Relaxing with your family at home has to be one of the best things in the whole world. My mum asked me yesterday if I was planning to make any new year's resolutions for 2013. I said that I probably won't make any this year, but now I feel I should definitely make one.

Chinese candle holder in the bathroom
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A collection of candles in the bathroom
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After Christmas sales, hello my friend

The time of the year when people are encouraged to crazy has arrived; after Christmas sales!
The sales arrive earlier and earlier year by year giving businesses a better opportunity to increase sales and reach their monthly and yearly budget targets. Retailers especially can recover from the damage quieter months do to them in terms of business, if they concentrate on online sales at Christmas time.

From the consumers' point of view, the sales can be amazing time too. If you are lucky you can find brilliant bargains and save a decent sum of money. I love a good bargain myself, but I have to be quite careful when the Christmas sales are on since I easily go on a shopping spree just for the sake of it. And that surely is not the purpose of sales, is it?

I haven't done any online Christmas sales shopping this year yet. I will see what's out there tomorrow though. This is mainly because I managed to find myself two pairs of boots whilst I was shopping Christmas presents with my mum last week. The first pair was beige suede leather ankle high boots with two golden zips on both sides of the boots and  golden details where the heel and back sole of each boot connects.

Beige ankle boots
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Beige ankle boots
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The other pair of boots I got were a black leather pair with approximately 8cm heel. They were pretty much perfect too, because they are very clean, sophisticated smooth leather pair of boots. Just the way I wanted them to be. You know how much I like my Ecco's normally, but this season I couldn't find a pairI I would have liked enough from the collection. Hence, I ventured off elsewhere. This pair is made by an old Finnish shoemaker brand Ara. I've never had their shoes before so I'm hoping that they surprise me. At least the fit is perfect and the heels seems to be in its right place, since they are really easy to walk in -even though the heel is relatively high and medium thin. I will include pictures later.

Christmas holiday!!! Oh the happiness indeed!

Christmas decorations in Liberty London

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I visited one of London's best antiques market a weeks back. It was such a funny experience. Almost all the vendors were slightly loony  so you ended up having the strangest conversations with them -whether you wanted it yourself or not. Krystal, my partner in crime, and I came into a conclusion that antiques markets can be quite dangerous places to go on your own. Hence, make sure you will always go in pairs ;)

Silver cutlery at the antiques markets

I was not looking for anything particular until I saw these silver napkin rings. As soon as I saw these silver beauties is a big silver bowl, I remembered my French hand made linen napkins I bought from Nice a few years back. It was love at first sight.

Silver napkin rings from the antiques market

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I walked past the boutique once, I walked past it second time, third time was 'accident'. Fourth time was because I had taken a wrong turn, and on the fifth time was destiny. These napkin rings were calling me! 

So when I finally made my mind about committing to buy these rings, I practically run to the silver bowl full of these must-haves.

Silver napkin rings from the antiques market

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Krystal and I kept on turning the rings around and comparing them to others and then after a good solid CSI London type of detective inspection work, I had found myself four alike napkin rings from A to D. I was proudly over the moon!

Happy Saturday!

Two glasses of gin and tonic

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Ellie Goulding - Jolene

One of my favourite female singers, Ellie Goulding, performing an old classic Jolene. What a great cover!

Pizza East, Shoreditch

I'm not a big fan of pizza. Never been really. Heh, in fact, I have two particular types of pizza I really like, one from supermarket frozen section that you can only buy from Finland and one made by my friend Kati. So you can really say I'm not generally that fussed about pizzas. I will eat it occasionally, maybe twice a year, but will hardly ever order it in a restaurant, if there is something else on the menu to choose from.

Waiting our food to arrive at Pizza East Shoreditch

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So there I am, quite happily mind my own business, not bothered if I could ever eat a single slice of pizza in my life again. This is the setting. Then I hear all these praises about this pizza place in Shoreditch called Pizza East.

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Saturday comes in and I decided, Pizza East you will feed me tonight. Don't fancy pizza, but hey ho, let's give it a go anyway. I book a table online, which proved to be a good thing to do -surprise, surprise.

We got to the restaurant in time. Table was there nicely set for us. Service was friendly and helpful. Restaurant had a lovely cosy, slightly dim lightning and a great overall feeling to it. By this point,  I was already sold. Food arrived super quickly and it was just gobsmacking tasty! The antipasti board was exceptionally good and there was a lot to go through on there. We actually didn't finish everything in purpose, because we wanted to save some room for the mains too. To be completely honest, I would have been completely happy just hitting the bar and concentrating on the tapas meats and cheese bites, which I probably will do very soon.  Mains, the two pizzas, were also yummy! Salami chili pizza was perfectly spicy and my veal meatball  pizza had lemon olive oil drizzled on it, which made it taste absolutely fantastic.

What did we eat?

*A board of 3 

(wild board speck, burrata and parmigiano reggiano)

*focciata bread

*carafe of red

*veal meatball pizza

*salami chili pizza

Cheese and meat board at Pizza East Shoreditch London

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I have been pretty much pizza-converted.

Food *****
Atmosphere *****
Service *****
Final bill £70