"In the 19th and early 20th centuries, scientists were fascinated by synaesthesia: the way some people perceive sensations joined together, like seeing letters of the alphabet in a range of colours or hearing music as texture. Victorians named it after the Greek for union (syn) of sensations (aesthesia). In the west, the research fell out of fashion in the mid 20th century, but since the 1980s it’s been rediscovered, helping neuroscientists to understand how we separate and combine sensations.

Classic synaesthesia is something people are born with; cognitive synaesthesia happens when our minds join different sensations, based on our experiences. It’s used by perfumers in the creative process; for example, fragrances are often inspired by listening to music. It’s the psychological side of aromatherapy..."

Synaesthesia is further described by Lush as the "Union of separate sensations" and merely watching the video above has me feeling more relaxed: mostly because I suspect I both underestimate the power of music and have become lazy about using it to reflect my mood...

While the treatment looks bliss all by itself, what struck me most was how we could use the word "synaesthesia" as inspiration for creating the kind of homes that stimulate us: homes that cocoon us and bring all our senses alive to the degree where we are truly mindful about how very powerful our four walls can be in the pursuit of atmosphere...

Watch it and be inspired.

*First up, look at the great postcard at the top of this post, I mean Heavens above, what's not to love? The fabulous pink tights? The curtains, the spindly legs of the gorgeous chair? (I heart chairs with a vengeance!). Which all goes to prove, methinks, that nobody did style quite like an Edwardian Hussy...


* Next, Boots Original Beauty Formula. Vintage styling and old fashioned products like Cold Cream, Damask Rosewater and Vanishing Cream that actually work without a whole lot of fuss and ceramide this and anti-oxidant that. Beauty for old -fashioned girls like us! Kath bought me a few of the products for Christmas and then in a moment of oh how much I love this stuff, I went out and bought the rest of the range, cos it looks pretty in my still un-finished bathroom...


* Added to my Love Film list this week? Once, Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House and I've Loved You So Long, a French Box Office smash  with Kristen Scott Thomas, who is so stunningly beautiful she makes my tummy hurt.



* Obsessing over Alice In Wonderland and a heart shaped magnifying class, Miss Marple was using in an episode I watched last night. Eating Marks and Spencers Red Onion and Mint Chutney with every thing.

* Getting to grips with Photoshop with the help of the supremely talented Pioneer Woman. Loving this post  about the complex relationship between Mums and little boys on Scribbling In San Antonio (Thanks Leslie!). Feeling irrationally excited about Liberty of London for Target. (The bike! The flip flops!) Especially since I will never get the chance to shop there...

* Reading Debbie Travis's Not Guilty, because I have followed her career since I too, was once a decorative paint artist, and wanted to read her take on raising babba's alongside a great career. But feeling mildly irritated by the slightly rubbish writing, peculiar attitude to raising the boys she clearly adores, and worst of all, her memories of her Lancashire childhood. All that and in the next week I've got to tackle The Line of Beauty for the Playground Mommies Bookclub next friday. Damn life being to short to fit in every book I want to read...

* Planning something kinda big for BrocanteHome at the end of May and working my socks off behind the scenes for all that entails and for all of those of you eagerly awaiting it's arrival, you will be pleased to hear that the HUGE Houseeepers Planner is almost finished too. Keep your eyes peeled Honey Pies!

* And finally, feeling this quote from Maira Kalman resonate somewhere deep inside the writer in me...

"I tell you these stories because these things happen to everyone. It's not about being starched or polished. It's about having ears that stick out. About breaking yet another glass. It's about seeing something for the first time and mking a million mistakes and not ever getting completely discouraged."

May we never be completely discouraged...

Happy Thursday Housekeepers!  

Oh now really, don't people go about just creating the cutest little things!
This morning I'm a teeny bit besotted by these scrumptious pencil cases from Marble Rose, which seem to me to be the pretty little epitome of a nostalgic childhood...

Though they are going for a song, Fleur at Marble Rose, paints and personalises the boxes to order, using vintage transfers, them ships them worldwide, so nurseries across the land can enjoy a little bit of all our yesterdays...

Oh to be a babba again.

While I may rather insist that as Mrs Beeton suggested, the Mistress of the house should be an early riser if there is any hope at all of her winning the battle against all things domestic, in reality getting up early nearly kills me and at the slightest opportunity I will bury my head under the quilt and shut the world out for another five minutes or sixty five.

You see I do believe that this here body of mine was designed to rise at nine o'clock and not a minute before. That the world is up and doing it's business long before that is sheer misfortune and merely serves to remind me that I am always at odds with what is the correct way of going about things.

Half term doesn't help. Being the darling little cherub that he is, Finley resets his body clock during the school holidays and instead of charging around the house at the ungodly hour of 6.15am, as he is prone on a school day, he instead, lies in until the beautiful hour that is 8.30am, then wanders into my room and languishes under my quilt, relaying the kind of school playground gossip all Mommies secretly love to hear if only so that they can firmly establish the pecking order of their babba's in the ranks of the cool kids. After which, following a game of tents, where we both pull the duvet over our heads and share the silliest memories from Finley's babyhood, we  pull on dressing gowns and make our way into another day.

This slow, snuggly hello to the morning suits me, and I feel good and alert and not constantly as if the world has dragged me kicking and screaming out of another pleasant dream and forced me to tackle an unwilling child into uniform or my own shivery body into the shower long before we are awake.

But such is life, and everyday can't be holiday and there are morning routines to be performed and childish outraged outbursts to be endured and work to be done and a life to be lead and and try as you might you can't wash the dishes in bed, nor present yourself and pyjama clad child in front of the sternest of headmistresses wearing a nightie and a dreamy expression.

Boring as it may one simply has to get out of bed.

And so I do. I get up horribly early, and don my Domestic Goddess head and perform my routines because if I didn't the world would fall apart as I so blissfully let it during the holidays,  and I make breakfast and cajole a moaning child and wipe surfaces and stuff laundry into the machine and pack school bags and rub concealer under puffy eyes and forget important things and truth be told, there is a little bit of me that resents every minute of it, until the clock strikes nine and I give the universe permission to force me into enthusiastic action!

So how about you? Do you get up with the lark, joyfully whistling a happy tune, or do you growl your way through the morning, cross with the world until you feel awake? What does your morning routine look like? Is it hectic or heavenly? Are you organised or the housekeeping equivalent of Mad Mary??

Oh and tell me Sweethearts, am I the only Vintage Housekeeper in the land who secretly wishes, that on the subject of early rising, dear Mrs Beeton had kept her mouth shut??

It is half term and two days in, already I am banging my fevered brow against the walls of the proverbial cabin.

Oh that I was not so resentful of the time stolen and the mess created!
I tell myself that childhood is short and Finn won't be my baby forever and that everything that is so darn loveable about him more than makes up for the mess and the noise, the relentless questions and six year old theories, the bumping and the banging and all the rest of  the general chaos he and his cousin Gabriel manage to inflict upon heart, head and home during every school holiday. I tell myself off for being so downright bloody intolerant: for wondering what life must be like for the Mommies of angelic little girls; for wishing him back to school when he is so very, very thrilled to be at home...

And then instead of joining in the lunatic games of Pokemon and referring to Wikipedia when he wants to know anything from who invented God to how you make sugar, I make myself a moving target: I wrap myself up in needless chores and flit past him and his cousin like the kind of domestic busy bee I am certain both of them want to swat!

All this while I steal moments to read "Little Things Long Remembered", a gorgeous little ode to Puttery Parenting, from a woman who would probably never dream of telling her children to boil their heads when they have lost yet another essential piece of Lego, (the size of an ant and just about as useful), and set about implying that you who were minding your own business on another floor of the house altogether were no doubt responsible for their carelessness regardless.

But enough already with my kvetching, instead indulge my hypocrisy and allow me to sing the praises of Susan Newman's little book, because even I have my golden parenting moments and this book makes it easy to fit teeny, tiny little indulgences around working family life and full time domesticity, for even the grumpiest of Mama's...
Laid out in eight chapters, the book reads rather like a long list of my own Puttery Post, with treats and ideas for different periods of time: whether it be five minutes or an entire weekend you have to spare for making your children feel special. Though many of the reminders are very, very simple and for many will sometimes seem terribly obvious and indeed occasionally nothing more than the basics of instinctive parenting: dig deeper into the book and with more than four hundred ideas listed, I defy any family not to find something that will become a long term ritual throughout the course of parenting any number of scrumptious babbas.

My own favorite idea's from Little Things Long Remembered?

Sunday Papers
Read your children's favourite comic strips to them until they can read them to you...

Dyno Power
Definition: Imaginary extra strength children get magically when a parent needs help with a job. Call for "dyno power" when you need something retrieved from upstairs, wood for the fire, or the dinner table set. This silly concept somehow overrides the fact that you have asked for help...

Problem Central
Call yourself the "Complaint Department" and "be-open" before final tuck-in so your child can get what, if anything, is bothering him off his chest.

Dear Laura
Send your child a quick note or letter once a week or once a month that details what she's been doing or the fun she's been having. Save the letters.

It really is a lovely little book and it has been a long time since I happened upon one stuffed full of ideas I felt were manageable: parenting idea's that did not presume I have no life or emotions of my own, nor work that must be done or grown up relationships that must be worked at.  That some of the ideas are so simple doesn't strike me as patronising or even unnecessary because being a Mum is hard: sometimes when we are growling with barely suppressed resentment we need a little reminder to remember to look to our little people and tend to the hearts they wear so vulnerably on the sleeves we stayed up till midnight ironing.

I for one need reminding daily which is why Little Things Long Remembered will be joining Simple Abundance on my bedside table hereafter, and in the meantime, me and my munchkins are off to flip pancakes and talk about the whys and wherefores of Pokemon...

Wish me luck Sweethearts!

Yes, that would be it... such high hopes.
I have been scrubbing. And lying down. And feeling tired. And the other day I was squinting to read something and my Mum passed me her glasses and lo and behold I could see and now I do believe it is time to shoot myself because it isn't enough that I have sprouted a grey eyebrow, but heaven help us all, the relentless march of time wants to render me old lady blind as well.

Such high hopes. Isn't it funny how you think life is going to go one way and ten years later it's a completely different kettle of fish? I am mourning my lost youth. So I have been scrubbing. And filling bowl after bowl full of hot sudsy water because I can't get enough of the scent of Cath Kidston washing up liquid. And channeling Dita Von Teese because she is my latest Domestic Idol, and singing along with Zooey Deschanel at the top of my voice (I'm just sitting on the shelf...)  and eating my own utterly scrumptious recipe for Shepherds Pie, with cabbage and mustard and a sprinkle of this and that, because nothing, oh but nothing, nothing and nothing, tastes better when it is so cold the French hand soap freezes on the kitchen window-sill. Shepherds Pie served with home-made tomato chutney in terracotta bowls and room temperature eldeflower water with a slice of lemon, curled up on the sofa with a tray on my knee and a little boy tucked under my arm.

High hopes! It struck me recently that I should probably come with a warning. If I say I am going to do something this week, please let it be universally acknowledged that I actually mean next month.
High hopes and the best of intentions are worthy qualities, but heavens above life is quite the rudest of interrupting, interfering curmudgeonly companions on the road to doing what you intended to do isn't it?
One forgets to factor in hormones and exhaustion, unexpected but utterly irresistable trips to the best coffee shop in the world, an evening spent wallowing in a spick and span bath instead of blinking in front of the computer doing what you said you were going to do to all and sundry and probably her Great Aunt Maud, and days when the simple act of polishing, or cleaning, or bringing order to a room isn't so much about avoiding life, but is in fact life itself.

I always feel like this during scrub week. Muddled in the head. At once exhausted and invigorated. Prone to stabbing about for deeper meaning hiding in the mundane. Prone to accepting every invitation that comes my way in an effort to escape domesticity, and more than that to fill my head with voices other than my own.

High hopes. I am behind. I have gotten waylaid by letters that fall out of books and worrying about a long list of tiny worries that probably won't come to pass. The scrub may have to linger over half term week and reach a glittery climax the week after. It isn't the end of the world.

High hopes you see are such flexible little friends. Relentlessly optimistic little shape shifters all too willing to adapt to only what we are capable of right now. High hopes are believers in tomorrow and if I know nothing, I know this: when it comes to scrubbing there is always tomorrow.

As the library of BrocanteHome PDF's grows, I am finding it more of a nuisance to track and view them on my laptop, without going to the bother of referring to the bother of referring to the printed editions I keep in my Housekeepers Planner. So as I am wont to do, I set about finding an app that would help me, and lo and behold I happened upon Adobe Digital Editions, which allows me to gather all my PDF's and EPub format downloads in one easy library and with one click view them within the integral brower. Easy peasy!

In the first image above you can see the first page of my "Library" of PDF's, which you can view  as a whole or categorised into sections of your own devising. When you want to view a PDF, you click the little arrow next to the one you have chosen and choose "Open Item" and it opens all by itself, so you can view it just as you would traditionally view a PDF, as below, where I can be seen viewing Page 22 of the Brocantehome Christmas Planner...


So how do you get this joyous little wonder for yourself? Well, first things first you will need to download Adobe Air. This isn't as scary as it sounds, it is simply the program Adobe Digital Editions (and many other wondrous applications!) uses to work.

1. So take yourself over to http://get.adobe.com/air/ and press the yellow button that says Download Now, then follow the very simple requests to get Adobe Air on to your system.

2. When Adobe air is fully downloaded, hop on over to http://www.adobe.ca/products/digitaleditions/ , then scroll down the page and click the brown Launch box to set the Digital Editions Installer in motion, then follow the very simple, very standard instructions and in the blink of an eye you will see the black Digital Editions Reader open on top of your browser and you are ready to start grabbing your utterly scrumptious Brocante PDf's and creating your very own little library(which really is as easy as opening a file on your computer, choosing a PDF and pressing open and quick as a flash it will be sitting in your Digital Editions Browser before you know it!)

Should you be very taken with the possibilities of Adobe Air a quick browse around the Air Marketplace will throw up all manner of stand-alone applications, but my absolute favorite and the one I can barely live without now is Flair..



A really rather fabulous browser for image finding on Flickr that for me at least saves hours of legwork hopping through pages of images on the site itself and instead provides me with a neat little pop up search box. This brings up hundreds of images based on the keyword or phrase that I input, that I can then scroll through or individually light-box faster than I can get through a fun size Mars Bar.

Fabulous isn't it?

* Never mind that you have been waking up next to him for twenty years, make sure you send your partners Valentine card by snail mail because there is nothing quite as lovely as getting a Valentine card in the post...

* Do as Chaucer recommended and seek out the love birds that are the traditional symbol of  Valentines Day.  Embroider a pair of love-birds on to a tea-towel, or start the ritual annual collection of something scrumptious decorated with a pair of Love Birds as a symbol of your own relationship.

* Spend the day before Valentines making your bedroom as scrumptious as possible. (Even if there is only you who sleeps there!) Polish till it sparkles, pile the bed with pillows and cosy quilts, put one or two pretty little buds in vases on the bedsides, banish as much clutter as you possibly can and hang your prettiest bedtime clothes from a padded hanger on the wardrobe door.

* Long before Valentines Day was commandeered by the soppy Victorians and their fancy-schmancy deliriously decorated (but oh sooooo pretty!) cards, it was common to write love letters on Valentines Day and this is so much more Brocante methinks than joining the thronging masses in search of rose-sprinkled tat. So steal away an hour or three and write a chatty list of I love you's and thank you's and plans for tomorrow, then spray it with perfume, tie it with ribbon and post it to your loved one.

* Cover the breakfast table on Valentines Day with a cloth decorated in the most exuberant red roses you can find.

* Arrange a date at a wine store and  go together to choose a really special bottle of wine to be enjoyed over the simplest of cheese and cracker suppers on Valentines evening, as a lovely alternative to over-spending on a not so romantic over-priced meal in a restaurant.

* Thread laurel bay leaves onto wire and twist into a heart for the simplest, most understated of Valentine wreaths.

* Buy a dictionary and highlight every word that describes your partner or how you feel about him or her. Wrap it up in layers of newspaper and tie it in a big red bow.

* Fill a vintage tin with memories and offer it to your partner as a gift on Valentines Day. Make it as attractive as  possible and fill it with long forgotten love letters, photos of your first holiday or home, locks of your children's hair, trinkets and menu's you have kept from special dates and anything else that is meaningful to the two of you.

* Rent a DVD of the very first movie you ever watched together.

* Gloves have long been a symbol of love with the verse "If that from glove you take the letter G, then glove is love and that I send to thee", so gift your babba's new gloves on Valentines Day or treat yourself, in a scrumptiously silly ritual all of your own, to a new pair of frivolous housekeepers rubber gloves, just because you can. (Gloveables are gorgeous!)...

* Stitch His and Hers or Mr and Mr on to a pair of pillowcases, or seek out a vintage set on Ebay and put them on the bed before you go to sleep on Valentines Day.

* Burn rose oil in the bathroom. Or mix 3 Tablespoons of honey with 3 drops of rose oil and three drops of vanilla essential oil and pour it under running water for the sweetest, most sensual bath.

* Teach yourself the language of flowers and use it to symbolise your emotions when buying flowers for yourself. Isn't there something intriguing about creating a private conversation with something so beautiful?

* Serve the kids red velvet cupcakes and ice cold milk on a tray for breakfast in bed on Valentines morning.

* Books are a traditional gift on Valentines Day. Seek out a vintage copy of your very favourite childhood story book, inscribe it with a thank-you to your Mum, and tie it up with ribbon for her. Valentines Day is utterly perfect for saying a million little thank-you's.

* Order a book full of the kind of accessible love poetry that will not scare the horses and leave it sitting on your bedside table, ready to dip in and out of or read out loud to your partner.

* Fill the kid's coat pockets with Hershey kisses when they aren't looking.

* Mix up a blend of romantic massage oil by combining 2 drops of rose oil with 3 drops of sandalwood and a single drop of black pepper oil into a a few drops of almond oil.

* Use heart shaped pastry cutters to create romantic fried eggs. Serve with tomato sauce and tell him it's the food of love.

* Add a vintage Valentine themed apron to your collection.

* Use kids alphabet magnets to write "I love you" on the fridge.

* Create a little in-car picnic and go for a drive on Valentines Day. Often more meaningful conversation happens in the car than anywhere else.

* Drizzle a sour cream heart on to a bowl of tomato soup.

* We are all skilled at creating memory books for the kids but often neglect to document our relationships in any meaningful way. Splash out on a truly special photograph album, and starting at the very beginning of your relationship fill it full of photographs that tell the story of your partnership. Just you two, no kids or maiden Aunts. Just you two.

* Make rosewater jelly(or cheat like I do!)  in little china tea cups, sprinkle with pistachio's and eat from nursery sized spoons in bed  with the tiniest tumblers full of sweet dessert wine.

* Pansy's are said to speak of loving thoughts so buy a tray of pretty pink ones and leave them tied in ribbon on your friends doorsteps with a little Thank you for being my friend note attached.

* Establish a drawer to be reserved for your slinkiest, loveliest, prettiest underwear. Put really special items in vintage nightie cases, store your most precious perfume in with your underwear, tuck bundles of dried lavender amongst every layer, add a bundle of ribbon tied love letters and cards and make sure to line the drawer properly so delicate lace doesn't snag on splintered wood. And there you have it, a scrumptious little nod to your most sensual self.

Have  a lovely  Valentines Day Housekeepers!


P.S: Don't forget you can get a little puttery treat in your in-box everyday when you sign up to the Puttery Post...

While I rather feel like a school ma'am rallying her troops, I wanted to set a little project for all those taking part in the Seasonal Scrub this week. You see I believe the Scrub is a rather wonderful time to take stock of your home: to look at it with an honest eye and say this is what needs to be done now. This is what I need to replace or fix. This is what I can no longer live with and this, this is how I want the house to feel everyday.

This isn't about massive transformation or keeping up with the Jones's. You see I think too many of us focus on how our house looks and forget that by focusing on the way our home feels and by being true to our authentic needs we can create a home that both nurtures our souls AND pleases us aesthetically...

But I do understand that it is difficult to identify what to do, or what to buy that will make all the difference between feeling irritated by your home and feeling thoroughly and utterly, scrumptiously delighted by it.

And so I believe that we need a system: something that helps us to identify what it is that is bugging us and thus I recommend collating a set of Mission Lists: three to-do lists you write in your Housekeepers Notepad as you start the scrub in earnest. something I have been committed to doing since 2005, and something I credit for the constant, reassuring sense that life is both constantly moving on and simultaneously improving.

As always remember that the method I describe below is of my own devising and you can make your lists in whatever way you choose, because it is your your house, not mine and only you know what will work for it...

"I start by taking an inventory of everything that is driving me mad from the moment I open my eyes in the morning till the moment I climb back into bed and just for one day I go about my business in the house mindfully: I open my eyes and notice that the screech of the alarm clock makes me feel shaky; that I have to walk across the room cold and naked in order to fetch my dressing gown and that there is a stain on the carpet by the door. I stand in the shower and notice that the soap is hard to reach and when I do it doesn't smell particularly wonderful, that some of the towels in the bathroom are a little frayed and my toothbrush jug needs a thorough scrub...

And so it goes on: the doorbell makes me jump, there is no proper home for the abundance of teeny tiny toy cars littering the floor and I would like to be able to sit down and read a book on the armchair without having to bring cushions over from the sofa. The fresh coffee keeps spilling in the fridge, I don't have a little
milk-pan for making decent hot chocolate and I can never find any bin bags. The light in the laundry room blinds me, there is a tear in the blind above the kitchen sink and the tap drips relentlessly...


I notice all of these things because they make my life uncomfortable, but I don't notice the scary green wallpaper on the landing or the lampshade I would like to change, because for the moment these things serve the purpose for which they were intended and therefore do not make it onto my list..."

So for today simply take your housekeepers pad and as you scrub, or take your elevenses, note down everything that is bugging you. Don't worry if you don't see much initially, these things often don't strike you till you are in the midst of a task: just make an effort to notice and eventually you will see that the things on the list fall into three distict groups:

1. To Throw Away and Replace.
2. To be Fixed, Cleaned or Re-Purposed.
3. To be Bought.

Over the next few days, start to divide your lists ready to form your mission lists in the Housekeepers Planner: ultimately they will form the basis of your action plan for the year, serve as shopping lists when you are treasure hunting and hopefully serve as a reminder that creating and maintaining home isn't about fashion or buying the kind of clutter that will not fill the gaps in your life...

P.S: this isn't to say that you are only allowed to think about need rather than want: BrocanteHome is, at its heart about the frivolities of life and there will be a chance to divine what your heart truly desires when the house is functioning as it should, but just as the seasonal scrub provides a blank canvas for making life pretty, the mission lists give us a map, and the Seasonal Scrub, a time when we are crawling in and out of all the nooks and crannies in our home, is the best time to draw it.

Happy scrubbing Darlings!

No, no, no Victoria. You are a lovely, funny, misguided young fool and we, the British who really rather adore you and admire your sheer determination to be lots of things you are not, want to tell you that these images for U. S Glamour were a big, fat, skinny mistake.

Yes, we know Madonna got away with it last month and we all secretly rather liked the pouty, leopard skin images of her peeling onions for Dolce and Gabanna, but Victoria Sweetie, that's because we all got the irony, and in our wildest imagination, we could at a stretch imagine she was just one more sultry Italian housewife doing her thing.
But you Victoria, you just aren't Madonna are you? We don't get the joke because you look like a porn star posing for the kind of magazine they sell in cellophane in service stations. (Little Jugs?) We don't get the joke because we were kind of hoping that beyond the whole Spicy business, and bizarre, profile only paparrazi shots, you were a bit like us: bringing up your boys and holding your marriage together. An ordinary woman leading an extra-ordinary life. We don't get the joke because the message is all muddled up: at once patronising, sleazy and saddest of all, dosed in the kind of "I wanna be's" that dilute your authenticity.

Have I made myself clear? Good. Now do excuse me, I'm off to caress myself with my Posh telephone. Have a lovely day Honey Pie.x

I'm rather late with Housekeepers Question Time this week.
I got a little waylaid de-cluttering the bookshelves and boxing up more than one hundred books ready for who knows what and then my fragile little ego took something of a battering when a random nasty stranger, going by the names of both Don't Clean and Dirty_Girl took the time to email me and with all the literacy of a stoned baboon informed me that BrocanteHome was "a waste of time an easy way to make money get a job and get a life" and as a result I wasted all of Friday night feeling oddly shaken by the ramblings of a cowardly lunatic, dithering about where one buys a life and wondering just how mad you would have to be to imagine that choosing a writing life has ever been an easy way to make money.

Truth is I'm not sure the word easy describes a single aspect of single mothering a scrumptious, but spirited child with a little collection of small but significant health issues of his own, while keeping a roof over our heads, answering my creative call and still being available to run to school should poor scissor skills result in yet another bloodied finger, or the accidental ingestion of gluten, in projectile vomiting. Life is hard. All day every day. And I am truly grateful that the small success that is Brocante allows me to improve life one day at a time for both my family and yours, regardless of what any old grimy nay sayers might spout.

Still, even the snarkiest of wounds heal and so by yesterday I was so over feeling irrationally weepy and my precarious emotional state had progressed into fully-fledged "if it's standing still, bin it" mode, to the degree that poor darling Richard nearly went for a Burton as a result, with P.M.T. making me susceptible to quite the most vicious of clear-outs, of the kind that three hours later, horror at what I'd done, had me leaning into the proverbial wheelie bin at midnight in search of a little something I was mad to throw away!

So it has been a funny old weekend, but all this hysterical book chucking, loony tolerating nonsense is by the by now, when pre-scrub, rather random curiosity is burning me to such a degree I can't help wondering, sitting here on the quietest of Sunday afternoons, what you will be wearing to scrub in: whether you my Darling Housekeepers come from the grungy, or glamorous school of home-making?

You see every morning, I get up, get showered, apply a full face of make-up and get dressed and then, and only then am I able to contemplate pulling the laundry out of the machine or running a duster over the mantle-piece.
I just can't clean if I feel dirty, and truth be told if I haven't clogged up my pores with foundation, climbed into clean underwear and pulled on my really scary spotty slipper socks, then dirty is exactly what I feel and without motivation I will skulk around in my nightie with a large mug of builder's brew in my hand until the early hours of the afternoon, achieving exactly nothing and mentally berating myself for being a layout!

I need to feel pretty to make pretty.

My Mum on the other hand is only really, capable of housework prior to showering and once she has washed away the home-making grime dusting her skin, she simply wouldn't dream of cleaning the oven in her best frock and lip-gloss. To her one gets the housework out of the way, then gets dressed and attends to the more important business of having a life beyond one's four walls.

Where her role as a housewife has clearly defined boundaries, my day is the carefully orchestrated jumble common to those who work from home. Housework fits in amongst everything else and one can quite easily find oneself running in from delivering a child to school (where it isn't the done thing to arrive in your dressing gown on the premise that you have got to get back to the ironing!), taking coffee with a friend, baking a quiche, doing three loads of laundry, writing five thousand words of literary genius (ahem), doing an impromptu cleaning of the loo, pulling out some weeds, talking to the headmistress and dashing to the post office before it closes: all in the same clothes. All in the kind of eye make up that says "don't mess with me Dishwasher/Headmistress/Ex-Husband/Laundry Basket", scented by a rather charming combination of Obsession and ammonia and wearing the kind of trousers that will neither tear nor reveal my bottom should I have to get down on my hands and knees to crawl under a bush on the playground and rescue the water bottle my six year old son has seen fit to use as bowling ball.

But it isn't just the fact that in my very own housekeepers uniform I am ready to battle with whatever comes my way: there is also a question of self-esteem. Somehow my senses are more alert when I feel nice. I am less likely to half-do a job in a dozy fashion when I dressed and wearing eye make-up. Add high heels and I am a housekeeping wonder shimmying around like the lady in the Shake and Vac advert and ticking off boxes on my to-do list with all the efficiency of a shoulder pad toting businesswoman. Throw a snazzy coat into the mix and I dash around the house as if my life depended on it.

And so to get to the point my friends, my question this week is are you with me or my mum? Do you wear make up to de-fluff the tumble dryer? Do you feel the urge to bathe after you have cleaned the bath? Do you water the plants in your nightie or do as a friend I know does and keep a cupboard full of "cleaning clothes"? Do you have a housekeeping uniform?  Do you clean the shower naked in a nod to multi-tasking or hoover in your knickers aka Rita Konig?

"Bubbles rising on the top of a cup of tea are kisses. To make sure of getting the kisses, skim the bubbles off with a spoon and sip them from it.
The spoon must not touch the sides of the tea-cup or there will be delays in the arrival of your kisses..."

Ok Sweetie Pies it is time to go scrub-shopping! If we are going to get down and dirty during the seasonal scrub we need to have all the right products and equipment at hand.

Remember when I said that when it comes to Scrub Club, the rules are there are no rules? Housekeepers, I lied. There is a rule, and break it m’dears and you will be damned! Ready for it?


No bleach! Ya hear me?? No bleach!

No Mr Muscle. No Jif with bleach. No Cillit Bang (Please Lord, no Cillit Bang!). Nothing mean at all. Nothing that gets up your nose and burns your delicate little nostrils. Nothing Housekeepers, that MAKES YOUR HOUSE SMELL LIKE A SWIMMING POOL!


While I don’t expect everybody to have the time, energy or even the inclination to make all their cleaning products themselves, you simply won’t get the best out of the Scrub or indeed the BrocanteHome way of life, if you don’t choose non-toxic, or indeed organic cleaning products. There are so many good non-toxic options on the market now that there really is no excuse for using anything else!


While there are some quite simply darling cleaning product lines available from the rather wonderful Mrs Meyers, to Method, and the utterly scrumptious Good Home Company, using those products exclusively would cost a small fortune, so it makes a lovely compromise to choose one or two favourites from the luxury ranges, supplemented with a few products from a budget green range like Ecover, (which is almost fragrance free and thus rather wonderful for adding your own aromatherapy oils to), and a range of basics like household soap, soap flakes, lemon juice, white vinegar and a pail of elbow grease.

Tomorrow I will provide a more detailed list of home-made cleaning product ingredients and the day after a lovely little list of Housekeepers Tools of the Trade…


Scrub a dub dub Honey Buns!

Oooooh look its Happy Loves Rosie  shopified!

Don't you  just love it when you see scrumptious little blogs blossoming into stripy, happy butterflies?  After all  who couldn't do with a dose of happiness dropping through their letterbox? Me, me, me!

Go grab a little happiness for yourself, and while you are there wish Happy and her lovely family all the luck in the world from me...

A month into the Puttery Post and I truly hope you have been inspired by some of the scrumptious little puttery treats I have popped into your in-box. The printable download of all the January Post should now be in your in-box and will, I hope, over the course of your subscription form a rather lovely little encyclopedia of home-making loveliness.

Over the past month we have made personal promises, set domestic goals, hidden treats to be discovered next Christmas, fed the birds, taken quite the most divine shower anyone ever thought up, found a rather fabulous way to store current magazines, mixed up some home-made laundry brightener, cosied up the bed, added a silk hanky to our polishing arsenal, created a Laundry Crisis Tin, drank the BrocanteHome Bedtime Brew and much more besides! It really has been a joy to dream up and indeed test the treats as I post them and day by day my commitment to the BrocanteHome way of homemaking is once again being affirmed...

My favorite treat from the Puttery Post in January?

January 12th...

It is National Letter Writing Week. Seven days much called for when the pleasure that was once the thud of a thick envelope stuffed with news has almost gone by the by.


Letters don't have to be novels. They can be dashed off while you wait for the kettle to boil because the shortest of sentences still have the power to make someone's day. So this evening might I suggest you create a tiny space dedicated to writing little bits of love?


We don't have to make a song and dance out of this scrumptious little treat. We merely want to make the notion of letter writing that little bit more accessible. So unless you have the space to spare do not worry about creating a dedicated writing desk, I rather think a pretty vintage tin containing all you need to write a variety of different letters could be offered a permanent home on the kitchen table making morning notes to teachers a breeze, and spontaneous love letters to your partner a possibility with your morning elevenses.


Today find a pretty tin, line it with scented paper and collect A5 buff coloured linen paper, tissue lined envelopes, a little book of stamps and a pen that makes a deliciously pleasing scratchy sound as it dashes across the paper.
And there you have it: everything you need to make National Letter Writing Week a treat by dashing off one heartfelt greeting or thank-you every day for the next seven...


P.S: Should you be cultured enough to be able to use a fountain pen with pananche, you can scent your ink by mixing one teaspoon of vodka to 2 teaspoons of aromatherapy oil and adding this solution to your ink before shaking well...

Puttery Treats you see are all about making life that little bit lovelier by embracing ritual, paying attention to the teeniest of details and committing to doing one tiny little thing everyday that improves your way of life...

If you haven't yet signed up, you can choose to pay $3.00 by monthly subscription here, or pay for twelve months of Puttery joy here for a substantial reduction...

I've got so many lovelies planned for February and it wouldn't do to miss out!

Gosh how a month swooshes by when you are in the kid leather soft glove of a book by Barbara Pym! A Glass of Blessings was the first of the twelve books in my Domestic Fiction 2010 Read-Along and just as I expected it got our year of cosy reading got off to an auspicious start with a book so quietly and often hilariously telling it was hard to put down, though I suspect I shall have great  trouble reviewing it in a way that really does such well mannered writing justice.

Wilmet Forsyth is  "rather bored". She is in fact politely bored of almost everything, from her marriage to the shadowy, almost irrelevent Rodney, to her situation as a well behaved middle class wife with very little to occupy her mind beyond the comings and goings of the local clergy and the mindless gossip doing the rounds of various church functions. Which I think you will agree, really rather spells trouble.

But Darlings this is middle class London in the late 1950's and trouble is hardly the minx she would be today. Trouble in fact for Wilmet comes merely in the form of a swooning crush on the enigmatic Piers Longridge, (though how enigmatic a man who spends many an hour collecting car plate numbers can be is debateable), a man whose charm lie's almost exclusively in his vagueness. But regardless, Wilmet fancies herself in love and so begins a comedy of errors, cringeworthy in both their affront to the polite society Wilmet and Piers reside in, and because in Wilmet herself we find too much of ourselves and our own willingness to cast ourselves in fairytale roles that will never come to pass.

While the supposed love affair is central to the storyline, it is the cast of supporting characters who are the real joy in the book. From Rodney's Mother Sybil who speaks her mind at every turn,  to the kleptomaniac Mr Bason, the clergys housekeeper, who cannot help himself but cast aspersions on all those who do not share his love of beautiful things and finally the really rather fabulous knitting pattern model Keith, a man who ultimately, despite the most unexected of odd's, Wilmet cannot help but take to her heart:  it is the supporting characters and the hilarity they so very often bring to the story (look out the Faberge Egg kerfuffle!) that are in striking contrast to the innate, perhaps essential blandness of Wilmet and her like, who never quite struck me as fully fleshed out: but then perhaps that is the difference between a well drawn character and a caricature which is what the really quite mad Mr Bason almost certainly is?

Clandestine affairs (even the desperately innocent kind to be found in Barbara Pym's books) are never unexpected in domestic fiction, but what struck me most about A Glass of Blessings was the casual approach the two civilised, well bred couples in the book took to the tiny betrayals intrinsic to many a marriage, flinging about the notion of  "taking a lover" with genteel abandon, and tolerating spousal wandering eyes with a lack off the kind of moral outrage that one would have expected from both the time and the class in which the book is set. Wilmet herself is not immune to the overtures of her best friend's husband and she isn't particuarly offended by her husbands parallel overtures, seeming almost to regard these small indiscretions as part and parcel of enduring the well dressed bars of middle class marriage.

Furthermore she does not seem to question the morality of her feelings for Piers in light of her deep rooted attachment to her beloved Anglican Catholic religion, though it has to be said that Wilmets devotion is reserved more for the community of the church itself than it is for any God and it is the rights and wrongs of the clergy, their funny little quirks and traits and the congregation as a source of gossip that most enthralls her and her readers.

"I also noticed two well-dressed middle aged women with a young girl, whom I remembered having seen in church sometimes. All three were chinless, with large aristocratic noses. Near them stood a thin woman with purple hair and a surprised expression, as if she had not expected that it would turn out to be that colour. She wore a good deal of chunky jewellery, and I felt she had gone a little too far in showing churchgoers need not necessarily be dowdy. She was rather surprisingly in conversation with a group of nun's from the convent in the parish. The nuns were of two two kinds, short and motherly looking ot tall and thin with steel-rimmed spectacles, pale, waxy complexions and sweet, remote smiles, that had something a little sinister about them."


That Wilmet imagines herself somehow emotionally superior to the more earnest women of the congregation and often cast's herself as the outsider looking in, is ultimately what she sees as her undoing. She is blind too much that is obvious because she is too busy entertaining notions of romantic grandeur she cannot imagine other, duller women are capable of,  and this arrogance finally bites her on the nose until she has no choice but to come down to earth with a soft, mildly embarrassed bump, and accept her life for what it is and what it has the potential to be.

All in all, this is a quiet gem of a book and Barbara Pym the kind of writer capable of conjuring up a world where plot hardly seems to matter when the characters are so beguilling, and the writing pitch perfect. Though at times I wondered out loud what it was that makes Pym's books so enchanting to those interested in mid-century domestic fiction, with their almost obsessional affinity to parish life and hero worship of often the most eccentric of clergy, the fact remains that I am never happier than navigating the social minefield of Pym's imagination, and I thought A Glass of Blessings was a joy, so I would love to hear your opinion...

P.S: In February I will be reading Julia Strachey's Cheerful Weather For the Wedding and you are of course invited to read along...

A grey and wet February morning, so cold my toes are turning blue. At ten past ten in the morning there has already been much chaos in the lane, courtesy of a rather large lorry crashing into a row of cars outside my house and shunting the next door neighbours little Clio a fraction short of the low stone wall guarding my little brick world.
Two minutes later  and the same car could have gone into one of the many little blue-uniformed babba's on their way to school. Three minutes later and it could have been Finn.

The neighbours cry and I find myself hugging dressing gowned people one after another, putting out traffic cones and taking photographs for insurance companies that are nothing to do with me, wondering out loud why Tuesday mornings so often seem to attract disasters big and small, and aching for a big tall milky coffee.

Now I am here, safe inside my little living room, a blanket on my knee and The Odd Couple (A housework movie!!) on the screen, laughing loudly and seeing far too many of my Richard's admirable neurosises in Jack Lemmon. (Stop controlling yourself Felix!!). After a weekend away there is soooooo much to do: as if we have holidayed for three months instead of just a few days. There is washing stacked in little piles queing up for the machine. A bag still un-packed. Home-made disinfectant sitting in the sinks in lieu of me actually pulling my finger out and doing the housework crying out my name, because it is cold and everyone know's it is impossible to pick up a scrubbing brush when it is cold.
So let it be known that upstairs, beds lay rumpled and un-made and I am sitting with a huge mug full of slimmers green tea and a rather divine chocolate and raspberry biscuit because there is clearly something wrong with my brain. Let it be known that chilly Victorian terraced cottages were never built for one as nesh as me. Let it be known, my Dears, that I would rather be back in Helen's cosy hot water bottle of a newly built three storey house....

One comes back always from trips with tiny little trinkets and tastes to remember it by. This time two pink dish brushes in preparation for the Seasonal Scrub, a bar of Tranquility Lavender Chocolate, the chocolate and raspberry biscuits mentioned, a book of 1916 household tips, and a cup dotted with hearts I found sitting boxed and be-ribboned under the passenger seat of Richard's car on the drive home. All that and a tired little head full of memories resounding with laughter.

Today when the film is finished, when I have found the pink cardigan that spells warmth to my goose-pimpled flesh, when I can finally work up the will to live instead of vegetating,  I will drain the kitchen sink and spend an hour or two inflicting a little Shiny Sink Syndrome on my soul, placing the pink brushes in a little cream pail on the window ledge, and rewarding myelf for my efforts with a little square of Tranquility.  Tranquility that I will let no kamikase lorries set asunder.

Have a lovely day Housekeepers.