A weekend in Helsinki

It was snowing, nearly minus 20 degrees and cold. So cold in fact that my fingers froze everytime I took my gloves off, so I gave up with the SLR and resorted to the Android instead (hence the polaroid vintage pictures)

The hotel was reassuringly warm (and also happens to have the best scrambled eggs I've tasted yet)

While out on my wanderings, I stumbled on some random vintage chairs, as you do

And found a pretty awesome indoor Nordic food market, Eat & Joy, with hot soup, pulla (sweet cinnamon bread) and much more

I've only ever seen the H&M home range online, so was quite surprised to see a dedicated store (although it seems to have been the exact same range for ages)

 

Started the next day at Fleuriste, a lovely French-style cafe

With pretty china, tea and cakes

Wandered through the design district and stumbled on some lovely boutiques. This one's called  Pino 

Wish I had better pictures, but Marimekko's flagship store was amazing, and huge

There's plenty to do: the Design Museum, tons of design shops, the Cathedral, the harbour. 

More coming up on Finland soon, with travel pieces I'll be linking to. But all in all, it's pretty cool simply seeing a city completely under snow.

Is it rain? Is it snow?

Who knows? All I know is, it's cold.

Rifle Paper Co

Blanca Gomez

Yoke

Dig the Earth

Dig the Earth

Laura Amiss

Heavenly quinoa full of good things

R and I are pasta and potato junkies. But with him trying to train for the marathon, and me trying to keep up, we're trying to mix it up a little and be a bit healthier. On a mission to find something high protein yet delightful to eat, I made this, a mismatch of this kale and pesto quinoa recipe from 101Cookbooks.com and this butternut squash and feta quinoa recipe from Lorraine Pascale.

I don't have a precise recipe, as I sort of blended the two recipes together and added in a little instinct. First I put some butternut squash in the oven to roast (it took about 20 minutes).  Then, I put the quinoa on to cook in water, while I stir fried an onion and garlic clove, before adding some tofu. The tofu browned, I added some sweet red pepper and then the kale and then tipped in a little pot of pomegranate. By this time, the quinoa was fluffy and done, so I mixed the stir-fried veg and the butternut squash with the cooked grains, added a fistful of pine nuts, crumbled in some feta, added two tablespoons of pesto, tons of fresh mint and basil, and it was done.

It's the first time I've ever tried quinoa, and I feel virtuously satisfied as a result. It's amazing how many natural flavours come out and how light yet filling it all is; the quinoa grains are like little broken pearls, the pomegranates luscious gems with that oh-so-satisfying crunch. Very tasty, amazingly light, and so, so wonderfully good.

Home London 2012

I spent the day at Home on Monday, where I was eyeing up new trends for 2012 for the Guardian. It was an amazing show - they have obviously worked really hard to only get quality designers and brands in. While you can't buy what you like at a trade show (it's not open to the public), it is great for eye candy and you don't have that market traderish crowd selling you stupid kitchen gadgets like some so-called 'interiors' shows do. Anyway my write-up about it all is here, but here's some more pics of things that caught my eye...

Ferm Living

Muted warm wintery things from Verso Design

Marimekko's new Helsinki range, based on an original 1950s design out the archive

Donna Wilson's lovely throws

Swedish ceramics at Sagaform

Handprinted, homemade bags and cards by Alexandra Snowdon

Ace biscuit cushions by Nikki McWilliams

Searching for squashy comfy cushions

On our grey sofa, we have these cushions, which I haven't had time to take a picture of so I shall describe instead. Hand embroidered flowers, in red and cream silk threads dotted with little mirrors in the threadwork at the centre of each one, they were passed down to me by my mum, who in turn had them from her mum. Actually, that's a bit of a lie. They weren't so much passed down to me as I spied something (a bit of mirror) in the airing cupboard, thought "Ooh, there's something shiny", stood on the edge of a shelf to reach for it, nearly broke the shelf, pulled the cushions out, made a mess of all the other linen in there, thought, yes, they looked nice and stuffed them in a bag to take them with me to London. Great tactic for stealing stuff from your mum's house, works every time.

Anyway. The cushions are lovely, but they are old. Some of the small bits of mirror are falling out which as well as leaving gaps in the embroidery is also a potential health and safety issue for, er, small nephews and er, grown ups too. Every now and then, R will be sitting on the sofa, struggling to get comfy because a small shard of glass may or may not have inadvertently cut through his jeans. It makes me feel bad and so this lengthy preamble explains why I am currently spending my hard earned money and valued time doing something very important called cushion shopping.

Today I ordered this one from Roddy & Ginger although really it's not to replace the existing cushions, but more to join the owl on the green snuggler armchair. Which wasn't what I was looking for, but anyway.

but a pair of these would go very nicely, thank you, with our charcoal grey sofa...

I don't have a bolster cushion but if I did, I'd love this print from ThirtyFive Flowers

This is awesome (and on sale!), but I know R will probably hate - one owl cushion is pushing it; an elephant called Elle would probably push him over the edge.

Although check out the rest in the range: Mr Franck the Fox! Aristo Katt! - I would gladly share the sofa with this lot

On a more grown up note (tis a living room, not a nursery. Not that we need a nursery. Just to make that clear), I do very much like Ferm Living's geometric designs...

But perhaps not enough to spend nearly £56 on. Luckily, that same Etsy seller, ThirtyFive Flowers, has something similar for a lot, lot less, although she only has one of them and I suspect that now I've blogged it, it'll sell out by the time I figure out which ones I want to buy.

I have long loved these (we have the bolster ones in the bedroom) but it'd be pretty boring if we had the same ones in one room as in the other too so that these rules out

While these are pretty gorgeous too

So anyway. That's my shopping round up. Basically, to recap, I was meant to buy a pair of cushions for the grey sofa but ended up buying one cushion for the green one instead, which means I've failed miserably in my shopping task. Never mind! There's always Franck the Fox!

Perfect Victoria Sponge Wedding Cake

Victoria sponge, raspberry and cream, big and squishy and ever so slightly wonky: my wedding cake, just as I'd imagined it to be. Photos by our wedding photographer Anna, and cake by Nicola.

(I promise not to go all wedding blogger on you)