Let it not snow...

... because I don't want to get stuck in the tunnel on the Eurostar tomorrow! A new treasury.

Little Venice at dusk

When passing through London a few weeks ago, I had some time to kill at Paddington Station. Just behind, is the Regent's Canal and ten minutes walk away is Little Venice. Some photos of the prettiest narrowboats.

Emma, just behind Paddingon Station. Follow the canal to the left...

Past the Floating Boater restaurant...

A tang of smoke in the air, passing the houseboats...

A floating balcony...

 

The light falls over Little Venice...

Jason's Trip leaves from the basin, and takes the Regent's Canal up to Camden in the Summer, a gentle way to see London.

Little pre-Christmas sale!

We're having a little pre-Christmas sale at pink milk vintage! Take 20% off any item with the code PMV10NOEL until December 14th. Last-minute Christmas shopping is easier when its cheaper...

Christmas shipping...

Please note there will be no shipping from Paris from December 17th-30th. If you want your item in time for Christmas, last shipping day to Europe is December 12th, to the rest of the world, December 6th.

Framed plates

I just realised I didn't post these, and they were one of my favourite parts of our wedding.

After designing and printing our beautiful invitations, the wonderful Helen from Sweet Olive Press let me have the plates she had made for them. Above are the plates I had framed as a gift for my parents, with the rsvp cards and their address, and I had the plate for the invitation card itself framed as a wedding gift for D*. The finishing touch to a perfect day.

*Unfortunately, after being mounted on emerald green silk and carefully framed behind non-reflective glass at hideous expense in a gorgeous blue-grey frame, D's gift was damaged when our flat flooded while we were on honeymoon. It's part of the insurance claim however and the plate itself is still intact and ready to be re-framed when this whole debacle eventually comes to and end.

La Pâtisserie des réves

What a wonderful wedding present, a tasting session at the scrumptious Pâtisserie des réves in Paris' 16th. Created by master patissier Philippe Conticini, these are award-winning cakes to be taken seriously.

We started with a late breakfast of feather-light buttery brioche, doorstep slices of French toast and petits pains gourmands, speciality bread rolls sprinkled with vanilla sugar. Earl Grey and strong black coffee cut through the sweetness, and freshly squeezed orange juice with cloves revived our palates, already straining under the weight of so much butter and sugar.

The salon de thé on rue de Longchamp is light and airy, with double-height windows that look onto a small terrace and a smiling welcome from Vincent. The patisseries are displayed under weighted bell jars, gift items and baking ingredients are high up in niches, giving the shop the air of an art gallery. Fully deserved, as Conticini's créations are culinary works of art.

Take exhibit 1. Post-brunch and already full, we chose to taste the Black Forest gateau, one of the more extragavant items on the menu and rarely seen in patisseries. The gateau, all overblown layers of chantilly cream, dark chocolate sponge and rich cherry syrup, is tucked into a cherry-shaped chocolate shell, itself dipped into cherry glaze. With a tap of the fork, it breaks open with a satisfying crack and spills its contents.

Simple by comparison, our next choice was the sweet orange tart. A dense biscuit base, with a light orange cream and orange glaze that was bittersweet and refreshing. Brioche, bread, toast, gateau, tart, and full bellys.

La Pâtisserie des Rêves

Shop and salon de thé: 
111, rue du Longchamp
75016 Paris

Shop:
93, rue du Bac
75007 Paris

Thank you Delphine Chan!

50 Most Powerful Women

Time magazine's coverage of Fortune's 50 Most Powerful Women List, published yesterday, reads like a who's who of the IT, defence and technology industries. Ten top-flight US female execs were from the IT industry, with 5 VPs, one COO and 4 Presidents or CEOs. New tech companies like Facebook, Yahoo and Apple are leading the way, in a corporate shift which may also spell cultural and social change, for the US is already streets ahead of some European countries in terms of gender equality - the term 'the old continent' is not wholly inappropriate when it comes to equal opportunities.

The International Power 50 - the other four continents crammed onto a single page - includes 12 powerful women from the emerging economies of China, India and Mexico; nine from Britain. The eight from France was surprising, but A Good Thing nonetheless.

Time interviewed several of the women who made the list, including Chanel CEO Maureen Chiquet, and Google VP Susan Wojcicki and entertainment heavyweight Oprah Winfrey. The full list is on the Fortune website.

Sent from my iPhone

Livre photo prête...

...mais j'attends mon mari ce soir pour l'ouvrir. Quel suspens!

Livre photo CeWe: le bilan

Le livre photo du voyages de noces m'attendait gentillement à la FNAC lors de mon retour de l'Angleterre... on en est ravis! J'adore le texte sur l'épine, ce qui fait 'vrai livre'. Le résultat est tout à fait ce qu'on voulait...

 

J'apprécie beaucoup les divers fonds qu'on peut choisir avec le logiciel CeWe, j'ai beaucoup utilisé la fonctionnalité fond-ésquisse, se qui fait dessin dans un cahier de vacances...

...couleurs à l'intérieur chaudes, saturées, mais pas fausses...

Des souvenirs de vacances sur papier de qualité très bien - même pas en qualité photo - brillante, mais pas trop...

Seul petit bémol: les couleurs sur la couverture sont un peu trop chaudes, mais bon. Merci encore trnd, un super projet!

Oh England, I do miss your Victoria Sponge

And your tiffin, and flapjacks, and Bakewell tarts, and carrot cake, and chocolate cracknells...

Your own little Paris

My Little Paris sort son livre from mylittleparis on Vimeo.

I love My Little Paris. My little heart skips with joy when I see an iPhone alert with a new little insider idea. When I came back from Bangalore with freshly threaded eyebrows - and a slightly raised pain threshold - My Little Paris came up trumps, with an authentic bon adresse for, threading near La Chapelle. Arriving home frazzled after a long day, My Little Paris added a touch of glam to my bubble bath with the perfect bathtime playlist. Exclusive offers (My Little brunch at Boucheron, anyone?) are tailor-made for girls like us and the whole site is wrapped up in the gorgeously chic artwork of Japanese illustrator Kanako.

A Paris (and Marseilles, and Lyons) must-have... also available in English for expats and Parisiennes by proxy. And now there is a whole book, at the top of My Little Christmas list.

Salon du chocolat?

Waiting for a train, wondering about going to the Salon du chocolat. I hear you walk away with lots of chocolate. And probably feel a bit sick.

The dress post

My beautiful wedding dress made by my dear friend and vintage officianado, Lola Loves. The day I have a wall tall enough, I want to frame it. Is that a bit Miss Haversham?
 

Cream satin with lace overlay to skirt and the top of the bodice, attached on the bias from the bottom of the bodice; vintage lace appliqué to the back. 

Vintage beadwork headband, also by Lola Loves.

Pearl earrings and necklace from my family.

Back waist detail, vintage lace, found in Portobello.

Bodice overlay, vintage lace with tiny polka dots.

  

Lace skirt overlay was a vintage veil, found in Portobello.

 

 Cream satin shoes, House of Fraser.

 

Wedding bouquet, by Au nom de la rose

trnd pack arrivé!

Chouettissime! Mon pack pour le nouveau projet trnd est arrivé... Hâte de commencer à faire mon album du voyage de noces... faut que j'attends le départ en weekend de Monsieur par contre, car c'est un album surprise...

Cosy Sunday

Cosy Sunday by pinkmilkkate featuring a pink cami

A little indulgence goes a long way on a grey Sunday afternoon...

Trying out Polyvore.com, just like cutting pictures out of magazines and making collages on school books and folders when we were younger. Love it, but it's a shame we can't clip etsy items... Above is a cosy Modcloth cardi, with Splendid Cotton jogging leggings, fabulous Nicole Farhi shoe boots, House of Fraser blush silk cami, Kate Spade pearls, Jerome Dreyfuss bag and Lulu & Nat cahmere scarf.

Green with DVF envy

Am coveting this Diane von Furstenberg green silk wrap dress. Re-issued seventies design, I stoke it whenever I'm in Printemps.

Blushbaby, by Mary Quant

Blushbabies pink their cheeks with Mary Quant! A super find at a Batignolles flea market on a recent Sunday sortie: Mary Quant Blushbaby blusher, unused with brush and insert. Now that life is slowly returning to normal for the Paris half of pink milk, we will be doing a lot more of this sort of thing, and we can't wait.


A staple of the sixties London scene, Mary Quant is an iconic designer famous for the Swinging Sixties look of Chelsea girls-about-town, miniskirts, coloured tights and skinny rib knits. At the forefront of the boutique culture that took London by storm in the sixties, Quant's Kings Road shop became a favourite hipster hangout. In 1966, she was given an OBE by the Queen, for her services to British fashion.


Mary Quant cosmetics were launched in Great Britain the same year, and in Japan in 1971, where Nippon girls were going crazy for the London look. Quant made regular visits to the country thoughout the seventies and eighties, launching accessories and home lines as well, in the early eighties.


Quant designed the packaging herself, in iconic white, black and silver to highlight the product colours, all featuring the trademarked daisy logo.


Today, Mary Quant cosmetics are available for mailorder in Japan online, or from the London store.

Exhausted

What use is a luxe hotel if you only see your room for four hours a night?

In own bed

This is not my bed, nor even my headboard, but maybe one day it will be. MSTRF's Liber headboard is to my mind the sort of solid, heavy influence required in a bedroom, with a nod to mid-century geometric style.

After two months sleeping in empty flats, spare beds and unused beds, we are finally back in our own. A few weeks of respite while we wait for the four insurance companies to come to enough of an agreement to start the complete redecoration that is needed to rectify the water damage, time to breathe long and deeply.

Thank you dear friends, for your kindness in the bed department recently.

On the boulevard St Germain

Two weeks living in St Michel was lovely, and just around the corner is the chic shop of chocolate artist Patrick Roger. The windows are always whimsical, in a Left Bank kind of way, note the little chocolate conkers - when I took these photos, Autumn was on its way. Now it is here.

The chococlate honeycomb is a reference to his new range of chocolates, produced with the honey from the beehives he has kept since October 2009, in the garden behind the shop, and on its roof in Sceaux.

Nomadic newlyweds

Living in our flat still unlikely for the foreseeable future. On the upside, we are moving around a lot and getting to know areas of the city we didn't know before. Currently at St Michel, not far from the Jardins de Luxembourg, wonderful for a Sunday run. Unfortunately no Internet in our current appartment, but having Shakespeare and Co around the corner dulls the pain.

After a long absence

... we are back. Fabulous and wonderful wedding: done, wonderful and perfect honeymoon: done, returning to find our home underwater: done... In the middle of a complicated insurance claim that will take months to sort out, we are temporarily homeless and mourning the loss of some - thankfully not many - treasured belongings. Most upsettingly, this includes most of our wedding cards, which are being carefully dried out so they can still make it to the scrapbook. Bad times.

Our cheering-ourselves-up stragey includes lots of time spent looking at happy, smiling wedding pictures like the one above, burying ourselves in bed with books and films, and blog wandering to find inspiring pictures of other people's stylish and lovely homes, that have not recently been under 6cm of water. The Someday Blog is a rather gorgeous recent find, set to become a favourite... More suggestions, internet-based or otherwise, for general escapism from the whole thing would be very much appreciated.