It’s not often that a book has such a profound effect on me that I feel compelled to tell everyone I know to read it. But this is one of those very rare times, and so: you have to read this book. I Wish I Knew This Earlier: Lessons on Love by Toni Tone isn’t…
Category: Reviews
Can I hinch myself happy?
I’m late to the party. The hinching party, that is. I’ve been vaguely aware of Sophie Hinchliffe, aka Mrs Hinch, for a fair while now, but until a few weeks ago I’d never taken much of an interest in the biggest cleaning sensation since British national treasures Kim and Aggie. View this post on Instagram Happy…
Something good is brewing: Bake & Brew Box review
Anyone who knows me knows that I communicate using the little-known sixth, and most hyggeligt, love language: baking. I LOVE baking for so many reasons – it’s therapeutic, it’s productive, it’s creative and it’s just plain fun. But what I don’t love so much is measuring out all the ingredients. If you’ve ever messed up…
The hygge of making
I don’t ‘make’ anywhere near as much as I should these days. When I was at school, I was in art club, and I remember loving every single second of those Wednesdays after school making stained ‘glass’ windows out of sweet wrappers, batik paintings, mosaics and clay animals. I was also in magazine club, where…
Book review: Scandinavian Comfort Food by Trine Hahnemann
If you’re a regular on this blog, I’m sure you’ll be familiar with Trine Hahnemann, the author of Scandinavian Christmas, which is the book that first introduced me to the concept of hygge (I talk about it a bit more in this post). But inexplicably, I’ve seen hardly anyone talking about Scandinavian Comfort Food. Is…
Let’s fika with ScandiKitchen: The Essence of Hygge
I’m very selective about the ‘hygge books’ I write about on here, mainly because there are just so many and a lot of them are pretty similar. How many ways can there be to light a candle, and how many books do we really need to tell us about the joys of spending time with…
Hygge and happiness with Meik Wiking
Got a hyggestund? I’m in a serious state of hyggehjørnet, so let’s hyggesnak about our favourite topic: that’s right, it’s hygge! And if you’re wondering what these fabulous terms mean, you’d better get your hands on a copy of The Little Book of Hygge: The Danish Way to Live Well by Meik Wiking. I’m the…
Book review: The Art of Hygge
Want to know a secret? I don’t know if you’ve heard, but hygge is THE hot topic of autumn 2016. There are something like nine books about hygge being released in the next month or so, which is amazing considering nobody in the UK really knew what it was when I started blogging about it…
Sleeping smarter with the S+
As I may have mentioned at some point before, I don’t sleep well. Not at all. I wake up several times a night, the slightest noise or brightening of the lights disturbs me and it can take me a good couple of hours to fall asleep. Obviously tiredness isn’t good, and a lack of sleep…
Sweet dreams: the Hello Hygge guide to sleep
Sleeping is harder than it looks. If you’re another ‘bad sleeper’ like me, you’ll be only too aware of this. ‘I won’t look at the time, I won’t look at the time… OK just one look… HOW IS IT 4AM, that means if I fall asleep RIGHT NOW I will get a MAXIMUM of three…
Cosy books for Christmas reading
I’m 99% sure I was born with a book in my hand. I was one of those kids who read 24/7. We had to write about our weekends on Mondays at infant school, and on every single page of my book I’ve written about the Enid Blyton book I read or bought. I wrote my…
British Summertime: Birchbox June 2015 review
Anyone who knows me knows I’m not the biggest fan of summer. I am the colour of a ghost and just as translucent, and as someone who naturally runs much hotter than the average person, it’s generally a bit of a sticky, moody mess for me. So when faced with this time of year, it’s…
Mew at Camden Roundhouse 20/05/15
I love Mew. I do. I’ve loved them for ten years. They were my third musical love, and being a Danish band, it feels right for me to write about them, given this blog’s semi-Danish title. Plus, Mew really are a fountain of hygge – I included them in my Hello Hygge playlist a few…
The Great Escape 2015
May is far and away the best month to be in Brighton. It’s festival season, and the town centre is buried for four sweet weeks in performances, crowds and NOISE. And this weekend was the noisiest yet, as The Great Escape 2015 bowled into town to join Brighton Festival and the Fringe Festival, bringing with…
Rufus Wainwright at Theatre Royal Drury Lane, London 06/04/14
“Any questions or comments?” Yes, as it happens, Lucy Wainwright Roche, I do have some questions or comments. How on earth does your half-brother Rufus Wainwright hold those notes? Why have relatively few people heard of Rufus? How did he get into those trousers? Why did nobody mention that Jean Paul Gaultier was here until…
Philomena with Steve Coogan Q&A @ Duke of York’s, Brighton
“It’s not an extraordinary story.” Perhaps a funny thing to say when it’s coming from the man who wrote, produced and starred in Philomena, and I can’t necessarily say I agree with Steve Coogan having just left a special screening of the film at the Duke of York’s cinema in Brighton where he also appeared…
Kveikur by Sigur Rós review: Once more with feeling
I’m going to say something that’s going to shock you. First I will mitigate what I’m about to say by making sure you’re aware that Sigur Rós is my favourite band and probably always will be. If you put my iPod on shuffle, every other song will be Sigur Rós. If I had to destroy…
A Weekend in Paris: A city review
Last weekend, I was fortunate enough to take a trip to Paris with one of my friends, Sia. We found a deal on a voucher website for three nights in a hotel in Nanterre, about 20 minutes outside central Paris on the RER, with Eurostar travel included, so we snapped it off and on Friday…
Auti-Sim: The game that shows you how it feels to have autism
“SHUT UP. Why can’t I make it stop?” An interesting thing happened when I started to play Auti-Sim. My browser, laden with tabs upon tabs and massive, complex web pages froze. I couldn’t close it, I couldn’t click anything. Everything on my laptop became unresponsive. Everything, that is, except the cacophony of distant screaming and…
Sigur Rós at O2 Academy Brixton 07/03/13: A review
The only thing you need to know about me is that my true love in life is Sigur Rós. Icelandic ambient post-rock isn’t for everyone, but they’re perfect for me. This is why, last autumn, I was sat at my computer desperately refreshing as the tickets for their London gigs were released. I booked a…
My pick of the free Brighton Festival events
I WISH I had enough disposable income to attend the entire festival, paid events included, I really do. I love Brighton Festival. However, I’m up to my eyeballs in student debt and I’m realistic about what I can afford. Some people would say that attending an arts festival in your own city is a bit…
Tanner’s top five French films of all time
Bonjour mes amis! I’m off to Paris two months today, so I thought I’d share with you my favourite five French films. So sit back, whack this on for a rather big hint about my number one French film and take notes avec ton stylo… 5. Chocolat Synopsis: Residents of a tiny traditional French…
Thierry Mugler’s Alien, Angel and Womanity
As anyone who knows me will be very aware, I walk around in a permanent cloud of my first, and favourite, perfume, Thierry Mugler’s 2005 eau de parfum, Alien. A heady combination of jasmine, amber and woody notes make this a potent potion which is not for the faint-hearted. The deep purple, jewel-like bottle conjures images…
OkCupid vs. BeautifulPeople
Anyone who follows this blog will recall my most popular post to date, about controversial dating website BeautifulPeople, which accepts wannabe members using a voting system based purely on attractiveness. The number of views that post still gets makes it quite obvious that people are endlessly fascinated with this website, and, seemingly, dating websites in…
Canteen: Great British Food book review
Canteen: Great British Food might be the most exciting looking book I own. An enigmatically simple brown paper cover, with its title and authors printed in large black capitals. And that’s it for the cover. No enticing, steaming plates of food or enthusiastic chefs captured in the middle of some dynamic kitchen sequence. No gimmicks….
Seasons Eatings!
Hello! The title today is in honour of the fact that my Ceviche review is now online for you to read! It’s nice to have something else published by a different website… what can I say? I’m ALL about the diversity. What I’d really love is for you to like it, share it, tweet it, comment…
Celebrate by Pippa Middleton: A book review
Being a massive fan of her perpetually elegant sister, I had to snap up a bit of the Middleton magic when I heard that Pippa Middleton had released a book. Celebrate is, unsurprisingly, a book dedicated to all things celebratory, and is, in a rather twee fashion, split into four sections by season. Pippa kicks…
Hello Hygge 