Love list #4

A tiny list of the things that I am currently loving

Hello, and welcome to the home of The Tiny Department Store. Here you will find my weekly newsletter where I share the behind the scenes of setting up a small business and working towards making my dream of opening a concept store a reality. Without premises or a large budget I plan to create the world’s tiniest department store, measuring just the dimensions of the wooden box on the front of my shiny blue bicycle. The Tiny Department Store will pop up once a month with a new theme and a limited edition range of products that constantly evolve. I will also give you a peek inside my world, sharing snippets of my daily life, travels and inspirations. I would love you to join me on this journey x

Reading

I have absolutely loved delving into Sea and Shore by Emily Scott, a beautiful recipe book that I have been reading as if a novel. Emily transports me to Cornwall and makes me homesick for the seasons of England. Her words both soothe and inspire, as she shares snapshots of food memories interwoven with descriptions of the weather, landscape and personal anecdotes. We have already made several of the recipes including the tomato sauce and pistachio biscotti and the instructions were easy to follow and the outcomes delicious. I highly recommend this lovely book and as luck would have it, Emily’s second book Time and Tide is about to hit the shelves in a matter of days (I have my copy pre-ordered!) You can also find Emily, here on substack where she generously shares her passion for food and storytelling and makes you yearn to visit Cornwall.

Watching

I have binge watched the entire series of Breakpoint on Netflix, having it playing in the background whilst I have been working. It is a fascinating insight into the high pressure world of tennis, introducing the next generation of stars. I particularly loved watching the American, Taylor Fritz and the Tunisian power house Ons Jabeur! My husband grew up in Wimbledon and we will be staying in his family home for the next week, as we begin our summer travels. It is impossible not to feel the tennis fever in the air, as both the town and village are transformed for the occasion, making it feel like you are in the midst of a carnival of the very best kind. Whilst we sadly don’t have tickets, it is quite easy to walk to the grounds and get late entry tickets for about £10. We did this last summer and managed to get onto a couple of courts. Jake and Posy enjoyed fish and chips whilst I had a glass of pimms on Henman Hill as we watched the end of play. Fingers crossed we manage to do this again!

Listening

It is no secret that I love a podcast and always have several on the go. One I have been particularly enjoying is Ruthie’s Table 4, where Ruthie Rodgers, the talented chef and owner of The River Cafe in London interviews customers who have grown to become great friends. Her little black book is impressive as she chats with artists, designers, actors and activists. All of her guests begin by reading their favourite recipe from The River Cafe, before sharing food memories from their childhood, talking about what food means to them and concludes with each guest describing their comfort foods of choice. It is the most delightfully enriching podcast and always gives me food for thought in more ways than one. The good news is that if you enjoy this podcast, there is a juicy back catalogue to dig into. Choosing my favourite episodes was quite a challenge, but I particularly enjoyed listening to Ruthie’s chats with Stella McCartney, Jude Law and Tracey Emin.

Cooking/Eating/Drinking

I have to admit that I have been doing more assembling than cooking as the temperatures have been rising. Lots of salads and BBQ’s in the garden. Taking a baguette, a packet of ruffles and a sliced watermelon to the park and the kids have eaten many, many $1 ice cream sandwiches by the community pool. I have been enjoying eating these delicious and dangerously addictive frozen raspberries dipped in white and dark chocolate. You could make your own, but to be honest I don’t think they would be more economical and sometimes we need to make life a little easier for ourselves! I have also been enjoying a canned margarita or two after a long day with the children. I highly recommend these ones!

Buying

We have been visiting lots of farm stands and buying delicious fresh fruit and one or two pastries! You might remember my post from a couple of weeks ago when I shared the Summer Bingo cards that I had made for Jake and Posy. One of their joint challenges was to ride their bikes into town with a small shopping list and to borrow some books from the local library. They proudly set off with an empty backpack, some money and a lock for their bikes, and I must admit I had a little lump in my throat when they arrived back home with a brown paper bag with some rather squished nectarines and a punnet of strawberries, along with a stack of books. Posy was so proud of herself!

I also treated myself to the Nette perfume sampler from Sephora as I was out of my usual perfume, Fog from Henry Rose and couldn’t quite stretch to a new bottle. I have been a huge fan of Nette candles for a couple of years now and was thrilled to see that they have expanded into fragrance. For an affordable $28 I could try all five of their new fragrances without breaking the bank and they are also perfectly sized for my upcoming travels.

Making

I haven’t been doing as much making as I had hoped as I have been working on more of the logistics for my first pop up and also planning a photo shoot for the autumn. I am still beavering away on the menus and packaging for my first product range and trying to do all of this on a shoestring budget. I have been teaching myself to use Procreate, an amazing app that is available to use on an IPad for a fraction of the cost of the Adobe programmes. I use it with my Apple Pencil and am slowly getting to grips with drawing directly onto the screen and adding layers of text. I hope to have more to share with you later in the summer.

Inspired

Winner of 2023 Best in Show, Horatio’s Garden - photo credit Marriane Majeros

My biggest inspiration in the last month has been the Chelsea Flower Show. When I lived in London, it was one of the highlights of my year to visit the show. As I am living far from home I have watched lots of the BBC coverage on YouTube and it was so incredibly inspiring to see the designers creating such incredible masterpieces. It made me realise that I need to dream bigger, aim higher and set myself some lofty challenges for the next five years. I really want to have a stand at Chelsea Flower Show and have been thinking long and hard about how I could somehow take The Tiny Department Store to the show and elevate my Pebble People to a Chelsea standard. I would love to make a collection inspired by every show garden and every category of plants. Larger versions with hand painted flowers and more elaborate flower crowns. I would like to be able to make them out of clay that I could fire and glaze rather than using air dry clay but this may be a longer term goal. Anyway, I am being bold and brave to share this huge dream with you all, so let’s see what I can make happen!

As I finish writing this, I am surrounded by suitcases in Dublin airport waiting for our connecting flight to London Heathrow. We will be in London for a few days before going to Copenhagen, Manchester and Anglesey. I will be sharing little updates on my Instagram stories if you want to follow along and will also be writing about each city in my weekly newsletters here. I have already made dream lists for each place, but if you have any recommendations do send them my way.

Until next week x