Hiphopsideproject

Just a couple of photos from last Saturday when we were in London. Our hotel was a couple of minutes walk from Tower bridge & the Tower of London, I really suck at outdoor super sunny photography, really need to figure out how to do that.. hum.

These were the last photos from that day as we headed out towards our show after checking in at the hotel, but I will be writing a little about the meal we had that evening at Wahaca (amazingly nice, cheap & relaxed Mexican food).

Whilst in London we visited the BUST craftacular, originally I’d applied to be a vendor but didn’t get a spot, but there were lots of lovely makers that I wanted to see and people that I wanted to meet. We got their early, about 11.15, and the queues were already growing so we decided to hang-out and wait.. it meant we’d be one of the first 100 so we’d get a free goody bag each, too. It was blazing heat, though, so it was a bit shitty being stood outside for ages.

The craftacular was great though, a lovely busy vibe.. I took some photos of the crowds (er, probably should’ve taken other photos but was a bit warm/flustered so kinda forgot). We wandered around for a while and chatted with people that I’ve known online for ages but never met in real life before, so that was nice. Also had an iced tea from Leona’s Iced Tea stall (Leona is the lady behind ladyluckrulesok) which helped cool us down!

I’ll do some separate posts later this week featuring my favourite vendors from the fair, I have a few old faves and some new ones to boot.

PHEWWWW. What a whirlwind weekend we had London, barely had time to pause. I’m going to be doing a few posts on the things we did/saw, hope you don’t mind. Don’t really care if you do ‘cos it’s my blog anyway…!

First stop!

We arrived in London at 9.45am on Saturday (after waking up at 5.45am, walking to the train station and tripping down on a fast leaning train) and our first stop was 221b Baker Street. Unfortunately the circle line was closed all weekend, so we had to kinda get our bearings and find another tube station, we ended up walking to Tottenham Court Rd and got the tube from their to Baker Street.

We had a specific location in mind, and that was the living quarters of that fabulous fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes. On our walk there we also past a former residence of H. G. Wells, this was turning into quite the literary excursion!

We didn’t have an incredible amount of time to spend there, so we didn’t bother going into the museum part of 221b Baker Street, instead we just browsed around the shop part. The shop was full of trinkets, curios and general over-priced tourist knick-knacks. You can see them all on the website. Quite a lot of great inspiration for some projects that I’m working on at the moment, too!

I also really loved Baker Street tube station, here are the tiles that adorn the walls. Amazing, I want these in my library (er.. when I build one) next to my giant fireplace (again with the ‘when’).

… We’re heading to London. We set off at 6.45am (woah.. early) tomorrow morning and plan to do some super touristy things. It’s weird, we travel the world, yet hardly ever go to our own capital city. The reason for our visit revolves around the BUST craftacular, as some fo you know, I applied to be a vendor this year but didn’t get a spot. That was kinda gutting, but we’ve planned a really nice weekend anyway, so I’m not too bothered anymore.

Saturday

After arriving we’re heading straight towards 221b Baker Street, from they’re we’ll travel across to Bethnal Green to the BUST craftacular. I know quite a few of the vendors that are going to be there so it’ll be good to meet a few of them! There’s also some FinestImaginary items for sale at the All Things Original stall. After we’ve had chance to look around the fair we’re going to head to our hotel. We booked a ‘secret hotel’ through lastminute.com which turned out to be Apex City of London (which looks super posh, even though we’ll hardly be there..!). It’s right by the Tower of London so after checking in the plan is to go and take a look there, and Tower Bridge. Then we’ll be heading back to the hotel to get ready for our late afternoon/evening shenanigans. We’re planning on eating at Wahaca before walking over to Victoria – hopefully via Buckingham palace et. al. – where we’ll be going to the Apollo Victoria to see Wicked.. omg!

Sunday

Hoping for a relatively early start! First stops will be sight-seeing places around Westminster, which I’m hoping will be quietish on a Sunday morning? Then we’ll be heading up to Regents Street & Oxford Circus for some heaving window shopping. Definitely wanting to hit Anthropologie, Liberty and the flagship Topshop.  As we’ll be near two, we thought we’d try LEON for a late lunch. Has anyone been? So our train back is at 5.45pm, if we have time we might head over to Camden for a stroll.

Fun times! It’s meant to be an epic heat wave this weekend.. gah! I’m taking my 400d with a 50mm lens on (the perfect light-weight travel lens, I find). Expect some photo posts next week.

These past few weeks we’ve been able to start picking a few of our homegrown treats out of the garden. The peas all came up great and there’s been a nice little harvest of sweet green pods. Not really sure what’s going on with the plants now because some of them have gone a bit yellow…? I’m going to try feeding them and not watering them too much, not sure if they’ve been over watered. We’ll see. I’ve read a little online but can’t seem to find what the problem might be. At least we’ve had a small crop from them.

We’ve also grown strawberries successfully for the first time! Wooo! last year we tried but no fruit appeared, however this year the same plant has come through and produced some super sweet fruits.

There’s still plenty of other things growing in the vegetable patch & greenhouse, too:

• Tomatoes
• Red onions
• Leeks (or rather, a leek.. erm.. bit of a leek disaster)
• Butternut squash
• Sweet peppers
• Habanero chilis
• Scotch bonnet chilis
• Cayenne chilis