Cecil Carlstedt a Swedish drawing and painting artist from Stockholm is someone whose works I'd like to introduce to you. Cecil has done her BA in Graphic Design and Illustration in London and an exchange year in NY.

Her most well known customers have been H&M, Swarovski, Esprit, Martini Gold, J Lindeberg , Paul Smith, Victoria's Secret, Elle, Vogue, W Magazine, London Fashion Week, New York Time and the Sunday Telegraph. So she is definitely someone to know.

Personally, I like her artistic style. It is unique and she has wonderful drawing skills. The colours she uses are also pleasant and in a perfect harmony.

Yesterday turned out to quite an eventful day. I think the theme word was extempore. Many things happened on the spur of a moment without or only some forethought. For instance, after having written that little happy note I put my gym stuff together and headed to my nearest fitness centre for a double class. First one was a bikram yoga class and the second class was advanced pilates. Liked both of the classes a lot since they were very demanding. Bikram was very fast phased and we switched from one position to another without pauses letting our in and outward breaths dictate the speed of movements. Pilates, on the other hand, was a mixture of fun and hard work. The instructor was an older Italian lady how pushed us hard and corrected everyone's position in every single moment. This clearly took time which meant that we did not end up doing more than ten to thirteen different exercises but because she took her time correcting everyone's position we had to do more repetitions than usually. I liked it though. There is a real potential for these classes becoming my early Saturday afternoon signatures.

After coming home and having had lunch, we decided to go for a bit of browse and coffee. It was nice since Ken had just came back from Taiwan so we had Starbucks and watched people playing table tennis at the shopping centre square. Hah, there were a few Chinese ladies who were impressively good at it and Ken, bless him, really wanted to go practice his table tennis skills too. However, Reiss and summer sales got the best of him so he settled  with only sitting in Starbucks' sofas sipping his coffee and watching the others. 

By the time coffees were drank I wanted to quickly pop into a phone shop to ask if my they have international phone call deals I could bundle up with my current contract. I have been receiving ridiculous phone bills lately which is why something had to be done and quickly, since in my mind, putting £70 on calls is just a stupid waste of money. Thus, I go into the shop and the assistant and I start talking and he shows me different options I could consider. Then one thing leads to another, I mention that my BB has been crashing a lot lately and has not been working as it should, we start looking at phones, we talk about a little bit of upgrades and then half an hour later, I leave the shop with a really good international  phone calls deal added to my contract and new Sony Xperia in a carrier bag! :D

Towards the evening I started to feel a little tired and uncomfortable.  I was cold and felt really heavy, so yes, by the time we started watching the sex and the city film around 8ish in the evening, I had started to feel really feverish. So for the rest of the evening, I staid under the covers on the sofa, munching paracetamol and occasionally falling asleep and then waking up and laughing at Samantha's comments. And now, I am full-on ill. 

Peaceful Saturday morning, just right amount of warm breakfast filling my stomach, sitting in the lounge in silence whilst the other ones are still sleeping and gazing at the continuous movements of the Thames river water. I am so happy I almost want to cry. I have finally had my peaceful weekend mornings back and that just makes me mentally so satisfied and content.  It gives me energy and recharges my batteries. There have been months when I have gone beyond the point of missing these moments, I have forgotten these moments exists. I have forgotten how important these moments are for me and most importantly how they made me feel. Now, when I am again connected to the feeling I remember what I have been missing and it makes me appreciate them even more. Happiness is little things.

We visited the Barbican Centre this week. Even though the main reason for our visit was to check the 007 James Bond exhibition, I was fully enjoying the interior of the centre itself. I would highly recommend everyone to pay a visit. Barbican Centre is visually very interesting place and seems to have a good atmosphere to it too!

picture here

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Florence + The Machine - Spectrum

Florence + The Machine does not seem to be able to disappoint with this song either. Love it!

Happy belated Birthday: Yellow gold, rose gold and rhodium plated crystal pendant and earrings set.

A few months back I read an article about the Fortnum and Mason bees 'The Life of Bees'. It was an extraordinary read and it really made me laugh and hope I could reborn as one of the Fortnum's luxury bees in my next life :) The beehives are designed by the Fortnum's sweet grocery buyer Jonathan Miller and have been decorated according to distinctive achitectural style -Roman, Mughal, Chinese and Gothic - and painted of eau de nil colourand finished off with gold details. Oh my goodness.

However, the Fortnum's bees are not the only buzzers who live in rather central locations and have the privledge to enjoy fantastic views. The Paris opera house, Palais Garnier, also accommodates a number of beehives on the top of the its rooftops. NY City's the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel has reserved the hotel's roofs for beehives (and 250 000 bee-residents) too, and, Chicago City Hall, Cultural centre and Garfield Park Conservatory have hundreds of thousands of bees buzzing around their rooftop set beehives days in days out.

Funnily enough, as I kept on reading about this phenomenon, it turned out that it has definitely not only been individuals, environmental organisations and city coucils encouraging the practice of keeping bees in cities and other urban areas. Within the past years also corporations and institutions such as Cisco, Philips and LVMH group's Guerlain and Luis Vuitton have started to contribute helping to bring the bee population back to a healthy level through various beekeeping corporate environmental and social responsibility projects and schemes too. 

Well done! Makes me wating to join a beekeeping charity now too!
x

It has been quite nice weahter today. The morning was especially nice since it was so sunny and warm. As sunny mornings set you on a good mood so easily I decided that today would be a good sunny day all day along, whether the sun would stay out or not.

San Pellegrino is a brand I like a lot. It is an old Italian alcohol and non-alcohol drink producer, which was established in late 19th century -1899 to be precise when it also became listed on the Milan Stock Exchange. It is said to be the first bottled water brand and origintates from the San Pellegrino village in Northern of Italy.

S.Pellegrino is probably best known for its mineral waters and fruit juice beverages all around the world, regardless whether we are taking about Milan, Shanghai or New York. In 1949 Sanpellegrino celebrated its 50th Anniversairy by launching its  sparkling fruit beverages range which incuded Aranciata Amara, Limonata, Chinotto and others. In 1954, the company purchased Acqua Panna and in 1999 Sanpellegrino Company celebrated its first 100 Years.

At the turn of the 21st century, S.Pellegrino has diversified into introducing more events to its core strategy. Occations such as S.Pellegrino Cooking cup and S.Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurant Awards became quickly embrased as the means to share and celebrate the Italian art of living.

The latest S.Pellegrino & Bvlgari partnership “S.Pellegrino sparkles with Bvlgari”

L'occitane en provence and a bit about the power of buying.

I had my first try of L'occitane products a few years ago. I used their shampoo, conditioner and shower gel in a summer cottage in Finland. I wasn't very impressed by their hair products back then, but loved the fragrant and feel of the shower gel. Then a year later from this, we visited one of their shops in our Southern of France and I bought some of their Shea Butter and olive soaps and hand creams for my mum and myself. Time passes by and then became last summer, I found myself walking past a L'occitane shop in Helsinki when I all of a sudden saw a basket full of drier lavender bunches nearby the shop entrance. Thought they looked lovely which is why I suppose it is needless to say that I indeed went in and a few minutes later came out with a bunch in my hand. Then again just today, I visited another L'occitane boutique, however, this time in Canary Wharf. They had sales on and I really wanted to get a bottle of Verbana shower gel -in fact, even Ken was contemplating whether to get a bottle or not. We left our bottles on the shelves, but it sparked a conversation why is it ok to spend so much money on soap.



























I think the L'occitane products are lovely, but I do have to admit that they do come with a higher than average price tag, which can put some people off. If you think about it only from outside, it does sound  strange even weird to spend £25-35 on a bottle of soap. At least, I would not necessarily spend this amount of money on a 250ml  bottle of shower gel just like that. Of course, it would be great to be able to do that at some point in life, but then I do not know. I reckon that a part of me would always contemplate and try to find a justification for such an expensive soap purchase. I can imagine myself thinking: 'hmm isn't that is a bit too much for a bottle of soap' and I do think this is fine (and normal) way of thinking, because it is true. At the end of the day, L'occitane products are scented soap in nice bottles and jars. This is of course, is only what we see on the surface when we pass a shop and do not know the story or values behind the product itself.

The basic idea behind L'occitane is a good one. It was founded in 1976 and one of the key values is to respect the nature. On their website L'occotane states that it strives limiting the impact of its actions and products on the environmental and on the local population. Design and packaging is made as ecofriendly as possible, and boxes, printed material paper come from sustainable managed forests and are not bleached with chlorine. The use of outer packaging is limited and  their website shows which one of their bottles, tubes and jar can be recycled. In addition to this L'occitane does not use animal testing on raw materials nor any of its finished products.The only exception is products that derive from beehives. Hence, it is not surprising that L'occitane has been recognised by such animal rights groups as Once Voice and PETA.

From my point of view, knowing all this behind L'occitane's business idea changes things to an extent. When you do know that only natural ingredients are being used throughout the production chain and that preservation of cultures that are in danger are taken into account (in other words, crops are being collected from cultivated land not from natural and fragile environment) together with the local environmental and agricultural government agencies and bodies to ensure sustainable development, the reason for your shower gel comes with a slightly higher price tag makes more sense. At least to me it is really hard to overlook the idea of contributing towards common good. I mean of course, companies like L'occitane, are there to make money and good business out of their products which is fair enough, but what I like about them, and many others, is that they also want to see the bigger picture and looking further on than just how they can make money now and today. That's good, it shows that these sort of companies have a sense of responsibility as it cannot be only taking and wanting, it also has to be giving back. I like that.

Plus, I think consumer goods are in general a great way of  giving people/consumers a power to make little (environmentally friendly or not) choices in their every day lives. I do not say that people buying e.g ecofriendly or organic products or services would be any better than people never buying them. what I am saying though, is that it is wonderful that nowadays we are lucky in a sense that we have some many options to choose from. The chances are that there is something for everyone and people can really have a say on things simply by choosing to buy something over something else. Little things tend to pile up :)