That Week in September + Naked Cakes

September is a crazy month for us. It starts with a new school year (or in this years' case - new schools), it's the busiest month of our business year and at the end of the month I will be hosting a pop-up tearoom at home as part of Macmillan Cancer Support's 'World's Biggest Coffee Morning'.

The kid's have been settling in well at school, particularly Lily. Arthur is mostly taking it in his stride, but is coming home (at lunchtime!) exhausted. He is due to start full-days after next week - I'm unsure if he is ready for it. We have the option to keep him part-time till after Christmas, so we'll see how he goes next week and decide.

Next week David and I are off to London to play our part in the London Design Festival. As last year, we will relocate our press office to Tent London. This years show, along with its sister show Super Brands London, looks set to be an must-see design event. My three-part review from last year can be found here, here and here, if you want to get a flavour of it. It's well worth a visit.

My parents will be coming to stay and look after the kids, ferrying them to and from school and taking in swimming lessons and cinema trips already scheduled for next weekend. I couldn't think of anyone better to leave the kids with, but despite them being 8 and 4 and doing this 'September thing' for several years now, I still hate leaving them and seem to spend my time in London with a permanent knot in my stomach, which won't subside until I return home.

Once back from London, I have under a week to prepare for my pop-up tearoom, so I've been trying to bake a few sponges this week - the ones that freeze really well - in order to get ahead. Naked, they look very plain, but once filled, iced and decorate they should look irresistible. So far there is a Honey & Poppyseed sponge and a Lemon & Almond Sponge - by the end of the weekend there will also be a Courgette sponge.

This will be my second year as part of the World's Biggest Coffee Morning. Last year was a huge success; exhaustingly busy, but well worth it. You can read about it here. Macmillan's are a worthy charity who I like to support. My original reason for getting involved with Macmillan was in memory of my father-in-law who we lost to cancer 10 years ago, but in the last year two friends of mine have been diagnosed with cancer - these are women who are in my age group with young children. The help that Macmillan's provide when your world is turned upside-down is priceless. In my mind holding this annual event is really a no brainer. Fingers-crossed, in two weeks from now, I'll have a heavy donation box and just crumbs left on the table ..... and normality will return as we move from a busy September into (a hopefully less hectic) October.

Photographs: Buttercup Days

Tent London: Part Three

Hot on the heels of my last post, here are the rest of my picks from Tent London ...

Tamasyn Gambell has designed a series stunning graphic interior fabrics that have a vintage and art-deco feel to them. She has teamed up with with Førest London, who import mid-century Scandinavian furniture, to re-upholster some key pieces of furniture with her fabrics. For Tent London, Tamasyn  was commissioned by Ercol to create a bespoke contemporary fabric for the iconic 203 Windsor armchair. Needless to say it was a much admired piece of the exhibition.

I had to do a double take when I saw 'George' on an exhibitors stand. George, for those who don't know, is a bit of a favourite in our household. He is a rather loveable children's book character from the book 'Oh No, George' by Chris Haughton. I know it's probably rather shallow to judge a book by its cover, but when I bought this book some time ago for Arthur that is just what I did. The illustrations use such a great colour palette and that sold it to me. Of course, the story is great too and it is one of Arthurs all time favourite bedtime reads. If you're looking to buy a great kids book, you can't go wrong with this. Anyway... so there was George at Tent, amongst some rather stunning rugs. It turned out that Chris Haughton is also a rug designer too. 

Before he became involved in books Chris was active in fair trade and has been a supporter and designer for the fair trade company People Tree for many years. In 2010 he took 8 months off to to re-connect to fair trade and find ways his design could work more directly with the fair trade groups in Nepal. Images of his rug designs became popular on the web and were featured in many blogs. Designers were emailing to ask if they could design their own rugs and buyers were emailing to ask if they could buy them. Node was set up to help facilitate this. Node works with some of today's leading designers and illustrators, converting their images into the highest quality hand-made fair trade carpets. 

One of the highlights at Tent was 100% Norway: a showcase of the countries best contemporary design. As a huge fan of Scandinavian design, it's always an exhibition I'm keen to see. There were several pieces that more than appealed to me this year, but these little wooden birds by Lars Beller Fjetland for Italian company Discipline won me over. Each one is made from old table or chair leg. Now that really is taking recycled products to an altogether more stylish level, don't you agree?

On The Back Foot + A Belated Happy Birthday

That's where I've been most of the last week; on the back foot. New routines coupled with our busiest work period always makes September a busy month in our household.

The children are now back at school and playgroup. The've settled nicely into their new routines. Arthur is now doing four mornings a week meaning I have an extra 4 hours a week in the office; barely enough but over a week or the month I hope it will make a positive difference to our ever-demanding workload. 

Next week is a biggie for our business as the London Design Festival kicks in. We handle the PR for two of the festival's biggest events, Tent London and Super Brands London. We've been working tirelessly since May with the exhibiting designers and show organisers to create as much coverage on the events as possible. During the event David, I and the whole team decamp to London for five days to work from our pop-up press office housed in The Old Truman Brewery. It's five, long, tiring, busy days but also five days full of buzz and celebration. It's also our key time of the year in which we can meet industry colleagues, old friends and hopefully forge new relationships and work contracts. We're also rebranding and changing our company name (more of that at a later date) and we'll be setting out the seeds to that change at Tent London and Super Brands London, which is kind of exciting too. In a nutshell it's a pretty important five days for us.

It will be a strange feeling staying up in London for those days next week. My parents will be down to care for the children and keep their busy little schedules ticking over. I know that Lily and Arthur will adore having Nanny and Grandad to stay and look after them, but I'll really miss them as I am so not used to not having them around.

Finally, I want to say a big, albeit belated, HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my wonderful brother who became another year older at the weekend. He may (or may not) appreciate the photographs above. We must have been around 6 and 3 in these pictures, but I love them; they really make me smile.