Last one 'til 2012!

Thank you to all of our faithful blog followers for sharing another fantastic year with us. Hope you have a wonderful Christmas and see you in 2012!

Bill Granger's Chicken and Mushroom Pie

Thought I'd share this recipe as it's been the flavour of the month – literally – in our household. I had a friend send it to me after she made it for us. It's from a Bill Granger cookbook. It's a bit fancy with porcini mushrooms but I left those out and it was still outstanding! Best thing is you can freeze it easily and bring it out again and again, night after night. I'm not sick of it yet…

Serves 4

10g dried porcini mushrooms

500g skinless chicken breast fillets

60g plain flour

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 teaspoon salt

freshly ground black pepper

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

25g butter

1 small onion, finely diced

2 garlic cloves, crushed

150g mushrooms, sliced

80ml white wine (or water)

125ml cream

1 tablespoon chopped sage

300g ready-made puff pastry (I used shortcrust)

2 egg yolks, lightly beaten, to glaze

Soak the dried porcini in 250ml just-boiled water for 30 minutes. Cut the chicken into 2-3cm dice. Combine the flour, cayenne, salt and pepper in a bowl. Add the chicken and toss to coat, shaking off any excess. Heat the olive oil and butter in a large frying pan over high heat. Add the chicken and stir-fry until lightly browned and sealed (not cooked through). Remove and set aside.

Add the onion, garlic and fresh mushrooms to the pan and cook over a medium heat for 5 minutes or until the mushrooms are coloured. Add the wine and let bubble for 1 minute. Chop the porcini and add with their soakage liquid and the cream. Simmer gently for a further 5 minutes. Add the chicken and cook for another minute. Remove from heat and let cool. Stir in the sage.

Roll the pastry in a lightly floured surface until 4mm thick. Cut out 4 rounds large enough to line 4 pie tins, 9.5cm in diameter, and 4 smaller rounds for the pie lids. Line the tins with the larger pastry tops on the pies and press the edges together to seal, then crimp with a fork. Make a slit in the top of each pie using a sharp knife.

Pies can be made and refrigerated or frozen in advance to this stage. If cooking now, brush with egg yolk and bake in a preheated oven at 180c for 35 minutes, or until golden brown.

To cook after freezing, allow the pies to thaw in the fridge for several hours or overnight then brush with egg yolk and bake as above.

Serve with green salad.

Dunlin Home

Well if you're looking for gift ideas this Christmas, and hoping to find something with classic, understated and original style for your loved ones (or me... he he!), check out new Australian homewares store, Dunlin Home. It's a collection of elegant pieces inspired by the olden days in the country, when milk jugs were actually used to serve milk, and fruit from the orchard was collected in a pretty woven basket. Check them out!

Flickr Find

This prolific photographer from Bulgaria is a bit of an enigma. I can't find any information about her, but her work is astounding. With a large collection of self portraits as well as other photos and paintings, she calls herself "Foxe" on Flickr, and her photostream can be viewed here.

One of the testimonials on her profile page best describes this talented artist and her intriguing work: "Foxeto is a beautiful girl with the soul of a poet; the maker of images haunting and unforgettable. I love her work so."

Hurrah

It's been a crazy few months here at Boheem. Lots has changed, the days are flying by and somewhere amongst it all we found our work published. {Graphic Design} Australian Style Manual is the first textbook for tertiary students written with an Australian and New Zealand focus. In a constantly changing and inspiring design environment, it's good to see something like this available to young designers -and we're stoked to be included for our work on Everything in Common.

California Gold

I just came across these posters the other day and instantly fell in love with them!

The design duo who also happen to be a husband and wife team over at Lab Partners are responsible for these beautiful prints. This series is all about California's natural wonders, the mix of gold and geometric shapes are stunning and work so nicely as a series. All five screen prints will be printed with metallic inks. They're not available yet, but I'll definitely be purchasing them when they are!

Spoonflower

Do the words 'custom printed fabric' make your heart skip a beat?

A good friend of mind recently told me about Spoonflower, which we now (at Boheem) consider somewhat 'life changing'. This site allows anyone to design, upload, print and create custom made fabrics.

There is no minimum order, they have a selection of really nice natural fabrics, the printing process is eco-friendly and yes, they ship internationally.

The website is extensive, well organised, with thousands of samples of past prints and projects.

Spoonflower will even send you a swatch and colour sample book for just $2.

Amazing and definitely worth a look: www.spoonflower.com

Plank and Trestle

Whilst being away from the studio I've been creepily checking in on the progress of some of the projects which were underway when I checked out. Just hopped online to see if furniture designers Lana and Mike Hall had launched the branding for their new venture: Plank and Trestle. Sure enough – a spiffy new landing page. By the way, the range is stunning… I can't wait to order one of their pieces for myself!

Luca Turns Two!

Somewhere in the blur of the past 12 months Luca started walking, talking in sentences, selecting her own clothes, riding a scooter and can count to 10.

Her favourite colour is green.

She loves Greek yoghurt.

Carrots the rabbit still remains her most loyal friend.

Happy birthday big girl!

The Distillery Letterpress Excursion

On my past few visits to New York City, I have paid a visit to Greenwich Letterpress in the West Village (visit their blog greenwichletterpress.blogspot.com). I have wondered why we didn't have a similar printing press/store in Sydney, this was true until now.

Last Thursday evening, Chantel, Kat, Mei, Jo and I went on excursion to the grand opening of The Distillery Letterpress in North Sydney.

The smell of ink greeted us, and after a short demonstration where we saw the 1959 Heidelberg Windmill Press in motion we were sold! There is a special place for letterpress in every graphic designers heart, the textured, pillowy paper subtly debossed brings design to life.

We were impressed by the team at The Distillery, they really seemed to know their stuff - and their passion for the fine art of letterpress was inspiring.

To put it simply, letterpress printers are to printing what artisan bread makers are to baking - yum!

www.the-distillery.com.au

100 Days of Typography

Spanish designer Lucia Soto set herself the ultimate challenge when she set out to create 100 posters in 100 days using fonts that could be downloaded for free from the internet. I love some of the work she's come up with and it's interesting to see how each font has inspired the style of each poster. See all of her posters here

Sasha Hearts Paper

I recently stumbled across these beautiful geometric patterns by Sasha Prood. Sasha is a designer, illustrator and artist based in Brooklyn. She creates detailed illustrations, patterns and hand rendered typography using pencil, pen and watercolour. Her work is organic and natural with an amazing use of colour!

It's a girl!

Claire and Aaron welcomed baby D'arcy Ruth into the world during the early hours of Saturday 10th September. 4 weeks early she took us all by surprise, but we are so happy she arrived safe and sound.

D'arcy is as cute as a button, and has become the 3rd Boheemian baby girl to add to our growing list.

Regular visitors to the blog will realise Claire does most of the posting for us… However with Claire now out of action for a few months, you are stuck with the rest of us! We are not as articulate as Claire and are sure to have apostrophes' out of place and possibly the odd spelling misstkae, but stick with us and hopefully we will come up with some insightful bits and bobs.

Just a thought, if anyone would like to be included on the Boho Bandwagon send through your info and a couple of pics to studio@boheem.com.au

PS 'It's a girl' featured card can be purchased at

www.etsy.com/listing/47710894/its-a-girl-letterpress-notecards-set-of

On Saturday...

Kat and I headed to The Papermill on the weekend for our type drawing workshop with Gemma O'Brien. We spent three hours working through some pretty fun exercises with Gemma and 20 or so other creatives - and we left feeling inspired and like we'd achieved a lot for a Saturday morning! It was lovely to get off the computer and use our hands to generate type - and it definitely made us want to draw more. This is a not-so-great photo of the result of Saturday's final exercise where we each had to focus on a letter. Bet you can't guess which ones are ours!

Periodic Table of Typefaces

This is typography nerdism at its absolute finest. Click on the image if you'd like a larger version. Unfortunately I can't find the name of the designer, who I'd love to credit. But well done, whoever you are! Although, is that Gill Sans I see in the heading? Can we just forget that font was every invented please??!