Month: February 2015

We love a wicked good napkin

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We had some friends round for lunch the other day and used up the last of the paper napkins from Christmas because the gold colour seemed to go with the daffodils. (It was fun – it would have been so nice if you could have joined us!)

White linen napkins are beautiful but they are such hard work to launder and starch after every use that a well-chosen paper one seems like a more attractive option, at least for less formal events. In fact, we love a:

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And that says it all really. But here are a few more from the cupboard:

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You can’t go wrong with a nautical theme
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Love these kitsch barbecue ones!
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These are waiting for someone’s birthday (it’s their favourite vegetable)

And there is always room for more… we can’t think of an occasion when we would need these zebra napkins from the Caspari website, but we really want some anyway (you know, just in case we throw a leaving party for someone off to hunt zebra. Could happen…):

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Every napkin makes a statement, some in a more obvious way than others!

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If you have a wicked good napkin, why not share a picture of it on our Facebook page?

Galanthomania!

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No, we’d never heard of it either but it turns out that ‘galanthomania’ means ‘obsession with snowdrops’. Love a good new word!

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We thought that they were pretty little flowers that are the first to appear after the winter and generally make us feel happy about the approach of spring. (Sorry if you are reading this somewhere still under feet of snow.) But it turns out that some people are far more passionate about them and comparisons have been made with ‘tulip mania’ in Holland in the 1630s, when tulip bulbs changed hands for vast amounts of money leading to the first recorded economic bubble.

In 2012 a seed company, Thomson and Morgan, paid £725 for one specimen snowdrop bulb. And this month a lady in the UK paid £1,602 to name a new snowdrop variety. At Sir Harold Hillier Gardens in Hampshire, plants are kept in alarm-protected greenhouses and given security guards when they are displayed in flower. It’s not easy to get into the snowdrop business though – they are covered by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (Cites) and that means that a licence is needed to sell a single bulb.  Snowdrops are native to continental Europe but they are also very popular in the US, where bulb prices are driven up further by all the paperwork needed to import the bulbs.

On balance, snowdrops are probably not going to provide a sure-fire get-rich-quick scheme after all. But they do look good and now we have the challenge of dropping ‘galanthomania’ casually into a conversation!

We baked you a cake!

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Happy Valentine’s Day!

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We baked you a cake – a big, chocolatey one. So you will have a slice, won’t you?

In case you were wondering,  the recipe is from ‘How To Eat’ by Nigella Lawson, and as you can see from its rather battered appearance, it’s one of our favourite cookery books (not just because the recipes are delicious but also because it is so well written):

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If you don’t have a copy, you can get the recipe here. The cake in the book is covered in a delicious sounding chocolate ganache, but we used good ol’ Betty Crocker Chocolate Fudge Frosting.

Another slice? Go on. As someone we know used to say, ‘you might as well as wish you had!’

xox

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Time to get to work

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Can you believe January is over? No, us neither. But it’s February and that means one of two things. Either the spring sun light will soon be shining its unforgiving light through those streaky windows and onto every surface in the house; or the snow will be reflecting and intensifying the winter sun light into unforgiving beams shining through those streaky windows and onto every surface in the house. Whichever, it’s time to think about spring cleaning, because there is absolutely nothing fabulous or lovely about dirt.

On the other hand though, cleaning itself doesn’t really count as fabulous or lovely either. You probably won’t be surprised that we have some tips for getting the stuff done as quickly and efficiently as possible so that we can all get on with more interesting things. (Have you seen the lovely new homeware in Anthropologie?)

First of all, you really don’t need a massive amount of cleaning products in the cupboard, but make sure that you keep a few where they are needed. For instance, keep antibacterial wipes and bleach in each bathroom so when you see something that needs a clean, you can do it straightaway. Oh, and if you have more than one floor in your home, find a corner in a cupboard on each for a duster, polish and spare bin bags and that way you won’t waste time carrying things up and down stairs.

On the subject of cleaning products… here is a little secret. You know when you stand in front of a whole display of them and they whisper ‘Buy us! All of us! You can take us home, leave us in the cupboard under the sink and our very presence there will not only magically clean your house with no effort on your part, but also give you the key to everlasting happiness’? It’s not true. Really. You can trust us on this. You’ll only be disappointed. (Look at it this way – if it were true don’t you think we would have shared by now?) There is one gadget we love though (and it’s just the thing for those streaky windows we mentioned earlier): this baby, the Karcher Window Vac:

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It sucks up water without leaving streaks, so to clean glass all you have to do is wipe it with warm water and a drop of washing up liquid using a micro fibre cloth, then suck up the water. As well as windows, you can use it on mirrors, glass doors, glazed picture frames and tiled walls. You can buy a special cleaning concentrate and a spray bottle with a microfibre head but see above! You really don’t need them!

Now windows don’t need cleaning often, but somethings do and the best advice for those is: have a routine. Do a proper clean of each room once a week and then all it will need on the other days is a few minutes tidying up and wiping down. That way you set an easy target for each day, feel virtuous when you achieve it and – this is the important bit – still have time for other things!

However, one thing we think should be left to the professionals is oven cleaning. Whatever the latest product is, it takes ages, smells foul, involves scary chemicals and the results never seem to look really clean. Most of the oven cleaning companies operate on a franchise basis so it’s worth getting local recommendations as the service from one company to another can vary between areas.

Now that’s sorted, have you seen this jug from Anthropologie? Isn’t it gorgeous?

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