madame love loves: bolia

 Hello everyone! I hope you had a great week end! This time, I am not showing a little brand, or less well-known online shop or designer in my madame love loves column. If you live in a Scandinavian country or in Germany, you will already have heard of bolia. Unfortunatly, they are not implanted in other European countries now, but you can order online as they deliver to all EU countries. Bolia is a Danish furniture brand, with its own team of designers. I have known Bolia for 4 years now, and the book shelves in living room as well as my sleeping couch comes from Bolia. The amazing thing with bolia is that they are getting better every year.

I went to one of their shops/showrooms in Hamburg this week end with my little family to have look at their new collection and saw some really lovely pieces.  I am for example completely in love with their TuckIn recliner chair {1.149 €} (at the bottom left of the collage) which comes in many different colours. I also love their new floor lamp called Heavy {579 €} (at the top right of the collage), which mixes steel, concrete and leather. 

I love the materials they use, a lot of natural wood of course, as many Scandinavian brands and also a lot of leather. I also love the colour scheme of the new collection: grey, black and nude. I think those colours work so well together in fashion and decoration.  They also have a arrival of gorgeous berber rugs, unfortunately, Mr. Love isn't a big fan, otherwise I think I would have bought one for my home. 

I wish you all a great day! Speak to you soon

Elodie

Lovely Press Coverage: madame love in sweet living magazin

Hello there! Have you heard about Sweet living magazin? The new German decoration magazine? The third issue is coming out today, and..... surprise...... madame love is in it with a double page spread! I am so happy about how the interview with the publisher, the lovely Marion Hellweg turned out and I love the layout! Even if I am a truly digital person, and love blogs above all, it is really a thrill to see yourself in print. The new issue is really beautiful and full of scandinavian inspiration. I am curious to hear if you like it as much as I do! Have a great day and talk to you soon. I will be back very soon with some new floral inspiration. xoxo Elodie

Pizza party al fresco in Umbria + a delicious pizza dough recipe

 Hello everyone! Today is the first day of September and it already feels like autumn here. Nothing against Autumn, but I just feel the need to remember those long summer nights we had in Umbria at the beginning of August with my family. We stayed for a week in a beautiful villa surrounded by woods of oaks and chestnut trees, with a stunning view on the valley. One of the great things about the casale del gallo, was its patio, where we had candle light dinners every night, and its outdoor pizza oven, which made us truly feel like we were in Italy! My nephews and nieces decided to make some pizza for us one evening and it was so delicious and beautiful that I wanted to share the recipe with you as well as some impressions of this beautiful evening.

 So here comes the recipe!

[yumprint-recipe id='3'] 

I wish you a great day! and lots of outside dinners to come! Talk to you soon! Elodie

pastel bouquet from the garden

Good morning, I am really happy about how this bouquet turned out. I made it two days ago, just after a rain shower, only with flowers and plant from the garden. I love the colour palette and how some of the flowers are already a bit faded but still beautiful such as the lilac: perfect imperfection!  As it was just after the rain, I discovered a little snail climbing on  a branch of lilac. I left it on the bouquet as an homage to the flower paintings of the great Flemish masters.  I wish you all a great and sunny day! Elodie

For this bouquet, I used some:

• Eden roses
• Aquilegia
• Heather
• Ivy
• Lilac
• Fern

madame love loves: Seventy Tree

  Hello everyone! Do you know Kerry Layton? Maybe you know Seventy Tree then? Kerry is the brilliant British illustrator behind the brand Seventy Tree.  Seventy Tree was established in 2010. I really love the animals, Kerry uses in her illustration and bought this lovely print called Everyone's friend (currently out of stock) that Ella literally loves! The bear is saying H E L L O and many different languages including the three languages Ella is looking at it everyday and it makes me very happy. I am sure that it is not the symbol of her multilingual upbringing that appeals to Ella yet, but the great contrasts. During the first 6 Months of their lives, babies can hardly see any colours and are fascinated by black and white, as this is pretty much all they can see.  So I really recommend putting up contrasting prints on the wall when decorating a nursery. On top of that, I think that animals in decoration always work very well, not only for children! I also love the cutting boards and tray by Seventy Tree. Geometric and very happy! I wish you a great day! Elodie

 © Picture from the nursery by Jocelyn Casey, pictures from the collage by Seventy Tree with permission

madame love loves: Audrey Jeanne

Hello everyone!  I would like to dedicate this post to my sweet Cheddar! He is been quite jealous lately, with all the new baby stuff invading the flat. Audrey Jeanne is a French illustrator I really love. As you can see above, she really likes cats like I do. She is my favourite crazy cat lady! I really encourage you to follow her on Instagram, if you don't already do. Her siamese cat Mikado is just the cutest! You can see a lot of Mikado, on Audrey's blog too. 

She produces posters, stationary, printed bags and t-shirts and now also jewelry. Most of her products can be purchased in her online shop or in her Society6 shop. I wish you a great day and talk to you soon, Elodie

madame love loves: Ashley Percival

Hello everyone, You know I love decorating with animals, I think animals in decoration bring a playful and fresh touch. I love it even more since my daughter was born, and her nursery is full of animals, unicorn, bear, cat, bunny, raccoon, you name it! A second thing I really like are pretty illustration. I already presented you one of my favourite artists a couple of weeks ago called Emily Martin. Today, I would like to present you the work of the British illustrator Ashley Percival. I bought a print last year on the Monoqi Website, and the biking foxes makes me happy every day! You can buy his prints in his Etsy Shop. I wish you all a great day! Elodie

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Floral decoration inspired by French and German painters

Hello everyone!I am back from my trip to the Netherlands and it was so beautiful! Today I would like to show you some of the bouquets I made for a ball in Hamburg at the End of March. The Bal de l'Amitié Franco-Allemande in the beautiful Hotel Atlantic. Each table was named after a French or a German painter (okay, one Austrian painter also), without forgetting the female painters, of course, and I had to create a bouquet in the spirit of each one.  It was both challenging and so inspiring. I researched a lot beforehand to find a floral bouquet for each painter. Another issue, was to choose flowers that could be found in Hamburg at the end of March and to find the right vases for 22 different bouquets.

Therefore, I set up a little project with the chosen paintings and corresponding vases. It forced me to look at the props I had at home and make a little catalogue. I knew I would have only a couple of hours on the day of the event to make the bouquet, so I had to be well organised and decide which vase I was going to use for which bouquet. It was a lot of research but I am quite happy with the outcome. I had to be creative and change the shape of the vase according to what I had and the type of flowers, such as for Gabriele Münter for instance.  I took some Chrysanthemum for my bouquet even if the original painting shows Dahlia. I tried my best to respect the spirit of the painter and the bouquet, more than just copy it. 

Here are a couple of the bouquets I made. I am not really happy with the photos, but I finished the bouquets just in time before the guests came and I had to to make the photos in a rush with little light.

What do you think about the idea? Which one is your favourite? I think that would be a great idea for a flower decoration for a binational wedding. What do you think? 

I know it took me a while to put this post together. I struggled a bit because everyone has been sick in my little household lately and we had quite a challenging time.  Nevertheless, I wish you all a great Easter week-end. I will be back on Tuesday with some beautiful tulips and the story of my trip to Keukenhof in Holland. speak to you soon,

Elodie

PS: I would like to thank LIV by TM Interior for lending me their beautiful copper vases for the event!

Joyeuse Clique - A Styling Workshop for Bloggers in Provence

Hello everyone! I hope you are having a good time. I must say I feel very inspired at the moment. I am back to the North of France, where I spend a lot of time photographing flowers from the forest and from my parent's garden. I just come back from two days spent in the South of France, in a little village called Pernes les fontaine, where I attended a Styling master class called Joyeuse Clique in the concept store "la maison pernoise".   Here are some snapshots of this beautiful location very well curated by Lau and Leo, two passionate interior architects, who created a very personal and unique store. You can see more pictures of the Session in my Facebook album. The workshop was given by the incredibly talented and very kind stylist Anouk Brands. Her motto is "look deeply", but Anouk also has the ability to talk and listen deeply. On the second day of the workshop, Anouk gave us a hand printed message on a piece of linen. The message was: KEEP IT SIMPLE BUT BEAUTIFUL. That pretty much sums up those two days and her approach of styling. 

DAY 1: BE HERE AND NOW: The task of her first day, was to create all together a Kinfolk style table.

"Kinfolk is a growing community of artists, writers, designers, photographers, cooks and others who are interested in creating small gatherings and finding new things to cook, make and do. We understand that coming together to share great food and casual conversation can make us feel balanced, grounded and energized.

Kinfok is the journal where we share ideas about low-key, back-to-basics entertaining. Every element of the magazine—the features, the photography and the general aesthetic—mirrors the way we feel entertaining should be: comfortable, slow, fun and engaging. The magazine brings together our interest in art and design with our love for spending time with our favorite people." {kinfolk Website}

The dinner was not an official kinfolk dinner, but a natural style dinner inspired by the kinfolk tables.  We styled it with props from the maison pernoise as well as things we found in the nature.

That is how we worked: After a theoretical session explaining the kinfolk movement, each of us gathered some props in the shop and in the nature, to create a little vignette with what could fit to decorate a kinfolk table according to us: The keywords were: SEASONAL, SIMPLE, SLOW, NATURAL, PURE, RECYCLED. We then had a look all together at the props we wanted to keep or not and why and then styled the table.

As you can imagine, my focus was on the flower decoration. A lot of the small bouquets were made with wild flowers we found in the background of the store or with branches of cherry and quince trees we picked in Lau's beautiful backyard. We also had some mini olive trees to remind us of the provence.

The dinner was cooked by the food truck Mistral Gagnant. The food was simple and delicious. All the recipes came from the Kinfolk Table cookbook.

The dinner was served for 50 people in the backyard of the maison pernoise under the stars with candle lights, and it was just incredible!

DAY 2: Moodboards and personal branding On the second day, it was more about showing your personality through your styling and styling from the heart. We could also use the props from the maison pernoise for some moodboard exercises. Here are some snapshots of the Joyeuse Clique at work:

Here is the moodboard I created for madame love, inspired by the keywords, that symbolise my brand: GREY, FLOWERS, ANIMALS, CREATIVITY. I think that will help me take my blog in the right direction. I am really happy with how it turned out.

Here are some of my favourite vignettes created by some of the Joyeuse Clique bloggers.

Sources: from left to right and from top to bottom

1. Karin from BODIE and FOU* 2.  Valérie from Atelier rue verte  3. Iris from propos déco 4.  CEZ from Méchant Design 

Thank you lovely ladies! Here is the list of the participants:

Lau, Ilaria, Anouk, Cristine, Karine, Caro, Juliana, Catherine, Cathrin, 

Marion, Iris, Valérie, Nannette, Elisabeth 

 

I can't wait for next year's edition! Have a nice day.

Elodie

Easter decoration idea: Hortensia on your table

Hello everyone,I just come back from the very inspiring Joyeuse Clique stylism blogger's session in the South of France. I have just been reviewing the pictures and I can't wait to show you the outcome in the next few days.

Today I would like to show you what you can do with Hortensia (also called Hydrangea). 

Hortensia is one of my favourite flowers.  They look so splendid in a garden and, as they love water, they are the perfect plants in rainy regions, such as Northern Germany where I live, the west coast of France or of course Great Britain. Of course, It is not quite spring yet and you are more likely to find hydrangeas in the flower shop than in your garden. So I have decided to show you some ideas of what you can do with a pot that you can buy from the flower shop.  If you take blue hortensia, you can create a very nice table decoration around it, with shades of green and purple. This can make a nice table for an easter brunch. I love that time of year, but I don't need to overdecorate my table with hundreds of painted eggs or tiny kitsch hares.  The good thing with decorating with flowers in a pot is that you can recycle them afterwards by planting them in your garden or in a nice pot on your balcony or terrace. 

Anyone who has ever had hydrangeas knows that they can be a bit tricky. That is over now, because of the new generation of hydrangeas that are easy to maintain, such as the hydrangeas of Forever&Ever^®. Those, unlike older varieties, flower on one-year-old wood, i.e. even after cutting back or frost each branch still bears flowers IN THE SAME YEAR. And that also means: if you cut some branches to put them in a vase, the flowers on the plant will bloom again that same year!

 If you are invited to an easter lunch or brunch this year, why not bring an hortensia as a present. It's a present that is made to last. I love for instance the red variety from Forever&Ever^®.

I wish you a great day and talk to you soon, Elodie

PS: This post is sponsored by Forever&Ever^®. However, my views about this plant are my own and haven't been influenced in any way.