Blogging | Featured

Make Stories Come Alive with Jodi Harvey – Brown

By on February 11, 2016

For globetrotting travelers, it’s easy to recognize a spectacular city. They are energetic, diverse destinations intent on preserving local heritage and revitalizing undervalued neighborhoods, and they possess distinct personalities that set them apart from other metropolises. Whether it’s the city you’ve called home for years or one you only just stumbled upon during your travels, the best destinations are intriguing cultural centers that can’t be replicated anywhere else. No city proves this better than Kyoto, Japan, which returned for the second year in a row to the No. 1 spot on Travel + Leisure’s annual World’s Best list.

People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.

Steve Jobs – Apple Worldwide Developers’ Conference, 1997

Readers called it the quintessential Japanese experience, offering visitors everything from history (in the form of spiritual shrines) to notable cuisine (shojin ryori) and encounters with Geisha. Italy’s classic crowd-pleasers, Florence and Rome, once again appear on Top 10 list — as they have for 10 consecutive years. Bangkok, likely bumped from the list in 2014 due to governmental unrest, has returned to the number six spot. Below is the full list of the World’s Best cities in 2015, which is compiled based on reader surveys. For more of Travel + Leisure’s 2015 World’s Best Awards, which cover everything from hotels to airports, click here: www.travelandleisure.com

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Featured | Interior | Lifestyle

Brunswick House is Filled With Unexpected Treasures

By on February 10, 2016

It takes enormous amounts of hard work to seem effortless. There’s the dancer who can appear to hold in the air for a quarter of a second longer than is strictly decent, as if the rules of gravity don’t quite apply to them as to others; there’s the jazz pianist whose blurred fingers pick the perfect pattern from one end of the keyboard to the other; or the painter who can drop a line on to the canvas which is the very essence of the sitter’s profile, with barely a flick of the wrist.

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Blogging | Featured | Lifestyle

Gardening Is The Best Medicine For The Mind

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January is the time of year when, for us gardeners, a small ray of hope breaks through the grey skies. Not long now, I think, until I can start chitting my potatoes. A few early daffodils have bravely poked their necks above the soil. I know the snowdrops will soon be on their way. Especially with the mild, wet winter we have had, spring seems just around the corner. But I know the truth. The inevitable will happen: the cold will return, February always feels long, and winter will hang around like some kind of chronic illness.

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Fashion | Lifestyle | Peoples

Is This Outfit a Relationship Deal-Breaker?

By on February 9, 2016

Since the nominations for the 2016 Academy Awards were announced a couple of things have happened. For one, the main nominations, for yet another year, were overwhelmingly white. As a result, the continuing cry by minority Hollywood stars for more diversity is full force once again. Two stars have even gone far enough to call for a boycott of the awards ceremony.

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Cinema

Breaking Bad Writer to Adapt Anne of Green Gables For TV

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Good news for kindred spirits – the irrepressible Anne of Green Gables will be returning to the small screen in 2017.

Breaking Bad writer Moira Walley-Beckett will be heading up the new series, which will be an eight-part adaptation for CBC. Anne of Green Gables follows the titular character as she arrives at Green Gables farm, “ordered” from an orphanage by Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert. They had wanted a boy to help with the work, but due to a mix up, found a young girl waiting at the station.

The story itself isn’t a complicated one. Anne ends up staying with the Cuthberts, and has lots of jolly adventures (and many more misadventures) as she grows up. It’s not the plot that has enraptured so many, though. It’s Anne herself that captures the heart of her readers. Despite her difficulties, she is a precious and charming girl, the perfect combination of open-hearted and pig-headed. The Anne Shirley series is heartwarming, funny and romantic.

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Interior

10 Signs You Were Born To Be An Interior Stylist

By on February 8, 2016

Ah the life of an interior stylist. It’s not all cushion fluffing and flower arranging you know! There are some serious skillz that need to go down in the world of being a bad-ass interior stylist, and one does wonder sometimes if these are things that can be learned or if they are in our DNA from birth. My handy 10 point checklist should help you work it out.

1.

You have at least 20 arty / fashiony coffee table books, 18 of which have never been read but look really cool on your sideboard.

2.

If two contrasting materials are next to each other then STOP EVERYTHING, cos that shit needs an instagram picture. Concrete and marble? Glass and fur? Wood and metal? ARRGH IT’S BLOWING MY MIND WITH ITS AMAZINGNESS.

3.

You restyle your bookshelves every couple of weeks just so that you can create the flyest #shelfie the world has ever seen.

4.

You have a panic attack if your Cire Trudon scented candle is not burning the right way so that the wax lays flat in one smooth, flat layer (yeah, you know what I’m talking about).

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