By Laurent Nivalle

By Laurent Nivalle

Go the website here: http://www.laurentnivalle.fr/
and blog: http://laurentnivalle.blogspot.com/

As for my music of choice I have another old school album for you from my student days. An album by a christchurch musician Bic Runga.  I am currently listening alot to her first album “drive” and the more recent one “birds”

Would you like a video? Here ya go.

Have a great week!

Walking along the cool sunny wintry streets of Christchurch I saw a poster with some names I knew all about, this poster was for an upcoming conference for designers up in Auckland – Semi Permanent. One of those names had me going straight to the website and buying myself a ticket.

Jessica Hische is a lovely, motivated and super talented designer/illustrator/typographer. Ever since she showed up on the interweb I have been admiring from afar for her attention to detail and gorgeous colour palettes. Here is a video! Make sure you head to her shop if you like her style and would like something for your walls.

SP 2010 Speaker – Jessica Hische from Semi Permanent on Vimeo.

Whats inspiring without a little music? I’m gonna show my age here, I listened alot to Lamb on those all night stints working on that assignment due the next day, way back in the uni days. I now have no idea how I managed those all nighters. I remember large amounts of spicy chips, chocolate and coffee being involved. Lamb still helps me focus on work. If I need to get some stuff done quick (usually some HTML and CSS!), this is my sound track. Play the vid for a sample:

Memories and nostalgia! The last design conference I went to was Semi Permanent in Sydney, just after graduating from uni. Add in listening Lamb and no time has passed. I’m that poor silly student all over again. So fun.

Here is one of the closeup shots i always go for:

Here is some yarn i am thinking of knitting into a lacy scarfy shawl.

I have been knitting, sewing even embroidering! But have yet to take pictures. I went on a bit a craft bender after I unravelled some socks that didn’t fit. So before starting those again i wanted to do some other things that have been looming and boy have i been loving the light relief!

As for light relief, those on facebook saw this little face I couldn’t resist taking a picture of.

It all starts with paper and ink. A good read – on ‘handcrafting’ websites. (for non-webbers – i have a music video at the bottom!)

Handcrafted CSS

by Dan Cedarholme with Ethan Marcotte

This book started going over about a bunch of stuff I knew in ‘bits’. For myself the value came from overall CSS concepts being  explained with some pretty sexy examples.  An added bonus, just like Dan’s Bulletproof web design book, you can build a website if you follow through copying the examples (The finished website is also available for download.)

I learnt a fair amount in the end and found myself getting excited about CODE. I know.. weird. My favorite chapter is the one on fluid grids. I have already started using grid based layout (after reading about it online) besides keeping the design tight, i didn’t really know why it had taken the web design world by storm. Now its explained in a funny way and I have more (and better) examples to play with. If you’re a web designer this book is perfect for linking all the new practices together to get your foundation CSS and HTML knowledge back into shape.

For each post on “what feeds me”  I plan on giving you a wee sample of my music collection. This week is the awesome guitarist/musician Kaki King. The album I own is “Dreaming of Revenge”  brought on itunes… i love itunes for music downloading ease!

What inspires you to stay on top and happy most days? Is there any special albums, places, websites or books? Perhaps daily rituals that help you roll out of bed… I love hearing about new music, art, books – feel free to share…

I wanted to start Monday with some deliciousness. So without further adue i show you my newest little purchase. Some 100% SILK 4ply yarn from Spinning a Yarn. Yes it is that shiny and luxurious. Infact, the colour is more subtle and varied than the photo can depict. Even better!

I have ulterior motives however, I designed the logo too. This is the testing ball band Jess printed the logo on and sent to me (how I was told what logo she chose!).

Jess has been dying her own yarn for awhile now and has been open for business selling her fibres since the beginning of this year (or there abouts) every time I go to her site and Etsy she has something new cooking up – she’s the one to watch!

Now some chit chat about the logo. Jess wanted a logo with some movement in it. The logos she sent through to me were all in script typefaces with the letters linking up. The main customers really vary in age in the area of around 25-when ever one feels they dont want to spin or knot anymore…. which is when? So it needed to approachable by a huge age group. The colour red also felt very ‘right’ to Jess.

The results where several logos… and she picked this one!

The little goats on the farm are soon to be given a boy goat too… Who’s to say how happy they will be with this concept.

They are very happy when treats are brought though. 
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Thats the latest update from the farm.

On our lazy Sunday out visiting Kylie and I spotted UFO’s from the mall where I finally brought myself some jeans… on closer inspection they were some kites on steroids.

Since you can see why I am not up to writing the ‘why’s’ and reasons behind my latest work (brain power is being preserved for some work I MUST get done before the week ends.) I thought I might just give a sneak peak and perhaps talk some more about them next week.

Hope you all have a great weekend. Mine will probably be spent on the couch!

Well Christmas has been and gone….. so we decided to do it again. This time in the middle of our winter. Some Christmas fare just tastes better when its cold. Its also so much more fun to have the decorations out twice a year rather than once!

Great times were had by many (i hope… at least they said so). I grew worried that there was so much food not being touched when people first started to arrive. But there came a moment the hunger must have started because all of a sudden the food was gone and we were being showered with praises over the gingerbread men!

I had fears we made too much gingerbread men and we would end up eating them all week and growing little bellies as a result. But alas there was none left at the end of the evening. They make great party food. There was almost a society formed to teach the most humane way to eat them and shocked glances and were seen as a person ate the little men from the feet up, rather than head down (apparently its a quicker less painful death from the head down).

Today you will get the gingerbread men recipe. I will post the Christmas mince pies and egg nog later in the week.

Gingerbread Men
(from joy of baking recipe)

3 cups of Flour
1/4 tsp Salt
3/4 tsp Baking Soda
2 tsp Ground Ginger
1 tsp Ground Cinnamon
1/4 tsp Ground Nutmeg
1/4 tsp Ground Cloves
113g Unsalted Butter at room temp (we still use salted if thats all we have)
1/2 cup White Sugar
1 Large Egg
2/3 Cups of Molasses (we used Red Seal Blackstrap Molasses this time)

First sift and mix the dry ingredients together. Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy, add egg and molasses until well combined. Then slowly add the dry mixture. Divide the dough into two and wrap each with plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for 2 hours minimum. (This time we made our dough 3 days in advance and just kept refrigerated until we were ready to roll out and bake.)

When ready to roll out, lightly flour a surface and roll out dough until about 1/4 inch thick. Use a ginger bread cutter to cut out the cookies, using a spatula transfer from bench to a tray covered in baking paper.

Bake for around 8-12 minutes (they seems to cook really quick – so be vigilant!) Leave on tray for a short amount of time then once holding together well enough transfer to a cooling rack until they are room temperature.

I am no decorating wizz yet, but I did find the frosting from the original recipe too soft. Mine was not right either, would not stick to the little man as I was piping it. You can press decorations into the men when they are hot. But wait for them to cool completely before icing.