Scents and Sensibility

We like to fill Twee Towers with the delightful aromas of all things sweet... the beautiful fragrances that linger in the air here were devised by Perfumer Extraordinaire - Angela Flanders.



Rhi had the immense honour of working for Angela in her quiant little shop on Columbia Road in London. She woke every Sunday, excited to get back in among the treasure trove of perfume bottles and spend the day introducing people to the most enchanting scents, that Angela conjures up in her own little workshop - everything mixed and made by her own fair hands and invented using her instinctive understanding of the fine art and alchemy of perfume making.

Her range covers everything from crisp, fresh citrus scents, aromatic woody fragrances, exotic orientals, - some her own adaptations of traditional fragrances, and even those based on legends (the delightful 'Hungary Water' - said to have been first made for the Queen of Hungary in 1370, the story goes that it restored her youthful beauty and she married the King of Poland at the age of 75!) - and historical romances (like 'Josephine', named for Napoleon Bonaparte's first wife - who apparently was enamoured with the scent of violets... it is said that after he returned from exile after hearing of her death, Napoleon went and gathered violets from her garden, he wore them in a locket until the day he died as a constant reminder of their turbulent love.)

To write a list of recommendations would be futile, we'd be just as well copying and pasting the entire range from her website... The fragrances that we use on a daily basis however are: Manderin and Mint (especially lovely in the kitchen); Rose Linen Spray (the most true and traditional rose fragrance - keeps the linens in the cupboard smelling lovely); The wonderous French Moth Herb Spray (to keep those pesky beasts from making holes in your best clothes! It really works!) - and perhaps our most beloved, the aforementioned violet-based 'Josephine' (romantic and dreamy... the perfect fragrance to accompany spending an evening creating pretty things!)




Take a look at Angela's online home here. However if you're ever visiting East London on a Sunday, you simply HAVE to visit her magical little boutique, it is an must see, one of the city's best kept secrets. Nothing better than a trip to Columbia Road's amazing flower market on a Sunday either :)

Much love.

R&L xx

Twee Towers Tour // The Kitchen

It was the birthplace of the infamous After Dinner Dance Parties, the catalyst of many wonderful & truely scrummy Twee Towers culinary creations and the place where lots of Twee Punch was devoured at our recent house warming, today the Twee Towers Tour brings you to....the Kitchen!

To compliment the chalky blue of the cupboards, cutesy candy pastel colours & vintage rusticness was the look that we ran with in this room. As somewhere where we'd spent a lot of our time, we wanted to make it playful and pretty as well as functional.

Here's a few snaps of our favourite bits from around the room:

We loved these pink appliances from Next as soon as we saw them, they really brighten up the room! By ensuring that the kettle is never far from our minds, the eye-catching fuschia might be partly responsible for our small fruity tea addiction, but if you can't have pink in your kitchen whilst living with your best friend... when the heck can you! :)

We painted the kitchen a fresh shade of pastel green (in record time I hasten to add - second coat - 30 mins, yeaaah!) and decorated one of the wall spaces with this beautiful Belle & Boo wall sticker from The Sisters Guild. Their collection of decor products are simply stunning, harking back to classic, vintage children's design and add a really sweet edge to any room.

Isn't this fruit bowl just beaut?

Stacks of cookbooks filled with yummy recipes & treats! Now that we've finished decorating, we're going to make more time to bake! We recently made Jack Daniels & Coke cupcakes (topped with mini cola bottles) for James' (Lola's boy) birthday. They were luuuush! Need more of them in our lives.

We rescued these shelves from the vortex of vintage & junk that resides in our garage at the moment and filled it with pretty little things! The cute floral china plate was our first joint purchase which we picked up from a car boot sale before we moved in!

One of our favourite aspects of the kitchen, we decorated the window sill with some more lovely bits (mostly gifts - big thank you to the fams'!) including this violet polka dot cup & saucer planter - the perfect incentive to start growing our own herbs & our Orla Kiely dish (not quite in fitting with our colour scheme but it's too good to put away and ideal for sharing popcorn in!)

We adapted our staple chevron prints to fit with the colour scheme of the kitchen and framed these beautiful Puffin postcards of classic Children's Literature covers. As littl'ens, we both LOVED reading so we thought it'd be a nice detail to display these small facets of our personalities in prime areas of our home!

Hope you like lovelies :)
L&R x

DIY LOVE // Make Your Own Record Player!

Do you find yourself with stacks of vinyl and no record player? So do we, *sigh*. Not for lack of searching, we just haven't found the perfect one yet! I'm sure it will find its way to us soon.

In the meantime, do not fear darlings, here at Twee Towers we don't need an excuse to embark on seemingly impossible DIY projects and today we bring you... Make Your Own Record Player! The best thing is, there's only a few simple steps and you don't even need electricity!

Please don't try this on your best vinyls though - we're good but we're not that good!

All you'll need is:

• A vinyl


• A paintbrush or pencil


• A plastic cup


• A pin

Firstly, stick the pin through the base of the plastic cup (so that the head of the pin is on the inside).



Place the paintbrush through centre of the vinyl (you can also use a pencil if this fits better)... we used blu-tac to make it a bit more sturdy!



Then you're just about ready to spin! Ideally you will need two people, one to twist the paintbrush around to spin the vinyl and the other to hold the cup over the vinyl letting the pin scratch the surface. Start from outside of the vinyl, holding the cup as steady as you possibly can, the pin will slowly creep towards the centre playing your song!

It takes a few goes to perfect and the vocals are a couple of octaves higher than you might expect but it all adds to the charm we think!

Here's our attempt at playing Cilla Black's 'Step into Love':






Happy spinning!

L&R x

After Dinner Dance Party // Space Edition

Sometimes over dinner we ponder on the "Great Unknown"... We wonder why on earth people are so scared of Alien Invasions and Body Snatchers. Silly humans, why would Aliens want to take over our brains, when they could take over the world in force, in the body of an Elephant... We then conspired that the dinosaurs didn't die out, they were just 'beamed up'... with Elvis.

On that note, we thought we'd share some Out of This World tracks this week, from the weird to the wonderful.



Paul St John


Paul St John's 1972 track kindly informs us that Flying Saucers Have Landed! HELP! (the Flip side to this record is also worth a listen, Spaceship Lover - creepy love affairs on Spaceships - fantastic!)

Joe Meek



Joe Meek, the genius that was (he might come up a lot in our After Dinner Dance Parties...) - I Hear a New World, the opening track from 'I Hear a New World - an Outer Space Music Fantasy' - the concept album, written and recorded by Joe Meek and 'The Blue Men', released in 1960 - lightyears ahead of its time.

The Spotnicks



Are you still with us? We did say it would get weird... Here are The Spotnicks. Performing in spacesuits. Quite possibly the best thing we have ever seen.

War of The Worlds



We couldn't possibly publish this post without a mention of Jeff Wayne's War of The Worlds. What is not to love about this epic musical interpretation of H.G. Wells' groundbreaking space invasion novel? Justin Hayward singing Forever Autumn is one of the highlights, with the addition Richard Burton's otherworldly narrative, it transports you straight to an alternative Earth under seige from alien invasion.


... We'll probably go to bed wearing tinfoil hats tonight and we'll definitely be wary of the elephant enclosure at the zoo going forward...

Happy dancing! See you next week!

Love R&L x