In my on-going mission to make your life as lovely as possible, today might I suggest you hop on over to Google Chrome and make the terribly sensible decision to abandon Internet Explorer and embrace the speedy floral sprinkled joy that is Chrome?

Here at BrocanteHome more than 46% of you use Internet Explorer to browse the web and while that's all well and good, it does mean you are missing out on the joy to be found should you be brave enough to step into a whole new world and explore the possibilities to be found in FireFox, Flock, or my new favorite, Chrome.

While I don't want to blind you with science, being something of a browser whore, I am familiar with all of the browsers above and have in my time, dallied with them all.
Firefox is abundant with add-on's that make life as a casual browser or a serious user infinitely easier: in fact I would go so far as to say that there are Firefox add-ons I could barely live without. Which is why Flock is such a joy: because having been built on the Firefox framework, most of the add-ons are compatible and having been designed with social networking in mind, there are all manner of other in-built features that make managing, Flickr, Facebook and the like an absolute breeze...

So why am I waxing so ecstatically lyrically about Chrome? Well let me tell you my darlings: apart from the fact that it is the fastest browser I have ever used (pages download in seconds), the add-ons it currently has (more coming soon) blend seamlessly, and images you download open for editing in your Windows Picture Gallery (oh joy!),  Chrome has the most scrumptious collection of Browser themes I have ever seen from all the artists we Vintage Housekeepers love to love...


Michal Negrin


Royal Delft


Rebecca Taylor


and Emma Bridgewater. To name but a few...

So what do you think? Wouldn't it be utterly scrumptious to have a browser that reflected your personal aesthetic? You could after all, run Chrome alongside the main computer browser, and make it all your own: totally personalised with all your favorite bookmarks, the really rather fabulous Twitter and Facebook add-ons, and a new tab page pre-loaded with all your favorite places to visit on the internet...

What are you waiting for? Life just got  teeny bit lovelier...

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"The Scale Clock"


"The Umbrella Chandelier"


"The Suitcase Chair."

I do so like it when I happen across someone doing something truly innovative (and simultaneously creating something fabulous!) with the scrumptiously battered junk we Vintage Housekeepers cannot help but covet...

Katie Thompson is the Cape Town designer at the helm of Recreate, a little company re-purposing found objects and turning them into beautiful somethings, an utterly charming description, which I think you will agree happily sums up her darling collection of scale clocks, typewriter lamps and wash-tub ottomans...

Should Father Christmas feel the urge to nip across to south Africa, I would be absolutely thrilled to find that mint green scale clock sitting under my tree...

Goodness me, I can't believe I didn't know (and never thought to investigate!) that Cath Kidston tweeted. Now admittedly the tweets from @cath_kidston aren't exactly revealing insights into the flowery mind of our favorite Vintage Housekeeper and are in fact more shop updates and sale notices, but even so, who wouldn't want such a pretty little tweety pie gracing the pages of those we follow?

Good Morning Housekeepers.

It's a gorgeous Autumnal puttery Thursday and so in celebration of all things cosy and housekeepery today, I hereby offer you a yummy little list of scrumptious puttery treats. Enjoy! 

Thread orange slices dipped in lemon juice on to a wire coat hanger and hang up to dry in the airing cupboard for festive pot pourri.

Give the antimacassar new life... drape vintage tray cloths over the arms and backs of a special chair....

Make bird food (melted lard or butter, sunflower seeds, ground nuts and porridge oats and raisins) and push into a cored apple...

Embroider seven tea towels with the days of the week. Resolve to make changing the tea towel part of your evening ritual.

Hold a glass vase audit. Gather them all together, check for chips and cracks then fill with a solution of two tablespoons of salt and 1/2 pint of vinegar and let it stand over night to remove stains. Wash gently in warm water the following day and polish them back to sparkling life with a glass cloth.

Go for an  walk and gather a little bit of Autumn for a nature table on your return...

Change the bulb in your bedside lamp to a pink, peach or red toned one to create the illusion of warmth in the coming Winter months.

Run around (right now!) and dust the top of every mirror and picture in the house...

Use your Christmas planner to make a list of all the people you will be buying gifts for this year. Get sensible and set limit on the amount you will spend per person.

Overhaul the medicine cabinet with vapour rub, eucalyptus oil for steaming, pretty paper hankies, paracetamol, decongestant tablets and a gentle cough syrup like Buttercup...

Make fabulous fire starters and save the planet at the same time, by using scrunched up newspaper to wipe the grease off plates before you put them in your soapy washing up water...

Take yourself shopping and treat yourself to a good quality, (invaluable) chamois leather. Every housewife should have one...

Start saving comics to wrap kids Christmas presents in. Dennis the Menace look quirky and bright...

Serve the children "High tea" when they come home from school and a teeny nursery supper before they go to bed, freeing up the hours in between usually spent "waiting for tea", for more leisurely, or constructive pursuits for all and better suiting the hunger patterns of small children.

Make the old universal remedy "Grog" a nightly ritual when you are feeling a little under the weather. Mix 20z of Rum, with a spoonful of sugar, the juice of half a lemon, 2 cloves and a stick of cinnamon and top of with boiling water in a long tumbler. Cosiness defined...

Plan a white Christmas.. start seeking out white bulbs for forcing now for a whole table display come Christmas... something that could in itself be a very understated answer to celebrating Winter. Think white crocuses, hyacinths and paper whites. Consider leaving the Christmas tree unadorned this year with just the merest hint of fake snow on the branches...

Pin a corsage of vintage velvet flowers to a pretty cushion.

Seek out recordings of old time 78's and bake in the kitchen to the crackly music of yesterday on your ipod.

Wrap a penny in foil and slip it into your purse as a good luck charm.

Begin to write a long love letter to your Mum for delivery on Christmas Eve...

And most of all, Dear Housekeepers, be kind to yourself!

Come the middle of November my brain turns to holly-spiked mush and the only thing truly on my mind is how to magic up the kind of Christmas little boys dream of and an old-fashioned Santa wouldn't  mind enjoying...

And oh how thrilled that same Santa would be to hear that Sunshine and Ravioli (purveyors of all kinds of papery loveliness!) have encapsulated the nuggets of wisdom that define his very velvety, fuzzy essence and printed them on a set of vintage inspired postcards guaranteed to bring a smile to even the Scroogiest of faces...

"All I Need to Know About Christmas, I learned from Santa

-Encourage people to follow you.
-Always remember who's naughty & who's nice.
-It's as much fun to give as it is to receive.
-Some days it's OK to feel a little chubby.
-Make your presents known.
-Always ask for a little bit more than you really want.
-Bright red can make anyone look good.
-Wear a wide belt and no one will notice how many pounds you have gained.
-If you only show up once a year, everyone will think you're really important.
-When you are at a loss for words, say "ho,ho,ho".


And indeed the rest of our little lives. Some days, you see, it really is ok to feel a little chubby- and heaven knows I needed permission today!

 (All images credited on the pinboard)

Because it is November and November isn't clean and fresh like September, or sparkly and twinkly like December. Because it is cold and grey and there are only so many soul reviving cups of tea a girl can have. Because November is just crying out for a splash of pretty colour and sometimes when it is very cold, inspiration wraps itself up in Welsh Tartan blankets and refuses to come out and play. Because I just thought a wander around my lovely Pinboard might give you a dose of happy and happy is hard to say no to isn't it?

There is a big bit of me that rather thinks it would be bliss to give away all my possessions: all the tchotkes,  ornaments and pieces of hard won, much loved furniture, and start all over again. To obliterate all my yesterdays (for don't they so very bossily, dictate all our tomorrows?), and whitewash these four walls. To create for myself the kind of blank canvas thats says, come now, be who you want to be, without compromise or personal nostalgia.

But alas, my heart will not let me: for isn't it emotion, not money, nor time, that binds us so drastically to our own history- emotion, that will not let us part with the proof of how we got to where we are? Each candlestick, every trinket, all those books, that say "remember?"  

It is so.

Which is why it is fun to play. To fill pin-boards full of inspiration for rooms we might never re-create. Swoon over magazine images of interiors more daring than we could ever dream up. Create collages full of possessions we can only dream of owning and seek out blogs that fill up our rss feeds with rooms so beautiful they make us want to cry into our chocolate muesli.

Today Home and Garden magazine, in association with the oh so terribly English fabric and wallcovering company, Sanderson, is offering us the very same kind of opportunity to play and in the process win £1000.00 to spend at Sanderson. The competition involves creating a scheme for the room in the image above, and should you be lucky (or clever!) enough to create something heart-stopping, have it featured in the magazine in 2010.

While the likelihood of me getting around to entering is slim, the competition got me thinking this morning about decorating my living room, something I suspect I have been boring you with for the past three years. My hearts desire includes white walls and a high-backed, winged armchair in which to sit and read, a wall full of junk shop art and floor to ceiling bookcases.

Tell me now, if you could start again, what would your dream room look like?

P.S: Last night I fell head over heels in love with An Aesthetes Lament, one of the quirkiest, loveliest decorating blogs on the net, not only because of it's authorative, knowledgeable tone, but also because the writer and her husband have set about cooking every recipe in Elsie De Wolfe's "Recipes For Successful Dining"...

Last night, in the wee small hours, having layed down my book and finally decided to get some sleep, I crept into Finley's bedroom to make sure that he was tucked in good and tight. And there he was, my very own topsy-turvy angel, lying snuggled in amongst the gang of furry friends he insists on taking to bed. So as I pulled his patchwork quilt up to his chin, I simply couldn't resist leaning in to press a little Mommy kiss on to his little babba forehead. Bad move numero uno, my friends. As my lips touched his skin, he swung his arm around my neck and grabbed me in an affectionate, come life threatening, head lock.

And there we were: him lying on his side snuggling his Mummy's head like it was the kind of prize trophy he wouldn't give up for a big dog (and you know how much he wants one of those) and me, the owner of said head, bent over his bed, bottom in the air, too terrified to move in case I woke him up, and in apparent horror at finding himself being suffocated in the night by hairy monster, subsequently woke the entire neighbourhood.

And so there we were. His grip wasn't loosening and I wasn't getting any warmer because flimsy nighties are useless when one finds oneself stranded around the house when one should be in bed, and let it be known here and now, full length thermal nighties of the kind I once cherished are very, very hard to find these days, and even I, the kind of woman rather partial to winceyette (I love that word, it just smacks of cosy doesn't it??), draw the line at this sort of affair.

But I digress, because there we were. And in the event I felt there was no choice but to sort of drag the quilt over my hunched back and kneel at the side of his little iron day bed, breathing in my sleepy son's biscuity, night-time breath and looking for all the world like I was praying for release. Just two seconds later I suspect I was asleep. In fact I must have been asleep because I was of the notion that I was walking around Debenhams (of all places) when smack! my erstwhile little boy rolled over and punched me in the eye.

Oh yes m'dears. Smacked me he did. I screamed. He screamed. We all screamed. And the sleepy sacrifice I had made not to disturb his dreams was damned to hell and back and my son was wailing about Doctor Who and I was hopping around the room trying to see out of an eye rather spectacularly displaying the odd phenomemon that is eyelashes worn inside out, and five minutes later I was hopping again, jumping around icy cold lino in the kitchen, warming milk and wondering, who, who, in the name of all that is holy, would be a Mother??

And so today I am tired. Sleep wouldn't come after the trauma of a midnight accident, and then this morning I stepped out into rain so torrential, (dragging my exhausted little uniformed munchkin behind me), that I bawled at everyone I met "Oh this bloody weather!" like some kind of wellington-booted, malfunctioning, cursing, Stepford Fishwife. It wasn't pretty I tell ya.

And now it is Wednesday, baking day, and I am in need of sustenance and a hug and in the absence of a boyfriend rather dramatically dying of flu, I am yearning for the kind of comfort food you shouldn't discuss in public, but as there isn't a mars bars in which to fry a banana in, in the entire house (and for the sake of my thighs, hopefully on the planet), I have settled on chocolate chip hob-nobs and there is a little batch baking as we speak...

Clearly the lessons I rather sharply impose on you, are utterly wasted on me...

But should you too, have suffered horrors of the night-time kind, feel free to join me in a biscuit fest, to be served of course with ice cold milk and the central heating cranked up to full blast. It is November. We are Mommies. We deserve it.

Chocolate Chip Hob Nobs.

Ingredients.

8oz Self-Raising Flour
8oz Golden Brown Caster Sugar
8oz Butter
8 oz Porridge Oats
Handful of Chocolate Chips
1 tbsp Golden Syrup
1 tbsp Hot Water
1/2 tsp Bicarb Soda

Method

Melt the butter, sugar, water  and syrup gently in a pan. Stir together oats, flour and bicarb and add to warm butter mixture. Stir in chocolate chips, then roll into little balls and place onto a greaseproof papered tray. Flatten each ball with the back of  a spoon and cook until golden on gas mark 180 degrees C...

Et voila... compensation for the trials and tribulations of living your life, in a chocolate sprinkled biscuit.

Ooooooooh look! My Ebay find of the day... Thirteen of the cutest little pink birds sitting atop glittery fircones and swinging from pink ribbon attached by somebody's Mum in the glorious 1950's...

Wouldn't they look just DIVINE decorating a  white tree or the barest collection of twigs?

From Ebay Seller 57FordFairLane500.

I am home from a walk through a dove grey drizzly day. My cheeks pink and wet.

Now there is a towel, warm from the radiator, wrapped around my hair and silly socks on my feet. The house is warm and twinkly with tea-lights hidden in a little collection of sugar bowls and milk jugs on the mantlepiece, and a Lego castle I dare not touch gracing the rug, though its architect is away doing his rather wonderful impression of the Ghost of Christmas Past in his much adored drama class.

I have nothing to do today. It is the first Saturday in a long time that feels all mine. That feels like the Saturdays I used to know and treasure. So I'm going to read. I'm going to finish the trashy (but delicious!) Liverpool novel I finally had to put down at two o'clock this morning for fear of waking up with the words printed on my face, and I'm going to start reading Backwards in High Heels because it is has been sitting looking pretty and utterly ignored on my bedside for a Brocante lifetime now, and I really do need some pointers on the route to the rather impossible art of being female...

In between there will be the Guardian Family Section and the Telegraph magazine, the latest issue of Country Living UK (resplendant with some scrumptiously pretty ideas for Christmas), bacon with honey mustard on the little white rolls I baked this morning, David Gray on the ipod and maybe even a little Dido if I truly feel  like metamorphing into a thirty something cliche...

Later there will be Richard. Standing in my kitchen stirring flaky chocolate into warm milk for the best hot chocolate in the world. A pile of quilts on the sofa. Fairylights piled in the redundant fireplace. Tangerine skins abandoned on polka dot saucers and red wine in cheap glasses because I cannot be trusted with anything precious.

Yes. It feels like all the Saturdays of yesterday. Only better. Oh what it is to be happy.

Oh heavens, I'm really not sure I'm up to knowing the ugly truth about my Darling Enid Blyton. Some reputations should never be sullied. And yet, and yet and yet, how can one resist Helena Bonham Carter and all that 1930's eye-candy?
Just be grateful this BBC 4 drama (Monday 16th November 2009, 9pm) will spare us the affair with her tennis coach and lesbian fling with the children's Nanny, because it is a fact as plain as the nose on my face that Enid Blyton would have been far too busy conjuring up Moonface and all his gorgeous friends while feasting on ginger beer and rhubarb to have ever, ever dallied with anything as silly as sex!

Damn her being such a hideous Mummy though. Damn her to the top of the Faraway Tree.

BrocanteHome is the cause of my sciatica. Or rather the fact that I absolutely downright bloody ludicrously chose to make the red armchair in my living room my home office is the cause of my sciatica.

I'm all about comfort me. It's a terrible affliction, because it means you do yourself all manner of both emotional and physical damage while convincing yourself you DESERVE to be comfortable, which is in fact a load of old baloney, because once we consider ourselves DESERVING of anything we need a good old slap around the chops.

The temptations of comfort harass us in all corners of our life: we fall into an ok relationship and flail within it's cosy clutch for the rest of our lives (because a relationship that challenged us might just reveal the ugly truth about who we really are, because a comfortable relationship is better than no relationship at all, because one merely needs a partner to take out the bins, etc, etc.), we choose flesh coloured boulder holder bras and knickers so big you could pack ten pounds of potatoes in them (because anything prettier, tighter, or erm, sexier, might just make us aware of that extra stone of weight comfortably cushioning our hips), we cook the same slightly dubious meal week after week, (because a minor level of culinary satisfaction is guaranteed and life is too short to stuff an organic mushroom), and we indulge our kids with lazy parenting because we just can't be botherered with dealing with the screaming ab-dabs...

Laziness you see is Comforts best friend. 

They are evil twins, egging each other on and condemming us to a life in Hush Puppies. And they want us to be in their gang. They want us to choose a cosy night in front of the television instead of an hour rubbing down the bathroom cabinet for the kind of makeover that would make our hearts sing thereafter. They want us to indulge in a carbohydrate fuelled white food day resplendant in pasta and potatoes because we feel a bit miserable and (shamefully) seek sustenance in the kind of food that makes us feel like Ten Ton Tessie half an hour after it has been swallowed. They want us to choose ugly (but comfortable) shoes that make us feel like somebody's Grandma, to live in elasticated trousers and turn down every invitation we get because we are all too willing to let shyness get the better of us, avoid social discomfort and hide within our own four walls for ever more.

Where LAZINESS is the evil, grimacing Joker of the Pack, COMFORT is a Jessica Rabbit like seductress, trailing her pretty fingers around our battered ego and whispering, Come now, don't you deserve a little comfort? And you are tired, too tired to argue really and so you nod and then you are in her clutches and she is dragging you across a feather topped mattress to her partner in crime and life as we know it becomes a great big bucket of the Can't Be Bothereds!

Do you hear what I am saying?? You know you really don't DESERVE to be comfortable all day every day: there is a time and a place for it. What you truly deserve is the time and energy to create the life you always wanted. The kind of life that takes commitment and planning and effort and won't let you shuffle through life, 24/7 in trainers and big knickers. The kind of life that gives short shrift to LAZINESS and COMFORT and becomes best mates with DISCIPLINE and PURPOSE...

And then and only then will you be entitled to the bliss of wallowing in the marshmallow sensation that is satisfaction.
Now get to it M'Lady!

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....

Now then my darling Housekeepers, can I ask you a quick question? I have recently, rather disasterously, messed up my blogger template and find myelf having to start from scratch and while fiddling about with the template found myself itching to fiddle about with the design all over again. Because I can't leave things alone. And I'm never satisfied. And it has recently struck me that fiddly, bloggy, design stuff makes my heart sing and a singing heart makes a smiley face and we will all feel better for that now won't we?

 
If ever there was a reason to commit to blogging, then Jennifer Causey at Simply Breakfast found it.

Last week Holly over at Decor 8 discussed to what degree blogging shapes our lives in terms of our committment to making the ordinary, the everyday, picture pretty or blogworthy and it is something that has been bothering my head in quite the most delightful fashion since...

Blogging helps me frame my life in a way that simply would not exist if the medium were not available to us. Journalling is essentially a private affair and we do not seek, nor need to impress an audience, but blogging is different and when we blog even those who would swear blind that they do it for themselves, I'm sure secretly revel in the attention of their readership whether it be tiny or indeed, global.

For the most part we want to present an image of a life less ordinary. An enviable lifestyle others will aspire to, this then being the reason why we do not litter our blogs with images of what the kitchen looks like after the tornado that is the family dinner, nor feature too largely the truth about our uglier habits, housekeeping secrets or the mess we ignore on a daily basis and only choose to banish when we are struck by the urge to frame it for a wider audience. The online equivalent of throwing a party and busting a gut to make the house look at it's sparkly best so we will not be the talk of the neighbourhood.

And this is a good thing. Blogging is a good thing. On the one hand it has us all perpetuating the myth that life is more perfect than we know it can be, while revealing to us, day by day, the utter ordinary, daily wonder of living we so often fail to see because we let ourselves become bogged down by the tiniest flutters of greed and resentment...

While most of maintain, what are essentially, online scrapbooks of our lives, bits of pretty this and that, hopes and fancied up dreams, and pictures of our lives preemed to perfection, others like Jen at Simply Breakfast choose to commit to projects that by their very nature, and by the ties that bind it to it's audience, demand swoon-worthy images while simultaneously providing life-enhancing goals (eat a good breakfast daily: make it different daily: make it beautiful daily...) and essentially ritualising the act of blogging, of good eating, and creating an image of a truly gorgeous life that most of us I'm sure aspire to...

Do you eat breakfast? Has blogging changed the way you live your life? Is every moment a potential photo-opportunity or was beauty your raison d'etre long before the blogosphere wrapped her pretty little fingers around your heart?