Happy Saturday

Hello everyone. Happy Saturday! Hope you're having a lovely day. I wanted to share this Polaroid with you. I took it last week on the beach in Santa Monica. (You can sort of see the Ferris wheel in the background on the Santa Monica Pier).

What are you doing this weekend?

Tavi

Meet fashion's latest -- and perhaps youngest -- muse: Tavi, the-13-year-old fashion blogger from Chicago.



Here she is on the cover of Pop Magazine, on newsstands this week. And that's not all...



Her Blogspot blog, Style Rookie, was featured in today's Wall Street Journal. It turns out Tavi's blog inspired the latest designs of fashion house Rodarte...



She's in New York for Fashion Week (with her dad) and Rodarte's designers, sisters Kate and Laura Mulleavy, have invited her to sit in the front row of their show on Tuesday.

This is how she describes herself:
"Tiny 13 year old dork that sits inside all day wearing awkward jackets and pretty hats. Scatters black petals on Rei Kawakubo's doorsteps and serenades her in rap. Rather cynical and cute as a drained rat. In a sewer. Farting. And spitting out guts."

Love her!

(photos by Jamie Morgan for Pop Magazine)

Baker, baker... baking a cake.

A couple of the cakes I recently baked for some friends' birthdays.

Yeah. Sorry, Kids. Yes, I just went all Tori Amos on ya's with that title. But I couldn't help it! Just always seems to come up when I'm baking a cake. Forgive me. And, stick a toothpick in me, Kids, 'cause it looks like your Uncle Beefy is done!

Just thought I'd leave you with some sweet treats as I bid you all farewell from The English Muse! Just want to thank Tina for letting me hang my hat here for awhile and to thank all of you for reading and commenting along! I hope to see you 'round "The Bedlam" and you know we'll see each other here!

Have a wonderful weekend, Kids! Thanks, again!

A small sampling from a marathon cupcake baking session. Chocolate cupcakes with salted caramel buttercream and cocoa-dusted vanilla bean buttercream. Gotta say... they were tasty.

Good things come to those who Labour & Wait.

Kids, your Uncle Beefy has entrepreneurial aspirations. Even after years in the service industry, and some hair-raising tales to go along, I still dream of a little something to call my own one day. Call me crazy. (Seriously, it's fine. Others do it all the time... only they also roll their eyes usually.)

I'm always looking for sources of inspiration and trying to visualize what I might like to conjure up. And that typically has me drooling over one British retailer or another! I don't quite know what it is but I just find the British sensibility for merchandising extremely appealing (I know, insert gross generalization here). So many of the shops I come across have that homey but sophisticated feel. Thoughtfully curated without feeling contrived. Anyway, it certainly boosts my Anglophile nature and makes me long for a British accent. (But we all saw how that worked out for Madonna... so I'm steering clear of that move!)

This, Kids, is one of my favorite inspirations and a shop I'm dying to visit! Labour & Wait. Isn't this just about perfect? It makes me want to plant roses and bake shortbread and drink tea and wear wellies while walking the corgi! I mean who wouldn't relish going positively domestic with all these offerings for inspiration?! Seriously. But for the moment I'm afraid I'll just have to [Labour &] Wait.

All images from Labour & Wait website.

Emily Forgot

Good Friday morning, Kids! A lovely day to start off what I'm sure we all hope will be a lovely weekend! Do we need some tea? Coffee? Oh, could you pass your Uncle the cream? Thanks muchly. Well now, just a wee offering to start off the morning...

Love these fantastically graphic plates from London-based graphic artist Emily Alston of Emily Forgot. Spot on brilliant! Don'tcha think? And available in her shop!

Gee, can't imagine why this one would be a stand-out selection for your Uncle? Hmm?

NYC Fashion Week Frenzy

High-heeled paparazzi go wild getting celphone pics of Olsen twins!

Crowd twitters as girls give out lemonade at Bergdorfs!

I'm living vicariously through the Twitter posts on NYC Fashion week this evening. New York Magazine's @cutblog was especially funny/mean. They offered this observation on the Olsen twin frenzy: "Fundamental issue with Olsen melee: The girls are simply too short to be visible when surrounded by a crowd. Midget fail."

Beware of fashionistas with wit and twitpic.

(Photos by @Fashion_Picture and @livefashionweek).