Tea and coffee with Alessi

November 2, 2015

Back in July I was invited to Alessi's press preview for their Autumn-Winter range at the Ily cafe in London's Regent Street. I walked into a full blown Christmas, which wasn't quite what I was expecting and must have been an unusual sight for the cafe's regular coffee drinkers.

I should warn you now, there's plenty of Christmassy things to follow, so if you have an aversion to Christmas as this time of year then you should look away now, as they say on the television.

There's been lots of research into making the perfect coffee pot and the Pulcina espresso coffee maker is the result of that research. To me it looks as if it's got a little beak and that's a design feature too - it's designed to be drip free, and if it works I'm sure it'll be welcomed by many.

I did like this “Quattro muri e due case” tray made of bamboo wood. It looked comfortable to carry and the perfect way to display Santa's note.

Would you believe the design for the kettle below is thirty years old? It was designed by Michael Graves in 1985 (hey - how is this thirty years ago?) and to mark this anniversary he's redesigned the whistle changing the iconic little bird to a Tea Rex - ahem. That's a reference to Chinese culture where these beings symbolise strength and fortune. It looks great and is a bit of fun too.

This lamp made of plastic looks stylish and would be good on a table or as a bedside lamp. It's called Lady Shy because the light source is at once visible and hidden, and is protected by the lamp structure that resembles a skirt blowing in the wind. But whatever, I think it's stylish and pretty minimalist.

You might have already guessed but the tea infuser above is designed by the same designer as the Tea Rex kettle. And below is a pretty holder for your bottles, a very pretty way to stop them leaving a mark on your tablecloth,

Each year the Alessi release a Christmas ornament which I'm sure become highly collectible. This year's ornament is by Italian Laura Polinoro. If I'm honest it's not really my thing, but I can see how they could become collectable and something that collectors would want to add to their collection, but not me.

The last item I'm going to share was easily my favourite, and it's one I will buy at some point. It's polished chrome, looks like jewellery but is for use in the kitchen. I was bemused as to what it was, but once it was explained it was a trivet I was fascinated and I could see just how useful it would be. And super stylish too - but it still reminded me of jacks I used to play growing up.

The stars (or jacks) can be arranged to suit any size dish, large or small and then when it's done it can be hung on a hook or left on display. Great isn't it? At £29 it's a more expensive than other trivets I've bought, but then again this is something entirely different altogether, don't you think?

So there was lots to see at this event, and lots more that I can see will be added to the Design Classics of the future. Thanks to Alessi for inviting me along, it was great to see these products up close.

* This is a collaborative post but all words and opinions are my own

Making bows from old magazines

October 28, 2015

Like many people I can lose a good hour or two to Pinterest, and I often pin craft things that I think I might make and usually I promptly forget about them in the hubbub of life. But when I saw this tutorial from How about Orange showing how to make gift bows from a magazine page I knew one day I'd be giving it a go.

I do like a good magazine and have quite a few here, including a large back catalogue of Good Food and Olive - don't worry I didn't use those. Usually I don't keep old copies of Good Housekeeping but on this occasion I'm glad I did.

I made the first one following the tutorial with strips 3/4" wide and while I was impressed with how easy it was to make, it was a little big for my liking. So I made another one with strips 1/2" wide and while this was a better size it was much more fiddly, but not impossible to do. Deciding to give it another shot I made another with strips 5/8" wide and that worked much better for me.

With the strips cut to varying lengths, I folded and twisted the eight lengths. Initially I found this confusing to do but soon got into a rhythm. For this stage I used a staple because it seemed a lot easier than glueing, and because I couldn't find the staple-less stapler I have!

Next I assembled each layer of the bow so the loops were evenly spaced and secured these. In the larger version I used a staple here too, but on the smaller versions I used glue dots (or part of glue dots).

Then it's time to assemble the layers, again glue dots work well here.

And finally add the shortest length rolled into a circle in the middle of your bow.

And there you have it, a gift bow.

Or in my case three gift bows!

I think they look great, and I'll be making some more - I chose colourful pages from the magazine, but I think you could use any page, even one full of text. I think you could also use the offcuts from wrapping paper for a coordinated effect. The possibilities are endless!

What do you think?

Shoe storage sorted.

October 27, 2015

Back in 2013 when we started to plan how and what to decorate and agreeing what should be in and what should be out, a shoe wardrobe was very much on my wish list. But it was deemed not to be, although I secretly thought I'd always manage to sneak it back in again somehow. You see, I do like a nice pair of shoes or two, and I may well have accumulated more than the usual number of pairs...

In my mind I'd have a wardrobe in the spare bedroom dedicated to shoes. It would have pull out racks with shoe trees on so it'd be very easy to decide which shoes to wear, and be easy to get to them too.

I'd spotted some racks in IKEA which did just that, and seriously coveted them. However, because the decorating on our middle floor - where the spare room is, didn't take place until earlier this year the shoe wardrobe was put on hold and during that time many of my shoes were stored in a large cardboard box in the conservatory. Occasionally you'd find me in the box head first, searching frantically for the pair of shoes I wanted to wear, that I was sure was in this box. Somewhere...

As we got around to decorating the spare room I learnt that IKEA had stopped doing my dream shoe storage solutions, so further negotiations were needed to secure somewhere suitable to store them. The Expedit units were the answer, our solution was to combine a 2x2 unit and a 4x2 unit on each side of the room.

A deal was struck.

One IKEA unit primarily for record storage and another IKEA unit of the same size primarily for shoe storage. Yay. I'll let you work out which of us were claiming which unit...

Further negotiations were entered which resulted in MOH putting forward a good case for some storage in the shoe unit. Three cupboards I was assured would be enough. The rest was mine. This is how it worked out.

I'll admit it's not quite what I imagined, but it's clean, functional and looks good. And let's face it it's way better than rummaging in a large cardboard box!

With the help of some pretty labels I can now easily find the shoes I want.

And yes the top right cupboard also has a pilates circle in and isn't so organised as the rest of the unit. But, hey it's got to go somewhere and boots were slightly trickier to fit in tidily. There are at least four pairs of knee length boots in there - and yes, I need all of them!

Don't ask me how many pairs I have, I still didn't count them. But at least now it's much easier to do that, if I wanted too!

How do you store your shoes?