Toast launches a recipe book
November 10, 2009
Fans of Toast will be pleased to hear there’s a gorgeous new Toast recipe book out. Toast founders Jessica and Jamie Seaton first met cooking expert Pamela Hunter Brown while they were in Ireland doing a three-week photo shoot for their AW09 ranges. Pamela cooked for the whole team and become a close friend – a Toast recipe book collaboration was soon underway, to be filled with Pam’s recipes for nourishing, heart-warming food. Sadly, Pam died unexpectedly in August, but Toast has continued with the project and created a charity book in her honour – Pam’s Recipe Book.
The recipes are all from Pam’s notes, a real A-Z of rustic, soul-food – perfect for this time of year. From roast pumpkin soup and ‘mum’s flapjacks’, to Irish brown soda bread and winter vegetable broth, it’s all designed to make you feel, well, Toast-y warm! The rest of the pages are filled with stunning photographs of the rugged Irish landscape, taken by Jenny Zarins, which conjure up the wild spirit of the countryside and make you feel as though you’re in need of a piping hot mug of soup! It’s a lovely book, £5.95, from Toast. All profits go towards medical charity. – Ellie
Curious Chocolate from the Bailey family
November 10, 2009
Sally and Mark Bailey’s 26-year-old son Ben has just launched his own business, Curious Chocolate. I’m salivating over the lovely website already – it basically combines two of my favourite things…old letterpress printing and chocolate!
Now, we rarely talk about food here, but the Baileys connection and the gorgeous packaging means I’m willing to sneak this in! Inspired by a trip to an old Amsterdam letterpress workshop, Ben Bailey’s chocolate bars come wrapped in graph paper covered with fabulous fonts – a typography lover’s dream come true! My favourite has got to be the ‘Mouthful’ mint bar – how appropriate for me.
The drinking chocolate in a rustic preserving jar would make a fabulous stocking filler, but it’s the jars of pretty chocolate-coated nuts and raisins that have caught my eye…they look like pebbles, eggs and olives! Very curious indeed!
All this talk of chocolate, and nothing but a lousy, dry and slightly squashed satsuma on my desk, which I have been ignoring for about a week now. Sigh. – Ellie
PLEASE vote for us! (intermission)
November 6, 2009
Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt this blog to BEG you, shamelessly, to please vote for us in the November Dorset Cereal’s Little Blog Awards. All you have to do is click on the link to the right, or indeed, click here to vote, and vote for HomeShoppingSpy in the Lifestyle category. We’d be so grateful. And, if you vote, you might even win youself a sack of muesli. Oh, the glamour! – Ellie

Paper projects to make you smile
November 4, 2009
Crafters – check out our new ‘book of the week’: Reprodepot Pattern Book: Flora, just out in the UK. It’s a beautiful collection of vintage-inspired floral textile designs, hand-picked by Djerba Goldfinger of fabric purveyor Reprodepot, with a foreword by Grace Bonney of American blog Design*Sponge.
As if the pages of floral gorgeousness are not enough, there’s the added bonus of a CD with 225 high-resolution patterns on it, ready to print out and use for your own projects. HOW. EXCITING.
From party decorations to stunning stationery and gift wrap, the book includes instructions for 12 creative projects, but once you’ve got hold of those magic files and a decent colour printer, the only limit is your own imagination!
I love these simple paper flowers – they look fab, and they’ll never wilt!
The Reprodepot Pattern Book: Flora is out now, £16.99, Chronicle Books. There’s also a Folk book, for double the fun. – Ellie

For him, as long as it has hinges and a lock, a door is a door. For me, the door must be painted black, French grey, or in
The ever-helpful 

Has this dark romanticism got something to do with 2009 being the bi-centenary of Charles Darwin’s birth? Perhaps. But whatever the roots of this dark trend, I’m LOVING it all. 
Also, check out their ‘Esquire’ notebooks with sketches of lethal-looking barber’s and dentist’s tools as well as some less-scary brushes. Their ‘Gardener’ notebooks and ‘Cook’ books all feature similar Victorian etchings, too.
The recent revival of the glorious 
Featuring over 1,500 engravings that originally graced the pages of Webster’s dictionaries in the 19th century, this chunky volume is absolutely fascinating. Meticulously cleaned and restored by fine-press bookmaker Johnny Carrera, the alphabetically-arranged engravings show everything from Acorns to Zebras, Bell Jars to Velocipedes – a Victorian list of ‘curiosities’. Crafting fans will be as excited as I am about the 
These cute cards also tap into another trend we’re seeing emerge – the Alphabet trend – but let’s not complicate things with all that now!! Having a quick look for some high-street Macabre buys, I spotted a black skull candle in 


That’s right, folks. Supermarket-chic is moving in to a whole new realm of excitement next season…great news if you’re a ’style on a shoestring’ kinda gal like me! We’ve been sessioning the spring/summer press shows this week, and there are lots of exciting things on the horizon, but I just had to share this sneaky peek with you today! It’s due to hit
These lovely paper fairylights from
I love the ‘tea & cakes’ idea – sweet at any time of year. I wish I could tell you that I’m having a lovely fireworks party tonight with twinkling lanterns, hot pumpkin soup and roasted chestnuts… but the reality is that I’ll be doing the same thing I do every year – standing in a crowded park, dodging sparklers, eating a cheap hot dog (and half the paper napkin too probably, in the dark) and wishing I’d remembered my gloves!
If you are having a party, these flying lanterns from 

I love the idea of serving cold drinks with ice spoons, or a mug of hot chocolate with a solid chocolate spoon on the saucer ready for dunking and stirring – and how cool are the letter moulds for chocolate cake decorations? These silicone moulds are due to hit stores in late November, and will cost from £7.50 each.
THREE: Just when you thought there were enough arty tea towels in the world – check out these lovely African-inspired designs at
I’ve just been sent an exciting book which I plan to read this weekend and share with you all next week…but for now, it’s back to reality with a thud sadly. The dishwasher drawer feature beckons…! Have a lovely weekend x – Ellie
I love these pretty sweetie cones made from origami paper and tied with rustic twine. Beautiful – and a great idea for wedding confetti, too. Of course, in reality, any children trick-or-treating at my house on Saturday night are more likely to get a fun-size (what’s ‘fun’ about small?) Mars bar thrust into their sticky paws than a carefully crafted country-style cone, the aesthetic beauty of which would probably be wasted on the greedy little monkeys anyway. But it’s nice to dream.
If you’re artistic and clever (not sure if I attempted this that it would be a success!) you could carve lovely leaf shapes into pumpkins – much more classy than an evil face but, I admit, not so much fun lantern-wise. There’s nothing like a spot of apple bobbing to spoil guests’ carefully applied face paints – this idea of turning the bucket into a decoration itself is easy and it looks lovely. Float
Another alternative to a scary face on a pumpkin is to cut small circular holes and create an elegant lantern look. By the way, if you’re having pumpkin trouble, the lovely people at
So many lovely ideas! And not a plastic bat in sight. I’m going to a Halloween party this weekend, but as the theme is ‘dead celebrities’, I’m not sure it’s going to be a classy, gorgeously-styled affair sadly… – Ellie




