the Design Room journal

Trial Balance Consulting

Sal — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 11:01:02 +0000

Although it may seem like it but here at Design Room we don’t just swan around eating cake and hobnobbing at wedding fayres, we actually work too! Back in November we teamed up with web developer Mike Hayes who worked with us on a redesign of our own website. It’s added a new dimension to Design Room and expanded the range of work we are able to take on. At around the same time this project came along; a redesign of the Trial Balance Consulting website. They approached us for a new look for their site and to accommodate new features as their business expands. Their new site is written in PHP with a MySQL database and behind the scenes, there lies an extensive suite of administration pages for the management of job opportunities and other admin functions, as well as an integrated function for auto-posting new opportunities to their twitter feed. The public pages use ajax for the asynchronous loading of certain page elements such as jobs filtering and applications as well as normal JavaScript for enhancing the overall user experience. We wanted to create a site that was clean, intuitive and easy to navigate, for both the visitor and for the team at Trial Balance who upload new opportunites through the site’s admin pages. We also managed the switch over to a new hosting package and e-mail provider with a minimum of down time.

So take a moment to have a browse through the shiny new website www.trial-balance.co.uk It’s been an interesting and exciting project for us to work on and a pleasure to work with Alex and his team at Trial Balance.

Home Page

Opportunities Page with drop down filter

'Meet the Team' page

Wedding Fayre at The Vean

Sal — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 14:05:48 +0000

We were invited along to show our work as part of the Wedding Fayre at the gorgeous Vean on the Caerhays Eastate in South Cornwall. It was a niche event with just a few others there and it was an absolute pleasure to spend a sunny Sunday in such beautiful surroundings. We also met some lovely people including Susanne from the Blue Carrot who grows flowers to order for weddings and there was some stunning food on display courtesy of Ding from Event Cuisine. All in all it was a good day, so thank you lovely folk at The Vean for having us along!

Em guards the DR table

flowers from The Blue Carrot

the DR portfolio

beautiful day, beautiful surroundings!

inside the lovely Vean

this lovely old car turned up at the end of the day

Year of the Cake

Sal — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 12:09:10 +0000

It seems that 2012 just may be the Year of the Cake. I don’t have a problem with this, it just so happens to turn out that three of my most recent photo opportunities have involved Cake. Firstly there was the Clandestine Cake Club at the Nare Hotel last month, then there was the task of photographing homemade cakes and pies at Lobbs Farm Shop last week. A coffee morning at Lobbs Farm Shop, this Saturday just gone, was awash with all types of cake, that I duly photographed. Then of course is the next installment of the Clandestine Cake Club coming up next week, where once again, my camera shall accompany me. It really is becoming a recurring theme…. fine by me! Anyway, here’s some foodie snaps from Lobbs:

Lemon Drizzle

Chocolate Sponge

Apple Pie

Cherry Crumble

a token savoury item, Pork Pies!

Clandestine Cake Club

Sal — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:12:27 +0000

Here’s a few snaps I took at the Clandestine Cake Club meeting this morning at the beautiful Nare hotel on the South Cornish coast. Point your mouse over to the Clandestine Cake website for more info. It’s a lively get together of folks with a mutual love of cake, what more could you ask for? Design Room’s contribution was an unctious Nigella Lawson recipe (all of Nigella’s recipes are unctious aren’t they?) a flourless chocolate & lime cake with margerita cream. Let’s just say, after a sample of this and several other wondrous cakes, a walk on the gorgeous (but blustery) Carne beach was much needed afterwards! Very much looking forward to future cake meetings! -Sal

Design Room's chocolate lime cake

glorious knitted fancies!

sparkly raspberries on a bed of cream!

a bloomin' gorgeous venue, thank you Nare folks.

awesome Queen of Sheba cake from Katie Ashworth

a gorgeous gateau from David McWilliam

'twas a wild and blustery day

Melodie & David tuck in

Melodie & Toby share a joke!

Carne Beach, a lovely backdrop for the meeting

A Photo a Day

Sal — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:20:04 +0000

My new year resolution was to take a photograph a day for all of 2012, beginning on the 1st of January.
If you’re interested in having a look point your mouse over to salsjournal.wordpress.com I think some days are bound to be boring, some days will hopefully produce something beautiful, let’s see where it takes me! -Sal

a Design Room Christmas card

Sal — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 16:05:12 +0000

The initial inspiration for our Christmas card came from half a dozen plastic reindeer bought in a cake shop in Truro. From this we considered the street art of Slinkachu and got to thinking of a suitable setting for our tiny herd of reindeer. Inspiration for the setting came in the unlikely form of an old hanging basket with two dead tomato plants in it. Dusted with sugar and flour, surely this could be a winter wonderland in the making? So we spent a morning dusting flour in a tea strainer over the old hanging basket, piling up ‘drifts’ of caster sugar and setting the reindeer free in this tiny snowy landscape. First of all here’s the finished ‘card’ followed by wider angled shots of the set up.

Have a lovely Christmas wherever you all are!

winter drive

Sal — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 11:00:11 +0000

Em and Sal set off this morning for a meeting in Devon. The weather recently has been pretty volatile but then it is the middle of winter and to be expected. It’s made for some atmospheric journeys just recently, to and from work with hail, sleet, torrential rain, giant rainbows, severe gales and anything else you can think of chucked in. Here’s a few iphone snaps from today’s trip into Devon…

Fat Stock Show, Truro

Sal — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 17:58:17 +0000

Whilst Em was lunching in the Dorchester at the Everywoman business awards last wednesday, I got to hang out with a bunch of cows, sheep and a lot of tweed at the annual Fat Stock show in Truro. It’s a gorgeous show, beautiful animals, lots of produce and a lovely atmosphere. I took my camera along for a few snaps. Wednesday also happened to be Late Night Shopping in Truro which was very lovely, finished off the evening with a fine brew in 108 Coffee, which I think is fast becoming DR’s favourite coffee shop in town. They make the finest coffee around.

getting ready for the show

so much cake, so little time

handsome dribbling cow!

know your onions

it's a serious business

yet more serious business

Doing it for the girls

Sal — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 08:58:02 +0000

DR has packed Em off to London today (actually yesterday, but without broadband was unable to post, thanks BT) to attend the NatWest Everywoman awards which means not only does she get to enjoy a posh lunch at the swanky Dorchester Hotel but she will be mingling with some truly inspirational women!

The Everywoman awards celebrate inspirational women in business who achieved significant success. The Awards play an invaluable role in both recognising success and inspiring other women to venture into the field of business. Read more here… www.everywoman.com

We’ll report back soon on how things went!

Festive photos at Lobbs Farm Shop

Sal — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 15:28:21 +0000

Stopped by Lobbs Farm Shop last night on my way home from the studio. It was their late night shopping event which sees them open alongside Heligan Gardens until 9pm. I managed to get some outdoor shots in between some hefty squalls of hail and rain and enjoyed the lovely atmosphere, twinkly lights, carols and mulled apple juice!