Christmas!

As promised, if a little overdue, here is my Christmas post! I hope you all had as wonderful a festive season as I did, enjoying time with family, eating and drinking too much and generally spreading festive cheer! I am so excited to show you some of the beautiful gifts I was treated to, along with some favorites that I gave and a few other fun things I got up to over my Christmas break!
I was so spoiled this Christmas, I really was very lucky! As I showed you on Christmas day, my parents gave me a beautiful Missoma Owl bracelet, which I am completely in love with:






I am a bit of a magpie when it comes to jewellery, so again I was thrilled when I was given this beautiful lighthouse charm for my Thomas Sabo pearl charm bracelet, which has remained charm-less ever since my good friend Josh gave it to me for my 18th birthday





isn't it beautiful!!!


I was also thrilled when I was given no less than 3 gorgeous mugs by 3 different lovely ladies in my life...Who obviously know me well enough to combine my love of tea and girly twee patterns!!





The heart mug was given to me by my Auntie Karen along with some yummy Thorntons chocolate treats, and at the time of this photo I was enjoying some yummy white hot chocolate...so delicious!!

One of my favorite gifts I gave this Christmas was this beautiful vintage "tea for one" set that I found for my mum.





She has a little dream/ambition that when she retires, she wants to open a tea shop on the coast, and serve tea to her customers in individual teasets... I hunted around all day to find the perfect teaset for her to help her along the way with her dream, but when I saw this I just knew she'd love it- nothing to big to begin with, but a gorgeous little set for my mum to enjoy her tea in!!!
The detailing on it is so gorgeous and I also fell in love with the matching box it came in. It is now sitting, pride of place on our kitchen window sill...doubling up as a cute decoration! We love it!

I also loved this Max onesie I got for my brother, here he is wearing it on Christmas morning:





Where The Wild Things Are was my favorite book when I was little, so when the film came out in 2009 I was over the moon, and dragged my family along with me to see it so many times I think I've lost count... I couldn't resist getting my brother this beautiful Max suit as a sort of in-joke and homage to our childhood. The suit was handmade by the amazing Emma at Boe Jumpsuits, who I highly recommend for all your onesie needs- she worked so hard to get the suit to me before Christmas, and I can honestly say it is absolutely beautiful!


The other great thing about Christmas, of course, is the amazing food!!! Here are some cute Christmas icing penguins that my mum and I made with my 4 year-old cousin Amy when we visited them up north just before Christmas. We were intending to put them on top of a Christmas cake but when they were finished, we decided they were far too cute to eat:





The day after Boxing Day, I had a few of the girls round to mine for mulled wine, mince pies and continuation of festive cheer. We had a great time watching The Gruffalo and The Gruffalo's Child (which, if you haven't seen, I highly recommend- another childhood storybook favorite transformed into an amazing animation for the BBC). My ever-inventive mum, not wanting to waste the uneaten Christmas cake, made us these cute mini Christmas-chocolate puddings by mixing the leftover cake with dark chocolate, then decorating the top with white chocolate and icing. They were almost (ALMOST...) too good to eat...





I hope you all had just as an amazing Christmas as I did- mine certainly set me up for a wonderful New Year. I hope 2012 brings you all health, happiness, love and joy!!

Sian xxxx

I got the Owl!!!

So happy and lucky, I really love Christmas!! My mum loved the vintage teapot I got her... Will post everyone's gifts later, but for now, take a look at my BEAUTIFUL Missoma Owl bracelet!!! xxxxx

Merry Christmas!!!

Oh Little Town of Bethlehem @ The Joy Exchange 03.12.11 from The Joy Exchange on Vimeo.

please feel free to share this video with your friends and family to share the festive Joy!!!

Christmas List

So Christmas is fast approaching, and I'd love to share with you all the amazing presents I've bought so far, but as I can't be sure exactly who will stumble across my humble little blog, for now I will just share with you some beautiful little things that have caught my eye, which I am hoping to find in my stocking if I am lucky!!!

Missoma "Ark" Bracelets








I stumbled across these beautiful bracelets as I was doing some Christmas shopping in my home town Wokingham whilst taking a break from Uni. They are so gorgeous and adorable- I love them! I've dropped lots of hints about these, but they are all so cute I really don't mind which one I get!! so cute... I love that they all represent character traits as well, the owl is for wisdom, the elephant for strength and the monkey for mischief. Amazing!

"Lioness: Hidden Treasures" from the late great Amy Winehouse




As many others were, I was totally heartbroken when I heard the news back in July. Amy was not only an incredible talent but a revolution, she put british music back on the map with "Frank" and broke through and got the worldwide recognition she deserved with "Back to Black"... it's just such a shame she was only alive long enough to see two of her albums released into the world. I, for one, miss her, troubled soul though she was, and I can't wait to get my hands on this album to celebrate her life and her work.


Visual Editions Books

These incredible objects are not so much books as works of art... I'm not entirely sure how to describe them to you, so I will show you...














"Tree of Codes" by Jonathan Safran Foer is a reworking of his favorite novel, "The Street of Crocodiles" by Bruno Schulz. By eradicating words and parts of sentences, he crafted a story of his own within the book. On top of this, the book itself physically has the erased words cut out of the pages, making it an incredible object to hold in your hands.

"Composition no.1" by Marc Saporta is a "book in a box"- each page an individual narrative which gives you freedom to arrange the book and create a story any way you wish. You can read as much or as little as you like, and you can rearrange to create a new story each time you open the box.





I'm a bit of a hoarder when it comes to books, and a real purist when it comes to eReaders etc- I MUST have the actual book!!! To me, this is the epitome of the physical object: the effect just would not be the same on an eReader or iPad.
For one of my current projects at uni- Contemporary Technologies- I am using the erasure technique to create "blackout poems" from all sorts of text which people submitted to the "parts bin" (more on that in a later post). Since doing these I've become obsessed with objects in the physical sense, so naturally I am drawn to these like a moth to a flame!!!


"Ceremonials"- Florence and the Machine






This year has been such an amazing one for music: new albums from my personal favorites Laura Marling, Bon Iver and Benjamin Francis Leftwich, festivals getting bigger, better and more diverse and platforms such as Spotify and Last.fm becoming more popular. It's a bold statement but I feel I've never been more transfixed by music!!
I bought Florence's first album mainly out of curiosity- everyone was talking about this tall, flame headed art student who was making music with harps. And of course, she won over my heart as well. Although she is not one of my all-time favorites (hence why I haven't bought this album already) I am really keen to hear what she's come up with next.




I am one of these annoyingly festive people who gets SO excited about Christmas, and I can't wait til Christmas day so I can show you all the wonderful presents I've bought for my friends and family! In the meantime, I'll keep my fingers crossed for my wishlist!