A while back I visited Friday Next in Amsterdam together with Nina from Paper Stories. What a lovely shop! You can drink coffee there and have something to eat as well. We ate lunch there and would have stayed the whole day if possible! The store is packed with design furniture, accessories and lifestyle things. Everything is carefully selected. I wanted to buy the whole lot! (they also have a webshop)
I found these by Yago Partal and they really made me smile. Aren’t they just exactly like people? We’re still waiting for some sunshine here… I do hope summer starts soon!
Since I’ve read the haunting and beautiful novel Effigy by Allisa York some years ago I’ve been more than intrigued by taxidermy (I interviewed her for an online magazine where I found out what an exceptionally interesting person she is and the amount of research she’d done to accurately portray the taxidermy process). I think there is a definite beauty in the dead animal, although in itself it’s sort of a macabre thing of course. I remember being on holiday in France in the country and we stumbled upon a taxidermist who had collected a great range of stuffed animals. I seriously considered bringing a duckling back home, but then the ‘deadness’ of the animal still made more of an impression on me than it’s beauty, I just couldn’t get over the fact it had quacked once… Still, when we’re going to Paris this summer I would love to visit Deyrolle, famous for it’s taxidermie, entomology and curiosities.
{All photo’s via Deyrolle site}
A little while back I did my very first Kindred Spirits interview with Nicole Blaak, the owner of the lovely and eco-friendly webshop Babongo. Then some weeks ago Nicole asked me if she could send me some products to review and of course I was thrilled because she sells only beautiful things. Of course I’m a fan of stationary products and Babongo is the only Dutch salespoint for the beautiful stationary products of Esme Winter. Esme Winter is a ‘modern English designer’ who makes eco-friendly paper products from recycled and responsible sourced papers. She has a background in textile design and is currently working on her first textile collection. I love the abstract patterns and since I’m a paper lover the notebooks and wrapping paper are just bliss to me. Nicole also send me one of her new products: a bamboo breakfast plate in the form of a mouse, so cute! Do make sure to check out Babongo for high quality eco-friendly products and if you see something you like you can get a 10% discount on your order if you apply for the Babongo newsletter!
{Photo’s were made by me and embellished with the help of the newly released and pretty rad app ABeautifulMess by Elsie and Emma. Love their blog too! }
Really like these paintings by Abbey Mcculloch, an Australian painter. Couldn’t find any site of Abbey nor any other site where you can buy her work, so she is shrouded in a little bit of mystery. I like a little bit of mystery from time to time…
Once again I’m literally under the weather as they say. My throat hurts so much I can hardly speak and all I want to do is crawl under a blanket and sleep (if it weren’t for that throat that makes just that impossible). I feel like I’ve been sick a lot lately and come to think of it, global news is also not getting any better. Crisis after crises and today’s silence in honor of all the people that lost their lives during WWII is not lifting my spirits either. On top of that I’m reading the very brilliant but darn out horrific book HhhH by Laurent Binet. I know, I know… that doesn’t help. Need something uplifting. Saw these flowers today and made a simple collage.
I’m slowly coming to the end of my London feed, but of course I had to blog about Marks & Spencer. I love M&S and was thoroughly disappointed when their enterprise in the Netherlands almost ten years ago didn’t turn out to be a good investment. They changed their appearance and business plan and now, after a decade, recently opened a new M&S in Amsterdam in the Kalverstraat. Actually the grand opening was just a couple of days after I returned from London blissfully unaware of this fact. Everything I bought over there in their amazing food hall because of its amazing packaging can now easily be bought in Amsterdam. Just so you know… I felt a little bit… well… foolish…
