{fried lemons!}

I was lucky enough to stumble across THE most delicious sandwich I have ever had the fortune to eat whilst I was in NYC. Roast turkey in a crusty warm baguette with FRIED LEMONS! The home of this incredible eat was the No.7 Sub sandwich bar, nestled beside the Ace Hotel where we were staying (just incase you happen to be on that side of the pond). Either way, the most important aspect extracted from this experience was the FRIED LEMONS. I found the recipe below and thought i'd share. The FRIED LEMONS are paired with AIOLI, and I can't think of a more ecstatic foodie pairing. Yum!

Fried Lemon Slices

1 lemon, organic and thin-skinned

1 egg, beaten

1/2 cup bread crumbs

Aioli

3 cloves of garlic

1/2 - 1 tsp salt

2 egg yolks

3/4 cup olive oil

juice of 1 lemon

Make the Aioli: Peel the garlic cloves and mince. Gather the garlic into a little pile and pour the salt over it. With the flat of a sturdy knife, crush the salt into the garlic until you get a nice paste. Combine the paste in a bowl with the egg yolks. Whisk or beat the egg yolks together (you can also use a food processor) adding a few drops of olive oil at the start. Keep whisking and adding a little oil until it begins to thicken. While whisking/beating, pour half of the oil into the mixture in a slow and thin stream. Add a tablespoon of lemon juice and continue whisking in the remaining oil until it reaches the desired consistency. Add more lemon juice and or salt to taste.

Fry the lemons: Slice the lemons into 1/8 inch thickness. Drop each slice into the egg, then coat in breadcrumbs. Place in hot oil (350 degrees F) and fry for about a minute or until golden. Take care for there will be some spattering. Remove from oil and place on plate covered with kitchen towel to absorb some of the excess oil. Serve with aioli or within a sandwich. Enjoy!

Some of the designs for the Ace Hotel interiors...

{backgrounds}

Here's a little bit about my background, and where my love for beautiful homes and making things stems from. My great great grandparents were painters, and they didn't contain their work to the canvas. It flowed out of the frame and all over their home, creating a bright and stimulating place to raise a family of lovers, friends and children. I think their work - which was in the homes of my mother, grandmother and great-grandmothers - filtered into my creative subconcious from an early age, and only much later did I begin to see the parallels. They even created theatre costumes! Their home, Charleston Farmhouse, is now open to the public and is well worth a visit or three.

These photographs were taken by Alan MacSweeney and they are my favorite taken of the house so far

{inner stories}

I find telling stories without words fascinating. I try to squirrel away images that could be part of a tale or song, using them as starting points for creating characters and moods in my work. I love these in particular for their whimsy, movement and sense of wonder. High end fashion editorials are also a great source, as they will often have been created with a story in mind. The models sometimes portray strong emotions or actions. Collaging these together to create a long story is a lot of fun! I'll share some of mine once I have had a chance to scan them in...

I believe the first and third images were retrieved from Abundance, and the last from Le Divan Fumoir Bohemien... surch trusty sources - thank you both.

{collecting}

{feeling leafy}

I was browsing away through the archives of the lovely Mary Ruffle, and realised that I kept saving images of clean white interiors filled with potted greenery. Not flowers, but leafy shrubs, herbs and ferns. They make houses into homes and you can never have too many. I especially love the old tea cans filled with herbs above the kitchen sink. I might just have to try something like this at home... I also adore ferns in bathrooms, but the only place I avoid placing plants is in the bedroom. But you can fill them with flowers instead!

{things i heart}

A little colour story for your delectation. I adore saturated reds, pinks and cyan together, sharpened up by crisp white. This post is also here to announce a weekly theme entitle *Things I Heart*. Images that float around in my collection that defy categorization, and yet stimulate and move me. So now they have their place, right here. In my heart. Awww.

Other than that, there aren't too many links between the subjects, thought I've noticed there are many nature-inspired prints and patterns that I find dizzyingly delicious.

Hope you enjoy this moodboard of sorts!

Sighhhh... or *dribble* as Ali from Speak Easy Loves would say.

{black swan}

Black Swan was incredible. I highly recommend seeing it splashed across an enormous screen, and as RoRo pointed out, it's like being in the audience at the Ballet that unfolds throughout the story. With costumes designed by Amy Westcott, and the ballet tutus by Rodarte (the label created by the Mulleavy sisters), Black Swan is also a feast for the eyes. Here are some interview excerpts about the design inspirations...

“If I had imagined a dream film, this is definitely the one to sign us up for,” Laura said. “The big question was, how can you create a whole Swan Lake ballet to coincide with the modern set of this film?” But that wasn’t the only big question—the other was one few designers encounter: How can you make clothes that are ballet-friendly? “It was very technical, because everyone had to be able to dance,” Kate added. “For example, the crown—the demon Rothbart has a metal crown that’s made with horns, and the Black Swan has a metal crown in chrome. That was a big debate, whether they could wear them as dancers.”

But necessity was the mother of invention. The crowns made it into the film, where they’re chillingly dramatic in its final scenes—but chrome they’re not. The Mulleavys ended up making the Black Swan crown out of lightweight copper, which they then burned to achieve their desired effect. “The crown is so coveted because it is symbolic of getting the role of the Swan Queen in Swan Lake—it’s part of this whole thing of getting the role. When it was time to do the Black Swan, that more intensely had to be linked to this demonic, menacing idea, [so] using metal became more important,” said Laura (on set with Portman, below). “Technically it was almost impossible, but we made it work.”

As to be expected, Rodarte sought inspiration in some bizarre places while designing the ballet costumes for Black Swan. "We imagined him like a mechanical bird — his breast is even padded out like a bird," Laura Mulleavy said of the costume for Prince Siegfried, which features distressed velvet with a floral embroidered cheesecloth overlay. "It looks like a spider web's taken over him ... He's like a demon." Meanwhile, Odette's costume involves a flat, pancake-shaped tutu made of white angora wool, which looks like "tree branches growing [on the skirt]," she described. Which is not very sexy, but definitely not boring either.

"We had an affinity for the subject matter," noted Kate Mulleavy. "We had never done a film. ... This would be a dream job in terms of just getting to make tutus. But, then we had, I think, something that allowed us to add to access the psychology of the film in a different way, which was understanding the darker nature and more of the twisted kind of underbelly of that world."

{slight obsession...}

Alright, this is becoming a little obsessive. Is it just me, or do Waterworks and Plain English Kitchens have an awful lot in common?

One is American, specialising in bathrooms, delicious hardware in every finish imaginable and a sleek crossover between traditional and modern. And, well, Plain English does too, only for kitchen design. I've alternated images from the Waterworks' latest collection, Henry, with images from Plain English. Don't the meld beautifully with one another? Yes.

{bathroom love}

I thought I would share with you a moodboard I've created to inspire me in a bathroom design I am putting together. Some of my keywords: Charcoal grey, warm white, maidenhair ferns, bright nickel and unvarnished brass, slabs of soap, coarse wood, old bottles, chunky tiles and smooth slate. I'm in love with the soft white bleached floor in one of the images above, and the simple but thoughtful styling. Very peaceful.

The collage above is assmbled from the catalogues of Toast, Waterworks and Remodelista.