After more than ten fulfilling, magical years beginning in the good old days of 2012, Hello Pretty is retiring and heading off to the beach with a drink with a tiny umbrella.
Read our goodbye letter
So 2015 is the year of the goat - not that I need any particular reason to buy new things!
Celebrate with some of the cute goat inspired products on the site:
Clickitty click!
Towards the end of last year, we were lucky enough to spend one lazy Sunday together, drinking wine and absolutely gorging ourselves on the most incredible food.
It was a pretty great opportunity just to be together outside of work, unplugged, to reflect on our year. It just gave us a rare quiet moment (or like, three hours worth of lunch) to talk about what we had achieved, and what we wanted to achieve in 2015. Because we are all constantly moving and travelling, to be able to do that together is really rare, and we couldn't have asked for a better setting.
We headed out to The Table at De Meye on the most beautiful day with the top down, wind in our hair, Taylor Swift blaring. (Shame. Our one male team member has ZERO say in our music choices.)
We were welcomed with a complimentary wine tasting, and obviously all left clutching new bottles - the wine is delicious, easy to drink almost any time (our favourite) and super well priced. What a win.
But then the food. Oh the food. I don't even know where to start. Actually just look for yourself:
That my friends, in amongst the vineyards, under the trees, is a beetroot tarte tatin with sour cream and "magic greens" (a mix of over 20 micro herb, vegetable and salad leaves). I DON'T EVEN LIKE BEETROOT! And there I was shoveling it in my face like a fat kid with cake.
Jess Shepard, you are a wizard.
Other amazing treats on the menu included
...
Sorry, I just had to take a second there. I was having a minor saliva situation.
But basically, the point of this post is to highly recommend going there. The people are kiff, the venue is drop dead gorgeous, and the food is basically art. It's fancy without the fuss, laid back without skimping on quality or details.
The folks who run the place are husband and wife team Luke and Jess, and they're really lovely people - I emailed back and forth about changing bookings and increasing table sizes and all sorts of nonsense beforehand (Ja I was *that* person), and they handled it with incredible grace, and welcomed us like family when our windswept selves finally arrived. (Driving with the top down has its pros, but also it's cons.)
And the dog is a real sweetie too!
Treat yo'self. Email jess.chef@gmail.com for bookings. Thank me later.
Big plans for Valentine's Day? Need to look fabulous on the day? Look no further - we're got you covered from your ears to your toes!
I spotted these lovely, tasty looking bits of chocolatey goodness on the interwebz last week, and felt that it was compulsory to share: Chocolates That Represent Japanese Onomatopoeic Words To Describe Texture. I mean. Just look at them.
'There are many factors that determine our experience with chocolate: the type of cocoa, the percentage used, and the flavors. But when Maison et Objet, the pre-eminent design show in France, told Oki Sato that they were naming him Designer Of The Year and asked him to design a set of chocolates, he had to pause. The head of the Tokyo and Milan-based design studio Nendo needed to rethink the concept of chocolate.
Nendo has created “Chocolatexture,” a series of 9 chocolates, all the same size, but each representing a Japanese onomatopoeic word that describes texture.
“The 9 different types of chocolate are made within the same size, 26x26x26mm, featuring pointed tips, hollow interiors, smooth or rough surface textures,” says Sato. “And while the raw materials are identical, the distinctive textures create different tastes.”'
Delicious as well as beautiful? I am definitely in favour of that idea!
New year, new stationery - I'm surely not the only one who gets excited by new books with blank pages?
We're all about that new notebook smell!
Clickety click!
