Last Saturday was a beautiful day—sunshine, nice breezes and full-blooms everywhere. I was invited to an open house by a Japanese Gifu craft showroom in west LA. Since I need to find some unique kitchenwares for couple of projects. I decided to take a little road trip.
As you can see, I always love to stop and small flowers specially when it is spring season.By entering the showroom, OMG, I was just amazed by how they arranged these beautiful organic kitchenwares with a little touch of ikebana–subtle, calming yet elegant.
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What I hold is a mini donabe condiment bowl. It is just so cute. Donabe is a kind of Japanese traditional earth-ware(clay pot). You can see how we open these little donabe from the following video.
These little bowels for sure put me in a good appetite.
We found this cool middle-size clay smoker with various kinds of charcoal choices.And look, this lid also serves ads a bowel.What a genius idea!Tradition Japanese Hoba miso in Gifu–grill miso over dried magnolia leaf for an unique aroma.
So, if you are in the process to re-organize or re-style your kitchen for spring cleaning here are several tips to make the task fun and easier:
Kitchenwares are one of the major components in the kitchen. So, find something that is Love in the first sight. When you have something you truly like and enjoy, you probably won’t feel it is not really that boring to do any chore in the kitchen.
Have some fresh flowers or greenery in your kitchen no matter how small and how simple your kitchen is. I guarantee those little beauties will brighten up your everyday-life.
Have the habit of collecting inspiring menus that talk to you. That way, you know how you are going to use your kitchen and how you would like to arrange and display your kitchenwares.
It will be a good idea to have couple pieces of earth wares–they are natural, organic and artsy, and always remind you of your mom’s kitchen. So at the end of the day, you may find kitchen is your favorite place to wind down and reconnect with the family.
Finally, rain stops and sun is out. And most importantly, the weather is finally getting warm up to 70 degree in Los Angeles. I know it has been a weird cold for a very long time since last Nov. I think I prefer the warmer weather with a lot sunshines. Who wouldn’t?
Well, it is March and spring is just around the corner and Easter is coming soon. I just cannot wait to put up a beautiful outdoor tabletop for entertaining with some fresh color palettes and romantic components. What about you?
So, I decided to go through some photos and videos from the events we have been to recently for inspiration. Then I found this video I shot—I wish I could have done it better. Maybe next time. But the whole set-up, organic components, the sun-lights, crystals and yummy cookies in pastel colors and of course fresh flower pedals really talk to me. I love how they have a large wood branch as a center piece with elegant crystal sculptures scattering around. The contrast between organic elements and high-polished items creates such a beautiful , moody, refined yet relaxed and casual atmosphere. And fresh flower pedals all over the table are just such a romantic touch. It’s a dream afternoon.
Guys, it’s middle of the week. We probably all need a little bit refreshing break from the busy week. I recently went to an art opening reception and was really amazed by how they styled the table with all natural ingredients and beautiful spring colors. Of course, the food was just beyond fresh and delicious. Everything was made from scratch. So they are local and very Los Angeles. Here are some photos and a video I would love to share with you:
It’s a relaxed vibe. Spring is here. Everything is so fresh and just out of the garden. Don’t you just love these spring colors? They look yummy!The spicy Tofu rolls are gone but I just love these beautiful leaves.Yes. Rapeseed is in full bloom in Los Angeles. I love how they style rapeseed flowers together with pomegranate seeds–so spring!Here are the spicy tofu rolls. They goes very fast!a moody moment
In case, you are interested in learning their story, here is the link. I hope you get some inspirations for your backyard spring parties. Life is about celebrating the moments.
When the sun shines through the windows, that is when magic happens. We realize it is spring time. Fresh, fashionable and feminine, this IS the theme for our Spring Story collection in fashion, home and art:
I am always looking for inspiration from my surroundings, nature, tech, art… And , of course, the fashion. I am so so fascinated by this week’s Paris Couture Fashion Show. It is the best time to stretch one’s imagination. Don’t you agree with me?
One of my favorites is Valentino Couture. The house designer Pierpaolo Piccioli truely took ‘ Florals for Spring’ to a new level. It is beyond ordinary beautiful. From the fresh color palettes to romantic dreamy floral patterns, these designs are such joyful eye candies. It looks like the designer brought a spring garden to runway. I couldn’t wait to share them with you:
Happy New Year! Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season. We’d been busy traveling and making keto cookies for the holiday season and here are some memories I would love to share from our holidays. Enjoy!
Home-made keto ginger man cookiesChristmas tabletop with red roses and fine china.SoCal CanalChristmasI am so obsessed by this little red door with a Christmas wreathWinter by the Canal
Christmas and New year are offically in count-down now. Hope you are in a mood for just being festive to celebrate the end of 2018.
One thing that fascinates me about holiday is the cheerful jewel-tone color palette. I feel that most people are just too scared to use the rich jewel-tone colors on the regular days. But those colors are not just for holidays and they do make you happier and enhances your appetite. And most importantly, they are from Nature. So this rich color jewel-tone palette can actually put you at ease and remind you it is time to celebrate. I finally find the time to put together our Thanksgiving table set and will sure update this post soon. Enjoy!
Wouldn’t be nice we have this long weekend holiday and it’s in May. It’s such a beautiful season to pamper ourselves with all of Spring beauties. My favorite are always about blue-and-whites, greenery, pink blooms, gardens, sunshine, fresh air… How about you? How are you going to celebrate MemorialLong-weekend?
Hope you celebrated green and had a wonderful St. Patrick’s Day yesterday. We always love St. Patrick’s day not because it’s fun and cool, also because it is usually the time for us to kick off the season of Spring entertaining. Specially after the several times of raining showers, everything in our garden just starts blooming. So, of course, inspired by the warm and clear sunshine and beautiful blooms in our garden, we decided to have a causal in-home celebration by cooking comfy Irish beef stew and put up an organic spring-theme tabletop to enjoy. You may want to do the same thing too, but may be just intimated by the complicated task and think maybe the other time. Well, life is about celebrating every moment. We are celebrating by doing and engaging as much as we can. Therefore, it is much more fun for memories and does excise your creative muscles a lot. But there are some simple ways to make in-home entertaining much less a daunted task. Here are 7 tips we would love to share to make spring entertaining fun, simps and stylish.
Just go to the outdoor and go to your backyard garden. You will be inspired by nature a lot and make you desire to bring nature to home. Since our garden is blooming, we just got everything from the garden—grass, roses, wild flowers, branches, herbs…
love these beautiful large yellow roses just picked from our garden. They are truly the super star for the table-top.Fresh picked greeneries from our back yard simply make you cheerful.We always love to incorporate some elegant textiles for the table top.
the wild flowers from the back yard.
2. Please don’t wrap up your fine china and put them away at somewhere you even cannot find. Yes, please display your chinaware at the place you can easily see. Therefore, you always want to use them.
love the details on the edge of this Italian white plate.The antique cup from Grandma
3. Plan,plan,plan. Write down the theme and food you would like to serve. For St. Patrick’s day table top, we wanted to celebrate the season of spring, so we had a lot of green-leaf veggies and in-season colorful root veggies. The next is to prepare the menu. For ours menu is mainly Irish beef stew with some green veggie cakes and green-leaf salad. We actually cooked the beef stew a night before in a slower cooker.
Guinnes is the key for comfy Irish stew to make the soup yummy and rich-flavored. Our main ingridients also include grass-feed beef and grass-feed butter.love these fresh pinkish reddish
4. Well, just sit back and enjoy.
5. Take time to take the photos for what you just do and you will be inspired to host next party.
