Flowers from Sabine's garden

Hello everyone, I am not making so many bouquets these days, but luckily my friends still are and I love looking at them. Today I would like to show you the little wonders from Sabine's garden. Sabine is a German copywriter and blogger and online shop-owner. Her lovely blog is called azurweiss and her shop la mesa. We first met virtually through the swapping action Post aus meiner Küche last year and in real life in February in Munich during the blogger meet up "I love you blogs and coffee". She posts a lot of charming flower arrangements on her blog, and has participated many times in our #2flowergirls photo challenge. I am a big fan of her Instagram feed, where she posts a lot of lovely flowers. She usually presents simple flowers in very pretty glass or white china vases.  Some are from the flea-market and some can be purchased in her online-store.

Today, I am so glad to be showing you some of Sabine's bouquets from her beloved garden along with a little interview:

Dear Sabine, what kind of flowers do you grow in your garden?

I’m very much in love with cottage gardens and I grow typical cottage garden flowers like cornflowers, cosmoses, delphiniums, peonies and old roses together with tons of herbs like sage, rosemary, mint and chives. And not to forget some tomatoes, courgette and pumpkins. Our garden looks quite romantic and often a little bit higgledy-piggledy (because I don’t have time to keep all the weeds away) but this contrasts quite well with our  house which is pure white and very functionalist, almost Bauhaus-style.

What does your garden mean to you?

Honestly –  I think I couldn’t live without it. Working in the garden just makes me happy and I wish I had more time to spend in this little green relaxing zone.

What kind of vases do you like using for your bouquets?

Most of my vases are made of white porcelain, many of them are vintage. I like to arrange them in groups with flowers assorted by colours – mostly white, pale pink or blue. I also use transparent or blue glass vases or even glasses (vintage or new). Liqueur glasses for example are wonderful to arrange flowers like forget-me-nots or single blossoms. Especially in autumn and winter I often use rough ceramics (mostly vintage) to decorate, for example, dahlias, asters or just branches.

Thank you so much Sabine for sharing with us your lovely pictures and your love for flowers.

I wish you all a great day and hope to talk to you soon if baby love doesn't decide to make an appearance. Only 7 days to go! xxx Elodie

(c) All photography by Sabine Wittig

2 flower girls #2 - by glomerylane & madame love

Hello there, Here comes the second edition of my flower column 2 flower girls with the sweet Inga from the blog glomerylane.

For those who are discovering the concept today, the idea is that we buy the same flowers in the same colours on the same day and style them our own way. For today's arrangements, we decided to use pink and white tulips. This time it was Inga's turn to pick the flowers, and I was very happy about her choice, as I don't buy tulips very often. It made me step out of my comfort zone a bit, which sometimes allows you to be more creative.

I will first show you the flowers unarranged:

I decided to present my flowers in a very colourful vase/cup from the Danish label Greengate that I bought a couple of years ago in Berlin and a single flower in a glass vase I brought back from Stockholm last week, which comes from the great interior shop of Lotta Agaton. Inga displayed her tulips in an antique teapot with a tulip pattern. I love the way she puts a single flower in the spout of the teapot.

Inga and I have so much fun every month playing around with the same flowers and styling them in a very different way that we thought that you would maybe like to play with us next time. We will be announcing the flowers we want to style a couple of days before on my facebook fanpage and on Inga's. We would be so happy if readers from all around the world would like to decorate their home with the same flowers on the same day. If you want to communicate about the action on Instagram or Twitter, you can just use the hashtag #2flowergirls.

We will keep you posted anyway. I wish you a very nice day and don't forget to buy flowers and visit glomerylane today to see what Inga wrote about 2 flower girls!

Elodie

images: madame love & glomerylane

Metropolitain in Hamburg

Hello everyone, There is a new place in Hamburg I would like to share with you today. It is very French and I am so happy I can reach it within five minutes the next time I am feeling homesick. Metropolitain is the long name given to the French Metro. This place is not an interior shop, it's a café/pâtisserie/wine shop/champagne lounge. The concept is really well thought through. You have three rooms:

1.  The first one is black and white, with a completely black counter, white tiles (the same as in the Parisian metro) and black bistro chairs. The area is designed to be like the entrance of a metro station. 2.  The second room is completely black, with sofas, and is the champagne lounge. It is conceived to be like when you are travelling in the metro and going through a tunnel. 3. The third room is completely white and reflects the interior of the metro trains.

It is a very atmospheric place with fantastic food, only organic French wines and a lot of attention given to details and corporate design. One of the owners is French and used to work in advertising, and you really feel that a lot of attention has been put into the concept, the choice of colours, etc. The green tone used in the logo is, for instance, exactly the green used in the Paris metro.

The products that are sold and the decoration at Metropolitain are so typically French that I decided to give you a little basic French course via the pictures.

A little French course:

Speak to you soon. xxx Elodie

Metropolitain Hegestraße 28 20249 Hamburg Tu. – Su. : 10:00 – 18:00 Closed Mondays

My fake christmas tree

Hello everyone, This year my family are coming to Hamburg to celebrate Christmas and we are going to buy a proper Christmas tree on 24th December. In the meantime, I made myself my own fake Christmas tree, with some white branches and home-made ornaments.I used some German polymer clay called Fimo, with some organza ribbons. To personalise them, I used a Love stamp from the German designer bastisRIKE and the letters are from Muji. I decided to have a Christmas decoration all in black & white this year. It's very much like Coco Chanel!

Next week I am on holiday and I am so looking forward to it! I will take some time to prepare the celebration with my family and spend more time on the blog, working on future projects for 2013. So there you go, here are a couple of pictures of my fake, temporary Christmas tree. You can see more photos on my Facebook page. Next week I will be doing some more ornaments, but this time in black.

What about you? Which colours are you using for your christmas decoration? Have you got a proper tree?

Speak to to you soon. xxx Elodie

a christmassy still life

Hello everyone, I hope you had a lovely week-end. We had dreadful weather in Hamburg today - we had a lot of snow and it has been raining on the snow, so it's all slushy now. Whatever! It is a good opportunity to finish my small Christmas decoration at home. This year I decided to use my little home-made table (made out of an old bathroom mirror) to display a little christmassy, wintery landscape and I am pretty happy about the result. I love the fact that the table reflects the scene, especially when the lantern is lit up.

I wish you a fantastic week. Only 15 days to go till Christmas! xxx Elodie

• The centre of this still life is a metallic candle holder in the shape of an old Dutch house that I bought in one of my favorite flower shops: Blumenküche.
• On the left, I made a little star bouquet using old bottles from the lovely interior shop Lieblingszimmer.
• The stars are hand-made glitter stars from the shop Nordlys and the paper ornament is from House Doctor. Around the neck of the bottle is an home-made star I made using the German polymer clay called Fimo. I stamped my name on it, with a lovely stamp from the German designer bastisRIKE.
• The plastic animal under the cloche is from a local toy store and I love the contrast with the big porcelain mushroom.

Here are a couple of close-ups of the still life.

the Speculoos stars - Post aus meiner Küche

Good morning dear readers, This week I took part for the third time in the German food swapping project, Post aus meiner Küche (mail from my kitchen) initiated by my fellow bloggers Clara, Jeanny and Rike. The theme this time was Christmas, and I must say it was a bit tricky for me. The concept of Post aus meiner Küche is that you cook or bake something in your kitchen, and send it by mail to your randomly picked swapping-partner.

In France, we don't have this tradition of baking small biscuits (Plätzchen) before Christmas, so I hope my wonderful partner in crime, the lovely Sabine from the blog azurweiss will forgive me for having only sent some simple home-made speculoos. I received on Wednesday an incredible delivery from the south of Germany: what was in the box can be seen here. I hope the star-shaped biscuits tasted good. I had the idea of making them after our trip to Belgium in October. They don't really look the same as the ones you find in France and Belgium because you have to use "Vergeoise" which is a very dark brown sugar that you find in the north of France and in Belgium, and it gives the biscuits a very dark golden colour.

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

Receipe for the Speculoos dough:

for 40 to 50 pieces - preparation : 10 minutes

500g flour 180 g salted butter 300 g brown sugar (Vergoise) 1 egg 1 teaspoon yeast 2 g of salt 8 cl milk 2 soup spoons of speculoos spices

Preparation:

Mix the flour, brown sugar, spices, yeast and salt in a bowl. Add the egg and the (not cold) butter cut into small pieces. Mix the ingredients together gently. Start to add, bit by bit, the milk and continue mixing until a consistent dough is formed. Wrap in cling film and place in the fridge for at least two hours.

Remove the dough from the fridge and leave for one hour. Pre-heat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius. Flour the work surface. Use a rolling pin to achieve flat dough around 3-4 mm in height. Cut into shapes using your form of choice. Place on baking paper on a baking tray and place in the preheated oven for around 15 minutes. Ensure that the speculoos are golden before taking out of the oven.

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

I wish you a nice Sunday afternoon.

xxx

Elodie

cone pine candle-light holder from the shop Nordlys in Hamburg (I don't remember the brand) wooden candle-light holder - Frau Sieben (soon available in the online shop), black plate - Habitat, little vase from Miss étoile, from the shop Rubios in Hamburg

smukkeStore in Hamburg

Good morning,My quest to find the loveliest interior shop in Hamburg continues. Last week when I was on my scooter, I stopped by at a shop on the Eppendorfer Weg  and I really loved it:

It's called smukkeStore - home & fashion. Smukke means beautiful in Danish and you will only find Scandinavian brands in the shop

HOME: You will find some of the usual suspects of course, such as house doctor, Bloomingville  from Denmark but also some less famous brands like or House of Rym from Sweden or Rie Elise Lasen & lb Laursen, also from Denmark. In the shop, you will also find some young designers from Hamburg and some old pieces of furniture that have been restored in the workshop at the back of the shop.

FASHION: Among  the fashion brands, you will find Line of Oslo from Norway and Container & Ichi from Denmark. sameThe shop opened on June 15, 2012, and you should definitely pay a visit to the charming shopkeeper Miriam.

You can also find some LOVEly clothes in the shop:

And some antique furniture refurbished by Miriam:

A LOVEly reference to Sting in the  changing room!

If you go there in the coming weeks, you will be able to shop some lovely and not kitsch at all Christmas decoration.

smukkeStore Facebook Fanpage Eppendorfer Weg 174 20253 Hamburg Mo. – Fr. : 10:30 – 19:00 Sat.            : 10:30 – 16:00

Red berries bouquet

In autumn, I like to do bunches of berries. The last longer than flowers and look beautiful with a little bit of sunshine.

Magic mushrooms

I am sorry I have been away for a little while, but I had a nasty tooth operation and was so down that I even lost interest in blogging! It was so bad that I couldn't even taste the cake that Clara baked on Saturday for the Blogst Workshop. But I am back now.Look at what I found during our little walk on Sunday afternoon. I discovered a little mushroom family with red and white spots, well hidden under loads of autumn leaves. Red is one of my favorite colours for decorating - and I love the red and white combination: very Swedish! My kitchen is completely red and white.

 I have alway been a fan of polka dots, and those mushrooms, are just perfect. You just have the impression that they come out of the kitchen of a famous French chef patissier, even if they are most probably very poisonous.

Minibibo - mini white sculptures from Hamburg

Tonight I writing a post, I have been wanting to write for ages. Do you remember the white dinner in Hamburg?  I discovered the Minibibo during the white dinner as they were decorating the big table just next to mine. The "Minibibo Miniaturen" are a creation of Sylke Fischöder alias dekofysch. These white sculptures are kept under a cloche and illuminated with LED and the light intensity can be controlled by a remote control. This one is calles "Scene to eat"  This one is called "Speisenaufzug" (Food Elevator)

and this one is my favorite one: It is called the "Hamburger Kessel" (Hamburg Kettel). It just looks cute and poetic with all the animals, but it is based on a true story. Kettling is a police tactic for controlling large crowds during demonstrations. It involves the formation of large  cordons of police officers who then move to contain a crowd within a limited area. Protesters are left only one choice of exit, determined by the police, or are completely prevented from leaving. During a demonstration by anti-nuclear protestors in Hamburg on 8 May 1986, Hamburg Police cordoned approximately 800 people into a "kettle" for several hours. The sculpture is a poetic reference to this political event.

If you like this sculpture, you can get in touch with Sylke, through her Facebook Fanpage: Minibibo on Facebook

Last September bouquet - a musical post

Dear friends and readers, I wanted to share a song with you from this new band, we discovered lately with Mr. Love. This Australian singing duo is called "The Jane Austen argument" and the song is called under the rainbow: [soundcloud url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/20678398" iframe="true" /]

So I suggest, you listen to this beautiful song while having a look at my new flower composition. I wish you all a great week-end! PS: the lovely little vase with the stars is not vintage, it is from the lovely Danish label Miss étoile .

Tea Party by Miss O.

I followed the instruction from the invitation, and went to Miss O's place at five o'clock on Sunday for tea.To go with the tea - I prepared some cucumber stars in the afternoon. The dress code had been perfectly respected: red, blue and white with some floral print. and obviously, we had some pimm's, to pimp up the tea! It was a very fine tea party indeed.