By the time the hurly burly of another weekend is done and dusted and I have spent an efficient hour or two making sure the rest of the week will run as smoothly as my Housekeepers Planner suggests it should, I am usually thoroughly exhausted and ready for my bed. You see I believe that Sunday evenings were designed to be spent in bed with a period drama on the DVD, and the scent of lavender spritzed upon our nighties...

Tonight spend a while organizing your week, then put the house to bed and go upstairs to run a bath. Run it as hot as possible, then add five chamomile tea-bags to the water and allow to steep until the temperature feels bearable...

Play something suitably soothing (I favour Mozart's Prussian String Quartets: No.21 and 22) and then get into the bath for a ten minute soak: no more or else the water will go cold and we want to take the relaxing benefit of this warm, chamomile soak back to bed with us.
 Climb out, pat your skin dry and climb immediately into nightclothes warmed on the radiator. Then go to bed and read or watch something gentle, (I am watching Berkeley Square this evening.) while sipping on more chamomile, a drink named after us all by Old England, for whom Chamomile once meant "woman"...  

Goodnight Sweethearts.x


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And The Housekeepers Pencil Case From March 11th

To my mind the start of a new season should always include a trip to the stationery store: because (bless my cotton socks!) nothing makes me feel quite so efficient as owning new paper and pencils...

Tonight while about to sit down with my spanking new Vintage Housekeepers Planner it struck me that I could do with a really rather scrumptious version of the schoolgirls pencil case: stationery all of my own unlikely to be pilfered by my resident six year old...

And so this weekend I am setting us all a little project... to fill the prettiest all grown up pencil case we can find with our very own collection of essential bits and bobs for journaling the bestest parts of our day.

1. Start by choosing a pencil case. Take yourself shopping with something scrumptious in mind, re-purpose a make up bag, or sew the simplest envelope style case from a scrap or two of fabric and hold together with a couple of vintage rhinestone buttons or a ribbon...

2. Now add your very favorite kinds of pens and pencils. I like a certain kind of ever so cheap, extra fine propelling pencil that I buy by the dozen, and always have a gel pen in a range of pretty colored inks or six available (I favour green or violet ink, while the most stylish woman I know signs everything with a dash of pink), so a couple of both these pencils and pens will go in my case...

3. Next up I suggest a tiny roll of double sided sticky tape, a small pair of sharp craft scissors, and if you can get hold of them, a pair of wiggly edged children's scissors that turn every little bit of scrap paper collected into a work of art. (Don't forget to add a little loop of fine ribbon to the handles of both scissors so no-one is in any doubt as to whom they belong!)

4. Find a glue stick and wrap a pretty sticker around the tube, add a small stapler, a box of staples, and a craft knife.

5. Then seek out the tiniest vintage pill box you own and fill it with paper clips.

6. And finally treat yourself to the prettiest, silliest pencil eraser you can find: they come in the most fabulous designs and their sweet smell will send you hurtling back to your childhood every time you open your pencil case...

Have fun Housekeepers!

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Happy April Housekeepers!