From Switzerland with love #2

Hello there, Lucile is back on the blog today with more Swiss adventures. I am so glad to have such a talented visitor on my blog!  Talk to you soon! Elodie

Hey everyone!

March just ended and I have to say, it’s one of my favourite periods. Once a year, spring just pops up in the middle of winter and says hello. It happens every time in March, just for few days, just for everyone to be surprised and to think again of all the good memories from last summer… Now I’m used to this little joke and I know it’ll pass, it’s not spring yet and the snow and the cold will be back soon… But these few days are so good ! It's a perfect excuse to go out, sit at a terrace, drink a coffee, do nothing and just feel the air and enjoy the sun. I like this little preview, it's helping me to get through this never-ending final part of winter.

So, today I decided to present to you my favourite place from last summer. It’s a café/bar called Zar, located in the Mattenhof area. I like this spot because: 1. it’s like being at home, a small place where people stop by after work and it seems that everyone knows everyone and even if you know none you feel instantly welcome. 2. they serve delicious cocktails. Last summer I used to drink Amaretto Sour (after of course having tried all the different ones) and this winter I have been enjoying Zar, a hot drink that mixes calvados, apple juice, cinnamon syrup and a slice of orange. Mmmmh !

This month too, I was glad to recieve my grandma’s Christmas gift. A real Eames coat-hanger! It’s said it was designed for children but I don't care, I love the flashy colours.

Breakfast of the day : yoghurt, fried egg, crunchy choco muesli and black coffee. Last week, it was snowing again and it’s not warm outside yet, but I look forward to the real spring and summer!

See you next month!

xxx.

Lucile V.

Vase story - my little whale from Japan

Hello everyone, Inga from Glomerylane and I have been really overwhelmed by the success of our first participative edition of #2flowergirls. You can see the links to the participating blogs under Inga's blogpost and under mine. Thank you so much for all those flowers, and for the positive and encouraging feedback. It made us all warm inside - and we definitely need that at the moment in Germany. You can check out the result on the March Pinterest board of #2flowergirls.

Today I decided to blog not directly about flowers, but about vases - my other love! When I travel, I always try to bring a little vase back with me in my suitcase that reminds me of the great places I visited. I bought this one on our honeymoon in Japan in 2008. I found it at a gorgeous shop for handcrafted products in Kyoto. It always makes me smile when I see it. It combines my love for flowers and for Japanese design with my obsession about animals in decoration.

What about you, have you got a favourite vase? What do you bring back with you as a souvenir, when travelling?

I wish you a wonderful week!

Elodie

2 flower girls #3

Hello everyone, Today is the third edition of #2flowergirls with Glomerylane and it is a very exciting edition for us, as we are slowly becoming more than 2 flower girls as everyone can participate. It is so beautiful to see how many different things you can do with the same flowers. So inspiring. If you want to see the other bouquets, you can check out our #2flowergirls Pinterest board or follow the links in the comment fields. Maybe spring will come eventually!

Here are my photos and those from my lovely partner in crime Inga:

I am so in love with Inga's colours. I love this light pink on a grey background. For my bouquet I decided to go round, and make a compact bouquet that reminds me of a wedding bouquet.

This time, we selected the same flowers, in different colours, but we both had the same idea to do a picture with a candlelight holder. Mine comes from the lovely designer frau sieben based in Hamburg.

We are looking forward to discovering your flowers! Please link your blogpost under this post or send us your photos by email to this address: 2flowergirls@web.de and we will post them on our pinterest board.

I wish you a fantastic week - and don't forget to buy some flowers for your home!

xxx

Elodie

three little bouquets

Hello everyone,When I found those gorgeous old roses on Saturday, I couldn't resist and had to bring them home with you and show them to you on the blog today.

As usual, instead of making a huge bouquet, without rearranging the flowers, I chose to make three little bouquets in various glasses or candle holders I brought back with me when I was travelling or visiting friends.

When trying to make a small bouquet, there is no point in trying to keep all the leaves. So DON'T BE AFRAID TO CUT THEM AND CUT THE STEMS!

Next week Inga and myself will be announcing the flowers for the March edition of the #2flowergirls project, and you can be part of it and style those flowers as well and share the photos with us. I wish you a very good week and don't forget to buy some flowers!

xxx

Elodie

From Switzerland with love #1

Hello everyone,today, I will not be talking to you. I am leaving a little of my blog space to my dear French friend Lucile - she will be visiting madame love once a month, with her lovely stories.  It is Lucile's first blogpost today, so I am very excited for her, but if you want to see  and read more about her, she has a very beautiful photo project with a graphic designer called melocoton et boule d'or.  Elodie

Hi! I'm Lucile. Elodie and I met in 2007, in Berlin, where I studied for a semester. We both loved good food, lovely cafés, sewing, design, flowers and home sweet home, so we became friends quickly…Last November, I visited Elodie in Hamburg and then we’ve decided that I could be a guest on her blog… It makes me really happy, thank you again Elodie !I'm now living in Bern, in Switzerland. So every month I’ll make a Swiss post and I’ve decided to share with you every time a lovely café, a walk in the street and some pics from my apartment and my breakfast (my favourite meal !). I hope you will like it… Today is my first post and I'm a little scared. So, not too many words and plenty of photos…

« Apfelgold » is a sweet café, so quiet and gourmand. Always full of light, with books everywhere and the cakes are so good ! I like to order a "café gourmand", this is an espresso served with some surprise cakes. Never the same and always a lovely surprise…

Winter in Bern is full of snow ! This is not surprising, but I grew up in the South of France, so, for me, there is always something magical about snow. I’m like a child… It’s freezing, but I love it !

Breakfast of the day : some yoghurt, an egg, homemade pear compote, some crunchy choco muesli and a cup of tea (not in the picture). It helps me to get out of bed ! :) That’s all for today… See you next month ! xxx Lucile V.

Still life photography - my article in SisterMAG

Hello everyone, Two days ago, the new sisterMAG - a journal for the digital lady - came out in English and German. The topic of the issue is Trends and Utopia. I wrote an article for the issue about the trend of still life photography with an exclusive interview of the Australian photographer Kevin Best about still life photography in general and also about his new book Still Life Photography. I was so happy about the result and the beautiful layout and so honored to be part of the great publication. The quality of the articles in sisterMAG is remarkable and I especially love the way the heart of the two sisters Thea and Toni beats for the digital world. SisterMAG is definitely the future of publication, it is a trend, but will not stay an utopia. You can read the magazine online via the issuu desktop version but also offline and your smartphone or tablet by downloading the sisterMAG app for IOS or  of the Android App. With these apps, you can enjoy reading your sisterMAG in the tube or in the train on your mobile device.

Here is the complete issue in English:

and in German:

and here is my article:

I hope you like the article! I am looking forward to your feedback! Speak to you soon xxx Elodie

Stockholm #4: Where & what to eat

BREAKFAST:

Claretti Tastesheriff and myself, we arrived very early in Stockholm on Friday morning, so the first thing we wanted to do, was to have breakfast. We went to the lovely bakery Vete-Katten (wheat-cat) and had a coffee and a lovely Swedish cake.

The bakeries were full with Semla, when we were there, a traditional Swedish pastry, made out of a wheat flour bun seasoned with cardamom, filled with almond paste and whipped cream. You can find a recipe on the gorgeous Swedish food blog Call me cupcake!

Vete-Katter Kungsgatan 55, Stockholm

Opening hours: Monday to Friday 07:30 to 19:30 Saturday 9:30 to 17:00 Sunday & Holiday 12:00 to 17:00

LUNCH:

On the last day of our trip, we visited the Nytorget Urban Deli for lunch with Ricarda 23qm still Clara Tastesheriff, Kathrin Happy home blog and Judith Joelix. Urban Deli, is a beautiful little restaurant located in an organic supermarket and beautifully decorated with bare light bulbs and yellow tolix high-chairs. The place is located in the trendy area of Södermalm and you can also go there for breakfast and dinner.

Nytorget Urban Deli Nytorget 4, Stockholm Opening hours: Sunday to Tuesday 08:00 to 23:00 Wednesday to Thursday 08-24:00 Friday - Saturday 08:00 to 01:00

DINNER:

We had three evenings in Stockholm, so three opportunities to try nice restaurants. Stockholm is not exactly cheap, but we had good food and always extraordinary bread to go with it. Here are the addresses of this three places, that I can all recommend, because of the food quality, ambiance, decoration and service. If you want to go to one of those great place, it is always wise to book in advance.

Cloud nine is a strange combination of French food and Sim Sum bistro Torsgatan 1, Stockholm

Boqueria is an excellent tapas place, which was recommended by our hotel, the decoration is lovely. Galleria Mood Jacobsbergsgatan 17, Stockholm

Scandic Grand Central - Restaurand Teaterbrasseriet - The restaurant attached to the Scandic Hotel is really fantastic. You can also eat some Köttbullar, the traditional Swedish meat balls. Kungsgatan 70, Stockholm

OTHER FOOD RELATED PLACE:

if you go to Stockholm, you should definitely pay a visit to the Östermalms Saluhall - It's a beautiful covered market, where you can find all sorts of food.

I hope you got a little inspired by this post and not too hungry! Speak to you soon xxx

Elodie

Stockholm #3: Meet the blogger

Hello everyone, I posted about Stockholm last week in drips and drabs, but now the time has come to tell you the real reason why I went to Stockholm. I attended the blogging conference "Meet the blogger" at the beginning of February. The conference gave me the occasion to meet new bloggers from all over Europe (mainly from Scandinavian countries), to network and to be inspired. The conference is an international event for homedesign and lifestyle bloggers and a lot of creative and interesting people gathered in Stockholm that week-end. The reason why I bought my tickets the day they went online is because Will from the blog Bright.Bazaar was giving a keynote lecture - and I must say he didn't disappoint me at all! His talk about building a successful blogging brand was great! He gave us some tips such as Transport your readers into your world, Believe in your voice, or Give your readers a reason to return to your blog. For me the most precious tip that Will gave us was: Be a creator not just a curator! After the talk, he gave us brilliant infographics that he kindly allowed me to post on my blog for you today. So here you go:

Designed by Amanda Jane Jones for Bright.bazaar

By the way, another great and very informative talk that day was held by Kirsten Jassies about the rise of visual content; and infographics was presented as one of the big trends in this context. Another great talk was given by my German friends Thea and Toni from the beautiful sister-mag about their creative process, giving us a lot of useful tools for blogging. The girls convinced us once again how much they believe in digital and mobile publications and promised that sister-mag will never ever exist as a printed version. For me, they really are pioneers and visionaries in that field.

So, as you see, it was a very interesting and rich week-end and, above all, I enjoyed spending time with my friends Clara, Ricarda, Kathrin, Toni and Thea and also meeting new blogging friends such as Judith (you have to visit her blog! I love it and she lives in my home region in France: Picardie), Gudy and Iris.

I will be posting a last post about Stockholm this week, before heading to some new adventures.

Have a lovely week!

xxx Elodie

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

Stockholm #2: Where to shop

Hello there, today I would like to give you a couple of shopping tips in Stockholm and show a couple of pictures I took in a very stylish shop called Snickarbacken 7 . A shop and a café are located in this building from the the 16th Century that used to be the stable of a Catholic girl's scholl. The shop is not very big, but displays a lot of nice pieces and has a very swedish flair with a lot of black and white.

Madame Love little Stockholm's shopping guide:

Snickarbacken 7 Website Snickarbacken 7, Stockholm

Lotta Agaton shop of the interior stylist Lotta Agaton The shop is only open on Thursdays but definitely worth a visit. Website Rådmansgatan 7, Stockholm

Granit A very cool swedish design chain with a lot of black and white Website For example: Götgatan 31, Stockholm but they have many shops around the city

Speak to you soon!

xxx

Elodie