Day Dream Lily

This week has been full of inspirational stuff...... it started with a cool digital mag called Antler http://www.antlermag.com which led me to Day Dream Lily http://www.daydreamlily.com/. Just the name in itself was enough to get me rethinking possible names for our little venture. The emotion a few words can create and the imagery that goes with it works so well in capturing the essence of the name. Can we achieve the same.....
It's all about the name! So many business books go on about the infamous 4 letter gem of a name, that rolls off the tongue, that's easy to remember, easy to spell, easy to............. are we belittling our customers? Shouldn't we try to capture their imagination, inspire them so much that they will go to great lenghts just to remember our name? I want a name that I can surround with beautful imagery, preferably images that relate to the sea, to anchors, to sailing ships....... like this SeaSaw


Sometimes I want it to be floral, pretty, vintage... My imagery changes but my desire doesn't. I want to have fun with our name, own it, enjoy it- I mean after all it's going to be around for a long time. And let's face it, when we name children we don't try to condense it, shorten it, we try to pick a name that the child can grow into, can own and fulfill!
So here's to ignoring the rules and letting your imagination run free
xx

Quest for Ideas

So Myles and I are in LOVE with the idea of opening our own Eatertique.... bit of a made up word, but it's hard to describe exactly what we want to do. We want to blur the lines between a cafe and a shop- just be a space with great food, and great stuff..... We are of course sh*ttin ourselves with the idea of all that responsibility and debt, but we just can't stop ourselves. Maybe because it's personal, like we want this to be an extension of who we are. We love flea markets, love food and having dinner parties, love exploring, love finding new affordable art and love creating art. Even a cool t-shirt design gets us going! So I have done a little collage of just images that inspire and aspire!

flight of fancy idiom
An unrealistic idea or fantastic notion, a pipe dream. For example, She engaged in flights of fancy, such as owning a million-dollar house. This idiom uses flight in the sense of “a soaring of the imagination,” a usage dating from the mid-1600s.


I just love the sense of freedom in the word 'soaring' and must remember in my continued search for the ideal lifestyle, not to let my imagaination and dreams stop soaring. You see my husband and I have always been described as 'restless' , non commital (yes we are married, figure that one out) becasue we refused to conform to the 9-5 paid pension lifestyle. Instead we emabarked on winter ski seasons, worked at whatever we could to live by the beach in the summer times and managed to travel the world inbetween.

This blog is a kind of hommage to that life, the places wev'e been and the inspirations along the way. Everything from home made Bailey's receipes from New Zealand to the coolest surf shop in Newquay..... I want to share the things that have inspired us to keep going and hope it might just inspire you too!



It's also a space to explore the future, the decisions ahead and the different paths to go down. For now though I want to share this awesome shop in New Zealand called House of Aroha. Aroha means Love in Maori and this amazing design led store enbodies that meaning like no other. Firstly it is run by family, even the son in law is involved, it emabraces all of NZ culture and they have such a passion for local artists that the place just ooozzesss cool! It's the type of place that you just have to buy something, no matter how broke you are. We settled on a hand sikl screened teatowel with a NZ take on the Cameo image we all know so well!
Whenever I need to be inspired, to remind myself why I want to run my own eaterytique (Eat & Shop) I just have to look here, http://www.houseofaroha.co.nz/ and it all falls into place.
xx