Coffee lovers must read. Coffee virgins....your welcome too

This whole post is being dedicated to Coffee with a side of breakfast!

Not only is it THE most important meal of the day but it is undoubtably my favourite!! And lets be honest....its the coffee hit all us coffee lovers look forward to. If your not a coffee lover...heres what a semi-addicts morning is like.

Wake up (time is irrelevant) The world is a blur, all noises become one and nothing is making sense. You stumble through your messy floor trying to get to the bathroom. Eyes still closed. Complete the basic bathroom routine with complete and utter efficiency because your mind is currently working towards one goal; get ready, get coffee.  Im dressed, I have my headphones in so no-one can talk to me and I walk to my one and only favourite coffee shop in London (because thats where I am now..) Its called Baker and Spice. Definitely a must see for any coffee lovers, just off Edgware road, Central London.
My sunglasses are on (weather is irrelevant) and my mind is blank (Drama is irrelevant). Quite literally. But then I smell it. The coffee beans and its like I'm on that rainbow Ron Burgundy and Christina Applegate ride in Anchorman.  I AM ALIVE BABY! and I would very much like to order one flat white with 2 sugars.

On todays schedule I am currently satisfied....oh and its 10:40am.... bit of a late start today. But in my defence, I wore some stunning Louboutin's last night, came home late and my feet needed a sleep in :)

welcome to my world faithful readers :)

My Progression Portfolio from St. Martin's, London

All work below is owned and created by myself.

Concept: My brand was the newspaper 'The Guardian' and I had to create a hotel to reflect it. Basically, If the Guardian was a hotel, what would that hotel be like?

Design Hierarchy 

1:1 Scale drawing with tape on walls

 If the Guardian was a product, what would the product be? A megaphone..

 Perspective drawing of people walking

 First Design

 Second design

Final design progression

 First half of course progression

 Entire course progression over 3 weeks

Model progression

Final Design

                                 
   

There are now words

Literally. No words for this title. I anticipate quite a large ramble but to sum it up in one sentence?? Im not so sure...

Over the past 3 weeks I have been enrolled in quite a full on course at St. Martins College of the Arts in London doing the Interior Design Portfolio course.

Overall I am so happy I did it but I'm also really disappointed in the College and because my disappointments are quite independent and short I'm going to list them.

1. The teachers just assume your rich because your at the school.
- Over the past 3 weeks I cannot even remember the amount of times one of the teachers called me a princess.
-  On the very first day said as part of his introduction "I know some of you have just put this course on daddy's credit card..."
AND
- One day we did an exercise to do a little class bonding. All students had to stand at one side of the classroom and the male teacher would ask a number of questions. If you relate to the question then you walk to the other side of the room. Here were  some of the questions (FYI these are all the questions bar 2) "walk the room if you have a car". "Walk the room if you have spent over 100 pounds over the past 48 hours".. "walk the room if you catch public transport".....like seriously why don't you just ask us what our account numbers are and just print off a bank statement?!?!?

2. When students explained their design ideas both teachers made faces during their explanations OR imitated them to the rest of the class afterwards.
This irritated me the worst because it made people feel scared to share their opinions. Lucky I have a bit of Chutzpah as they say (loosely translated as balls/guts) and I started not to care what they thought and just went with what I thought was right. But it made me upset because people were so nervous to speak in front of the class! and that is probably the worst teaching morals I have ever come across. It came to a point where I approached them mid second week during lunch and calmly and logically explained to them how unprofessional they were being. In hindsight it was a test to their  maturity on how they took it. I wasn't rude and I don't feel I came across as a 'princess'. I merely let them know that we were trying and that it's really disconcerting when they make faces and imitate us whilst were trying to talk to the class. Needless to say they held their heads high and took it in stride. The female teacher really seemed like she was trying to improve but the male one just didnt, for lack of better words, give a shit. He's the type of guy that just thinks the world of himself and cant imagine making room for what anyone else thins about him. Oh well.

3. There was no structure.
Gosh this was irritating, especially because it was an expensive course and would only be logical to receive a course outline. But to no avail. At the end of the first week I asked if we would ever receive one and the response was "no, it will just limit your creativity, you wont understand it and then you'll just fight me on it"....in other words, 'we dont have plan and I dont want to make a course syllabus so no, your not getting one'.

4. The male teacher was late most days
Usually I wouldn't care. Its a summer course, a short course, pretty laid back so...
But on the first day he took about 10 minutes explaining to us that its so unbelievably rude to show up late especially with a latte in hand and to just "not do it" rather just don't come....Ironically he was the one usually late...and never even showed up for the Thursday and Friday of the first 2 weeks. Strangely, the other teacher never spoke about it or even acknowledged his absence...it was really strange....

5. They never explained anything.
Nothing was ever explained!!! how frustrating that was!!!!!! mainly because we always got in trouble for our inability to complete the task correctly. Like seriously? On the first day the female teacher even said "now we do this task every year and no-one seems to get it right" my initial thought was MAYBE ITS NOT US?? MAYBE YOUR NOT EXPLAINING IT? But no, we were treated like 5 year old for not understanding them.

6. They always contradicted each other
One teacher told us to do one thing, then the other teacher would ask us why we were doing that and it was just a cycle from there on in. So confusing, and again, we would get in trouble for not doing the right thing even though one of the teachers told us to do that in the first place.

Example:
Context: we were making a model of a staircase railing in the building.
Female teacher to student: The model has to be in 3D, make the glass in 3D
Student spends nearly 10 minutes remaking the glass.
Male teacher to student: "what are you doing with the glass? why don't you just cut out a square of paper? your doing it all wrong"
Student is stunned, irritated that she has just spent time remaking the glass for nearly 10 minutes.
Student: "female teacher told me to do this"
Female teacher: "no I didn't, I said the whole model has to be in 3D"
All students: eyes rolling.

7. Favouritism
Now this one is really just stupid because honestly I don't mind teachers having favourites and frankly I think its inevitable. But the male teacher grew quite fond of one of the girls in my class (and I mean in the MOST platonic way possible, also because I'm 100009999% sure he's gay) But he was laughing at something on his phone with the other teacher in the studio whilst we worked (just as a side point we were screamed at like 5 year olds and called princesses if we were on our phones in the studio) But it was so funny that he went to the other side of the room (all students watching, drawn in from the laughter) to show his favourite student, in front of the whole class what was so funny on his phone....it was then I rode him off. From that point I just viewed him as immature and unprofessional.

8. The course was just not what it was advertised as
I really don't  mind this one so much. The course was meant to be in interior design but they didn't even get interior designers to be our teachers. They got product designers and so we did close to no interior design but rather spent our time making architectural models so the course was really more interior architecture. Having said that, I probably wouldn't have ever enrolled in an interior architecture course. So by default it was great new information but again, not what I signed up for.

9. Time division
This just made no sense to me. We spent the first week on finding our brands. The second week on making our prototype model and had TWO DAYS of the final week to make our final model. How the hell does that make any sense?!?!?!?! no-one finished and they ended up pushing the deadline back a day. They also just gave up and let us do the rest of the course at our own pace.

10. Thoughtless.
This also was a big hit for me. Most of the time they gave us a task they refused to help us get to the end and just assumed that we should know what to do. Yet they reworded that sentence to a more PC version that sounded something like this "do what you want and then we'll discuss it" or "its your design, don't ask us". But when it came to presenting our ideas (remember point number 2 about making faces and imitating) more often than not we did it "wrong" or our work was "boring" or "unintellectual". Seriously, this is a summer course....ease the F up people!
BUT the worst time this came into play was Monday of the final week. we needed to go to a 4D shop to buy props for our final models.
Did we have time to think about what materials would work with our brands? NOPE, we were just supposed to "find inspiration in the shop" aka we have wasted your time and cant do that anymore.
So we go to the shop after class in our own time and go buy our own stuff.

Side note: This was not in the course outline, that we needed to go shopping for a model that most of us cant take home because we live over seas...

BUT THE WORST was that we  all came back to class the next day and it was all; "no you cant use that its paint", "no you cant use that its too heavy", "no you cant use that because you need to make it yourself". COULD THEY NOT HAVE TOLD US WHAT  NOT TO BUY BEFORE WE WENT TO THE STORE????! No, because as much as they treated us like idiots most of the time they were the true idiots. Not making sense, getting us in trouble for their inability to teach, treating us like 5 year olds, having favourites and tripping over their own words. Sorry but if I was asked to recommend this course I would say find somewhere else...geese I forgot how mad this course made me.

But number 11 definitely takes the cake

11. Total wifi crash
Today (last day of the course) was a complete and utter fail. It was the day we were supposed to present our portfolio (course title) to the class at 2pm. By 12:30 the wifi in the school had crashed. Everything in the school is run by wifi and wirelessly, including the printers. So we were unable to print off our portfolios and ended up cancelling the presentation. I literally walked away from this PORTFOLIO course, without a complete portfolio....
We were offered to come back in on Monday, but fortunately I will be sipping sangrias on San Sebastian's beach with this course long gone from my mind.

In saying that, I am happy with what I made (even though a lot of creativity was punched in the face by the teachers and most students ended up with products only because that was what the teachers liked).
The female teacher did a complete turn around after I tried talking to the them at lunch. She offered to sit with me and help me with a private project I was working on. She became more friendly, complimented students, gave them positive reinforcement and I know a lot of students really grew to like her. I know I did and I'm actually kind of sad that I'll never see her again.

As for the male teacher?? well, some of the students and I let of steam after class one night whilst working late in the studio. We watched some of his youtube clips....in one, he's in his underpants....after that I couldn't take him seriously and just laughed every time he tried to insult my work or acted like a complete ignoramus....

This class brought out the best and the worst in me.

See the next post for my work progress. No words, promise!

The French Fetish and the Louvre: My future home

When I begun my journey in interior design I too LOVED 'French Provincial'. In every house I wanted white walls, antique white wood and burnt oak, pretty white plates, wooden floor boards, farm sinks. The answer to everything was french french FRENCH!!

As my journey through design continued I realised how uneducated I was in my taste.
Side note: I have come to see that many people who are not educated in design fall onto the design of French provincial. After all it is the largest selling design concept in most generic stores....

Interior design has taught me a very important lesson - the hard way might I add - that I can also apply to life I guess. Never be limited by what already exists. This was probably the hardest thing for me to get my head around.

The first time I saw this was on Kelly Hoppen's T.V series 'Superior Interior' where she created a loft design bedroom within a space, that at amateur glance, would not have thought to be possible.

The second time was more practical, when I was redesigning the office space EDT Global (for the competition that I didn't enter in the end because of this trip :s...oh well shame for them).
I remember sitting with Rob Meyerson both of us starring in silence at the current floor plan. I was literally thinking inside the box, literally! Studying the walls, all of them, permanent and not, thinking only of furniture movement, wall colours and other smaller detailing.
Rob on the other hand said "this is so stupid, knock that wall down" pointing to wall running through the entire office. It was at that moment my entire view on design changed. Your only as limited as your knowledge and Rob has literally knocked down the walls of the box in which I was inside of. Never again will I be trapped inside of it - thanks Rob!

But it didn't stop there, my 'love' - or what I  thought was love - of French provincial began to change. Thanks to modern manufacturing and globalisation (well at least thanks in this department) almost every material is now within arms reach - :O!! The possibilities are seriously endless.

So before my trip I begun to steer far far away from my former lover of the French Provincial and more towards; concrete, the modern mixed with the ancient, white wooden floors, metal framed dining tables slabbed with a large chunk of raw wood on top and the list is obviously endles. It steams beyond one period or one material. ALL my walls have broken down, all walls of what I didn't see as limitations; the physical and the unembodied.

Now I can create a room with stunning concrete floors, eclectic blood red rugs running across the bottom of the kitchen bench top with that's shiny cupboards and bench tops with white with copper detailing. Seee?? so many mixed materials it makes me so excited!!

But, ho hum, it seems I just may have come full circle and this is where my trip, my mind and my blog come together.

It was during my tour through the louvre I saw my future house. Yes thats right, I plan on my house being a small, small, probably tiny tiny sort of replica to that magnificent place...only with a twist. Unfortunately I was restricted by time...something my mind hasn't figured out how to destroy the limitations of...yet....so my feet did not cover the entire floor space of the Louvre.
Nonetheless it ignited an unknown love of french gothic artwork, high detailed ceilings and dramatic colours, like what you see in the picture below.

Love the colour palate. Both roof and flooring

Hard to see but the red behind this painting covered the entire wall and somehow complimented each and every picture in that room

 

But again my need to go beyond my initial thought kicked in...and this is my new vision for the house in Bondi I will never be able to afford...but will work my ass off trying to get. Well so far its only my entrance hallway.

The entire floor of the hallway is concrete with a long cream wicker carpet running the length of the hall surrounded by a deep blue or red (inspired by the above) boarder and gothic artwork running along the walls!!!! lighting and wall colour TBA :) Obviously it's a ridiculously long hallway (my little shrine to the Louvre) and also incredibly high ceilings (a girl can dream). Sooo, whattchya think??

And that my friends is why this post is titled 'The French Fetish', somehow, no matter the period, they seem to know what they're doing.

Au revior!

El Natural

This is just a short note:
So much of interior design depends on natural lighting and how the designer is able to harness it. It's influence and impact cannot be recreated in a lightbulb...it just cant be!

This picture was taken at the T in the Park festival in Edinburgh, Scotland. No filter!

For the love of great food and greater gal's

After the Paris trip Julz and I met up with 2 of Jul'z friends from Melbourne Rach and Becca - a pair of great gal's! We spent the weekend together and would later meet up with them in Scotland for T in the Park music festival - but thats another post!

About 3 or 4 posts ago I showed you 2 table tombs I bought; Rachel Zoe's A-Z guide to style and the al time wonderful Jerusalem cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi. Well, as luck would have it one Becca had booked, wait for it, a reservation - at - Yotam Ottolenghi's - restaurant!!!!!!

where to start?? well seeing as this is more of an interior blog than a food blog lets start with the design - Wow!

As soon as you walk in your hit with the Mediterranean theme. One of the key colours with this theme is white but what made this restaurant more royal was its soft boarders of gold - see below

I love the rough texture on the walls on the left somehow mix so well with the shiny tiles on the right. The lights, lighting, wooden chairs and copper lights all blend together so well! and the atmosphere made it so simple and easy to have a great dinner. I honestly dont remember the last time I had such an enjoyable dinner with no cares, lots of wine and great conversations. We sat there for over 2 hours! just talking, drinking and eating

The signature 'o' carried through ever detail of the restaurant, on the waiters collars was embedded a small golden plated 'O', the napkin rings were the same thing but bigger - even the toilet seats were shaped in an 'O'!!! that is attention to detail, and dont even get me started on the bathrooms. I felt like I was Willy Wonka's elevator when I went inside.

The Bathroom

The 'O' toilet

Note: not sure who the child is in the picture so I have blurred the face. But Julz so kindly took the pictures for me. When I went the first time I didn't think I needed my camera :p so i send Julz on a mission! 

Not to mention the food which we completely devoured!

If you are ever in London this place cannot be missed! so much for backpacking on a budget hey??

We made it!

After a very turbulent passport related non-existant planed journey Julz and my spontaneity overtook our logic! (thats when the best experiences happen - right!?)

We ended up in Paris..well for only 2 days...but thats better than nothing right??

After not getting onto our train on the Monday and trying to reorganise our Paris trip on Tuesday - with no luck - we decided to give up as you would have read in my last post.
As fate would have it on Wednesday of that week we were sitting on the London Tube on our way back from 'Book of Mormon' (sidenote: ITS UNFRIEKEN BELIEVABLE!!!! and a must see if it comes to your town!) and well we decided that our return tickets were still valid. Long story short, we were on the next Train to Paris early Thursday morning for a 48hour trip to Paris.

Codos to Julia who is the most unbelievable itinerary planner ever! We saw almost everything; the Eiffel  Tower, the Opera district, the Louvre and the famous Pita restaurant in the Jewish district - which was amazing by the way, definitely a must in your ever there! I reminded me of the episode of Seinfeld with the Soup Nazi...their efficiency is like no other!

After that Julz and I split up to do our own thing. She saw the Arc de' Triumph and I went shopping! Some would say that was a ridiculous thing to do but I don't feel like a trip is complete without a souvenir, don't you? I love that with my 2 new dresses I can say in response to my future compliments "ohh, ha ha, darling its from Paris"...although probably with less poise :p
Julz and I met at the train station and off we were back to London with a whirlwind of Parisian memories food and sites swirling in our heads.

The picture below is one of the cafe's we sat at for lunch. whilst al the locals were surviving on coffee and cigarets we both tucked into a great cafe signature salad.... But the reason I chose this picture to include in my Paris post was more to do with my Interior passions. The two men you see (who slightly resemble the mario brothers) were our waiters. Although they seem as if they are taking a break they are actually on the clock. But it resinates a small lesson with design. Every element needs to be thought through, in this case, custom designed outfits for these waiters instead of the usual black apron. Everything about screamed the theme of the cafe, their hats, their low grade overalls. It looks as if they are performing a private street show for our cafe and yet they seem to blend in so well with the surrounding atmosphere.

When designing a house, every room should have its distinct 'private show' it can be from something as small as curtain, chair, rug or table. Window design, vase or artwork. These small features will ad so much character to your rooms. The same way these walking characters added so much to Julz and my trip.