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April 25, 2010

buns

Hello all,

Since my last post my motivational ideas seem to have diminished somewhat. However, I have upped my consumption of Swedish culture, mostly of their food! My grandfather lives in Finland (he is not Finnish, he is English, but that's another story..) and I remember when I visited about ten years ago we ate these really nice sweet buns that were flavoured with some sort of spice. Yum!

Anyways, so while researching Swedish food to get we into the swedish-learning mood (yes I am a poet..) I found these Swedish Cardamom and Cinnamon buns, cousins to the Finnish buns which are called Pulla. I have actually tried to make the Pulla before but it failed miserably so I was a bit scared to try it!

So I had a bit of a one-person baking party a few days ago and made them, with the yeast and everything! It was very exciting because I have never cooked using yeast before.. But it was so good! I felt like a real proper baker because there was actually a chance that things could go wrong, unlike with my normal biscuits and cakes where pretty much the only that can go wrong is that they have too much/not enough sugar..

I did actually take heaps of nice photos, which also showed off my sweeeet new dessert stand that I got from the Salvo's the other week, but you will have to wait a couple of days for them as I am a bit lazy with the uploading at the moment.

But because of my laziness what you do get is a couple of photobooth pics of my recent purchases (because I know you care!): my super-duper yellow tights and some new additions to my owl collection, which now looks quite sizable and needs a bit more shelf space I think!


Banana legs!
In a way they just make my legs look a little bit diseased but I like them anyway!


So many owls...

In more shop-related news I have actually added a few new items including a beautiful vintage typewriter and a spotless glomesh bag (which I really love but really I think four glomesh bags is enough for my personal collection!)

So I hope you have learnt something about Swedish cooking or maybe more about my laziness here today!

xx Elly

P.S. While researching Swedish food I found this picture of a Swedish Crayfish Party!
How crazy !! (Plus aren't lobsters kind of expensive?? Swedish people must have too much money..)

April 15, 2010

insecurities

Hey there lovelies,

Now I am not normally the sort of person who really gets into the whole "motivational" thing, I tend to zone out and just think about how unlikely it is that I am actually going to "take time out to de-stress" or "repeat my positive mantra five times a day" etc etc.. But when I came across this article today called insecurity doesn't pay the bills, and as a completely over-analytic anxiety wreck (i'll wager that I could beat most of you in a crazy-off) who aspires to be a "proper designer" one day this completely spoke to me.

So I suppose I have to be a better person now and blog more regularly!

Hope you're feeling just a little bit inspired :)

xx Elly

April 7, 2010

type

Today is the type of day that I haven't had in ages.
I got up, didn't get dressed until midday, sat on the sofa under a blanket and got some of my silly uni work done. It was so nice when I woke up, the kind of cold and rainy day where it is so nice to just sit inside.

I've really been loving the cold weather despite being sickly because I am a half-english, cold-loving kind of girl. My plans for the future are to move to Melbourne where they have proper winters, and then in the more distant future to move to Sweden where they have really proper winters. The type of winters where you can legitimately wear coats and smoke cigarettes in a sophisticated-european-black-and-white-film kind of way. This is what I am envisioning for my life. I just have to train my lungs to not die the day after I decide to smoke a single cigarette..

In other news, while procrastinating from my work AGAIN (this is a very common theme in my life) I found the most gorgeous little blog called we make words and am now absolutely obsessed.



Being the design-student typography-obsessive girl that I am, this is my idea of heaven, especially as cutesy real-life type is actually my favourite thing ever. Well one of them at least! And I love that the materials are unrelated to the words that are written.

Beautiful work girls I am totally jealous inspired!


xx Elly

April 6, 2010

sickly

Oh dearrr,
Being the sickly girl that I always have been, for the past week or so I have felt even worse and as such have been completely unproductive and unmotivated to do anything.

As such, all useful activities have fallen by the wayside in favour of falling asleep under snuggly blankets, drinking hot chocolates and crying to ease the pain (literal pain not emo pain, for once..)

One of the main problems with this is that this week and next week are the two weeks before my uni break and are the two weeks in which a bunchload of my work is due. ISSUES ARISE.

Anyway, apart from my many woes, if you are feeling a bit down lately like me I have a sure-fire cure for you, and that cure is baking. Baking solves everything (except obesity I hear..) Try out this amazing chocolate torte from design sponge, trust me it is easy as pie (ha?)

Seriously though, a certain silly friend once grilled my mix instead of baking it and it still came out delicious, though I think it might be hard to go wrong with a melting pot of chocolate and butter.


(photo from design sponge, my one wasn't quite as beautiful!)

Take care,

xx Elly