Sitting here with a glass of Mulled Wine and my Quiksilver catalogue- choosing clothes for Fall/winter09!!!! My Boyf is making my dinner (do hurry up love, ha, ha) and getting over the packed shopping centre where I successfully did all my Christmas shopping last minute! Well, ok, my brother did a lot of it last week, but all the other stuff I got today …and some! We took some pics of me and my brother which I got developed, and we are giving these to my nan and my great  Aunt. I’m sporting  a stripy number from the spring collection in the pics-my new favourite jumper. Thanks for the lovely surprise suitcase full of clothes Quiksilver. Ahhhhhh!!! Georgous silks and wools. So AMAZING!!           

Spending Christmas day at my nan’s house in Hammersmith, by the River Thames. Love it there, all the childhood memories. She will be 80 next year! My brother will be cooking the Christmas meal, as always, the chef. The only thing is that my nana is insisting on frozen sprouts this year and my brother has turned his nose up and has brought some fresh ones. Hope they don’t have a row, ha ha.  They have a big Turkey, but I will be sitting pretty with my Quorn sausages!! In the morning we will be at my partners house with his family and will have smoked salmon, scrambled eggs and champagne!  Looks like lots of Wallace and Gromitt on the telly tomorrow and my mum and nan will be watching the coronation street special- the addicts! 

On boxing day we will go to my dad and Pam’s -his partner and on Saturday and Sunday I was planning to go to the gym, but its shut, so I guess I will carry on eating mince pies and drinking wine! On Monday  we are recording in west London, yeeharr!

Have a lovely Christmas with your family’s, or how ever you are spending the Christmas holiday. Hope you have a  relaxing time and have lots of fun and yummy food!

Ellie xxx

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Do you also get annoyed by the mood messages of your so-called friends on Facebook that for example just got out of the shower and are now about to use their raspberry body lotion or by the ones that just put two sugar cubes and some diet milk in their coffees? Seriously, why do those people think I could be interested in a single one of those details about their lives? Well correct, maybe because they are my friends on Facebook. And you are totally right if you advice me here to just get rid of them. But as much as their ‘mood messages’ annoy me sometimes, once in a while they can be just as delightful and inspirational…

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Just recently, for instance, a true facebook acquaintance of mine (I maybe talked to that guy twice in real life, but thanks to Facebook, I now get daily updates about what time he eats breakfast…) had the following mood message: “I haven’t had to listen to ‘Last Christmas’ up until now and I hope this won’t change this year…” Not that this was too inspirational, but it made busy Ela at least have a halt for a second and think of the absolutely adorable time that was going to stop her from running through life soon: Christmas Holidays! And for this very second there on Facebook, I decided to ignore the fact that I hadn’t shopped a single Christmas gift for my beloved ones, but instead concentrated on the feeling which only the sheltered moments of Christmas Eves with your family can offer you… Believe me, it felt brilliant!

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Well, I become a hopeless romantic when it comes down to Christmas. This includes not only traditional Christmas dishes (since I’m Swiss, its Raclette) but also huge golden gifts with enormous ribbons and of course an outfit that makes me eclipse all the shiny gift boxes…This year, I am convinced that I will steal the limelight from all of them with my Quiksilver Women’s Holiday Collection Marianne dress. Maybe to go with a golden Alice band including a glossy bow on the top to make the gift boxes fade even more?

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Well, let’s stop it! The golden hairband is definitely too much of the Christmas romance for me as well. Either way, I think I’m going to listen to ‘Last Christmas’ these days soon… Call it corny! But hey, it will take another year till Christmas, right?

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So let’s just be romantic and merry Christmas to all of you!

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Ela (hopelessly glittering already…)

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Ela wearing the Marianne Dress for X-Mas Eve

Hey everyone, I’m Anna and this is my first blog!

I’m a singer songwriter based in London- I am also at full time University studying for my music degree which is hard work but fun- continuing with my studies has been important to me. 

So, what have I been up to? Well, I’ve just got back from a hard days work at the studio!!   I’m writing a song with the very talented Peter Vetesse- and I was inspired after watching a film called Factory Girl- I don’t know if you’ve heard of it. Anyway the storyline is based on the life of Edie Sedgwick (Andy Warhol’s muse) and there’s a side storyline detailing the love affair between herself and Bob Dylan- then I found out that a lot of his songs are supposedly about her- and its fascinating me sooo much! I’m doing more and more research about it as we speak, and I can’t wait to put the story into a song- hopefully the one I’m writing at the moment! It’s got a gorgeous piano part- it sounds Christmassy!

I am so excited about Christmas- I went shopping with my best friend Marisa over the weekend- and have almost everyone covered now! =) Christmas is full of little family traditions in the Leddra-Chapman household – my little sister Beth is now 10 but is still full of the wonders of it all!   

Happy Christmas everyone! 

Anna xx

This is for Charlotte caus she loves James Taylor!!

Saw this documentary the other day called Hotel California about LA in the 60s and 70s. The Soundtrack is Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, James Taylor, Crosby Stills and Nash. The Documentary is beautiful and really takes you back there to that golden era of folk music before it all changed in the 70s with the arrival of rock and roll and the evil Charles Manson. I loved it caus it reminded me of living in LA and the 60s and 70s was really my mum and Dads time with peace and love and all that. If you can get hold of this documentary Its brilliant. Heres something I found on youtube about the scene.

James Taylor -going to California

uk.youtube.com/watch?v=nxubFB7TrQ8

Hello there ! This is my first post as a Quiksilver woman! yeay. Things are great at the moment. I am about to release my album The Philosophy Tree on itunes in the UK, USA, Australia and France. It will be on itunes by the end of January! Its really strange and exciting as yesterday I was singing Nelly Furtado’s song ‘try’ and I thought I would go and look for her on itunes and buy the song as I realised I don’t have it. Then I saw her ‘itunes essentials’ album and checked out her biography…and it has me listed as one of her ‘contempories’ alongside Dido, Amy Winehouse, Jem! Mad and unexpected!

I am putting together another album called ‘Lost songs’ to be released at the same time which will be 12 of my many many songs that I have written (well over 100) that didnt get to see the light of day as they didn’t fit on my first album soundwise. These will be songs that are very special to me. Im so excited to be releasing another album even though this isn’t strictly my second album- that is still in the making! I spoke to Yoad, who recorded the whole of Jem’s first album and he likes a song that I have written to a track he sent over to me. We have written a few together and he is sooo talented and comes up with the most crazy keyboard sounds and scales! Love him!!

Looking forward to my band getting back as well..some of them are travelling at the moment. We will get together and Jam and do some more writing and recording in Jan/Feb with a great new engineer and producer called Clive Martin! If you haven’t seen the links We have a gig this week in Camden Town by the Canal so I am practicing some new songs on my beloved Hummingbird (thanks Gibson for the free guitar!!) and Dave Harewood is accompanying me on Djembe, which Is my favourite drum of all drums, (and Dave is my favourite companion, ha ha!) and Hils has been round my house going through new songs and harmonising with me..sweeeet!

Spk soon

Ellie xxx

NewYork

Me and my manager jumped on a plane….got 3 seats to ourselves because we used the “pretend your asleep and no one will sit next to us” trick.
3 hours into to it…and the plane starts to get a little bit shaky…..and then it got REALLY SHAKY…and im not gonna lie…i thought that was the end of www.myspace.com/charlottesoul.ahaha…i seriously did think that that was the end of me.

 
and it didnt help that i was watching the dark night which btw is the most scariest film ever and i felt really on edge when i was watching it…so i decided to watch camp rock.ilove abit of the jonas brothers now and again:)
anywayyyyyyyyyyyyy got to newyork….jumped into a yellow cab.. and went to 5th avenue to drop the bags off.and then went to get something to eat.

 
So i get a phone call of an absolute saint of a man paul inder…and tells me i have a slot at the canal room..which is possible the best venue with the most amazing sound system ever.
after that i met some really cool people and basically it was a really amazing 6 days.

Pictures time…

Ellie’s last (official) gig of 2008, should be a corker!! Playing lots of new songs and arrangements acoustically, with guitar keys and percussion… this is a show not to be missed. The Constitution is a great pub 5 minutes from camden tube station, renowned for its great mix of live music performances, and there are several other great performances lined up on the bill that night.

Come and join Ellie and her band in an acoustic christmas extravaganza party, in a great venue in Camden, and forget about the boring christmas shopping nonsense once and for all!

5 english pounds on the door, 4 if youre a concession.

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Dear you.

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My name is Eliane, but call me Ela, just as all my friends do. And since I’m going to spill my guts here in the future, I sort of feel that you became one of my friends just by reading this. Who I am is a student, a journalist, a part-time model, a fashion addict, an art lover, a book reader, a music listener, a movie viewer, a theatre spectator, a sun worshipper, a rain enthusiast, a snow devotee, a city person, a mountain dweller, an ocean admirer, a globe trotter, and with the move I’m doing right here right now, I am all of a sudden as well a blog writer…

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The only problem with this is that I don’t read blogs. Not that I wouldn’t dignify this new opportunity of written expression or not that I wouldn’t like to read. As a student, a journalist and as a book reader I naturally fall for both. The reason that I don’t read blogs is that I am a bit old fashioned as far as the written word is concerned. I simply don’t like reading on a screen, but I do have a serious fetish for magazines, books, newspapers and any other kind of letters on tangible paper. And that’s what made me (doubtlessly a kid of 21st virtual space century) so far locking the written word out of my letterbox rather than loading it into my mailbox.

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Now when the girls at Quiksilver Women asked me if I was interested in holding a blog on their website, you might be able to imagine what dilemma I was caught in since I don’t read blogs… I mean, it was Quiksilver Women calling. The brand I fell in love with at first sight. Of course, I wanted to hold a blog on their website, but how in this world was I supposed to start this thing?

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Being totally clueless might make others give up, but not me. I’m a fighter. At least in those cases in which I have someone else to kiss my arse and make me fight… Here is the significant kissing-arse-story among my first blog-entry: I had tea with a friend of mine a couple of nights ago and there was this quote on the teabag that said ‘By honouring your words, you are honoured in this world’. I interpreted this as a sign and I thought I might just have to give my words a chance, also within a blog. So I went to Quiksilver Women’s website to find some inspiration for the defining moment of writing my first blog-entry. It must have been destiny because this website was where I bumped into a wallpaper-quote that would bear ‘goodwill’ as a middle name if it actually had a name. However, this miracle of a sentence said ‘Now it’s about what I create for myself’…

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And here we go, this is what I created for myself, but to share with you. My first blog-entry. Not only an appeal to you to start create what matters only for yourself as well but also an invite to come back here every once in a while and share the Quiksilver Women blog creations anew. I’m looking forward to sharing with you whatever women of our kind want to share, building up on our one thing in common: The love for the effortless, independent and classic elegance of Quiksilver Women’s collection.

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Thanks for honouring my words, now it’s about what you create for yourself,

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Ela

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Find the miracle of a wallpaper and many other Quiksilver Women Wallpapers in the ‘Download’ section on Quiksilver Women\’s website!

Photo : Ducasse

Coming from Switzerland, Ela grew up between cowbells and cheese fondue in the tiny village of Klosters right in the heart of the Swiss Alps. Beautiful and smart, she loves playing with words and builds her life around them. She is all at the same time a student, a journalist, a part-time model, a fashion addict, an art lover, a book reader, a music listener, a movie viewer, a theatre spectator, a sun worshipper, a rain enthusiast, a snow devotee, a city person, a mountain dweller, an ocean admirer, a globe trotter…and she’s great!

What is your “relation” with words and reading ?
The relation goes probably back to about when I was six years old and everyone started to exchange those classmate books in which you had to fill in your profile including the questions of what you want to be one day… Seven-year-old-smart-ass-Ela always noted something like ‘writer’ or ‘author’, while everyone else wanted to be a kindergartener or a nurse. I doubt I knew back then what the job occupation of a writer was all about… However, after graduation, my love for snowboarding and the written word brought me to an internship at Germany’s biggest Snowboard Magazine ‘snowboarder MBM’ in Munich. Ever since, my life has been a firework of letters, studying Journalism and writing for magazines nowadays.

Can you describe your writing style ?
I think great authors have a style of writing; I only have an idea of how I would like my writing to be… Funny, entertaining, sarcastic, smart, vivid and simple however are the words that would describe the kind of style I’m aiming for the most… We’ll see if I’m lucky enough to get there one day.

What are your inspirations ?
Lots of things… but to produce new ideas for my writing it would be mainly listening to the stories of humorous, positive, creative and motivated people, making up stories about random people while observing them in public places, reading delightful books and magazines, watching movies that make me cry and spending lots of lots of hours on my own somewhere out in the greenery.

When, Where and How do you like writing ?
Sometimes, I wish computers wouldn’t have been invented. Cuz if they weren’t here, I think I would spend even more time out in mother nature’s heart writing with a semi-sharpened pencil on the pages of one of those leather wrapped notebooks, feeling totally intellectual… But since computer screens are useless out in the sun, most of my writing comes into being on my MacBook while sitting in my room at my desk, feeling rather flat.

Your favorite book?
I simply do love all the writings of T.C. Boyle. The book that inspires me the most at the moment though is the timeless classic ‘Catcher in the rye’ of J.D. Salinger.

What makes you feel a Quiksilver Woman ?
The definition of the Quiksilver Woman as an effortless, sexy, independent and creative female is probably not what I am, but definitely what I would like to be… Haha!

What is femininity for you ?
The ability to step through life with the warmth of a mama cat, the strength of a lioness, the cleverness of a vixen, the humor of a she-monkey and the elegance of a tigress… Just a little less poetic!

The quote that defines you ?
‘God made our head round so that our thinking can change directions’ of the Dadaist Francis Picabia. Not that I’m religious, but I do believe in the fact that there is more than just one way of thinking.