Suzuki Takayuki

How beautiful aren't these creations? All made by Japanese fashion designer Suzuki Takayuki. His clothes are almost like pieces if art, refined into the smallest detail. They are dramatic at the sime time as peaceful. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Suzuki started his career as a designer of theatrecostumes?

Shin Tanaka

The Japanese graffiti-artist and designer Shin Tanaka is now on display at Östasiatiska museet in Stockholm. He is known to use the old traditional techniques of origami and mix it with modern street influences. The result is great! He makes small creatures, paper toys and sneakers. He first started to create the papersneakers as a student and didnt have the money to buy the sneakers he wanted. Unfortunately I dont have any photos of the papersneakers but check out his great page http://shin.co.nr/ it is truely inspiring!

Christian Zuzunaga - Pixilating the city

The London-based, Barcelona-born graphic and print designer Christian Zuzunaga expresses himself primarily using printed textiles. He means that textiles always been used as mediums to identify, differentiate and destignate where we come from.

His main inspiration is the city. He is looking at the city as a metaphor, or a force that pulls us towards it. Architecture and the structural ideas of cities like Barcelona, London, New York and Shanghai are his main inspiration in his work.

Photos via: www.apartmenttherapy.com, www.design-klub.com

Pepparkakor Part 2 - The baking of the cakes

The dough so as the bowl were still intact the next day. These things, like letting the dough rest over night is just the things that gets me going when it comes to baking. The more complicated the recipe is the more pepped up I get. Well the pepparkakor recipe is not complicated at all, its just the rest over night part people are too lazy for. Therefor premaid pepparkaks-dough is sold everywhere.

I couldnt resist to eat a bit of the raw dough as always. This one as well as raw sponge cake are truely my favourites. As a child, me and my friends often made sponge cake without baking it, just to eat the mixture. Without baking soda offcourse.

The dough was delicious and Im happy I added the bitter orange. Use a rolling pin to bake them out, as thin as you like. Add more flour to it, so it wont stick to the table. Bake them in 200 c for 3-5 minutes. Decorate as you like. This is how we did it.

Pepparkakor - the baking of the dough

Pepparkakor (Gingerbread biscuits) the most swedish and christmaslike of all cookies, is a challenge for me. I spent years of baking Baklava, Biscotti, Cupcakes, Ayurveda-style cookies and fabulous looking cakes, but never Pepparkakor. To be honest Im quite scared, since I know I can never live up to the pepparkakor of my mothers. But hey I will give it a try. My way.

First of all, I was very careful when choosing recipe. There are hundreds out there. The one I chose is from one of my mothers old cookbooks. Its from the eighties and sure to be the pepparkakor I grew up with. Second of all, be careful when choosing the spices. I went to the beautiful Essensfabriken at Wallingatan in Stockholm. The shop itself is a delight. It looks like something from the 19th century and all the spices TASTE for real.

There are many variations of which spices to include but I chose: cinnamon,
grinded ginger, grinded clove, and grinded peel from Seville orange. Mix the ingredients with water, sugar and syrup in a pan, stir it until boiling. Let boil for a minute or two, remove from heat add butter (always butter, never margarine, f*ck the calories)and let it melt in to the brown "sauce". Mix a bit of baking soda with flour and add it to the rest of the ingredients (the "sauce"). Make a proper dough and let it get really cold over night.

Tonight is freezing, my dough is chilling out on the balcony and I hope it will be allright tomorrow without accidents like the glassbowl the dough rests in has exploded or something.

Baby Jesus on its way

Beauty - Surrounds us

These photos makes me happy since they remind me that beauty is found everywhere, nothing is stopping creativity and the importance of adding some color to your everyday life.