I'm a city girl at heart and I love my home town of London so much. I spent three years away at university in Wales and now that I'm back for good, I have rekindled my love for exploring the city's plethora of steets and quirky places that are not so well known.

Now I love a Starbucks as much as the next person, but I can't help feeling that, with the rise in popularity of large coffee shop chains, little cafes are getting forgotten about. When I pop in to Costa or Starbucks, it's always so busy in there and I often have to wait for a free table or sofa - sometimes you just need somewhere quieter, calmer and just a bit more homely - especiallly if you work from home as I sometimes do.

So, I've decided to make it my mission to discover some of the interesting and lesser known tea shops and cafes of London and share them here on my blog :) I'm a bit of a tea snob who also likes a flavoured or spiced coffee now and again and also a huge fan of herbal teas so I'm looking for somewhere with quality bevarages but also atmosphere and something unique to it. Over the next few months I'll be posting about my successfull and unssuccesful trips here and there, hopefully with a few pictures too!

Insta-update #1

The First of the snow//Gorgeous pink sunset on the way home from work//An old film photograph of mine,

Yummy predrinks//M&M world!//Adorable handmoade owl pincushion,

Cuban bar in Camden//Getting ready for NYE//waiting at the bar on NYE.

My Etsy Shop

Firstly, Happy New Year all :) hope you had a wonderful Christmas and festive break. It's back to cold/icy reality for most of us which means more work and no more mulled wine and chocolate *boo*. However, for me, the New Year has brought a fresh start with a lot less stress. Now that I'm no longer working 3 jobs at once, I finally have some free time to focus on the things I love.

I've had an Etsy shop for a couple of years now, and have miraculously made a couple of sales on there - despite hardly putting any time or effort into it and rarely creating any items to actually sell. But recently I've had the time to update my shop and start to come up with ideas of new things to sell, which I find great fun :) I can also now explore the myriad of quirky and innovative handmade products on the website - I could spend all day on there! Much better procrastination than facebook... ;) You can favourite items or shops and make 'Treasuries'; lists of similarly themed items that you can create and share with others. It's a hive of creativity and so inspiriting as an artist.

If you haven't heard of Etsy, or are thinking of starting up an online shop, check their website out, it only costs about 20 cents to list an item and see your items get favourited or bought is incredibly rewarding, it just takes a bit of time to get it all up and running!

Here are some links to a few of my recent favourite shops:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/PoofyDove

http://www.etsy.com/shop/metamorphosing

www.etsy.com/shop/POAST

http://www.etsy.com/shop/NightjarBooks

http://www.etsy.com/shop/melodyseal

And mine:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/CalmShores