were hosting a Eurovision party and since it also happened to be the birthday of one of the Minx’s friends who was attending, I offered to make a quick birthday cake.

And then I went on Pinterest, disappeared down the rabbit hole, and emerged to find several hours had gone by and the kitchen was totally covered with food colouring and buttercream.  This is indeed a very easy frosting idea, but quick it is most certainly not.  It was enormous fun to do though.

 

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The Minx and I got a little carried away with the food colouring and made coloured layers inside the cake, which I think in hindsight was a garishness too far, particularly as they were not quite as subtly pretty as I was hoping  It would have looked better just as plain cake with white buttercream inside.

But then garishness isn’t really a problem when making cake for an eight year old. Please excuse drunken pic below, but you get the idea.

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Update: Several people have asked me to provide a bit more information on how I did it. I mixed up a big batch of vanilla buttercream (beat together 2 sticks/220g of  room-temperature butter, 6 cups/640g icing/confectioner’s sugar, plus a little vanilla extract, plus a tablespoon or two of milk until the buttercream is soft and smooth).

Then I divided the buttercream into six and the Minx and I conferred long and hard over which colours to choose. I spread a very thin crumb coat over the sides to even them up and then used a #21 tip to pipe little rosettes onto the cake, making sure that I didn’t pipe the same colour in adjacent spots.  And then kept going and going and GOING until every bit of the cake was covered.

Further Update: Thanks to the comments below, I’ve been able to track down the original source of the idea at I Am Baker. Thanks for pointing it out. The original pin I found was ‘uploaded by user’ and no source was indicated, so I’m glad to finally be able to credit the right person.

   
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Are You Over-Propped?

 

This article which appeared in the New York Times last week has caused a lot of controversy out there in the blogosphere and touches on stuff we’ve been talking about recently.  The author, with a hint of self-deprecation, gently criticises those who style their homes to within an inch of their lives and fills them with ‘props’, such as vintage typewriters which look pretty but which are never going to be used. 

 

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You used to see it a lot in homes which were styled for interiors mags or had been pulled together by an interior designer and filled with objects, art and even books, which had been chosen for how they looked in the space and not for what they meant to the inhabitants.

But now in these days of interiors mags, design blogs, books about design blogs and, heaven help us, Pinterest, design trends and ideas seem to appear, become ubiquitous and turn into clichés in the blink of an eye. As this also fascinating article in Vanity Fair has it, so many of us now;

‘have become amateur stylists—scrupulously attending, as never before, to the details and meanings of the design and décor of their homes, their clothes, their appliances, their meals, their hobbies, and more.’

There has been an inevitable backlash from bloggers, and lots of heated discussions on Facebook etc. – after all what’s wrong with wanting to create a beautiful and carefully curated living space?

For me part of the key is authenticity – by all means colour code your books if it’s easier for you to find them that way; display your Le Creuset pots with pride if you actually use them for cooking and revel in that inherited Arco lamp that fills you with memories of a favourite aunt. 

And yes, stubbornly continue to enjoy your owls even after 81% of your readers have told you they’re over as a design trend.

But at what point does today’s pretty object turn into tomorrow’s ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ poster? How do you decide what objects to give houseroom to? And what mistakes have you made – barcarts and globes that just gather dust; trendy paint colours that now make you cringe; objects that you bought on a whim because you saw them in a design blog, but have never really fitted into your home?

The writer of the article lists – extremely weird – design clichés here. Some like the bar cart I can totally understand, but fresh flowers, a cliché? Seriously?

   
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Fan Bingbing at Cannes

 

Last week Chinese actress Fan Bingbing won the Internet.

 

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Firstly she gets to be called Fan Bingbing; secondly she gets to put tassels in her hair and look stunningly beautiful,  not utterly ridiculous: and thirdly she got to wear one of the most exquisite dresses I have ever, ever seen.

 

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Her glorious embroidered dress by Christopher Bu was inspired by a Chinese porcelain vase from the Qing dynasty and tells stories of the Four Beauties of Ancient China. Her hair is worn in the style of a young noblewoman from the Tang dynasty. 

 

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She and the dress are so freakin’ beautiful that I want to hang her on my wall.

   
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Fancy Hotel of the Week: Four Seasons Seattle

 

When the sun does come out in Seattle there is no more beautiful place on earth.  The unfortunate thing is, that, unless you have your own yacht, there are not so many places to just lounge and enjoy the view.

 

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Yes, there are the lakes and the cold ocean beaches, but there are very few loungers and margaritas types of places, and, as you have probably guessed, I am very much a loungers and margaritas type of girl.

So when it became apparent on Thursday that temperatures were set to soar in Seattle for the Mother’s Day weekend, we decided to throw caution to the wind and book into Seattle’s Four Seasons hotel for a ‘staycation’.  The Four Seasons is unusual for Pacific Northwest hotels in having an outdoor infinity pool, with breathtaking south-west facing views out over Elliott Bay to the Olympic mountains beyond, which reminded me of the similar views we had from our downtown apartment when we first moved to Seattle.  

 

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The pool area also features a hot tub and fire pit and is protected on three sides by the hotel and other high rise buildings, so I would imagine that it would still be very pleasant in the cooler months of the year.

The beautiful spring green planting creates a little rooftop oasis and exactly matches the beautiful spring green umbrellas, which looked amazing against the blue sky and turquoise water.

 

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The pool itself is heated to 85 degrees and also gently salinated, which makes the water deliciously soft and somehow bouncy, and there was plenty of room for the Minx and the Husband to practise their synchronised swimming routines.

 

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Inside the décor is luxurious, clean and contemporary, with an emphasis on natural stone and woods, soft autumnal hues and organic shapes, with lots of interesting artworks and glass.

 

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In the lobby, slatted wood walls are juxtaposed with intricate stone floors and striped carpets to give a clean, modern almost Asian feel.

Oh and the breakfast wasn’t bad either.

 

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We were also really impressed with the welcome given to the Minx.  When we booked they asked for her name and age, and there was a welcome pack waiting for her in the room, with a little treasure hunt questionnaire for her to complete.

 

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It’s the first hotel we’ve ever stayed in which provided a mini kids robe and slippers, to the Minx’s enormous delight and to cap things off, they also gave her a little pink sock monkey, from which she became inseparable. And yes, I do know that my daughter is INCREDIBLY spoiled.

 

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Here is ‘Chaussette’ lounging by the pool.

 

We left feeling incredibly relaxed and asking ourselves why on earth we haven’t done this sooner.  Truly that view is good for the soul.  Four Seasons Seattle, we will most DEFINITELY be back.

 

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Thanks once again to the lovely Sheri at Pacific Northwest Journeys for arranging our stay.   We paid for the hotel room ourselves.

   
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Go Fug Your Kitchen: Sophie Conran’s Bayswater Flat

 

Sophie Conran is yet another child of British design royalty Sir Terence and his second wife cookery writer Caroline Conran.  Sophie is maybe not quite as famous as her brothers Jasper and Sebastian (whose Notting Hill house has already had the honour of featuring in GFYR) but still has serious design chops as the designer behind the Sophie Conran for Portmeirion dinnerware and a newish range of wallpapers for Arthouse among many other food and product collaborations.

Her Bayswater flat is not really interesting enough for a whole Go Fug Your Room, as most of it is blandly inoffensive and seems to have come straight out of the pages of Fuck Your Noguchi Coffee Table’.

 

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Collection of mis-matched white jugs. CHECK.

 

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Collection of mismatched white vases. CHECK.

 

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Saarinen Tulip Chair. CHECK

 

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Arco Lamp AND Arne Jacobsen Series 7 Chairs. CHECK and CHECK.

 

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Saarinen Tulip Chairs and Tulip Table. CHECK and CHECK.

Utterly hideous pink walls. CHECK. 

Er, excuse me?

Apparently Ms Conran let her daughter chose the wall colour, an evil which has been compounded by picking out the ornate mouldings in stark white, making the whole thing look like a particularly tasteless wedding cake.

So, in the run up to Mother’s Day, I’d like to ask the delightful mirrormirror commentariat two simple questions.  Is this kitchen fugly and should kids ever be allowed to make décor decision not immediately pertaining to their own bedrooms?

   
   

In previous Go Fug Your Room news, around 30% of you liked Adam Levine’s house (and weren’t influenced in any way, shape or form by his cute smile. No sirree). Around 30% of you thought it was fugly and 40% of you were meh on the whole thing.

   
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