We just spent two very busy days at the NY NOW (formerly the NY International Gift Fair) over the weekend! Too busy to capture some of the more elaborate booth displays, but here are a few! I can only imagine how much time and effort went into these displays. Stay tuned for the products we found!
We recently discovered these super chic vintage-inspired italian staplers at Present&Correct, a lovely stationery store based in London. They look like little whales! (Images below are from Present&Correct.)
And my very own in orange….
I was happy to see House Beautiful’s roundup of Folk Floral Fabrics recently and the their very first fabric, Talullah, caught my eye. It looked SO familiar, and then it occurred to me – Talullah, designed by Tulu, a beautiful boutique in Istanbul, is the very same fabric used on the clutches that we brought back from Istanbul. We had stumbled upon Tulu right next to the Blue Mosque and loved their shop instantly. We went a little crazy and picked up several items from vintage ikat bowls to suzani cushions. You can find clutches and pouches in the Talullah fabric, here at Harabu House. And here are the items we from Tulu that we brought back.
You’ve probably heard about it… the long lines at Ippudo, the Ramen noodle shop in NYC that is apparently to die-for. What was all the hype about? Naturally, being a lover of anything Japanese, I had to try it. Of course, I didn’t believe the stories about the long lines and decided to head over there for lunch. I showed up an hour after they had opened for the day, and I mean, what was I thinking? It didn’t seem like i was! I walk in, expecting a 30 minute wait, which is reasonable for a popular restaurant in Mahnttan. Instead, the wait for a table was on the order of 2 hours. Urgh! Sadly, I abandoned that quest and decided to come a bit more prepared the next time.
So last weekend, I rallied up the troops and got there at exactly 11am, when they opened. There were already 20 people in front of me, but thankfully since our entire party was there, we were seated right away! I ordered some shishito peppers, steamed pork buns, baby cucumbers and of course a hot steaming bowl of the spicy ramen. Wow, they weren’t kidding. I’ve never had a better bowl of ramen before, EVER! And I grew up in South East Asia. The wait was most certainly worth every last drop!
We’ve had quite a bit of snow lately, and not to mention some pretty frigid temperatures along with that. All this white outside made me think of ice hotels in Scandinavia. I’ve always wanted to stay in one, although given how well i’m adapting to this winter’s cold, perhaps I’d be better off just VISITING an ice hotel so i can scratch it off my bucket list…. or come to think of it, these images might just suffice!
Babble.com did a run down of 10 Most Amazing Ice Hotels, which you can find here. Here are a few additional images from Pinterest that I found particularly stunning. Enjoy and stay WARM!
And my absolute favorite……
