Hello Housekeepers, just a flying visit to share a few Brocante related snippets!

1. In honour of BrocanteHome's Fifth Birthday, there is a new Brocante download available on Etsy today. This latest e-book brings together the best of  five years of BrocanteHome in one PDF. Below is the introduction to Life, Love and Vintage Housekeeping and this would, I rather think, be the perfect place for new Brocante-Homers to start, and old timers to reminisce...

"I created BrocanteHome on a cold November afternoon, five years ago when my little boy was just one year old and the home I had created with his Daddy was an oasis of domestic bliss I wanted to share with the world, never imagining, even for a moment, that eventually my little website would become the mainstay of my life, my means to financial support, an emotional prop I can now barely live without, and the link between myself and thousands of like-minded women from across the globe, happy to call themselves Vintage Housekeepers.

A lot has changed in five years and blogging has been an astonishing way of documenting the unforeseen. When Finley was two and a half, his Daddy left me for someone else and life as I knew it was turned on it’s lavender scented head. Where once there were routines and rituals I practiced in order to bond my family together with domestic glue, now there was a hole I needed to fill with a life of my own, a life less ordinary, a life that honoured who I am and who I want to be, while simultaneously providing the stability and security I craved and my little boy desperately needed.

The stories here, much like life, swing between the hilarious and the absurd. Sometimes they are no more than snippets from my vintage housekeeping life, the trials and tribulations of single parenthood, or the calamities I am certain every woman finds herself doing battle with, but only I, it seems, see fit to share with the blogosphere. Occasionally my Brocante Posts have been laugh out loud funny, sometimes tinged with the kind of loneliness that is palpable and once or twice so shamefully embarrassing I can hardly bear to read them again! But at it’s heart BrocanteHome is and always has been about making a home that thrills you right to your fingertips. A home you never want to leave. There are now more than 1500 posts on BrocanteHome touching upon an eclectic range of vintage-related subjects, but every one of the little essays in this collection, whether they be about the horror of dating in your thirties, or the scents that bring your childhood flooding back, are ultimately about the domestic rituals that shape our worlds, and hopefully show you, my reader, how, domesticity does indeed shore against our ruin.

And so here it is: the best of The Brocante Home Chronicles. Five years of my life as a Vintage Housekeeper."

2. I want to say a huge big thank you to everybody who responded to my call for your opinions on the future design of BrocanteHome. It has been something of a revelation and just goes to prove what a wonderful, dedicated, gorgeous audience I have here at Brocante! From your comments and emails, it seems opinion is strongly in favour of a brighter, dottier blog, and I am currently fiddling with a new design (the results of which can be seen in the image at the top of this post), but will probably leave a complete re-design until January, because only someone truly nuts would attempt to change the world this side of Christmas and I'm mad but I'm not that mad!

3. The next Christmas Countdown email goes out this evening, and I have thoroughly enjoyed putting this gorgeous set of emails together! The next one will go out in time for Stir Up Sunday and then the Countdown will begin in earnest on the 24th of November when sign ups for subscription will close, so if you are not signed up yet, get to it, for a scrumptiously cosy, BrocanteHome Christmas!

4. Finally, Season Two of the Vintage Housekeepers Circle is now closed, though a download of this years month long seasonal scrub will land in your in-boxes in the next few days (ready for January??). Many, many thanks to all who took part, and please make sure that you cancel your subscription by going into your Paypal account as soon as possible.

And that's all for now Folks! It is almost the end of the school day and preparations for quite the snuggliest of candle lit high tea's to be eaten before yet another round in the battle that is Junior Monopoly commences,  are in order.

Have a lovely, cosy November evening my Darling Housekeepers....