Blog Every Day in November #BEDN

Donna Wilson sample sale

Today I visited this weekend's annual Donna Wilson sample sale. I did rather well. These are *just* the bits I got for myself:

And here's the cushion modelled by Crumpet, I think she sets it off rather nicely:

The Perfect Tea Towel: Skandium

I love stories. Tell me a tall tale, spin me a saga, feed me a fable and I'm hooked. Which is why this tea towel from Skandium is today's Perfect Tea Towel. 

This tea towel isn't just about its rich colours and the folk style of the illustrations (I particularly like the leaf and flower detailing). It's also about the story within the design, for me the imagery conjures up strange stories of dancing in forests, hiding in trees and floating on rivers. However...

...looking at the name of the design (Lustgarden) maybe my imaginings are a little vanilla... 

Lustgarden Tea Towel, price £25 from Skandium

Faves: Humblesticks

I spied this lovely new brand over on the excellent Mad About The House blog (which while I'm at it can I heartily recommend for amazing style, great finds and for making my guffaw at my desk on a regular basis) and I knew pretty much straight away that they would be popping up as a Fave very soon...and here they are!

So the brand is Humblesticks and they are an ace new band who rejuvenate found objects and vintage furniture. Luckily for us they now started selling these cool, creative products online. They also have a very nice logo. 

My fave (lots of choose from with them though) is this Forest Grande Lamp, I heart the simple demijohn lamp paired with the Marimekko print, both set off by the fab green flex. Very nice. 

Forest Demijohn Lamp, from Humblesticks, price £145 

Mondays are for Mugs: Gold

This Monday is dedicated to the very best gold mugs. Ahead of the festive season when I reckon we could all do with one of these glittering lovelies. As these would be perfect either for Christmas day coffees with multiple sugars or filled right up to the brim with buck's fizz. Your choice. I'm team buck's fizz: 

Gold Lustre Mugs, from Luna Lighting, price £25 

Gold Fragment Mug, from Room39, price £14 

Gold Mug, from Howkapow, price £7.95 

Gold Heart Mug, from Big Tomato Company, price £17.95 

Drip Tease Mug, from Reiko Kaneko, price £14 

The Perfect Tea Towel: Yoke

A sweet design, a nice message, a lovely gentle peppermint colourway, but the clincher? you know I'm a sucker for a good chevon:

Forrest Tea Towel, from Yoke, price £11 

Mug Shots: Moi

New thing:

Mug Shots and is a new little feature on my favourite topic..cats! Nah not really, it's about Mugs of course (as a feature called Cat Shots might not have quite the same ring to it...). 

So here's how it works...I'm going to be ask some people that amuse me to tell me about their very own fave mug and hopefully find out a little bit more about them too. As I'm (you might have noticed) a bit keen on cups, I reckon you can find out a lot about someone's life through their teacup tales. Maybe one day I'll even find someone with as much passion for porcelain as me (unlikely but let's see eh?). 

But let's start with the first Mug Shot and in a totally non-self-indulgent oh-she's-giving-herself-another-reason-to-natter-on-about-mugs-way...I'm kicking this off with my own answers!:

Mug not to scale (note to self: must work out perspective when taking photos or buy smaller mugs)

Tell me who you are?: I'm Amy, but if you call me Daisy I won't mind and probably won't even notice. 

What do you do? And how do you find yourself explaining it to people?: Other than interviewing myself for my own blog...? I'm an Interiors PR by day. I tell people this means I get pictures of cushions in magazines. But they still think I work in advertising, marketing or am a PA...

That's a nice mug, why have you chosen it?: Why thank you, it is from the Our Workshop website and has become a trusty fave. It is the perfect shape to fit a proper cuppa and I think it matches rather nicely with my breton stripes too. I picked it out randomly from my ever-growing collection (read: hoard) in which I have far too many silly sentimental reasons to pick out most of them. And already kinda wish I'd chosen this mug (below) simply as a picture of me holding it would have been my favourite kind of ridiculous:

What have you got in there? Tea? Coffee? Something with a bit more of a kick?: Supermarket own brand Lemsip tonight. Keeping it classy.

Are you picky about porcelain?: I swear by the adage that you enjoy a cup of tea more from your favourite mug. So even when I'm home alone I only drink hot drinks from my very favourite china. I take it quite personally if I'm given a cuppa in a substandard mug (too small, bad design, chipped or uninteresting) so maybe I'm a tiny bit picky. And I take *far* too much time deciding who gets which mug when making a tea round (it's always going to be Russian roulette when you have a moron mug in the collection). 

Any mug nightmare stories? When I first moved out of home I only had a plastic mug, for some strange reason. I soon learnt that drinking Cuppa Soup from a plastic cup means the synthetic minestrone taste never leaves the mug....it being the only mug I had no choice but to persevere and drink many a cup of tea from it afterwards. Which were all, in hindsight, pretty damn disgusting. 

Best mug moments?: I knew the boy was a keeper when I told him about a mug I'd seen featuring a scale of different tea colours...and he had one made for me. Definitely a keeper.

He's a keeper

First cuppa of the day?: Wake up. Shower. Kettle on...always 

And the final traditional question:  How do you take your tea?: Milk and no sugar please (and it's pretty much a given that I'll be having one)