Happy December: 5 new things and an afterthought

Pinch punch, third of the month (it could be a thing).

I bought a couple of cool things this week, and even more pleasingly have had some lovely things bought for Christmas.

HP

I am unconditionally bound to Harry Potter and evidently don’t care who knows it.  My friend bought me these amazing note cards, so that when I send people letters or thank you notes or birthday cards, I can entirely cement into your heads the fact I am a 24 year old Bellatrix wannabe. You know, in case there were any doubts.

NOBEL

My mother and I brought some of this tea home, the last time that we went to Cyprus. I have a large but well managed obsession with tea, and if I see chai tea in a shop I tend to buy it. No two chai tea brands are ever the same, as chai is a blend of different spices. Each manufacturer makes it to their own taste. Although this isn’t called Chai, it is the same type of flavour and my all time favourite tea. Soz, but you can only buy it on an obscure Cypriot website.

MAC

Speaking of obsessions, lipstick and I have a consistently OTT relationship. Mainly dark berries and burgundies, but why even lie? Any colour. A wonderful friend of mine bought me an early Christmas present: Dark Side Amplified. It is a dark chocolate brown lipstick, which she added a lip pencil (Nightmoth) to. The lip pencil is considerably darker than the lipstick, and if you blend the two together at the edges, your lips will look INSANE. I might not have to get those lip fillers after all, cheers Georgia.

VOGUE

In addition to the make-up and the note cards, this annoyingly good friend of mine bought me one of these bad boys. I’ve always loved colouring in. Actually, no. When I was at the age when I should have loved colouring in, I was horrific at it. I tend to get bored quite easily and as soon as I’d screw up and colour outside of the lines I was all “Yeah great what else is new”. But ever since colouring for adults has found itself back in style, it has also found itself miraculously into my house. In all seriousness, it helps with anxiety and depression, as well as it being fucking cool. This specific Vogue book has dated annotations of each cover girl you’re colouring in.

BAUBLES

Finally, I thought I’d end it on a festive note. While in London last week I had to stop at Harrods, because the Christmas season needs THREE things to begin for me. I’ve gone to the German market, I watched Love, Actually and so... Harrods was the only thing left. I’m not living with my mother anymore so even though I’ll be there over Christmas, I have my own home to decorate now. Being a VM means I have seen a lot of Christmas Shops, decorated a lot of trees in a lot of expensive baubles. No amount of experience will ever prepare you for Harrods Christmas World 2015. I bought a couple of baubles to adorn my sad bare tree with tomorrow, when the incessant decorating begins.

AFTERTHOUGHT

If you find yourself bored and too broke for Netflix, AmazonPrime has an AMAZING one time miniseries out about one of my favourite things: ballet. Flesh & Bone is addictive and kind of verges on sickening. This show touches on every theme ever. Sex, dancing, opera, incest, love and caviar. I urge you to watch it, you will be buying me colouring books and lipstick in no time.

x

Recipe: Sticky banana & salted caramel muffins

Good evening! 
As if I don't bake enough as it is, I evolve into an incessant dough-on-her-face monster around Christmas. Possibly because it's too cold to be outside, possibly because I love winter and when I'm happy I cook. 
So, I'm going to show you my latest creation: Sticky banana & salted caramel muffins, with a coconut and peanut glaze. 

Ingredients
90g melted butter (cooled)
270g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp nutmeg
130g demerara sugar
2 tsp salted caramel flavouring/vanilla extract
2 large ripe bananas
2 large eggs
135ml milk

For Glaze and icing
2 tablespoons course coconut oil
1 table spoon peanut butter
Desiccated coconut sprinkle for garnish/decoration
Icing Sugar
Salted caramel flavouring

To prepare
So, preheat your oven to 200C and when it's time to put the dough in, lower it to 190C.
Sift the flour, baking powder, the spices and bicarbonate of soda in a big bowl and add the sugar. Stir it all well.
With a fork, beat the eggs with the flavouring, the melted butter and the milk. Mash the bananas really well and add those into the wet ingredients. 
Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and add the egg mixture. Stir it but don't overdo it or play with the mixture too thoroughly. 

Fill your muffin cases and put them in your baking tray.
Bake for 18-20 minutes at 190C, or until you can tell they are coming away from the sides.
Pull them out and rub the glaze over the tops, and return them into the oven for another 5 minutes.

With water icing, I just mix a certain amount of spoonfuls of icing sugar with cold water until I get the consistency I want. If you have salted caramel add that into the icing mix too, and when the muffins have cooled, brush the icing on the tops. Sprinkle your coconut, put them in the fridge or wait an hour for the icing to set, and you're ready to go!

I got a lot of people trying out the florentines, so please go ahead and try these out too, let me know how you get on and show me your photos!

E x

Festive Recipe: Cherry & Almond Florentines

It is a day in the week, which means it's time to bake food and eat it excessively!
I thought I'd show you a really easy recipe for florentines since we are nearing Christmas, and it's half of this blog's namesake.
The good thing about florentines is that they makeshift easily into what you want them to taste like. I've gone slightly traditional, but you can add pistachios, walnuts, cranberries or any other grown up sounding ingredient that twelve-year-old-you would've scowled at.

Ingredients:
60g butter
60g demerara sugar
60g golden syrup
50g plain flour
200g chocolate

For the flavour:
60g glace cherries
60g almonds

Yeah, I am not joking. The ingredients and measurements are that straightforward. As long as the flavour ingredients equate to 120g, you can include most anything. Flaked almonds are necessary, but you can chop any nuts or currants to go with them. It is also worth noting that dark chocolate tastes best on florentines. They are covered in caramel and unless your sweet tooth is colossal, white and milk chocolate will only cause a seizure. 

Method:
Preheat your oven to 180C and get three baking trays ready. DO NOT do a single thing without having baking paper in your house. 
Measure your sugar, syrup and butter and gently heat them in a pan til melted.
Remove pan from the heat, and add the flour, cherries and almonds. 
Stir until there is barely any caramel at the bottom of the bowl. 
Spoon sixteen teaspoons of the mixture onto your trays and bake them for 10 minutes. 
Once they're out let them harden and cool before putting them on a wire rack.
Melt the chocolate in a bain-marie and spread it on the flat side of the florentines. If you're feeling particularly insane, mark out a pattern with a fork. 
Put them in the fridge for an hour to cool.

Try the recipe and let me know how it goes, or better yet, I'm happy to test them for you.

E x

Rainy Days on Instagram: 6 Fashion accounts to follow

Happy November! It is scarf, hat and runny nose weather, FINALLY. Winter is my absolute favourite time of year. On the occasion where I spend a rainy night at home with a cup of something deeply and dangerously caffeinated, one of my favourite new world vices is scouring through Instagram.  I’ve put a list of 6 accounts together for you to look through; there’s a mix of high end and high street international businesses, as well as good old inspiration accounts. Enjoy!

Third_form

A new start up, Third Form was founded by Merryn Kelly in 2014, who previously worked with Australian brands Zimmerman, Lee jeans and Shakuhachi. Third Form clothing is minimal with a distinct urban influence and pointedly high end. Running through the pictures will find you spending insane portions of your income on svelte monochrome dresses and unstructured midi skirts.

Runway96

Arguably, this account/brand is the most “on trend” of the group I have featured. Founded in England, they have curated a collection of designers and fashion houses just for their clientele to be inspired by. From big names Calvin Klein and Bjorn Borg to British born Finders Keepers and Lavish Alice, Runway96 have a wonderfully balanced combination between well established and fresh blooded brands for you to choose from, at fair prices.

DruzyDreams

This company is so cool. Also established in 2014, DruzyDreams specialise in bohemian alternative jewellery, beautiful stones and silver. Based in the UK but shipping worldwide, they are still grounded enough to be massively interested in their customer. Their Hunter’s Moon collection for this season is insanely beautiful. They name each and every piece of jewellery and you feel like a hippy witch wearing one. I have a rainbow moonstone ring on my wish list, check them out.

PhoLondon

Ahhhhh I am so excited about Pho London existing. This brand’s pieces are timeless, minimalistic, simple yet so freaking necessary in your life. As with Runway96, Pho London is a collection of handpicked, corn fed, organic and beautiful few brands, moulded together to sell a Cos and Whistle-like lifestyle to you. Brands such as Blake LDN, Charlie May, and Marina contribute artfully basic wardrobe pieces, while there are brands like Katie Leamon and Matthew N Butler for art and accessories. Pho London’s instagram feed is to blame for my poorness.

As an aside, I thought I’d reserve my final mention for two other favourites. I’ve always had an illogical penchant for bridal wear, couture, and massively elaborate eveningwear I wouldn’t be able to afford even if I sold all of you for parts. Amazing household name Steven Khalil’s account just makes me want to marry and divorce a couple of hundred times, just so I can wear his pieces. Lastly, LovingHauteCouture is pretty self explanatory. That instagram feed is the most inspirational mood board of stunning, embellished evening dresses, wedding dresses, runway dresses... dresses and more dresses. All of that, topped with a few curiously pristine bouquets of roses thrown in for good measure.

Enjoy your rainy nights in, enjoy your wasted time and if my suggestions are successful, enjoy your early onset poverty!

Emily x 

Links:

www.thirdform.au 

www.runway96.com

www.druzydreams.com

www.pholondon.com

www.stevenkhalil.com

Autumn Recipe: Sweet Potato & Coconut Curry

Hello, there. Ever since moving out of my mamas house and living alone, I’ve begun to realise just how time consuming my favourite hobby can be and sometimes I can badly not be bothered with standing over a stove for six hours just to destroy my plate in a minute and a half.

So although I don’t claim to be the best cook on the planet, I’ve mastered the skill of throwing whatever is in my fridge together, making  something remotely tasty, all the while managing to remember NONE of what I did to tell you the next day.

But that’s what’s good with this recipe, if you can even call it that. It is a guideline, at best. Chucking your own herbs and spices in will ruin nothing.

I should also state that I use the word ‘curry’ lightly, and anyone of Asian descent should not send me complaints for doing an injustice to years of spicy food.

Ingredients

3 Sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped in chunky pieces

1 Aubergine, sliced/chopped

1 can of beans, (butter beans are my favourite, but haricot, kidney and chickpeas work too)

2 tomatoes, chopped

2 spring onions, finely chopped

1 clove of garlic finely chopped OR spoon of lazy garlic

1 yellow pepper (but seriously, what’s the difference, use whatever colour you want, I hear some people have a weird aversion to yellow peppers)

1 tin Pride coconut milk (This is important, I think this is much better to use than Dunn’s River which is 100% liquid. Pride is half solid half liquid, and helps with a creamy consistency)

2 generous teaspoons of coconut oil (100% pure and coarse, in a jar)

1 healthy squeeze of tomato puree OR half a carton of passata

Method:

Put your chopped sweet potatoes, aubergine, tomato, spring onions, pepper and garlic into your glass Pyrex dish and coat them in coconut oil. Give them a good mix and put them in the oven, preheated to 200°C for fifteen minutes just to get started. Once you take the dish back out, add the beans, the coconut milk and the puree and again, mix it well. Now is the fun bit. Open up your spices drawer and have a party. I use cumin, chilli flakes, medium curry powder and cinnamon in mine, because it’s a sweet and spicy mix to go with the sweet potatoes. I have an illogical, irrational dislike of salt, but this would be the part where normal humans season their food, so feel free! Put your improv curry in the oven for about 50 minutes, opening the door regularly to stir the dish around and make sure the juices are soaking through.

Once it’s done, I add it to coconut rice, sprinkle paprika on top and fall into it head first. If you’re as lazy and single as I am, you’ll notice the spare food left over. What I do is mix the rice with the curry and I refrigerate it. In the morning, I fill tortilla wraps with the curry and take my sexy burritos to work.

Let me know how it goes, and if you made any changes which you think make it way tastier. Show me your photos!

Emily

x

Beauty Review: Korres Wild Rose Moisturiser

I am always keen to try new products, but speaking as someone with problematic skin (the list of skin flaws is endless) it is admittedly so difficult to do. Do you buy cheap, and if the product is a flop then you can still sleep easy at night because it cost £5? Or do you delve into your pocket and invest in a top shelf cream with a good reputation and assume it’s expensive for a reason? Problem with both avenues is, it only takes a single lather of cream and one face covered in red hot lumps to realise your money has been misspent.

Because I have combination skin I never know what to do. Using Simple is good for the part of my skin that’s sensitive, because there won’t be any flare ups. BUT, the rest of my skin feels starved, like I’m being given half an ice cube after months of dehydration. I’ve been searching for cream that is sensitive, natural AND that manages to be rich and deep conditioning all at once.

So. Korres. I’d actually never even heard of this brand before I caught it on the Asos gifting section while I was buying my particularly beauty savvy friend a birthday present. I had to check they were a cruelty free company, as she’d just achieved a cruelty make up cull and emptied her drawers of anything unethical – something I am dying to gradually do myself. To my pleasant surprise, Korres as of a year or so ago, are cruelty free.

Brill. So after buying my friend’s bits, I gambled and bought the Wild Rose moisturiser (for oily/dry skin) for £20 on Asos. A nice in the middle price for a luxury face cream, and I will continue to throw money at this company. My dry patches and blemishes cleared up in a WEEK. My face smells like a garden. I can tell I am using something simply good for the skin.

I went on my standard wiki rampage to dig up dirt on Korres and found they were a Greek company, founded by husband and wife Lena and George Korres. (I swear I didn’t know they were Greek before I bought it)

My favourite part of this brand is how obsessed the founders seem to be with good all natural products. They truly believe in homeopathy and that heritage is evident in their apothecary-like pharmacy full of herbal remedies, plants and ingredients. From primrose to aloe to yoghurt, their archive of little vials and bottles is full to the brim with natural alternative solutions to skin problems.

They have such a home grown comfort to their brand, as they state on their website that George Korres’ grandfather unknowingly created the first ever recipe for the company; a warming aniseed and honey syrup. They support farmers, they use 100% eco friendly planting and extracting systems, and they’re constantly researching new herbs and plants that can help them help my god damn skin.

I looked up the ingredients of the cream I bought (find them here) and saw that 96.8% of the cream was completely natural. If you guys identify with any of my skin problems, I seriously advise you peruse on www.korres.com. They are wonderfully helpful in that their website is FULL of information and omit no shady facts to get you buying. 

So go, buy. If for no other reason, my country is in need of some non-tourist related money. 

New job, new blog

As I have been planning on jumping onto the blogging bandwagon (about fifteen years late, I might add), I thought it only right for Fashion & Florentines’s first post to be about both my new exciting job and Birmingham’s well awaited arrival: John Lewis.

Oh man, I have been so excited to be a part of this venture. If any of you reading this happen to know me personally, I’m not the jump up and down squealing ‘yay’ type. In fact, unless I’m faced with something edible I don’t tend to raise my voice above a certain decibel.

But THIS has been a wonderful adventure, one which the actual branch partners (you heard. PARTNERS) only joined in the last couple of months. This has been in the making for years, with so many insanely hard working people getting it ready for yesterday’s grand opening. I can only take two or three weeks credit on it, the teams building the in store fixtures, departments and general interiors have been at it for a substantial amount of time longer. And that’s just taking Visual in to account. If I mentioned trainers, logistics, planning etc. my first blog post would be about 700 other people.

I was a Visual Merchandiser at House of Fraser for a couple of years, and that was great, my first job in the ‘field’. Before that, I was making quarter shot decaf skinny wet hazelnut flat whites (shout out to EAT, I miss my discount, what you saying?) and although it was fun, I was dying to start my career properly, in something relevant to my degree. I know it’s a luxury in this current economical and social state to be in a job relevant to your educational background, especially if that background was, brace yourself, creative. 

But I gambled my barista job for an unpaid month placement which, thank the lord of money and mental health, turned into a full time paid job. I’ll never forget my first day at House of Fraser. I was wearing jeans and a baggy shirt and someone who started on the same day came in wearing leather and metal and chiffon and spikes and just loads of other precious materials which wouldn’t last three seconds in the store. Even then, as fresh meat, I remember thinking “buddy, what are you dressed for?” She never showed up again. 

My Nan would tell people in Cyprus, that I was a window dresser. I can’t fault the logic, she’s used to the golden age of visual merchandising; the unveiling of Christmas windows and ethereal imagery a department store window would fill Corporation Street with. Basically, an episode of Mr Selfridge. Alas, a few decades down the line, we are not the Miranda Priestlys of the store’s hierarchy and pecking order. We don’t strut with sequin gowns in our hands and leave open mouthed, awe-stricken shop floor staff in our wake, wishing they had our artistic flair. We tend to run, with bits of ceiling dust in our hair, holes in our  leggings, sale banners and seven thousand and eighty one little bits and bobs shoved in our pockets (to avoid a second trip, obviously. Department stores are huge; do I look like an athlete to you?) We are all, collectively called by one name. “VISUAL! DID YOU GET MY EMAIL?”

Although I am always first to burst someone’s bubble when they assume my job role is glamorous, I’m so happy about that truth. I absolutely love that there is no other role in retail, comparable to that of a merchandiser or a visual merchandiser. We are the set designers. We are spending 48 hours preparing and putting up banners for a promotion that lasts for an afternoon. Then we take everything down and stow it away for next time.  I’d come home with bruises, scratches and injuries the inanimate mannequins would cause, I learned how to drill and wallpaper in that first VM job of mine. 20-something windows and in-store displays, and a couple of golden nurturers made me a fully functioning VM, ready to take on my next challenge.

Unless you’ve been boycotting news/internet/human interaction/the spoken word, you will have heard of John Lewis opening in Birmingham. There’s one in Solihull, but Birmingham has been so ready for its own branch. We are now the only city outside of London to have all the major department stores. YES, second city! The new new New Street opened at the start of the week, but yesterday marked Grand Central’s first day of trade. Grand Central might not open as shiny and polished as John Lewis will, but it won’t take long for the other shops to turn their lights on. I am so excited for Tiger, White Company, Kiehl’s and a few other brands to set up shop. But I am insanely ready for Cocomacs and Frizzenti. Sparkling wine and macaroons? Try to find four words that will please me more. I dare you. 

The wonderful thing about merchandising in a department store is that it would be mentally impossible to get bored of your job. There are floors, escalators, departments separating you from boredom every day. I used to think I wanted to be a VM for a High Street brand, but now I’ve experienced the pace of a department store, there’s no going back. This post isn’t here as a review of John Lewis Birmingham. I’m a part of it, I’ve lived in it for a little while now and I am already in love with it. I want you to go and explore the floors, and tell me what you think.

The best bits for you to go to see are the... ENTIRE home department, the Christmas shop that you are lucky to get a week before other stores (I’ve already decided what baubles I’m going for), the completely new “Loved & Found” on Womenswear Floor 2, which is a cutting edge fashion edit, (seriously, I’m going to lose a huge cut of my wages to that department) Denmark’s own Joe & The Juice, an insane toys department and for the love of all that is sugar coated – Gift Foods. Seriously. Gift Foods. You may think I just listed the entire store, but I didn’t.

 There is something really quite brilliant about being part of a new store opening. I’m in a team of about 12, and we all got to meet each other on the exact same day, all of us are learning about our new employer together. If you’re a VM, a merchandiser, or working in retail, I cannot stress enough how powerful being part of a brand new store opening is. It’s even better if chaos is your happy place.

Even though I was lucky enough to be here, making history on Day One of John Lewis Birmingham, I now have a very ill-timed holiday to go on, back to the motherland. 

I will be back from Cyprus in two weeks, a few stone heavier. Let me know what you think of Birmingham’s changes.

Emily

x

P.S Seriously. Gift Foods. I’m not lying to you.