The other day I was sitting in a café with a friend, Christmas music played quietly in the background and then almost as if on cue, it started to lightly snow outside. It’s little moments like those, that I stop and take a breath and feel so grateful for all of my experiences and the people I meet along the way. I’m trying to do more of that lately, especially when things can feel a little out of control at this time of year. We put so much pressure on ourselves don’t we!
Read more on Our Swedish Christmas in NZ House & Garden Magazine…
One place in our apartment that needed a serious update, was our bedroom, especially the bed linen. We were literally interchanging between a really old duvet set (all of the buttons had fallen off), and a newer one that just wasn’t such a great fit – hence barely showing my bedroom here and on Instagram. Recently I gave myself a little project give the bed and room a bit of a makeover.
Well I just wanted to say a really big hello! It has been ages since I dropped in, right? It has certainly been a lot longer than I had planned.
It’s been a while since I’ve written a personal post here. Actually, this blog has really been neglected and there is a reason for that. Since arriving in Stockholm I’ve had this niggling feeling that something had to change in my life. I felt a little lost and like I didn’t have a purpose. Did I really want this blog to be a business? I had such big plans with it before and it was really starting to take off and I was beginning to make a small income from it along with external writing projects. Then I had the health problem before leaving NZ and everything just kind tumbled and my focus shifted. But after I had settled into my new city I kept beating myself up. Why couldn’t I get back to posting three times a week and start building it up again? Why couldn’t I be more aggressive on social media? I told myself that I wanted to be the Garance Dore of the interior and lifestyle genre…. I told myself a lot of things, but in retrospect I felt so unaligned with it all. I felt like I wasn’t living my truth. I had lost my passion.
Read more on When admitting defeat can change your direction for the best…
Hi everyone! Yesterday I attended a trend presentation, Stora Trenddagen, (Big Trend Day) here in Stockholm by Stefan Nilsson. This guy is known as the expert in trend forecasting here in Sweden, and goes by the name, Trend Stefan. I actually spent time with him during the blog tour of the Dutch Design Week last year and he’s such a great guy, so I was eager to check it out. There was one minor hitch that I faced, and that was that the presentation would be in Swedish and mine is almost, well, non-existent. I did however surprise myself by how much I understood, which I put down to Stefan being such an entertaining presenter! But don’t worry, I’m not going to lead you down the wrong track as far as this year’s trends go, I came home armed with a trend-forecasting booklet as backup!
Read more on Stora Trenddagen’s 5 Big Interior Trends to look out for in 2018…
Hello everyone. Just two and a half days until the big day and I had to pop in here to wish you all a Happy Christmas. The season is just so beautiful here in Stockholm, I have never quite felt Christmas in all of its glory like it is done here. You can’t help but get drawn in to all of the celebrations and rich traditions. Would you like for me to give you a little rundown of what goes on?
I first experienced my American Christmas when I was fifteen years old. Coming from Australia, where we celebrate with barbeques on the beach, it was like something out of this world. There was a particular fragrance that circled around the festive tunes that played in the shopping malls. Decorations weren’t spared and people literally walked the streets with beautifully wrapped boxes piled on top of the other to put under the tree, just like in the movies. We were there visiting my step-mother’s family, so we spent a lot of our time celebrating in their homes and sampling all of the seasonal specialties. And then there was the snow! Flipping through the recently released cookbook, New York Christmas by Lisa Nieschlag and Lars Wentrup, took me back to that magical Christmas I spent as a fifteen year old. Let me tell you a little bit about it, along with sharing a couple of the Christmas recipes from the book.
Read more on New York Christmas, Recipes & Stories Review + 2 Free Recipes…
