Sunday Sardines...

I've had insomnia for a couple of weeks now, it doesn't go well with close stitching corset insides.  It's frustrating but I'd only be unpicking so I decided to change tack.

Mollie Makes arrived this month with a Sardine key fob kit and it got me thinking.  Our bathroom light pull was pretty dull, dull, drab.  The cord had lost its end twice (I'm sure there's a little innuendo in there somewhere) and the knot to stop it fraying didn't do much for me either.  It had "needs improvement" written all over it.

See?

Nothing a small grey, spotted, Sardine couldn't fix!  It was all pretty self-explanatory and, with only one Sardine to make, a very quick little project.  I used my favourite string (finger knit though I could have plaited it too) to make a new pull and, in a moment of very lazy pedanticness, finger painted the cord holder to disguise the rather nasty plastic "bronze" finish. The final touch was to add a lovely wooden pull that I bought for the old cord and never used.  It reminds me of a fishing basket.

I could add a couple more, a line of Sardines... but we'll see how One-Eyed Fred gets on first.

Restored...

This is another thank you to the lovely KW who, once again, inspired me into action!  Recent pictures on FB of her beautiful furniture restorations, combined with a Bank Holiday (and therefore time for a project) had me eyeing up our old sideboard again.  It was bought with the full intention of restoring it; I think I even foolishly said at the time that it would be done "before it went in the house".... three years and counting, it was sadly overdue a facelift.  Sticking to the rules of last time, I didn't buy anything for this project, luckily I had some leftover eggshell paint from the wardrobe repaint and know that it is the perfect colour for our little house. 

The boyf helped me drag it outside before spending the day getting sunburnt at golf... and it was a lovely sunny day, with the radio on, the chooks clucking away and the dogs happy to sunbathe in the garden.

I thought that all the grooves and fluted details would be a nuisance to paint and that I would struggle to remove the varnish and the hinge covers, but it all went surprisingly well.  Apart from a little stray pony excitement during our walk, it was a nice relaxing way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Before

Sanded

The first coat of paint

The fifth coat of paint!

Done!

I was a little nervous about a single cream piece of furniture in our otherwise dark-wood-fest dining room but I am pleased with the results... it has my eyeing up a couple of other bits now!  It also proved to be a nice opportunity to put a couple of extra pieces on display; the Buddha suddenly looked lonely on the right hand side, so my lovely (Christmas, but they smell so good!) candles and Chinese pots finally get a proper place to sit.  I also love the light and dark, blues/greens and reds/browns contrast going on. 

KW meanwhile did some wonderful work on upholstering a chair... I wonder if I could borrow you sometime to sort the rest of my house out?! ;o)

Surprise!! It's a Wine Bottle Cheesecake!

We did it, my co-conspirators and I, we surprised the lovely boyf for his 30th!  It was a risky proposition, the boyf says he doesn't like surprises, and I'd never organised a surprise party before.  We have been planning for months and have had a few gulp moments.  But, even though the game was first given away less than 24 hours after we started (never mind the second, third, fourth and fifth times!), nothing was ever said that gave him too much of a clue and I think he was genuinely delighted.

It could never have happened without a lot of help and plotting (thank you all, you know who you are) and wouldn't have been as successful if it wasn't for all the good folk who were able to attend.  It was a really good gathering of family and friends, old and new, and as much a pleasure to see people meeting and catching up as it was to see the look on the boyf's face when he first walked in. 

Of all the decorative things (the invitation, the large number 30 poster with suitably embarrassing photos etc.) my favourite was the "cake": the result of the latest collaboration between the lovely Mrs B and I.  We have a history of birthday cakes, mainly my mad ideas and her mad skills, and this was no exception.  The boyf is not a fan of cake so the first plan was a cake of cheeses but they are mainly tiered, weddingy, creations and so it needed a little something else.  What better then, for my cheese and wine loving boyf, than a "vintage" all of his very own.

The Wine Bottle Cheesecake

A dozen firm cheeses (plus two for decoration), a 7cm circular cutter, lots of muscle (Mrs B's, not mine!),  a wine bottle long wooden skewer, a sharp knife, four pins, candles, a bunch of grapes and a personalised wine label later... one wine bottle cake.  11 layers formed the bottle, a mixture of deeper flat rounds for stability and some thinner, more interesting, angled layers.  The top layer we cut with the round and then "curved" with a sharp knife. The bottle neck was 5 layers, cut from a single piece of cheese with a knife, using a screw cap from a wine bottle as a template.  We skewered the neck pieces together first and then slowly pushed the skewer down the length of the bottle.  It would probably have been fine without, but we decided to take no chances.  A cheese board base, with a Stilton to hold the candles, a Lancashire Bomb because it's everyones new favourite and some artfully arranged grapes finished it all off nicely.

The lovely Mrs B artistically arranges the grapes!

Surprisingly simple, very effective, and demolished in minutes... so quickly that the boyf never actually got a taste!

What to do on a snowy Sunday morning?

Move the furniture round in your bedroom, of course.  It was all the lovely boyf's idea and a damn fine one it was too.  There are only two options for our room, the bed sat facing the main window and the wardrobe sat to the side (you get a full height wardrobe but you lose one of the two available lights, which has been gently annoying us, especially in the winters) or to swap them around.  

This was option one...

So swap them we did, easier said than done.  Moving bedroom furniture can be, at the best of times, a pain; moving bedroom furniture in a 600 yr old cottage with walls, floors and ceilings that curve, slope and undulate, is a whole other challenge!  The bed could go nowhere but the other end of the room by the front window and the wardrobe then had to be moved to where the top of the bed was (the only other spot in the room tall enough and with enough space to then work), before it could be dismantled and put in place properly. Getting it there involved dragging it, tilted at various angles depending on the ceiling height, frequently getting it jammed and stuck on the ceiling and some swearing and tears (both mine!)   

Moving stuff in tiny places involves a little crazy, Megs was not amused.

Then we, I say we, it was the lovely boyf, but I did take the pictures, set to "adapting" the wardrobe to fit it's new home.  I say "adapted" because it sounds nicer than we chopped the drawers and legs off, which we did!  

Man plus saw =

this used to be drawers +

much, much shorter legs!

And whilst that was happening, I found that the top of the wardrobe was lined with some pretty funky wallpaper!

The architect of destruction... rather enjoying himself too.

Half an hour later, we have a new wardrobe... and to give you an idea of just how wonky our floors are, look at the legs, the difference is nearly 4".

Since moving to this house, I have come to love collecting old weights, they are perfect for leveling everything out.  We have the wardrobe at 3" just now, but will need to go shopping for more; we also need some for the bed, unless we want to sleep with our feet raised!

And that's it.  Our new room.  We will need to find a matching light for the other side of the bed and I am going to take the opportunity to paint the walls as I have a pot of Craig & Rose's Hemp Beige which I've been itching to use somewhere in the house.

I will need to find something to use as a bedside table, as it seems that I may have now stolen, rather than borrowed, the globe lamp (!), and then came the fun bit; finding new homes for all my bits and pieces...

I love the red of these Moroccan slippers.

And the space at the top of the wardrobe to display a few, normally, hidden things.

The Wedding Basket tucks nicely into the gap and makes a good bookshelf.

And it's pair sits at the other end of the room, a depository for the contents of the boyf's pockets! 

I also needed a new home for the picture frames, some sit on the window to the side and this one, one of my favorites of the 11yr old (when she was about seven, I guess), sits on the main windowsill with my Omani silver, my Grandmother's pomander pot (which still smells wonderful after what must be more than 40 years), and one of my memory boxes....  and, yes, constantly foggy windows are a fact of old, cold cottage life....

Finally, my Grandfather's card table, which sat at the end of our bed, needed a new home. Originally it came upstairs because the wood was too dark in contrast to our furniture downstairs but, with the addition of a couple of other pieces, it now works just fine.  

It is, as the decoration suggests, to be a drinks table, and a card table when I find the cards. I feel rather grown up, with a drinks table in the house!

And so, on a budget of nothing (the boyfs stipulation was that we could only spend money, eventually, on a new light and any weights we may need) we have a new room.  It certainly works much better; the bed is no longer near the cold outside walls and window; the full length mirror can be used properly as such and already it's brighter, as the wardrobe isn't blocking the one available light source.  Sleeping with my head to the hallway wall felt a little odd, rather like there was space behind my head, not solid wall, but that's just my crazy talking. The room feels much lighter and airier which, as my old amah Chan would have said, is because the feng shui is "Good!" (not easy in our house) so I'm expecting lots of lovely nights' sleep!  

Tragedy! and beautiful wallpaper...

When I met the lovely boyf told me was that he "didn't do sports."  Having been a football widow for several years, it was absolutely one of the nicest things that he could have told me, though it didn't take long to figure out that this wasn't entirely true.  He loves to snow board, mountain board and blade, but these aren't weekly fixtures and anyways, I could get very used to après ski!  That is until we moved here.  Never mind the village of the damned, we live in the village of the golfers and the boyf has succumbed.  I am now a golf widow.

And so it was, under the guise of going to get food for Finn, that he stopped off this morning at the range to hit some balls.  Leaving me, midway through painting the last wall of the 11 yr old's room, with the dogs for company and oh, what fun we had....  Those of you that don't have dobes (and those of you lucky enough to have a lovely chilled out, low-maintenance dobe!) may not know that dobes can sing.  It is the kind of noise that you can only shake your head at in half horrified, half hysterical despair!  Megs particularly likes to sing when there are people in the church and the, usually dead (pardon the pun) quiet, graveyard.  Half way through my painting, I discovered that there was a funeral being held and I'm pretty certain that the mourners were not appreciating the (mercifully short) heartfelt dobe accompaniment!  Megs came inside, and serenaded me instead.... Finn, in the meantime, was having a fabulous time finding stuff in the 11 year old's room.  I don't know where he found half of it, being the size of a hotdog obviously has it's advantages; he is the search and rescue dog of lost toys and hair accessories!  Luckily, he's more of a hoarder than a chewer, but it's always better to be safe than forking out for vets bills... in the first 50 minutes that the boyf was out, I barely managed a third of the wall; in the last 10 minutes that they finally gave up and went for a nap, I finished the rest of the wall!

So, the 11 yr old's bedroom is finally finished.  It has taken ages but it's my own fault.  I only paint by hand with a 2" brush (I swear that the finish is worth the effort) and the thought of 3-4 coats of paint that it takes to cover that horrible blue has been a real deterrent to getting the job done.  However, I had promised her that it would be finished by the end of the summer and yes, I know that I'm cutting it fine with only 48 hrs to go, but it is done.  All ready for her to start school on a calm, tidy and ordered note... for a week at least I hope!  

I also made a discovery.  Not only had the room, before the blue, been almost exactly the same dusky pink that I have just painted it (!) but underneath all of that was this:

I am pretty certain that it is hand blocked wallpaper; the patterns don't always quite match up and you can see and feel the texture of the paint.  It is such a pretty pattern too, and a real shame that someone chose to paint over it.  The boyf and I, when we decided to buy this place, said that we were never really going to be it's owners but rather its caretakers. This lovely cottage, after 620+ years, is a grand old dame, we are are only here to do the best that we can to ensure that it has stories to tell for another 600... I just wish that the previous occupiers had thought the wallpaper worthy of being part of the tale.

It's Day Two in the house...

A year or so ago I made a couple of little pictures for the house.  The first was thanks to the dobe; she and I were going through a testing time.  She was of an age and temperament where a lead walk just wasn't enough, she needed to stretch her legs too.  Problem was, she would go charging off and not come back.  The boyf was away at the time (another gentlemen's jolly if I remember rightly!) and the 10yr old had shared her viral bug with me.  After an hour and half, with a temperature of 102F, of trying to coax her out of the middle of one of the paddocks, a neighbour eventually tempted her into his garden, with the promise of a Bonio or two, and we rugby tacked her under a bramble bush.  For a while she was stuck with lead walks only, until she remembered her manners, and I made myself a little reminder of how I needed to be, which still hangs by the coats and leads at the back door.

The second was a pictorial representation of our family.  I hangs in the bathroom and was meant to be the first in a grouping of pictures, which I have never got round to completing.  Sadly, it is now inaccurate and I do not have the heart to delete the members of our extended family who we've lost this last year.  It seemed better to remove it entirely but I have been unsure of what to put up there.

Then an old friend from HK, who I've happily reconnected with, thanks to Facebook, posted some pictures of her lovely house and the collections of pictures that she has hung throughout.  One of my jobs for this weekend was to touch up the paint in the bathroom and it got me thinking. So today I decided to rifle through the spare picture frames that I have (I really can't throw anything away!) and see if there wasn't something that I could do in the bathroom.  

 

I planned to use only what I had in the house, but broke my own rule by £7.99 as I couldn't resist another inducement to "Keep Calm" and love the addition of a splash of red in the room.  It is hung with two picture boxes; one of which holds a pearl heart that I have had hovering about in need of a home for years.  Above them is a very special picture frame, one of a pair that my great grandfather hand-carved.  In it I put a peony that used to sit on a pot pouri cushion, given to me by my mother.  The dobe damaged the cushion and I didn't have the heart to throw the peony out.  Finally, I added a couple of things that I printed myself: a copy of the Holstee Manifesto, though this needs to be printed again, in a smaller size; and an instruction to "Bee Happy" featuring a Victorian illustration of a lovely big bumble bee.  It's too small a room to take a decent picture, but it gives the room quite a different feel and I'm pleased with my efforts... with thanks to K for the inspiration.

The 10yr old's bedroom.. it's Parfait!

Call me a control freak or, as the 10yr old would say, “a meanie”, I don’t mind…  I will happily admit to having the sort of Decorator’s OCD that means that only I can do the job properly! 

In my funny little world, there is nothing worse than a badly decorated room and in particular a badly painted room.  Moreover, try as I might, I am not a fan of masking tape and rollers etc. I paint with a 2” brush and a 1cm wide artists brush for tricky sections and edges.  Time consuming it may be, but it requires nothing more than patience, a steady hand and a keen eye.  I’m also a temperamental decorator, leaving projects for months and then trying to finish them in a day, but on the days when the mood strikes, I’m a very happy painting bunny. 

And I really am best left to my own decorating devices; that and, on the occasions when I forget that he’s not that fond of a paintbrush, the boyf’s kind and valiant painting attempts generally end in emergency trips to the washing machine for whatever anyone in the vicinity is wearing and me “just touching up” whatever he's painted afterwards!  As for the 10yr old, she is still only 10 and I will happily admit that I do not have the time or the patience to share the experience.  I would love to be one of those laid back Mums who let their children help paint their room and live with the results but, in all honesty, it would drive me mad.  The child will learn to paint when she buys her first flat...

And so it was that I found myself painting the 10yrs old’s room last Sunday.  It was a lovely day to be painting, the sun streaming through the window and the birds singing up a storm.  The colour she chose is a beautiful soft blue-based pink rather appropriately named “Parfait” – its name alone was a very neat way of ending an otherwise long debate!    

It was such a joy to get it finished.  I didn’t like the colour of her room before, but I hadn’t realised just how much I didn’t like it until it slowly started to disappear.  Painting done, we rehung her pictures and stuck on a gorgeous “Family Tree” wall sticker from Cox & Cox.   A great deal of her pictures were framed family photographs and this is a far neater alternative to them.  A quick shuffle of furniture and a “new” shelf unit from the antiques market (to house the teddy/unicorn collection that she’s inherited from her Nana Nicie) and the transformation is complete.

I love the 10yr old’s room.  It is a mad clash of fabrics and colours and collections.  Full of books and bits to look at, a wall of stars and a fantastic view and soundtrack outside.  I know that she would have liked to have helped paint, I hope that the “Surprise!” was enough to sway her… and there’s always her playroom next door, you never know, I might need a hand with that?

My new bookshelves

My able assistant demonstrates the product!

I love these!  A pair of old Adam Kern bottle crates which we picked up last weekend at the local antiques market.  They are beautiful, well made, solid wood with a wonderful patina.  We removed the bottle racks from the bottom and stacked them on the floor.  Perfect.

Seagull No.5

I've thoroughly enjoyed my charcoal seagulls and this is the one we've decided to frame.

He's large, the card is A1, and I think that, with a hardboard border and painted wood frame, it'll be the perfect piece for our dining room wall.

I love it when a plan comes together!

My old house was old, but the interior was sleek, cream and modern.  I've built up a collection antiques, particularly Oriental ones, over the years and in the old house we enjoyed the juxtaposition of old and new. Moving to a 600 year old timber-beamed cottage required a rethink as we had to honour the beauty of the building.  Modern would not work, so we replaced our sleek cream fabric sofa for a leather Chesterfield; our maple dining table for a dark Oak Rectory table and mixed my existing antiques with a wonderful collection of what the boyf fondly refers to as "very nice toot"!  Almost everything we own is now stored in a vintage suitcase, hat box or trunk and pride of place goes to a matching pair of antique Chinese wedding baskets (right of picture) which are the most interesting bookshelves I've ever owned, and double as coffee tables in the process.  One thing we could not find was a magazine rack, and then I found on a 1950s Atomic on eBay... I love these racks!  They are everything I love about 50s vintage: quirky but elegant; able to stand their ground, but subtle enough to mix well with other styles.  It was a small risk, but one I'm glad I took; I am so pleased with little Joan.  And no, I don't often name my accessories... but Joan Jetson would be proud!