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discovering interesting and unique shops around the world

ASTRID

flask walk

With Spring not around the corner, but actually here it’s time for some home decorating. We’ve painted all the interior walls and now I’m keen to strip back the doors and start afresh.

My favourite doors are plain doors. My most favourite doors are old villa doors with the paint stripped back with beautiful coloured decorative glass panels.

I also like lovely muted front doors. London has a lot of lovely muted front doors. When we go out for our walks up to Hampstead we pass many lovely doors; yellow, green, red, sage green, light grey, dark grey and blue.

Incidentally Farrow and Ball is running a competition for the best front door. You’d be wise to have a look if you’ve got a thing for doors.

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

Most Saturdays we head to Primrose Hill for cupcakes and coffee. We get our cupcakes from Primrose Bakery, and coffee from Melrose & Morgan.

This week we’ve seen London wrap itself up all warm. The clouds have gone puffy and grey. The sky that colour that says it will snow soon. The wind that says put your coats and jackets on and do them up tight. And time for a good brisk walk for coffee and cake. Damned if we let the weather get in our way here!

So and it’s time for me to be looking in the ladies coats departments after I left mine behind at yoga class never to be seen again.

I thought I’d got away with it – we all did, but winter is most definitely upon us. And I can’t wait for next Saturday when we’ll head down to Primrose Hill. And with any luck it will be snowing and we can take the girls in their sleds!! Time to look forward to steaming hot coffee, little paper cups of hot chocolate and lovely snug coats with which to wrap ourselves warm.

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.

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

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

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

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.


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.

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.