P MADE THE MOST delicious Eggs Benedict on the morning of the first day of the new year. It was sunny and beautiful out, which was perfect, as we had decided the night before that we would go a long bicycle ride in the English countryside on New Year's Day. We ended up in a quaint pub we'd been to a few times before, but always only outside in the garden. This time, we had the best seats in the place, right in front of the roaring wood fire ...
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WOKE UP YESTERDAY morning thinking that it was Monday and thought about getting back on track after Christmas‘s excess of trifles and puddings and cava and far too much food and thought about Weekend Links and workouts. Of course, that was until I realised shortly after that it was actually Sunday, and then it was back to lounging about, a late breakfast and drinks in the evening by the fire.
TO SAY THAT it has been a strange week is an understatement (more on that later). It has been a week spent nearly entirely indoors and we're going a bit crazy. Christmas is now only five days away and the end of the year, a mere 11. It's strange how a year where not much happened flew by so quickly. It's a pensive, melancholic time, for many reasons, (one being that I hate endings), but especially since it feels like there hasn't been a proper holiday season in a very long time ...
YOU MAY HAVE noticed that aside from last week's Links and one set of articles on Monday, there were no new posts this past week. We spent the entire week in London, taking time off from everything and it was wonderful. We ate Italian food in Marylebone and discovered a wine club housed in bare-brick vaults and lit by candlelight ...
HAPPY DECEMBER! Can you believe that it's already the last month of the year? Feel like 2021 just flew by and don't really know what I did in all this time. Know that had meant to get through more books. I did complete a web design and launch that had been planned long ago, and definitely got a lot of decorating done at the cottage since we've been homebound for the last two years ...
When we booked our trip to London for the second week of December, we had no idea that a new variant was about to rage through the city and quickly become the dominant strain. We were both double-vaccinated, but were still very cautious and wondered if we should get the booster vaccination before we left.
IT WAS THE NIGHT before Christmas Eve and I had just finished some last-minute shopping with P and was on the way home when I heard the news that Joan Didion had passed away at her home in Manhattan from Parkinson's disease. She was 87. This news hit me really hard. I had first read The Year of Magical Thinking (the 2005 memoir about the sudden loss of the author's husband, John Gregory Dunne) in 2019 and was so moved by this book that the next year, I read Play It As It Lays, The White Album, and Blue Nights. As I write this by the light of my desk lamp over a glass of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, I thought about what it was that really drew me to Didion's work. Perhaps it was because I really connected with the spare, straight-forward yet wonderfully poetic writing of this Californian culture columnist, this acclaimed writer and journalist.
THE INTERNET is a funny place—it can be both stifflingly small and a place so large, that we can all be "known" in our own little corner of it without ever running into each other. I only discovered Pia Baroncini, the Creative Director of Los Angeles clothing label LPA, today and loved the little glimpses she gave on Instagram of her Spanish colonial home in Pasadena, California ...
ON FRIDAY NIGHT enormous fluffy snowflakes fell furiously here in the countryside, covering everything in a mesmerising blanket of wet snow. You may have watched it falling on our Instagram Stories, for we knew we had to capture it as it would not last. Within an hour or so, the rain fell, and by morning, it was gone, but for a little while, things felt rather festive ...
I MUST CONFESS that I have a thing for beautiful packaging, so when Hermès announced the next chapter in their beauty range—a new nail enamel collection—I knew that I wouldn’t be able to resist.
THIS PAST YEAR we've introduced you to some beautiful places to stay, from a chic one-bedroom seaside apartment in Trouville-sur-Mer to a family-run B&B in Tuscany; a private nature reserve in South Africa, and even a remote Airbnb in Tasmania. Today, we whisk you away to this charming weather-beaten fisherman's cottage in Mousehole, Cornwall
WE ASKED for your beauty/makeup inquiries on our Instagram Stories recently and received so many questions! So many that we couldn't possibly get to all the DMs and thought we might answer a few of them here. From perfume recommendations to makeup tips for beginners to the best foundation for dry/sensitive skin, here are the things that you want to know ...
THIS PAST WEEK, we were back in London, thinking it might be the last time in a long time again that we would be able to be out and about before another national lockdown. We were also there to celebrate the holidays and two anniversaries. When we were last here, it was May, and things were only tentatively opening up again. All the pubs and restaurants were outdoor seating only, which mean it was difficult to find a table without booking the good places in advance through an app. The weather was unseasonably rainy and cold and we wondered if it had been a good decision to come ...
IF YOU'VE NEVER dreamed of running away to Italy to open a B&B with your husband, Valdirose will change your mind. A family-run Bed & Breakfast situated among the hills of Lastra a Signa, not far from the centre of Florence this beautiful place to stay is situated in a 19th-century building 14 km from the 15th-century Basilica of Santa Maria Novella and Boboli Gardens ...
ON SATURDAY a wild winter storm resulted in a rare red weather warning for parts of the UK. There were extremely hight winds, some places had a beautiful snowfall, while here it was just really windy and rainy and by 10:00pm Saturday night, we were sitting by firelight and candlelight and no wi-fi due to a sudden power outage ...
