Liberty London

Last weekend I had the opportunity to *finally* visit Liberty. I know it was very overdue especially that almost every English crafty friend I had recommended it. Liberty was tucked away from the main street, which makes it more of a destination. The shop was established in 1875 by Arthur Liberty. After the great success it was received with, this current Tudor style building was completed in the 1920s. It was designed by Edwin T. Hall and his son Edwin S. Hall and constructed from the timber of two ships: HMS Impregnable and HMS Hindustan. You can clearly see all of this in the facade. Read more about the history on the Liberty's main website.  

There are few doors to Liberty and my favourite one was the florist front. The flowers were colourful and smelled so good. 

and you go in and see more arrangement choices and lovely flower pots and bits. 

The interior design of the place is as magnificent as the architecture, especially with the quadruple open ceiling that ends with a glass roof that brings a lot of natural light. The style of balconies on each floor of the four floors makes the whole store interconnected. 

The design and the divisions of spaces are symmetrical and angular. 

There are many subsections for all the different available categories from fashion, accessories, stationary, home ware, furniture to everything in between.    

Below is my favourite shot, when the elevator opened and had a second to click. It really felt like Liberty is an open door to fashion. 

I loved the lights that were dangling from the fourth floor to the ground floor. It gave an urban feel to the historic space. 

The building was designed to have three main wells and each one will have smaller surrounding rooms to give a homey feel to the visitors. The other well area had these beautiful crystal chandeliers.  

The ground floor of accessories and stationery was fabulous and tempting was hard to escape the sparkle and all the little goodies. The third and fourth floors were decor, furniture, cookery and interior design accessories. I have a special blog post about that, but take a little sneak peek!  

They also had a beautiful craft section with YARN! *my love* fabric, threads, buttons and more beautiful crafty things that I couldn't resist. 

Look at all the beautiful options!

All high quality and with lots of yummy colours!

Overall, Liberty was a lovely place to visit and to be inspired by. Highly recommended if you are visiting London. 

Beauty in the Surroundings: Greenwich

Happy Tuesday everyone! Today was one of those gorgeous sunny days that are RARE here in the UK! I was up early for a machine knitting class in Greenwich Community College, which I will review this weekend. On the way,  I couldn't help but notice the beautiful surroundings! Greenwich is such a lovely and quiet area with a lot of beautiful spots and colourful doors :) I felt very blessed walking there & taking pictures was a MUST! *mashallah* 

A mysterious path

Signs of spring!
Other trees are still catching up 

Greenwich Park

A lovely house and vibrant garden! The purple and yellow combo is GREAT!

A scene of the city from the top of the hill

Hot pink door! My favourite colour! 

Very trendy door with the mint green colour painted on!

Bright blue door that match the trousers I was wearing!

Door with stained glass

Old door that reminded me of old glorious movie scenes 

A big white house that reminded me of Spanish and Mexican architecture

Lovely smelling flowers with all spring colours on Royal hill

Gorgeous local produce on Royal Hill

Fresh Bread and cheese from Cheeseboard.
They do local deliveries

Of course there was a bookstore there!
All these books were 1 pound each! 

GoodAndProper Tea

Happy Tuesday everyone! 

I started this week with an invite to a tea tasting event for GoodProperTea at Sofa.com in their beautiful show room in Chelsea (thank you for telling me about this miss HOPinteriors). I also met the UK editor of Remodelista, Christine! Gorgeous interiors and amazing tea is the perfect start for any week! Read on, I will tell you all about it.

The beautiful Sofa.com show room in Chelsea

I loved their upstairs design corner! I want it to be my office! 

You all realize how much I already love tea, right? Yesterday my love for tea grew ten times more! I thought I knew what a good cup of tea tasted like and I was even feeling like somewhat of an expert, but yesterday I tasted a GOOD and PROPER cuppa. The brand is called that, too! The name really reflects the quality and the taste.

Let me tell you a little about Good&Proper. It's a new company that was set up in 2012 by British entrepreneur Emilie Holmes, who was so frustrated with not finding a place that sells GOOD tea in London! The land of tea. Every time she goes to a coffee shop, her friends get amazing cups of coffee with a lot of work in them and she gets a dusty tea bag. So, she started a mission and a brand going around London with her van and her pop up shops giving people a taste of real tea in it's real form. She found a gap in the market and she went for it! Now, she is educating the nation about tea and spreading the yumminess! When you get a cup of tea from GP, it's the perfect temperature and perfect timing. You don't get a tea bag to faff around with. You just get really good tea!  

Wouldn't you just want this parked outside your house?! source

Tea Secret: use filtered water! 

The Good&Proper Brew Bar set up. This is similar to how it looks in the van!

Tea Secret: If your tea tastes wrong then the water was too hot and it burned the tea! 

The kinds of teas we tried

Each tea from the ones above was in its natural form without any additives or extra flavouring. Tasting the natural flavour of each tea was a great experience. The tea on its own is perfect without anything else. 

Tea Fact: All teas come from the same exact plant, whether they are black, green, white or anything in between. What makes them different is the preparation process and the amount of oxdization they get.   

Black Teas:

They could take hot water on 100-90 degrees

• Ceylon. This one was strong and full bodied.  
• Golden Tips: Asam. The tea leaf was really cool. It actually has golden tips! 
• Darjeeling 2nd Flush: It tasted a little spicy and mature. I am having it this morning. I am on my second cup it's so delicious. 
• Keemun: It tasted a little chocolaty and SO GOOD! To me that was the lightest black tea. 

Semi Black/ Semi Green Tea (Aka Olong):

These two were my favorite teas (starting from yesterday!). They tasted just right! The water temperature should be 90-85

• Honey Orchid: Dark olong. Tasted like honey and it was sweet, light, rosy and just wonderful.
• Yellow Gold: Light olong. This was happiness in a cup! very relaxing and up lifting. It even supplied me with sweet tea dreams heheh.

Green Teas:

Least amount of heat 75-65

• Jade Tips: This one was a perfect flowery and fresh green tea. 
• Sencha: This is an everyday Japanese green tea. It tasted more veggie and grassy. 

Emilie Holmes pouring goodness into our cups

Tea Fact: There are no calories in tea! 

Kate from Sofa getting a taste!

Of course there was homemade brownies afterwards! bye bye fake diet!

My generous gift from Good&Proper *mashallah* 

I used it this morning for a very delicious cuppa!
By the way, that infuser is really good quality. Get one from here 

Good and Proper have really thought of all the details. From the amazing quality of their teas to the very smart packaging! I am already planning how many gift boxes I want to get for all my tea lover friends! It was a really good experience! Getting all these useful information and tasting that very yummy teas! Thank you Sofa.com for arranging it. I think tea tasting is the new best thing! 

For more info and pix from Sofa.com & GP tea, follow them on twitter and Instagram 

Sofa.com Twitter

Sofa.com Instagram

Good&Proper Twitter

Good&Proper Instagram 

Royal Academy of Arts: Sensing Spaces

I started this week with a visit to the Royal Academy of Arts to see their new exhibition sensing spaces. Seven architecture firms were invited to participate. They came from six different countries. They are Grafton Architects, Diébédo Francis Kéré, Kengo Kuma, Li Xiaodong, Pezo von Ellrichshausen, Álvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto de Moura. It was great to see such expression from different architect. Each had a different voice, a set of concepts and a unique way of sensing a space. They were all inspiring. The exhibition is worth a visit and Royal Academy has a late night opening on Fridays! You could go check it then or this weekend :D

Bellow are the pictures I took myself with a little captions about which architect designed what and a some thought! Enjoy :)

I walked from Green Park tube station and this is the first thing I spotted 

Entrance! 

This where I started my exploration. I had to go through it, then around it. I stood there trying to understand it. 

It was done by Álvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto de Moura

From the above room's entrance I saw straws of colours and that instantly grabbed me.
I saw children on the sides and adults playing with the different straws. I was puzzled for a second. I wanted to go play with what they were playing with, but then my social norms kicked in and I heard my grandpa in my head "just look and don't touch anything" bless him. It took me few minutes of looking around until I understood that I was MEANT to participate. From what I observed this was the most interactive installation and the architect intended for it to be. He drew it from his own culture, where everyone took part of building and making of the architecture. I thought that concept was beautiful because everything is a collaboration. By the way, this installation started PLAIN and all the colours you see were done by the visitors in the past few weeks.    

This installation was done by Diébédo Francis Kéré  

I continued walking until I saw this built structure. I wasn't sure of what it was until I got closer! these columns are spiral stair cases and it takes you to the top! There was a ramp in the back that would take you up too.

This was done by Pezo von Ellrichshausen

A top view when I climbed all the way up! 

After this space, I saw people going through dark curtains and I followed them to be greeted by these beautiful installation of light extending above. I loved it! 

This was done by Kengo Kuma 

I kept going and I saw this built structure that felt like it was hanging from the ceiling. It was a great structure to control light and see how placement could affect our moods. This one was dark.

This was made by Grafton Architects

Light source from the top of the structure.

This is a shot of the same above picture, but with different settings to show the actual structure.

But it was followed by a well lit, white structure. The contrast between the two spaces were powerful. 

This was also done by Grafton Architects

Overall, I enjoyed my visited. It filled my mind with creative ideas and a new understanding of space. I hope you enjoyed this post :) Please feel free to share your thoughts on the exhibition in the comments below :D