Olivia Burton's Beautiful Watches

Just before Christmas I made another great Instagram discovery - Olivia Burton watches

I'd been after a new watch for ages when I spotted this collection & was instantly sold. 

Founded in 2012 by 2 fashion graduates Lesa Bennett and Jemma Fennings, who quit their jobs buying for the likes of ASOS & Selfridges to design & create their perfect watch... & aren't we glad they did!

Their collection is beautiful & affordable with a sleek simple design, drawing inspiration from vintage style & catwalk trends.

You can choose from large or small dials, a huge colour variety of leather straps, rose gold or gold plated stainless steel link straps, & a gorgeous selection of motifs including butterflies, bees, hummingbirds & owls, reminiscent of the British countryside. There is definitely something for everyone. 

For me there was always going to be one winner, the hummingbird watch was exactly what I was looking for, a simple watch face & leather strap with just a little bit of added quirk, a classic design that's just a little bit different. I do love it so! 

Bonnie Gull - Seafood Shack in the City

Last night I managed to tick another restaurant off my "must try" London eatery list. I first came across Bonnie Gull in an Evening Standard review, it sounded pretty good so I added it to my ever growing list of places to eat. Since then its popped up in blogs & review sites all over the place with nothing but praise, so when my mum said she was going to be in London this weekend for her birthday I thought this would be the perfect opportunity!

Starting as a pop up in a Hackney Pie & Mash shop & with a couple of very successful collaborations, Bonnie Gull now has permanent residents on Foley Street in Fitzrovia, with a new seafood cafe on the horizon opening soon in Exmouth Market.

It's a gorgeous teeny tiny seaside seafood shack in the city, the BT tower looms just around the corner but you could swear you were just steps away from the shore!

The interior is simple but effective, as you'd expect a seaside shack to be, all white & blue, with wooden clad benches & bar & with rope adorning the rustic walls. But there are some unique little quirks, namely the stacked crate shelving behind the bar surrounding the raw bar & the "Winkles" & "Clams" toilet signage which really add a special touch.

Booking is a must due to the size & popularity (yes, a popular & tasty restaurant in London that you CAN book at, shocking, I know) I was informed that the bookings come in 2 hour slots but they'll be more than happy to extend this if possible. 

Now... The most important part - the food!

Some seriously good seafood, all 100% UK sourced, the menu changes according to the catches of the day, with a feature blackboard on the back wall which tells you where each type of fish featuring on the menu has been caught - nice touch! 

We ordered the Crab & the Mussels to start. The crab starter was beautiful, half a crab with toasted sour dough & a pot of their special crab mayo - pretty hefty for a starter but that's never really been an issue with me, the more food the better! The mussels with cider, creme fraiche & smoked bacon, served with a big chunk of bread were also a winner, the sauce was delish!

I'm a sucker for a Bouillabaisse, so when I spotted that on the menu I was pretty much sold & was mega happy I did, it came piled with 3 different types of fish (forgive me ... I've forgotten which, but they were all good!) clams, mussels & the best squid I've eaten, It was so meaty & delicious, miles away from the chewy/soft calamari rings that are all too popular around London, this was proper squid, tentacles & all & it was good, really good! We also ordered the Plaice a la Menuiere, Mussels & samphire which was the biggest portion of Plaice I've ever seen, & the Beer Battered Haddock, Beef Dripping Chips, & Mushy Peas ... & we may or may not have also ordered a 2nd portion of the chips to share (they were AMAZING) 

We didn't indulge in dessert unfortunately as we had a rather large birthday cake to get through, I would definitely have gone for the Chocolate Brownie with Cherry Ice Cream if we had done though! Bet it would have been amazing. There was also an impressive looking selection of cocktails that were being churned out from behind the wood clad bar. which unfortunately I didn't delve into on this occasion, another good excuse to go back though! 

The staff are amazingly nice and were only too happy to apply a million candles to my mums birthday cake & sing along to "Happy Birthday", they definitely added to the overall experience with their friendly banter. 

So if you fancy a trip to the seaside but don't quite have the time and/or energy to leave the Capital , or you just want a great seafood meal then get down to Bonnie Gull for the ultimate Seafood shack in the city!

Laura Gravestock

Myself and the boyfriend went to the Cockpit Arts Christmas open studio a few months ago. Based in Holborn, Cockpit Yard is home to the working studios of some amazingly talented people & the open day was a wonderful opportunity to go and nose around and buy some gifts directly from them!
The Summer 2013 open studio dates have just been released - Holborn 7 - 9 June & Deptford 14 - 16 June, put it in your diaries, its well worth the visit!

One person in particular really caught my eye and that was Laura Gravestock and her beauuutiful hand made jewellery. Check out her new electrifying Struck collection, it's lush... & with Valentines day coming up something from her Written collection would be the perfect gift! I love the single & multi heart rings - so cute & dainty.

I was lucky enough to get treated to my very own commissioned Carla necklace from the boyfriend for my birthday :) ... love it SO much, its so beautifully made!  I can NEVER get stuff with my name on, so it makes it super special that it's been made just for me!

There's always time for Cake!

I bought "Tea & Cake London" by Zena Alkaya the other day. I'd eyed it up online before but wanted to have a flick through & double check my favourite cake shops were included in the extensive list (because to be quite honest, if they weren't it would be a pretty rubbish cake book!) Peggy Porschen's, Bea's of Bloomsbury & Hummingbird Bakery were all in there so I gave in & bought it, & how happy I am that I did! :)

With my impending post Birthday diet, it probably wasn't the wisest thing to buy as I now feel the need to eat my way around London's best cake shops. But I bought it, & it's mine & who am I to deny that poor little book it's life's purpose?!

So I opened it & started with ...

Konditor & Cook's original Waterloo branch is featured in Tea & Cake London but as we were in the area a friend & I popped into the Soho branch last weekend to kick off my final birthday celebration.
It was located in a random little cinema on Shaftesbury avenue & is open until 11pm (10:30pm on Sundays!) for late night cake emergencies, which I think everyone has once in a while & I'd have a whole lot more if I lived nearby!

We headed straight for the cake. I'd been told by a friend that the Carrot Cake & their renowned Curly Whirly cakes were amazing ... So I went for carrot, & a little mini cake off the counter that was some kind of chocolatey cherry heaven, my friend had the Almond St Clement which was this moist lemony, orangey gluten free almond cake & was delicious - They were all SO good, you definitely could not fault any of them!

To go with our amazingly good cakes we ordered a pot of tea, before noticing my next favourite thing about K&C which is the fact that they sell wine! ... Not enough places sell cake & give you the choice of washing it down with a glass of wine! So after the cake was devoured & the tea was drunk, wine was ordered & we were very happy.

I need to go back & try the Curly Whirly cake ... & the brownies are meant to be super good! There are 6 branches across London, in Soho, Waterloo, Borough Market, Chancery Lane, South Bank & The Gherkin ... all of which I now feel the need to visit! I'd like to go for lunch one day as the savoury food looked super tasty too - I'm really regretting not getting a spinach & parmesan muffin but after all the cake there definitely wasn't room!

So... a good start for my new cake bible! Where to next?!

Lantana

Myself & the boyfriend embarked on another day of fun this weekend & had the YUMMIEST breakfast at Lantana Cafe tucked down a little lane near Goodge Street in London. Greg came across it on one of the many restaurant/food apps he has on his phone & when we arrived & saw the queue snaking its way across the front of the building we knew it wasn't likely to dissapoint! 

After queuing for about 20 minutes in arctic conditions we eventually got seated inside the teeny cafe at a teeny table & ordered a big pot of tea to warm us up. We ordered pretty much straight away having spent the 20 minutes outside wisely perusing the menu, the menu which is full of amazingly yummy sounding food. It took me a while to decide what I was going to have & changed my mind about 10 times but eventually decided on the "BERT" - not sure why it's called Bert… but it's basically a posh bacon sandwich - Bacon, Egg, Rocket, tomato & aioli, & I added a cheeky side of Halloumi cheese just to make it that extra bit special... it was gooood. 

Greg had corn fritters with bacon, spinach, roasted tomatoes and avocado chilli lime salsa, the salsa was AMAZING & went really well with the corn fritters. But yea, go to Lantana, it's yummy, the service is really good & they sell wine & gin. What more could you want on a Saturday morning?! 

I'm going to have to go back to try the Cinnamon french toast with blueberry compote, honey ricotta and toasted almonds. The thought of that makes me happy inside. Or perhaps i'll try out their sister restaurant in East London, Salvation Jane.

Kristjana S. Williams

I spotted this print in the Evening Standard on the way home from work & it instantly made me think of the Chloe Croft cushion I blogged about here and bought from here the other week. I love graphic style and the vibrant colours ... and of course the fact that it's basically 4 brightly CMYK coloured flamingos, whats not to love?!

This particular print is part of her exclusive new collection for London Design Festival 2012 which features a variety of shockingly bright exotic birds. Inspired by nature, the tapestry rooms in the V&A and Victorian Engravings, Kristjana is well known for her large scale "brilliant and daring Victorian engraving mash-ups" which interweave Victorian inspired engravings with contemporary illustration & colour.

I think they're mega beautiful! They're available to buy at Outline Editions from £95-£530 & she'll be featuring at Designjunction from 20-23rd September for London Design Festival. It seems everything I'd LOVE to go to in London is happening on that one weekend when of course, i'll be out of the country (check out the cake and bake show, literally breaking my heart to miss this!) I may have to send someone in my place!

Best Burger in London?...

This week I found my new favourite foody place in London. We'd heard the hype, we knew the back story & for some reason we're still trying to work out why we hadn't been before, but from the moment we arrived we knew we were in for something a BIT special.

Thursday night me & my dearest friend Lauren went to Meat Liquor, and it was AMAZING.

Meat Liquor started off as a mobile burger van called The Meat Wagon owned by Yiannis Papoutsis. When it was stolen he hatched the idea of opening the pop up restaurant "Meateasy" in order to save up enough money to buy another, however it turned out to be such a success that they went & opened up a permanent restaurant just off Oxford Street... & so Meat Liquor was born!

We weren't really sure what to expect, we'd heard good things but were worried it wouldn't live up to the amazingness we had going on in our heads. Although, when we rounded the corner & were hit by a smell that made us instantly dribble, we knew there wasn't much chance of us leaving dissapointed.

It was about 9pm on a Thursday evening & with Meat Liquors strict no reservation policy we found ourselves joining the back of a small queue outside the nondescript grey building. The only branding, a red neon slatted sign spelling out "Meat".

About 10 minutes later there was still a slight wait but we were told we could wait at the bar & have a few drinks.  They didn't have to ask us twice & 5 mins later we were standing, jam jar cocktails in hand, taking in the sights and sounds (sights being a selection of amazingly attractive male bar staff, and sounds being REALLY loud music). The cocktail list has been carefully put together by the guys at Soul Shakers - I had a Space Gin Smash (Gin, Lemon Juice, Sugar, Apple Juice, Elderflower cordial, Mint & Grapes) ... it was seriously good!

Jam Jar Cocktail anyone?

The interior has been designed by interior architects Shed & Graphic Design company I Love Dust.  A huge domed ceiling supported by pillars is daubed in crazy black & white murals of animal heads splatted with red paint, giving it a crazy slaughter house feel. This, paired with the low key lighting of red neon signs & the music blasting from the speakers leaves it feeling less like a restaurant and more like a back street American dive bar, perhaps not for everyone, but me & Lauren were loving it.

Graphics by I Love Dust

After about a 10 minute wait we were shown to our table & perused the menu. Simply put together it comprised of a selection no nonsense American diner food, burgers (beef/chicken), cheesesteaks and hot dogs, a few side orders and a selection of "Rabbit food". Both me & Lauren went for the Bacon Cheeseburger & we shared sides of cheese fries, onion rings & coleslaw. It arrived all together on a tray with a kitchen roll to mop ourselves up with afterwards. The burger was a meaty masterpiece, the onion rings were MASSIVE, the chips were a huge portion smothered in fried onions & cheese, & the coleslaw was literally the best coleslaw i've ever had in my life. We were left probably about a stone heavier after demolishing the mountain of food, but it was totally worth it, what with the amazing food & the incredible atmosphere.

Greasy Masterpiece

Clearly not a place to go if you're on a diet, or if you want a nice quiet intimate meal with friends and family, but it's amazing no frills food, a great atmosphere and great value for money, despite being in central London. We paid £24 for 2 for a giant tray of food, & cocktails start from £7, well worth a visit!

Rob Ryan

On my little jaunt to Columbia Road a few weeks ago I visited Rob Ryan's studio Ryantown. I've had a slight fixation with his quirky cut out designs for a while now & visiting his cute little East End shop/studio was a right treat.

You'll no doubt have come across something by Rob Ryan, his designs seem to be popping up everywhere, in particular I keep walking into shops to be greeted by his kitchenware, mugs/plates etc.

Rob Ryan's lovely plates - set of 4 for £26.99... BARGAIN!

His whimsical illustrations usually come along side cute little quotes or poems that just make you go all warm & fuzzy inside. My fave of his laser cut artworks is his "Can we? Shall we?" design -

 

Isn't it adorable? I would very much like to have one of these hanging on my wall encouraging me to run away for a day of fun. You can pick up his limited edition laser cuts on his Etsy shop from about £80 (prices go up quite considerably though, depending on the edition size!)

I myself, decided to purchase a Rob Ryan vase whilst out on our day of fun, to house my beautiful Columbia Road peonies :) isn't it gorgeous!

Blanca Gomez super cute prints

I discovered Blanca Gomez whilst browsing through Elphicks on Columbia Road last weekend & instantly fell in love. They're just so cute! I love the playful illustrative style & the use of colour, don't they totally make you smile?

You can purchase prints from her Etsy shop, although she's disappeared until the end of June I discovered today when I went to buy some!


These are a few of my favourites:

This is my absolute favourite.
Love it!

Sunday morning on Columbia Road

I had the loveliest day with the Boyfriend this weekend. We don't get many days just me & him so when the opportunity arises we try & run away for the day and do lovely things.

This Sunday we popped into London bright and early to visit Columbia Road, i've wanted to go for ages & it didn't disappoint. It is one of the few streets in London thats made up solely of independent shops, cafe's & galleries & on a Sunday morning it is transformed into a sea of flowers & foliage as the Columbia Road flower market takes over.

It's definitely the place to go to get a taste of real old East London as you wander around to the tune of dozens of London accents calling out "3 for a fiver!" (that or... "My wife's expecting a take away & a bottle of Pinot Noir tonight, if you don't stop taking photos & start buying something it'll be a tin of beans & an appletiser!" HA! he was deff my favourite) The flowers are stunning & such better quality and price than anything you'll find in Asda on a Sunday morning, you can pick up anything from flowering cacti (which I had actually bought in Asda the night before - sans flowers & regretted instantly!), herb plants & bulbs to huge bunches of cut flowers.

The boyfriend bought me the
loveliest bunch of Peonies :) 

After we'd finished strolling up & down the market we squeezed
our way behind the stalls to pop into a few of the shops, where it
took all my mortal strength to stop myself spending a total fortune!
The galleries were my favourite & I've fallen in love with so many things, in particular some prints by Blanca Gomez that I found in Elphicks (cute little gallery), I love them so much that they will be getting their very own post. There are a tonne of little quirky vintage shops as well, full of gorgeous tea sets, glass wear & paintings, one of them - Vintage Heaven, had a teeny little cafe set in the back of it thats
meant to be really nice, deff going to have to go back & try it out.




As if the flowers, the shops and the galleries weren't enough, a bunch of buskers turned up & started entertaining the crowds (they were really good!) which totally topped off the whole atmosphere. It was just the loveliest way to spend the morning!

<3

Peggy Porschen's Scrummy Cakes

Over the past year or so I've developed a bit of a passion for baking and cake decorating and through this I discovered one of my favourite places in London: the Peggy Porschen parlour.

If you haven't heard of Peggy porschen before and you have a sweet tooth or just appreciate amazingly beautiful cakes, her Belgravia parlour would be the first place I'd suggest you visit.

I went with the boyfriend during that ridiculously hot week in October (remember that?! ... That was lovely) and I was so amazingly excited, having drooled over pictures of her cakes for a good 6 months, to actually get to eat one.

After a wander through Belgravia in the blistering sunshine we rounded a corner and I spotted her pretty pink parlour, my boyfriend said I actually squealed and jumped at the sight of it, ever the cool and collected person that I am I just don't believe him, he must have been delirious from the heat.

Spotted this pretty little bird on a pretty Belgravia door.
So cute!

After spending a good 10 minutes choosing what cakes we were going to go with (I chose a slice of the summer berry cake and the boyfriend got a chocolate cupcake) we sat outside and devoured said cakes in what seemed like a couple of seconds, it was literally the best cake I ever tasted! It was light and fluffy and the flavours were amazing, I do think everyone has to go and have at least one of her cakes in their life time, I personally have very over the top dreams of having one of her beautiful tiered cakes centre stage at my wedding one day... maybe if I start saving now! I've also recently discovered that you can go to the parlour for afternoon tea which I will deff be looking into for my birthday next year!

So go... Eat cake and be merry, I've heard the black forest cupcakes are heavenly!