Well, lets warm things up a bit and have a party!

The Fabiola & Sing Sing Christmas party will take place in Oxford, UK, on Wednesday 2 December 5-10pm.

Celebrate with us and enjoy a fabulous 15% discount on every item in our shop, as well as complimentary drinks and nibbles!

Email us if you would like to come and celebrate with us, and help us get through the champagne and cocktails!

Looking forward to seeing you! Merry Christmas!

St Helen & St Katharine is an independent day school for girls in Abingdon, Oxfordshire. As it’s a local school to us we’re very happy to support their charity fund-raising endeavours by taking part in their annual Christmas fair – especially as we get to sell our wares in the wonderful Old School Hall.

And this year the fair promises to be bigger and better than ever before. The fair takes place on Saturday 14th November, with doors opening at 10am.

Look forward to seeing some of you there! It could be the ideal opportunity for you to pick up an object of desire in time for Christmas, and have a fun day out at the same time!

If you do come to the fair this weekend, please don’t be shy – say ‘Hi’ and tell us that you read the blog. We promise not to bite!

Of course, if you can’t wait (or can’t make it to the fair) you can always find an array of gorgeous and beautiful items in our online store.

He’s a food photographer who is completely obsessed with anything food and drink related and anything in between. What’s not to love!

I found his blog whilst looking for great Halloween recipes.

These Candied Apples are so striking have such a depth of colour you would think you’d served up the dark heart of Medusa and the blood of a thousand virgins.

Matt has graciously allowed me to use his gorgeous photography and recipe below. Enjoy!!

Red & Black Candy Apples

8-10 medium sized apples
8-10 wooden twigs, twimmed
3 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1 cup of water
several drops of cinnamon flavored oil
1/4 teaspoon of red food coloring
1/4 teaspoon of black food coloring

Clean and dry the apples. Try to remove as much of the wax as possible. If you purchase them from your local farmer’s market then chances are they have not been treated with the food grade wax that makes then shine. Remove any stems or leaves and insert a twig into the end of each apple. To facilitate easier twig entry you can carefully sharpen the end of the twig or use a candy stick to create a guide hole. Set apples aside.

Heat and stir sugar, corn syrup and water in a saucepan until sugar has dissolved. Boil until the syrup reaches 300 degrees on a candy thermometer. Don’t go over 310 degrees or your candy burns and then you’ll be sad.

Remove from heat and stir in flavored oil and food coloring.

Dip one apple completely in the syrup and swirl it so that it becomes coated with the melted sugar candy. Hold the apple above the saucepan to drain off excess. Place apple, with the stick facing up, onto a baking sheet that’s greased or lined with a silpat. Repeat the process with the remaining apples. If your syrup thickens or cools too much, simply reheat briefly before proceeding. Let the apples cool completely before serving.

A note about the black apples: Lighter colored apples (Granny Smith, Golden Delicious) work well in making the red appear bright and glassy; darker apples like red delicious help the black candy appear as dark as possible. Muy spooky!

Also, Adam made one batch with red food coloring and after he had a few red apples he reheated the candy mixture and added black food coloring. Adding black to red will make it darker. He repeated the dipping process. Black food coloring can be found online or at specialty baking stores.

The Dorchester Festival is based in and around Dorchester Abbey in south Oxfordshire, with all kinds of entertaining activities ranging from puppet shows and ghost hunts to Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat and murder mystery trails!

And, of course, all of this is in support of the fabulous historic building and local charity Seesaw.

The Dorchester Festival lasts 10 days, with the festivities culminating in a two day fair at Dorchester Abbey – which means you can meet us and many other exhibitors between 11am and 5pm on Saturday 9th and Sunday 10th May. It will make a great day out for all the family – so why not come along?

You can read more about the Dorchester Festival Fair, and some of the different companies showing off their beautiful goods, on the fair’s website.

If you do come to the fair this weekend, please don’t be shy – say ‘Hi’ and tell us that you read the blog. We don’t bite, we promise!

It’s all stations go at Fabiola & Sing Sing today, as we prepare ourselves for a day at the fair, to support a local Oxford church.

Holy Trinity Church is a picturesque church in Headington Quarry, Oxford famous for being the place of worship for celebrated author CS Lewis who attended the church, and first preached there on 29th March 1942 on the subject “Religion and pleasure”.

Lewis and his brother, who was known as Warnie, always sat in the same pew in the church, beside the pillar to St George. In 1991, a stained glass window – known as the Narnia window in honour of CS Lewis’s incredibly popular books – was installed beside the pew.

The window depicts Aslan the Lion as the sun, with the word Narnia in the rays of light coming from his mane, while on the right hand side you’ll find a flying horse, the castle Cair Paravel, and a talking tree.

I’m not sure if they have any talking trees in the graveyard, but if you hunt around you may very well stumble across the gravestone of CS Lewis himself.

It’s always good to support your local community, and we’re delighted to be attending Holy Trinity Church’s Spring Fair today. If you drop by, please say hello and take a look at our selection of gorgeous gifts and objects of desire – it could be your last chance to buy that special something before Mother’s Day tomorrow!

The fair is being held at The Coach House, Quarry Road, Headington, Oxford, between 1pm-5pm today.

The snow will make it all seem even more magical.

This weekend at Temple Guiting, I am on Friday night supper duty and in my recipe search, I discovered this fab foodie-blog, Gastronomy Domine.

I have settled on chicken with cardamom and preserved lemons. It just looks warm and colourful, the kind of comfort food to eat in our wintry snowy weather!

I hope we all manage to make it safely out there, us Brits usually panic at the sight of a few snow flurries.

In my teens and early twenties, I drove many times up snowy, precarious mountains to Broken River Ski Field, near Christchurch, New Zealand.

Hopefully, the experience I gained then should prepare me for the driving conditions this weekend.

Fingers crossed!

Next week brings the launch of the January ‘09 Maison et Objet trade show. It showcases anything and everything that is new and gorgeous for interiors.

This is THE show for anyone involved in the interiors industry. It can take years to be accepted as an exhibitor at Maison et Objet and as a result there is literally nothing that isn’t fantastic there – all the horrible/ ugly/ useless stuff has been weedled out.

I find it so inspiring to see so many new and amazing products, including many British companies and artisans. One example is Fiona Gall, one of my favourite British artists. It was a pleasure to see Fiona of Emerald Faerie at Maison et Objet last year. She makes very pretty and whimsical creations, such as this ‘Butterfly Umbrella’ chandelier:

There is everything to be found at Maison et Object – from chocolate-flavoured tea, to squishy sofas and all the things you put on a sofa, to a fully equipped Kitchen Aid kitchen! I hope I will be able to exhibit at Maison et Objet one day soon – but in the meantime I will be a very happy visitor. Wish me ‘bonne chance’!

And if you’re not able to make it to glamorous Paris next week, there are some other great trade shows closer to home this month. Here are some that I am attending.

Top Drawer runs from 18-20th January 2009 in London and showcases the very best new products. Again, a great trade show where only really fantastic products are exhibited, no junk to wade through, yay!

Interiors Birmingham runs from 18-21st January 2009, in Birmingham. This is the UK’s largest interiors event and covers the whole spectrum for interiors from high-end to mass-market.

Thank you to to all of you who have encouraged and supported us at Fabiola & Sing Sing, while we have grown into something to be proud of.

Many of you gave us wonderful feedback, especially regarding our website, while we ironed out the creases. It’s looking a little less crumpled and we are so excited that we decided to throw a party!

The Grand Opening of the Fabiola & Sing Sing website will take place in Oxford, UK, next Tuesday, 16th December 5-10pm.

Celebrate with us and enjoy a 15% discount on every item in our shop, as well as complimentary pink champagne and Christmas Caipirinha cocktails!

Email us if you would like to come and celebrate with us, and help us get through the champagne and cocktails!

Oh, and I nearly forgot. As a special early Christmas present to our faithful blog readers – you can take advantage of a 15% discount of all the products in the Fabiola & Sing Sing online store by using web code WEB1208 at the checkout. This special promotion is running until December 20th – so don’t delay!

Looking forward to seeing you! Merry Christmas!

We had a wonderful time on Saturday at the St Helen & St Katharine School Christmas Fair in Abingdon. It was great to introduce ourselves to many new customers and meet other hardworking vendors selling lots of lovely items.

If you didn’t get the chance to meet us on Saturday, then be sure to check out the other fairs we will be exhibiting at in the run-up to Christmas.

The day was made even more fun by the delightful Sandrine, who was manning a busy stand opposite us festooned with French pâtés. Sandrine and her family run Maison Plasse, who import organic French charcuterie and ready-made dishes from the Auvergne and ship to anywhere in the European Union. Unsurprisingly, a steady stream of customers lined up to taste the scrumptious terrines, confit de canard, and foie gras she was displaying.

If you want to get a friend or loved one something a little bit different for Christmas, maybe some French organic gourmet food will be just the ticket. Bon Appetit!

Fabiola & Sing Sing were exhibiting at the Steventon Craft Fair today in Oxfordshire. It’s always good to get out of the virtual world and meet our customers face-to-face. Maybe some of you reading this are visiting our blog after finding out about us for the first time in Steventon?

I thought it would be a good idea to tell you about other Christmas fairs and markets that we are going to be attending in the next few weeks. They are all in the villages surrounding our base in Oxford, so if you’re in the area, please drop by and say ‘hello’.

Saturday 22 November, 2008: St Helen & St Katharine School Christmas Fair, Faringdon Road, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, OX14 1BE. 10am – 3:30pm.

Friday 28 November, 2008: Friends of Wychwood School Fair, 74 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6JR. 2:30pm – 5pm.

Friday 28 November, 2008: Cumnor School Christmas Bazaar, C of E Primary School, Oxford Rd, Cumnor. 6pm – 8pm.

Saturday 29 November, 2008: Abingdon Preparatory School Christmas Fair (Formerly Josca’s), Josca’s House, Kingston Road, Frilford, Abingdon, OX13 5NX. 2pm – 4pm.

Thursday 4 December, 2008: Friends of John Blandy Kingston Bagpuize School Christmas Shopping Evening, Southmoor Village Hall, Laurel Drive, Southmoor, OX13 5DJ. 6pm – 9pm.

Saturday 6 December – Sunday 7 December, 2008: Northmoor Trust Christmas Craft Fair, Hill Farm, Little Wittenham, Abingdon, OX14 4QZ. 10am – 4pm.

And finally, two other Christmas fairs in the Oxford area that sadly we’re not able to attend because of other commitments. Hey, maybe it’s time we cloned ourselves?

Saturday 6 December, 2008: South Hinskey Christmas Fair, St Laurence Church, Parker Road/St Laurence Road, South Hinksey, OX1 5BA. 10am – 4pm.

Saturday 6 December, 2008: Squirrel School Christmas Fair, Oxford. 4pm – 6pm.