Maroque

Discovered lately following my love affair with the Casa Moro cookbook, maroque imports all manner of marvels from Morocco. Tagines, ceramic jugs and bowls, ceramic serving dishes, handwoven carpets, nickel and ceramic table lanterns, silver mirrors and Moroccan food.

We especially love their beautiful delicate glasses that come in a vast array of splendid colours with pretty gold detailing.

www.maroque.co.uk

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Ana Montiel at Little Paper Planes

Ana Montiel at Little Paper Planes

Having recently discovered the beautiful work of Ana Montiel via Holly at decor8 I found myself eyeing up two very lovely prints available now as limited edition exclusive to Little Paper Planes.

She’s recently moved to London and says her head is just too full of all the amazing things going on here. Yes, she’s very right about that. Ana seems very much quite a mystical girl too which inspires her work. I love her crystals and mantras pieces.

The very talented Ana also does pattern design and art direction.

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SMALLable

SMALLable.com

Clockwise from top left:
Duffle jersey sweatshirt – Mauve by Emile et Ida, Loose-fitting Dress – Charcoal Grey by L’Esprit de Luna, Tomas sweatshirt – Navy blue by Tuss, T-shirt – Old rose by L’Esprit de Luna, Jersey blouse – Taupe brown by Emile et Ida

This winter in the Lovely Shops household we are sewing up a storm of dresses and buying up a storm of tops from the most wonderful SMALLable. It’s the best children’s fashion shop we’ve ever come across – with a brilliant range of clothes in our favourite colours; slate grey and dusty pink. The fabrics are thick and soft and utterly delicious for a wonderful start to our favourite season, Autumn.

SMALLable says “Our idea is to offer very beautiful things (not necessarily outrageously expensive, it’s worth pointing out !) for all children from 0 to 12 years, in the world of fashion, design, decoration and toys.”

SMALLable.com

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Cobbled Together

At the school spring fair I spied a young lad with big brown eyes wearing the most beautiful faded French vintage linen overalls. Following closely behind was his mother who could quite easy be mistaken for Amélie. The Amélie lady was wearing the most amazing woven-looking green gingham hat, and surprisingly, spoke with a slight trace of an Australian accent.

She had made her own hat. And the vintage overalls were a fleamarket find. Brenna does however make little linen jumpsuits for children, lovely hand-dyed dresses and beautiful little (well, quite big) felt dolls.

cobbledtogether.etsy.com

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Sticky Tiki

These are just the most amazing thing we’ve found in a very long time. Fabric wall stickers that are removable and can wipe clean from little sticky fingers.

Made in New Zealand – by the very amazing artist Kim Hands, we love the Nikau Palm height chart, the brilliant alphabet set, little rabbits and deer in pretty colours and the rose arbour with bluebirds of happiness. The little tree with owls is high up in our list of favourites too. Not cheap, but worth saving up for. At £10 a week into a savings account it will take us a couple of months but will be most definitely worth the wait.

Sticky Tiki on Etsy

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Occa Home

From top left clockwise: LSA Milo Jug, Mooi Five o’Clock Chair, & Small Wall Clock, LSA Rose Vase, Eichholz Corbusier Sofa

A new discovery for Lovely Shops is OCCA HOME. With a superb collection of LSA, our favourite glassware, along with a few delightful surprises, such as the mooi range – with pretty vintage rose prints on chairs and coffee tables; an amazing Corbusier sofa by Eichholz in our favourite grey and a super sweet orange wall clock by &.

Be sure to check their lovely blog for interiors features and new products.

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Things for the house

From left to right – Top: Fleur de lis Linen from Borderline Fabrics; egg craft from Anthropologie; Blue Spot vinyl tiles from Cath Kidston. Bottom: Edith the cat money box from Liberty; Cowboy teepee from Cath Kidston; Cornishware Pudding basin from TT Green; Felicity Etruscan jug by Burleigh from Liberty.

Our beautiful rustic house really is in need of a few odd jobs being done. I can think of nothing more fun than buying paint, wallpaper and some beautiful objects to adorn the house – and while Kevin is great around the house for things like blocked showers, putting things on walls, fixing broken taps – I’m not so sure about architeching anything involving any serious construction – or even wallpaper paste. And I do so love wallpaper.

Perhaps I need to take some lessons. I’ve always secretly wanted to be able to make my own furniture. Because for that kind of thing I’ve absolutely no idea where to start. It always seems like such a huge barrier between me buying a shelf with a wall bracket and it actually ever materialising on a wall near me.

There’s a good resource where you can get tips on choosing a MyHammer handyman.

With that taken care of I can focus on the decorative aspects of the house and spend hours online shopping at my favourite interiors shops – Liberty, Cath Kidston, Anthropologie and Toast.

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Olive loves Alfie

Ollie loves Alfie
84 Stoke Newington Church St, London N16 0AP | Tel: +44 (0) 0207 241 4212

Quite a recent discovery but already a wardrobe staple. We even have a new set of rice lunchboxes for Edith’s days out.

Ashlyn curates a beautiful and thoughful collection of clothing, swimwear, shoes and accessories (read: Miffy lamps!). In fact it was the Miffy lamps in the window that made us stop the car whilst driving through Stokie one afternoon.

Since then we’re now the proud owners of beautiful party dresses, a dinosaur dress with matching leggings, a very sweet little heart skirt, brilliant flouro purple striped leggings cut on the bias and soon to be getting some beautiful soft leather sandals for summer. Not forgetting Edith’s new black togs and Astrid’s soon to be hers pink and red gingham beach ring.

Labels you can find at Olive loves Alfie include Mini Rodini, Louie Louis, Mini Numpf, Katvig, No added sugar and Nutured by Nature. Organic cotton and good colours abound.

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Caravan

image from a girl a style

Caravan. 3 Redchurch Street. London E2 7DJ.

I met Emily a few weeks ago at Holly from Decor8 blog’s book party at Liberty. Emily’s house is in a lot of books and we were once in the same book as her – it’s a little Japanese book called Lovely Styles of Living Spaces.

Emily had the most amazing orange bag on – by Shanghai Trio who create beautifully crafted bags using vintage materials. The requirement for such an orange bag sent me along to her shop the next Saturday, Kevin happy to pay a visit to Allpress down the road for coffee.

Bagpuss the cat was there to greet everyone while we had a little look around the Caravan of lovely treasures. An ever-changing stock of unique and interesting pieces from Emily’s network of designers, makers and suppliers around the world. There were beautiful french wire baskets (around £12) and birdcages (around £20) – and some incredible scandinavian knitted softies (£69).

Next visit to Redchurch Street I’m going to book myself a manicure and pedicure (it’s £37 for 1 and a half hours) at The Painted Lady – they also do vintage haird styling – yay!

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Shopping for Furniture

Lulu Bright at 57 Southend Rd, Hampstead, London, NW3

We are always to be found buying new furniture, with a mix of styles we like; scandinavian / European mid century modern, late 19th century country pine, Paul’s Emporium in Kentish Town, eBay, Heal’s and of course the odd bit from IKEA.

We have recently been blessed by the arrival of Lulu Bright in our local area South End Green right by Hampstead Heath. They stock an incredible, hand-curated boutique of scandinavian furniture and home accessories. Originally it was going to be a pop-up bütik but we’re hoping they’ll stay.

It does have to be said, furniture appreciators are a dedicated lot. We head to Lulu Bright every Saturday and Sunday and any other days if we were off work. eBay gets a few looks each week maybe although often one needs to do a lot of browsing to happen upon a hidden gem. Once a month we’ll head over to Kentish Town to Paul’s Emporium. He’s got brilliant, cheap, ever-changing stock. We bought a beautiful but water damaged mahogany chest of drawers for £180 a few weeks back. A set of g-plan nested tables set up back £40 a couple of years back.

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