Sorry for lack of recent bloggery.
I’ve aggravated an old lower back injury and sitting at my computer has been painful, so I’m trying to limit desk time for the moment.
A combination of chiropractic, Rolfing, rest and light yoga seems to be helping though, so I’m hoping to get back to business on Monday.
Miss you guys!
I’m trying to be a bit more active on social media nowadays, posting up interesting things I see around and about to the mirrormirror Facebook page and to my Twitter stream.
I thought I’d also start doing a regular Saturday link round up for those of you who inexplicably don’t follow my aimless meanderings on social media, just in case you find yourselves with time on your hands at the weekend
Apologies for talking about Christmas in September, but these Liberty print Christmas crackers are too beautiful not to share {via the beautiful new blog from erstwhile British rock chick and now designer Pearl Lowe}.
I went to a class at the Pantry at Delancey a week or two back and was lucky enough to try their homemade roasted pepper hot sauce. Which was amazing. You definitely need to make this.
Marmite has brought out a limited edition gold version with edible golden flecks. I love it. (British in joke). Poor bereft overseas Marmite fans such as myself can order it from the official expat page on the Marmite website, which ships worldwide.
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Finally someone has worked out that it would make sense to have differently coloured dollar bills. And making them different lengths to ensure better money management is a fabulously ingenious idea.
I just wish these were real, I get so confused. {From designboom via the lovely Tula}.
It’s a sparkly, warm day today in Seattle but the leaves are turning just round the edges, the evenings are growing cooler, the Minx and I spent yesterday picking blackberries and there’s definitely an undertone of autumn in the air.
We’re back after an incredible weekend at the Labor Day Family Weekend at Canoe Island French Camp in the San Juans and the Minx went back to school this morning. My little tiny, itty bitty scrap of a baby has just started third grade.
It’s been a wonderful summer, but I can’t wait to start a new year for me too. I have BIG PLANS and maybe this year I’ll even get to execute them.
In the meantime here are some photos of our weekend on Canoe Island. Man, that place is good for the soul.
Just in case your life was lacking a little chocolate right now (yes, I thought so) here are some pics from the afternoon we spent making chocolate desserts and truffles under the watchful eye of master chocolatier Jean-Pierre Meignaud at Patisserie Camp on Canoe Island.
It’s going to be the same drill as before, no real recipes, just descriptions and food porn a-plenty.
First get yourself a bowl of properly tempered chocolate, some Pralissimo hazelnut paste (this stuff is GOOD) and a box of chocolate breakfast cereal. Yes, truly, something like Cocoa Pops or Cocoa Krispies. I feel so much better now I know that fancy pants patissiers use this stuff too.
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Carefully mix the ingredients together and then use a ring mould to form them into a crispy chocolate base. You’ve just made the world’s most sophisticated, and delicious, Rice Krispie cakes.
Then mix together some more melted, tempered chocolate with the hazelnut paste and fold it into some whipped cream. Pipe this chocolate mousse onto the crispy bases.
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So far so easy, n’est-ce pas? Unfortunately it gets trickier from here on in.
Next use a knife to ‘wipe’ petals of chocolate onto a sheet of acetate. The shape of your knife will dictate the shape of your petals. Place the sheet of acetate into a plastic ‘gutter’ (half a plastic tube) to bend the petals slightly. That just blew your mind didn’t it?
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Or you could just swirl blobs of chocolate with your fingers.
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Or comb out streaks of chocolate and again swirl them into grids.
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It was amazing watching Jean-Pierre do this stuff. He made it look incredibly quick and easy.
Finally use your chocolate shapes to decorate your mousse cakes. Adding a little gold dusting powder as necessary.
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I’m just off to rustle some up for family supper tonight. Hahahahahaha.
We also made chocolate truffles that afternoon, but I have enough swoonworthy pics for a separate blog post.
Or a small study in the effectiveness of social media.
This past weekend I had the most blissful time at ‘Patisserie Camp’.
I was hoping to blog my pastries this week, but with the Minx now home from school for the NEXT. THIRTEEN. WEEKS (heaven help me), and with us heading off for a mummy and daughter long weekend in Victoria tomorrow, the processing of the over 800 photos I took is taking some time.
She’s off to camp next Monday though, so normal blog service will be resumed then.
In the meantime I leave you with a small but intriguing study in the power of social media and Pinterest in particular. Remember the cake I made a week or two back?
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Well ever since I posted it I’ve been getting a small but gratifying bump in traffic to mirrormirror thanks to a few blog readers posting it on Pinterest (thank you whoever you are). Until this weekend, when it absolutely went through the roof.
I checked back on Pinterest (did you know that if you look at something which has been pinned from your site you can see ‘Also From XYZ.com’ to the left?) and this is what I saw. Suddenly the cake had been pinned and repinned literally hundreds of times. It had gone viral.
I’ve been looking back through all the pins and can’t identify the ‘tipping point’ when it all went crazy. Suffice it to say that I yesterday I had 6x the blog traffic I normally get and the craziness shows no signs of abating. To put it into perspective that’s about 3x the traffic I got when Salon.com mentioned my Kelly Wearstler Go Fug Your Room back in 2008and that abated after about a day.
I mention this not to show off – I’ve actually been feeling like a bit of a fraud since I found the original idea on Pinterest, in a picture that had been repinned maybe two or three times – but because now I finally understand why big brands and big bloggers court Pinterest so assiduously.
I’m fascinated to see where my little cake ends up, what happens to blog traffic over time and whether any of the hordes of people stopping by turn into regular readers/commenters.
And you can probably expect a lot more images of photogenic cakes in the weeks and months ahead.
Update: Yay! I don’t feel such a fraud any more. The source of the original idea has been tracked down to I Am Baker. The original pin just said ‘uploaded by user’ so I couldn’t get to the source originally. So happy to be able to credit the right person.
Speaking, as we were, of lace effects in unexpected but obvious places, I just wanted to share my love for these award-winning nori sheets (found via JeannieJeannie).
Ad agency I&S BBDO Inc in Japan was asked to create an online campaign for the Umino Seaweed Store, a company producing nori (the sheets of seaweed used in making sushi) that had been badly affected by the tsunami.
Unfortunately, and particularly in a Japanese context, nori is a very boring product to advertise, so the company looked for ways to differentiate the product and get it some online buzz.
Remember I did a certificate in Online Marketing last year? Well, we were told again and again that original and persuasive content is the key to online campaigns that work, so the agency’s strategy of tweaking the product itself in an original and beautiful way was utterly inspired.
Because of the horrible circumstances of the tsunami, the agency looked to traditional Japanese designs for longevity, good fortune, hope, happiness etc. to create a positive vibe around the product and the campaign has since won many awards.
After poking round the Internet, I discovered that Seattle’s very own Food Geek had also had a very similar idea (and made some beautiful photos). Feast your eyes on these.
Can someone please produce these commercially? They would make such beautiful onigiri.
So the quality of blogging round these parts is going to soar over the next few days. (Thank goodness, I hear you cry!)
For the first time in its excruciatingly long and illustrious history, mirrormirror will be featuring guest bloggers.
While I am chilling at the beautiful L’Auberge del Mar (or more likely visiting Legoland), you will be travelling the world in the company of four fabulous guest bloggers and erstwhile members of the mirrormirror commentariat.
Sandra, the stylish mastermind behind Raincoast Cottage, will be taking you on a tour of Vancouver; interior designer Tina from Life in Sketch will show you her hidden New York; and the lovely Liz from Violet Posy will be whisking you to Ely, the ancient English market town that she calls home. In addition pro architectural photographer Michele from Sequined Asphault will be giving you her top tips for creating great architectural photos.
Please leave lots of encouraging comments on their posts and click hard and often on the links to their blogs, to make it worth their while and ensure that they come back to blog here again.
I’d say ‘don’t miss me too much’ but I have a feeling you’re not going to miss me at all. Please leave any good tips for things to do in Del Mar, Dana Point or San Diego in the comments and follow my progress on Twitter and Instagram. I’m @mirrormirrorxx.
See you on Monday!
So, as you will hopefully have realised, I’ve decided to take my blogging a bit more seriously in the last month or so.
Would you believe I’ve been pissing around in an unfocused and inconsistent way on this blog for about seven years now? At the beginning of this year I decided it was time I either put up or shut up, which was one of the reasons I attended Holly’s class and have been thinking deeply about what I’m doing here.
Can I take this blog to the next level, make it more professional and maybe start earning a bit of money off it? I’ve taken a couple of online classes on monetizing blogs and it seems I’m currently at the bottom end of what an advertiser would be looking for in terms of monthly page views and unique visitors, so my first priorities are to bump up blog traffic, redesign the blog so that it better accommodate some curated advertising and put together a press pack.
I’ve also been giving some thought to the ‘elevator pitch’ for my blog ie. a short, succinct way of encapsulating what I’m trying to do here. I found the section of Holly’s class where we talked about this to be enormously thought-provoking, as the one thing I’ve struggled with over the past few years is knowing and communicating exactly what this blog is about.
This is what I’ve come up with so far:
Does that float your boat? Does it sound like the sort of blog you would visit often and comment on? I’m a chatty, opinionated extrovert, so the things I love most about blogging are chatting, sharing opinions, hearing what others have to say, learning new things,and making new friends,
And all that can only happen if there’s an engaged commentariat. Which is where you guys come in. I love it when you stop by and take the time to comment and chat and I’d like to make this a place you want to visit often and settle in for a cosy chat with a glass of wine and your gossip knickers on.
So this bit’s all about you. I’ve set up this Urtak questionnaire to find out more about the incredibly intelligent, stylish and forward-thinking people who read ‘mirrormirror’. Some bits of information concerns the sort of demographic stuff that might be helpful for advertising in due course, but most of it is so I can help develop content that you guys want to read.
The great thing about this Urtak format is that you can answer as few or as many questions as you want, and you can also add your own questions for commenters here to respond to. The questions I’ve seeded it with are delivered to you randomly. And obviously feel free to share further information about your deepest, darkest personal secrets in the comments. I won’t tell.
mirrormirror readership survey
Update: It has been brought to my attention that the mighty Urtak won’t let you add questions without making you register etc. Stuff and nonsense. If you have a burning question for the ‘mirrormirror’ commentariat, please add it in the comments and I’ll make sure it gets asked.
So, as you will hopefully have realised, I’ve decided to take my blogging a bit more seriously in the last month or so.
Would you believe I’ve been pissing around in an unfocused and inconsistent way on this blog for about seven years now? At the beginning of this year I decided it was time I either put up or shut up, which was one of the reasons I attended Holly’s class and have been thinking deeply about what I’m doing here.
Can I take this blog to the next level, make it more professional and maybe start earning a bit of money off it? I’ve taken a couple of online classes on monetizing blogs and it seems I’m currently at the bottom end of what an advertiser would be looking for in terms of monthly page views and unique visitors, so my first priorities are to bump up blog traffic, redesign the blog so that it better accommodate some curated advertising and put together a press pack.
I’ve also been giving some thought to the ‘elevator pitch’ for my blog ie. a short, succinct way of encapsulating what I’m trying to do here. I found the section of Holly’s class where we talked about this to be enormously thought-provoking, as the one thing I’ve struggled with over the past few years is knowing and communicating exactly what this blog is about.
This is what I’ve come up with so far:
Does that float your boat? Does it sound like the sort of blog you would visit often and comment on? I’m a chatty, opinionated extrovert, so the things I love most about blogging are chatting, sharing opinions, hearing what others have to say, learning new things,and making new friends,
And all that can only happen if there’s an engaged commentariat. Which is where you guys come in. I love it when you stop by and take the time to comment and chat and I’d like to make this a place you want to visit often and settle in for a cosy chat with a glass of wine and your gossip knickers on.
So this bit’s all about you. I’ve set up this Urtak questionnaire to find out more about the incredibly intelligent, stylish and forward-thinking people who read ‘mirrormirror’. Some bits of information concerns the sort of demographic stuff that might be helpful for advertising in due course, but most of it is so I can help develop content that you guys want to read.
The great thing about this Urtak format is that you can answer as few or as many questions as you want, and you can also add your own questions for commenters here to respond to. The questions I’ve seeded it with are delivered to you randomly. And obviously feel free to share further information about your deepest, darkest personal secrets in the comments. I won’t tell.
mirrormirror readership survey
Since we were all so rude recently about DvF’s Manhattan apartment, I feel it’s only fair to highlight the rather wonderful clothing collection she’s bringing out for Gap Kids, which hits stores on Thursday 15th (a couple of weeks later in Europe I think). Lots of beautiful jolly prints, cool sandals and wrap. dresses. for. toddlers. Who could want for more?
As I mentioned, one of my beefs with DvF is that – since I’m not in possession of a waist - I am one of the few women in the world who is not flattered by her wrap dress. However, I am in possession of a tall, willowy seven year old blonde who will look FABULOUS in some of these creations.
I’m seriously thinking of getting up early on Thursday to get in line, sad slave to labels that I am.
I also very much liked the quote from the video DvF made for the Gap website. Much food for thought for us mamas.
Here’s a still from the video, which I don’t seem to be able to embed. The full thing can be found here.
Will you be getting in line for your daughter? Or maybe even yourself? (I think they go up to age 14). Or do I really need to get a life?
