Bodie and Fou - Inspiring, French and Beautiful - What More Could You Ask For!?

We love Bodie and Fou - a chic, inspiring online boutique for design lovers in search of cool modern styling for the home and unique beautiful gifts. If you're revamping your home or looking for an interesting present, this is the place to visit - the products are simple, elegant and unusual and anything I've bought from there always sparks up a conversation.  

There's nothing more inspiring for us than seeing entrepreneurs with a passion for lifestyle so when we found Bodie and Fou, we knew we'd be advocates for life, and we’re among good company as their celebrity fans include Helena Christensen and Claudia Schiffer! Bodie and Fou is run by two French sisters, Elodie (Bodie) and Karine (Fou) who source home and fashion items styled beautifully across their website and blog.

It's no surprise their online store has won multiple awards as has Karine's blog which has landed her in the top charts with Vogue and The Telegraph where Karine shares her inspirations, insights into her personal life, creative interior ideas and DIY projects.

Simple, beautiful design takes over the online store which sets off the products perfectly. The duo talk about 'la famille' being one of the most important things in life and you can see the appearance of this in their striking photography.  

My favourite part of the site (apart from the products of course) is the 'About Us' section - not your usual factual page but an inspiring montage of images with keywords detailing all the things they love, from contemporary design to their little girls, and from beautiful moodboards to Sydney... it’s all so inspiring!

Although we are always finding new products to love our current favourites are listed on our 'Products We Love' page. Katie's Top Pick is a pretty map of America taking her back to her world travels and mine is currently a gorgeous but simple gold triangle necklace... perfect with a tan!

Discover your favourite Bodie and Fou items on their website here or find out more about this inspiring pair on Karine's blog here.

With love, Jane x

Working Summer Lunches by Katie & Jane

The launch of our business at the beginning of the year had a huge impact on our working world. All of a sudden our kitchen tables turned into our work desks, we were rushing from meetings to networking events and trying to find the perfect place to take our clients. Eight months on, we thought we’d share our top tips for keeping yourself happy, healthy and energised on-the-go!

Working from the Kitchen Table

When working from home by yourself it can be very easy to graze all day, or completely forget to eat at all! I like to make up a batch of my favourite Thai Tom Yum Soup for a quick (and spicy!) lunch to eat while reading a few articles from the day’s news or catching up on some of the latest app reviews. Tom Yum translates as ‘hot & sour’ and it's a delicious and nourishing lunch to eat either at home or to make in advance and heat through at the office. I like to add king prawns but it's lovely with beef, chicken or tofu too. Find my favourite recipe here.

A Katie & Jane Perfect Working Lunch at Home

At least twice a week Jane & I will work together at either her house or my apartment. We found very early on that we would have so much to do and talk about that we would forget to eat, surviving only on coffee and green tea... not very healthy. So now we make an extra effort to prepare something quick and easy and of course vegetarian for Jane!

We love these homemade Avocado & Bean Wraps as a fresh and nutritious midday boost. They're perfect for leaving the filling in a dish on the side and helping yourself as and when you want one using crisp lettuce leaves as an alternative to tortilla wraps. The brief time out helps us to make sure we have a break from our laptops to reflect on our work and chat about what's happening in our working week.

Recreate it: After cooking mixed beans (black-eyed beans are my favourite) and quinoa, mix with a little feta cheese, cucumber, avocado, spring onion and sun-dried tomatoes, then fill your romaine lettuce wrap and enjoy!

Brain Food

A social media training day can be long and is filled with a lot of information to take in and many decisions to make. A little while back we were fortunate to work with an exciting new brand called Hattie’s Wines and while we were training on-site we were treated to a gorgeous tapas board featuring continental cheeses, breads, olives, Italian meat and a refreshing summer salad. It was all served on beautiful wooden boards - a great idea for feeding a team of people.

Although Hattie's Wines offers hand-selected wines without the 'wino' waffle, we did refrain from sampling their amazing selection while working but are very much looking forward to their new website being launched soon! Find out more about Hattie's Wines on Facebook and Twitter and join a community of women passionate about having fun and talking about wine in a no-nonsense way.

We love these tapas boards from Bodie & Fou below, perfect for recreating your very own tapas-style lunch! Click the image to find out more...

On-The-Go Eats

In the busy world of running and growing your own business, time is of the essence and most of the time food preparation is the last thing on the list.

For lunch, we love Innocent Veg Pots which you simply heat up in the microwave for a few minutes to fill you up and keep you fueled throughout the day. My favourite pot is the Thai Coconut Curry and Jane’s is Mexican Sweet Potato Chilli - the pots contain around two portions of vegetables helping you on your way to five a day!

A great on-the-go afternoon snack is a Naked Juice which can be easily taken from the fridge and into the car on the way to a meeting and apart from being delicious, they're quite filling too! Find out more about the Antioxidant and Superfood juices here

The Perfect Place to Take Clients

The problem with taking a client out to a working lunch is that it’s so hard to find somewhere that balances a great atmosphere with enough space and a quiet, relaxed environment. The newly opened Fig & Olive in Middleton is a hidden gem in the heart of the beautiful Coppice Garden Centre. Being surrounded by so much nature, while eating indoors is a real treat and the menu caters for everyone with lunchtime delights including Beef Teriyaki Glass Noodles, Pan-Fried Lobster Cake, and a light, but filling Hot Smoked Salmon and Beetroot Salad. Find out more about the gorgeous outdoor area, Barry the turtle and their delicious homemade cakes here.

We hope this post has inspired you to ditch the supermarket sandwich and get creative at lunchtime whether you're in an office or working from home. If you want to know more about anything we’ve included in this post then send us an email at smile@katieandjane.com

Katie x

Hanging out with Richard Branson & Elon Musk

Sir Richard Branson continues to be a source of inspiration and motivation for us and last week we watched the live stream of the very first Virgin Unite Google+ Hangout between himself and Paypal, Tesla and SpaceX founder; Elon Musk. They both answered questions about entrepreneurship from various tech hubs across the world including the Branson Centres of Entrepreneurship in South Africa and the Caribbean, the Start-Up Loans initiative in the UK and Virgin Mobile in Colombia.

Elon's vision for the future is based on his passion for wanting it to be better than the past. He said during the Hangout that, if you’re in the business of making useful things for people, then you’re on the right track... it’s as simple as that!

Elon also spoke of his new project Hyperloop which he claims could make a 380-mile journey in "about half an hour" compared to 3 hours. Hyperloop seems to involve sending passengers through a low-friction tube in a capsule. Aimed at being a practical solution for people separated by 1,000 miles or less, the motivation behind it originated from his disappointment at reading about California’s high-speed rail project. To find out more about Hyperloop click here.

On creating a business, Richard said to "come up with an idea that will improve people’s lives and just do it. Lots of people come up with great ideas, but it’s important to turn them into actions and give it a try, and if it fails, pick yourself up and try again." This is certainly the way we think when we're discussing our new ideas, if we don't try something (after careful planning & research of course!) we know we'll regret it even if it doesn't go so well. Our motto, similar to Richard's 'screw it, let's do it' is 'what's the worst that can happen!?'

During the Hangout, Richard also spoke of the UK Government and the need for it to foster small companies, as most are fragile and have a low success rate, and shield them and let them grow so they can become sustainable. He said the big companies always try to stamp out the smaller ones, but it’s an issue of survival - British Airways tried to eliminate Virgin from the airline industry but Virgin outshone them putting the customer experience at the heart of their offering as a way to standout, and sued BA for their dirty tactics.

Richard also talked of entrepreneurs using their flair to help address the world’s larger and more complex problems. I have long been a supporter of The Elders, a concept originated from a conversation between Richard Branson and the musician Peter Gabriel to create a group of dedicated individuals who use their collective wisdom and influence to help tackle some of the world’s most important problems. Desmond Tutu, Kofi Annan, and Gro Harlem Brundtland are only some of the devoted people who make up The Elders, first backed by honorary Elder Nelson Mandela. Find out more & join their cause on Facebook

His final note was to have fun, look after yourself in the process and surround yourself with people who can share the burden of the business and enjoy the good times. Most importantly, he inspired the 5,000 viewers by encouraging everyone to dream big and believe those dreams will one day become a reality. Richard then said farewell to Elon in America and (we assume!) went off to enjoy the sun on Necker Island!

To view the entire hangout in full click here. The conversation was moderated by Yonca Brunini from Google who will be hosting more Google+ Hangouts featuring some of the world’s top entrepreneurs soon.

Katie x

Gentlemen of the Road Stopover...A festival full of fun!

I have a lovely group of girls that I always do festivals with and every year we like to choose a new festival to try. This year was one with a difference…Gentlemen of the Road Stopover  in Lewes, near Brighton.

Hosted by the epic Mumford & Sons, the global series of events began in 2012 and toured small cities and towns around the world, creating a unique experience for everyone involved, and this year was no exception. Staying true to the spirit outlined by the band…it was a music festival that celebrates local people, food and culture, where everyone pitches in and everybody gets something back.

Lewes is a gorgeous town steeped in folklore and history, famed for its huge celebrations each bonfire night, it was chosen by the band for its 2013 UK stopover because they’d heard that “The people of Lewes love a good hoedown” and how right they were, the atmosphere from start to finish was infectious, exploding into the sleepy town after the festivities, where the few local pubs, including The Lansdown Arms welcomed revellers to carry on the fun.

Music highlights include the soulful tunes of Bear's Den, playing ‘Isaac’, an uplifting rendition of ‘Home’ by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, a throwback to my younger years with Vampire Weekend’s ‘One (Blake’s Got a New Face)' and of course the headliners of the weekend Mumford & Sons with a rousing performance of Babel.

The site of The Convent Field was relatively small, but included all you could need in terms of food stalls, with the biggest queues forming for the hog roast. You may have struggled to find options if you were vegetarian as there was a lack of veggie stalls, however the main attraction was the popular Higgidy Pies stall which was a lovely addition to the feel of the festival.

On the second day we decided to bring our own picnic food (read Jane's recent blog post for picnic inspiration!) and laid our picnic blanket out right in front of the centre stage and enjoyed the gorgeous music of Bear's Den. This not only allowed us to save money but summed up the laid-back feel of the festival which is hard to find at other festivals I have been to in previous years where the crowds are claustrophobic and you are more worried about losing your friends forever because you need to queue for the portaloo! This was the most relaxing festival experience I have ever had.

We decided to use a new app to document the fun of the festival called Time Lapse, an app you can use to take photos that can be later rendered as a video with a backing track of your choice. You can choose to manually snap your images or program the app to take a snap every so many hours, minutes or seconds. For our first efforts, we ended up with a funny memory of the weekend set to the backing track of Mumford & Sons of course!  A full Katie & Jane review will be available soon.

When booking the tickets we were told the on-site camping had sold out and after a lot of calling round the local area, we booked to stay in the pretty coastal town of Eastborne in The Guesthouse East, which was £30 a night between 4 of us, we stayed in a fully-equipped suite with shower facilities and most importantly a comfy bed to rest our weary dancing legs! We pre-booked taxis to pick us up from Lewes after the festival which we had no trouble in picking up, and we travelled to Lewes every morning by train.

Overall Mumford & Sons seem to have packed a festival with everything they love and shared it with the world, I can’t wait to see where the next UK stopover for 2014 will be, but I would love to visit one of the US stopovers next year. It was such a unique experience, and really inspired me to look out for new, smaller festivals because they might be smaller in terms of its line-up but it packed a punch where it needed to, the music, the atmosphere and the friendly town of Lewes!

Stopovers in Simcoe, Troy, Guthrie and St. Augustine still to come this year so make sure you head to the main site to check the line-ups for each festival here. 

After each festival I love to purchase a little memento to put up in the apartment, and this One Must Dash print from Bodie & Fou is just perfect to remind me of the Gentleman of the Road printed onto the flags welcoming us to the friendliest festival on the planet!  Click the image to find out more...

Katie x

The Best Things in Life (in July!)

Inspired by our favourite magazine, Red, each month we'll be answering a couple of questions that appear in the magazine, as well as an additional question of our own!

The following questions are taken from July's Red issue featuring Sofia Coppola, beach barbecues and recipes from a new cookbook, Share, which raises money for Women for Women International.

If you have any questions you'd like us to answer in August, tweet us using the hashtag #katieandjane or email us at smile@katieandjane.com

Katie

The best things in life are...

Spinning: I’m not one for spending hours in the gym, slogging it out on the running machine just leaves me feeling bored and always as though I could have done better. Spinning is my new work out – I love the fact that for 30 minutes it’s non-stop and by the end of the session you are left feeling exhausted – but in a good way! It’s a great way to build fitness into your life especially if you are always busy and on the go!

Trying new food: I’ve been meaning to try Kale Chips for a while, and this month I found the time to bake some, they were surprisingly tasty and healthy too – the perfect snack!

A Beautiful Mess app: I haven’t found such a fun app in a while, I love being able to create little masterpieces to share with my family and friends. Now with a lot more borders and backgrounds to choose from, I would thoroughly recommend it to those who love photo-sharing apps. To find out more about it, read my earlier blog post here  

I never go on holiday without...

My favourite reading material: Red Magazine, Women’s Health and Zest. Three magazines jam-packed full of inspirational articles, facts and motivational women. Just the things to enjoy while relaxing on the beach, leaving me ready to hit the ground running when holiday time is over!

The social media question I get asked the most is...

‘Should I delete negative comments?’

The answer is a definite no! Social media is a two-way street and as long as you have planned for unwanted situations, then you should be able to resolve any issues efficiently. Social media is a place where brands meet their consumers face-to-face, and if they get this meeting right, it can be such a powerful way of building brand-loyal ambassadors that translate into purchasing product. Therefore accept that negative comments will arise from time to time, but deal with them proactively and ensure the customer has a positive experience. This will allow you to be public with your efficient resolution too – gaining trust in your company long-term.

Jane

The best things in life are...

Jimmy's Iced Coffee from Selfridges (me above drinking it!). It reminds me of days spent on a my favourite Greek beach!

The Happier app, I've banged on a little about it (find out the rating I gave it in my recent blog post here) - but I genuinely love it and so glad to have been able to share it with many others.

Training for the Color Run 5K in July, will it be the 'happiest 5K on the planet'? My legs will tell you afterwards!

I never go on holiday without...

P20 sun protector - it's the only product that doesn't aggravate my prickly heat. Damn you sensitive skin!

The social media question I get asked the most is...

'Should I join all the platforms?'

No but we'd always encourage you to test them out. On a personal level, try them, if you get enjoyment out of using them continue, if not then quit. In terms of when brands ask this question, this is exactly the need for a strategy first - discover where your target market is and join them there. Better to focus on a few key platforms brilliantly than them all half-heartedly.

A successful social media presence starts with engaging content!

We have spent the last few years creating engaging social media content on behalf of brands and we can tell you it's tough when there isn’t a product launch, a campaign to excite an audience or indeed a competition to generate content. 

Never fear as we know that inspiration can be drawn from a valuable calendar of celebrated events…take a bow the 2013-2014 Awareness Day Calendar by Katie& Jane!

The calendar features more than 500 awareness days, national holidays and events that can be adapted for a number of different target markets on social media platforms. It’s also a valuable asset for scheduling PR events and lesson planning if you're a teacher. 

Whether you generate content for a small business or a multi-national brand, this awareness day calendar will be useful for you.

Here's a few pointers for when posting content - don't forget to...

• Adapt it to your target market, think about what fans and followers already like to talk about online
• Give your audience a call-to-action. That could be anything from a question relating to the topic or a prompt to visit your website to find out further information
• Add an image. Images speak a thousand words and are so important on social media. For example, on Facebook, a post with an image increases engagement rates by 120%!
• Check the dates before posting. Awareness days and events are likely to change from time to time

Find out more and download the calendar at Katie & Jane

Katie x

2013-2014 Awareness Day Calendar