Design - The Intrepid Misadventurer

“Life is Good!” – A Mini Boden Story!

June 23, 2014 By Kanchan Char 32 Comments

Mini Boden. childrens clothing, video review, British clothing

One of the first few ‘British things’ I fell in love with was Boden clothing, and Mini Boden in particular! I have closely spaced children who are only 15 months apart and have diametrically opposite tastes.. they’re as different as peas and yams! As I mentioned in Nature, Nurture and Apples falling from Trees – one is capable of zingy flamboyance, the other opts for a more muted palette!
Since my girls were little, I’ve turned to Mini Boden for their clothes so when I had the opportunity to review a few of their clothes, I thought I’d go the extra mile with it! We decided to make a small movie of our time spent in the South Norfolk woods…storytelling, poppy gathering, dandelion blowing and a lot of cake-eating.. (that really is what good times are made of!) (Please do watch it – it’s our first movie here on the blog and so that teeny bit extra special :))

The Intrepid Misaventurer featuring Mini Boden from Kanchan Char on Vimeo.

Mini Boden has always stood the test of time for me.. the quality is *great* (and in the one odd occasion where something goes wrong – Boden operate a no quibble returns policy – provided the fault has little to do with “having been mauled by pets, drawn on by nephews or worn while decorating”. It’s like a little insurance policy!;P

Do I hear ” At those prices, you need one?” Admittedly, Boden does cost more than a few highstreet brands (though I’ve been surprised at some labels recently that surpass Mini Boden in price but pale in comparison on design and quality).

For us, Mini Boden is a thrifty option – here is where I get lynched and mobbed, but hear me out! I buy clothes that are to be used by two children simultaneously, they see a lot of wash and still look as good as new for a looong time – I say this after years of buying Boden! I find that Mini Boden styles can be bought in a bigger size than your child needs and are still very wearable because of adjustable features, making sure you get maximum use of the item. Clever things like adjustable waists, slightly longer sleeves than what you get elsewhere (that means tees can be worn longer) and dresses that are A-Line in style tend to go on looking good even after your child’s grown out of the size bracket on the label. Nifty things like footless tights – again a Mini Boden staple, takes care of those transitional season days we have almost every other day in beautiful Britain! ;P And after all that jazz, stick it on eBay and get a very sweet sum back (I speak the truth, go test it…). This effectively makes your purchase (if at all), a couple of quid more than a super market buy.

I’ll let the gorgeous prints and design speak for themselves…or you can go over and have a browse at *Boden* and see for yourself. They’re offering a nice 30% discount at the moment and if you’re a new customer, you get a little gift (say you’re new in the space provided for delivery options at checkout).

Happy Shopping! 😉

*Disclaimer : This is a sponsored post. All opinions (very honest, btw), stories and ramblings are authentically mine! :)*

A big thanks to the wonderful Daniel Simm, my partner in crime for collaborating with me on this! 🙂

Still Lifes & Shelfies – The Art of Repeat!

May 23, 2014 By Kanchan Char 19 Comments

Shelfie, Nordic, Scandi, Muuoto, Ikea, Kinfolk

As ‘NeoNordic’ and ‘Scandinavian Chic’ become buzzwords in design-conscious homes across the UK- it got me thinking about how most trends are generally cyclical! If you think Still Lifes (think meticulously administered narratives of home/travel/food- things set against equally considered backdrops), and Shelfies (shelves or any homespace that have a few lifestyle markers indicating the sort of things “you’re into” ) are a new age phenomenon – think again! Both art forms ironically trace back to Northern Europe and as far back as the 1600’s. I’ll let this lovely page on Wikipedia fill you in on the engrossing details of Flemish and Dutch still lifes ! ;P

Every year, I ‘cache’ a few words in my mind and they become linguistic symbols of what moved the year in my memory – this is apart from my children ‘brunging’ me water or ‘growding up’ etc! 2013 definitely included “government” and “surveillance” as we horrifyingly zoned in on information breaches, security or the lack thereof. One that’ll hold strong for 2014 is the ‘shelfie’, the sorta more intelligent version of the ubiquitous selfie that’s been around in it’s evolutionary trajectory from the early kissy face to the more suprise-driven ‘o’-pout – often with a strategic but oh-so totally unpremeditated lipstick held against the cheek! Barring the lipstick, Van Gogh’s self portraits weren’t too different. 🙂

apples, still life, shelfie, vintage, farmhouse, reclaimed wood table, baking — Still Life of the birth of an Apple&Cinnamon Swirl…or bun!

And then there’s “artisanal” – I love this word! Added to a deli menu or sribbled on a chalkboard, it inevitably raises the mark-up on everything – Herb Butter. Handmade Crisps. Wooden Cacti! And linen. Non-artisanal linen blouses? just so wrong! Artisan in my humble opinion is the new ‘Designer’ – before “buying designer” came to be seen as plain lack of good sense or insight 🙂

I am often well aware (Yes, I am!) that all the aerial shots I take of tables set for the making of cinnamon apple rolls or shelves dotted with my kitchen pride can be construed as a form of self-absorbtion, adding to a world already free-falling into an obsession of pictorally cataloging their lives! Why else would there be place for something like Instagram or the “VSCo Grid”?! <bows deferentially!>

Apple&Cinnamon swirl, dessert, pastry, baking, foodporn, blossom — Still Life of the existence of the Apple&Cinnamon swirl…or bun in Spring!

To me, shelfies and still life shots are very similar to dressing up and personal grooming -the reason why we generally don’t prefer to dress in nondescript clothing – grey – lacking any ornamentation or accessories. (Arguably, it all hits “Taupe” when you move past your mid-thirties, but moving swiftly on…!) Why should we condescend on a description of a life/hobby/ pursuit which is invested with self-expression – regardless of how self-involved it be! After all, being well groomed is not an act of philanthropy either! If the penny hasn’t dropped yet, this post IS in the defence of every Blogger, Facebooker and Instagrammer’s right to take “carefully assembled snapshots of beautiful things”‘!

croissants, french, pastry, foodporn, bonne maman, jam — A Cornucopia of Croissants..and a nifty Jam!

The ease of creating a beautiful picture without a lot of expensive equipment, calling for an eye for beauty and attention to detail (which is admittedly a dying artform) , is all that’s needed! If it was good enough for Cezanne and his apples – strategically placed for weeks till he completed a painting that would forever be viewed as the inner landscape of his psycholgical state, it’s good enough for me! My friends argue that in the making of beautiful settings , spontaneity is lost. I agree, there’s a a place for cheap plastic bowls filled with uninspiring potato crisps and cheese puffs, and a place for pull-ons and jogging bottoms; but sometimes you want to go that extra mile, set the table. Invest in your aesthetic. Even if you walk that path one corner at a time! 😉

brown paper packages, string, ale, stout, local, grain, Norfolk — Still Life : An Urban Ploughman’s Lunch!

There is nothing original in our obsessive control-freakishness to pictorally depict our world… generations dating back to the Pharoahs of Egypt did it! We do it exponentially to our circumstance of modernity! Art has always been about creating one small aesthetically gratifying corner, about beauty reigning in the face of the inane (often personally translates as my one clever corner in a tip inhabited by two severely messy little girls – probably a reason why young mums have taken to it like fish to water – the idea of controlling a few cubic feet in a home spiralling out of control!) 🙂

All considered, we must admit that all trends go from hot to NOT – we bore of it as it oversaturates our senses and we take on something fresh. According to sociologists and those who actually know what they’re talking about (coughs!), trends that are a no-no regain their appeal 50 years into their death when they begin to be viewed as ‘quaint’! That leaves me assured that in time, my grandchildren or great grandchildren will come pottering about, looking for my esteemed MacBook or dSLR- to dust off and complete their cleverly curated and rejigged tableaux of 3D simulated reality!

Snap!

map, Boden, diary, coffee — Somewhat Shelfie : Destination Abroad. Holiday to be undertaken Circa Autumn 2014.

If you’ve enjoyed this post, you’re very likely to enjoy these too 🙂 :

Retro-Chic and the Cult of Neo-Sobriety!

Like Rain on Warm Scented Earth!

This post is also available here :

Like Rain on Warm Scented Earth!

April 30, 2014 By Kanchan Char 12 Comments

paper, eco-friendly, lost art, handwriting, email destroys penmanship

*This post was especially inspired by The Reading Residence‘s campaign about Bringing Back Paper!* 🙂

I wish nothing ever comes along to make me stop enjoying or respecting the smell of rain of warm, scented earth! Where am I going with this? I’ll tell you..It made me chuckle to myself when some friends around me were talking about how technology has robbed man of some of his core skillsets – how true actually! Made me also think of Neil Young’s “They give you this, but you pay for that” in his famed My My, hey hey! There are no free lunches in this world!

“Autopilot counterproductive as pilots scale down on skills.” ” Motorists incapacitated to read international traffic-markers as a result of over-reliance of satellite navigation!” You can stretch those headlines to about as far back as “Hard, big-bearded man loses aim with spear as soft-around-the- edges man settles in to chow down a pot of cooked grain!” You win some, you lose some… I’m not yearning to go back to being timid gatherer valued for spatial awareness and childbearing- all too yabba dabba doo for me! 😛 But, I do remember being known amongst my teachers for my handwriting, it was so important in the ’80’s and early ’90’s to write well and you still had your ‘character’ assessed through it. I now hold my pen pretty much as I would a club. My writing is rubbish, and I hold out no hope of my children ever writing beautifully either, their character’s likely to be judged by their stash of video games!

paper, eco-friendly, lost art, handwriting, email destroys penmanship, unbleached recycled paper — Eco-friendly paper 🙂

We’ve lost the art of penmanship..finding some of my parents’ love letters before they were married was nothing but awkward, but reminded me of just how beautiful it might’ve been to get a handwritten letter by someone who meant the world to you! 🙂 I had to be gentle with the paper, it is after all 46 yrs old. I lost my parents a while back and so creepy or not, I often go back to reading their innocence and the way they loved each other! They were both teenagers when they wrote them and hardly the parents I remember as being quite emotionally stoic. There is definitely something lost with us having given up on paper; handwriting is probably the least.. A newspaper in Shenyang recently featured a whole front page that was entirely handwritten to emphasize that it’s becoming a crisis. Imagine losing the ability to write lovely Mandarin characters or Japanese Kanji!

Whilst I understand and wholly support the need to reduce paper use, and would not dream of wasting it in any form (I’ve written a fair few words about preserving the environment here on my blog) so I’m not recanting; there are several eco-friendly varieties available (unbleached recycled is one of my favourites) for a quiet day, when I find it enriching to write a bit by hand, illustrate, do caligraphy…if only for my children to read, hold on to…cherish or even just be plain embarassed by! 😉 It’s leaving them a small gift from the past like what my parents left behind for me ! x

Some things to keep in mind while we use paper responsibly:

Reuse

Use both sides

Recycle

Buy recycled

Look out for treeless paper, cotton, hemp, bamboo…paper made from wood only started in the 1800’s

Use old newspapers as wrapping paper with a string…very shabby-chic! 🙂

Petrichor- the smell of the mingling of rain and earth is one that is ancient and simultaneously in the moment – galvanizing time! It’s said to be one of the most powerful endorphin releasers found in nature whose effect on people has remained constant. We give, we take, we barter our skills continually to the unending drumroll of time…somethings are too important, too human, too beautiful to give up on…and penmanship for me, is one of the flagbearers of that list! Let’s never give up on our own “Rain on Warm Scented Earth!”