Seed & Bean: funky festival chocolate

Continuing on from my last post, here is another blog entry I did for YOU magazine. Yes, essentially re-blogging myself does make me a lazy blogger, but the sheer beauty and deliciousness of the chocolate makes up for that (I hope).

Gone are the days of the lowly humdrum chocolate bar. Now, it seems, chocoholics are on the hunt for the funkiest flavours and jazziest packaging and the latest offerings from Seed & Bean provide just that.

As the official chocolate bar of this year’s Glastonbury Festival and with packaging featuring the psychedelic retro designs of artist Matt Lyons, this is chocolate at its most stylish.

The smooth and delicious treats come in three flavours: Milk Chocolate with Cornish Sea Salt and West Indies Lime, White Chocolate Raspberry and Vanilla, and Dark Chocolate with Sicilian Hazelnut. The white chocolate option, which tastes like real raspberry ice-cream, was a big hit in the YOU office.

To top it all off Seed & Bean also have top eco credentials, as the UK’s only 100% ethically accredited chocolate company – even their wrapping is biodegradable!

At £2.29 each, these bars will be out in shops from September, but if you can’t wait until then you can find them online now, seedandbean.co.uk.

Vintage clothing, elaborate door knockers and my Mum.

I’m quite proud of my mum. Not only because she is the Queen of macaroni cheese (a much coveted title I know) and her multi-tasking talents reach the brink of human ability, but also because she has well and truly embraced vintage chic*!

(*Of course, by ‘vintage’ I mean ‘second-hand’, but that doesn’t sound quite so glamorous)

It seems that every time I see her she’s sporting some new item that she “just picked up from the local charity shop in my lunch break”.

But my mother has made a recent discovery and, gosh, she’s really outdone herself this time. If they allowed 50-something women into the Brownies, she’d be sewing the I’m-a-vintage-QUEEN badge onto her sash as I type.

Molly’s Den is not just a charity shop, it is an Aladdin’s cave bursting with vintage, second-hand, antique, upcycled goods including, but not limited to, furniture, clothing, books, pin-up pictures, ornaments, records, wedding dresses, kitchen utensils, and random elaborate door knockers!

As I have frequented this two-floor 16,000 square ft warehouse during my last two visits home, I thought it was only right to dedicate a blog to it and the many wonders found inside.

What I particularly like is how out of place it feels. Molly’s Den would be quite at home in some trendy back street of Islington or Camden, but instead its home is a small industrial estate in a corner of Dorset. It makes a country girl proud!

I could have wondered around it for hours and, of course, that’s exactly what Mum and I did.

Some top buys so far include a cute shirt for work and a vintage cream jug with the spout painted like a fox’s head – Mum was particularly proud of that one.

Plus, to top it off, there’s cake! Gosh, I love Dorset.

Wrappings of goodness.

If you want an ethical alternative to wrapping paper or just haven’t had the time/ money to pick some up, then why not try wrapping the goods up in good ol’ fashioned newspaper and jazzing it up with some coloured tape?

My photography skills may not be award-winning, but I think it creates rather cute, quirky presents (and is a little kinder to the environment, of course!). I only hope that my sister agreed – Happy Birthday sis!

You could use anything really – ribbons, coloured glue, painted pasta… – and finding newspaper pages with stories and images the birthday girl or guy would like is a nice touch too.

(NB. Check all newspaper clippings for horrific, un-birthday-ish stories and images; that would not create the fun festive feeling you’re going for!)

What a corker!

I can’t tell you exactly when it all started, but at some point in my life I began to collect corks… as you do.

During the many hours spent mulling over beautiful, crafty blogs, I have come across a great number of great cork projects.

So, obviously, I started collecting them – just picking them up whenever I saw fit, telling myself that they were only going to be thrown away anyway and I was going to make a masterpiece out of them. A masterpiece!!

Well, needless to say, the masterpiece still hasn’t quite happened and, instead, I have a draw full of clandestine corks.

So I thought I’d scour the web to find some of my favourite cork-orientated craft ideas.  Several hours after starting the search, I can say, or rather type, with confidence that today’s young cork entrepreneur really is bloody spoilt for choice!

(L to R): 1) Cork ornaments/ pendants 2) Place card holders 3) Classic cork board 4) Pretty little stamps 5) Trivet and coasters 6) Hand decorated key rings