BrocanteHome

A New Era

2010-05-13T07:38:00.000-07:00

Yes Darlings. BrocanteHome is moving house again.

This will be my last post here on Blogger as I have, with heart in mouth experienced the steep learning curve that is hosting my own site at Wordpress.Org, and after a month of the hardest work I can remember since I had to pull my guts out to pass my maths GCSE, the site is almost ready to receive visitors...

I say almost, because I fully intended to invite you over on Monday morning, but today Rachel Johnson, sister of Boris and editor of The Lady tweeted about a post I have written over at the new site about her magazine and before I knew it, just like that, my little old secret was out and I noticed a whole lot of unexplained visitors hopping all over the pages of the all new Brocante...

And so here we are, a few days earlier than I had anticipated with, many of the i's not quite dotted as scrumpiously as I had hoped and an entire section still not yet live (wait and see!), but heavens if I carry on faffing with my fiddly need for perfection I'll still be faffing when they put me ten feet under...

So here is what is going to happen: BrocanteHome here on Blogger will be live until Monday, then fingers crossed it will start to re-direct all traffic all by itself and you will be dragged by your pretty little knitted slippers over to the new site: the only thing you need to do is change bookmark and blog links to the new address if you would, while all feeds will be automatically re-directed and there shouldn't be any need to re-subscribe if you view Brocante in a reader...

I have decided upon this change for a number of reasons: a while ago I asked you what you thought of the current design and many of you suggested that you had preferred Brocante in it's previous happier, dotty incarnation (Hint!). While many readers also suggested that Brocante was both difficult to read and worse than that, almost impossible to navigate and even my own Mum declared problems searching for old posts and reading the text without glasses and a 200 watt light. So I listened and I dwelled and I ruminated on the idea of tackling something quite new to me (and previously rather terrifying) and before I knew it I was sitting with one of the Playground Daddies being taught the in's and out's of Wordpress, and keeping myself up till silly o'clock at night investigating the joys and endless possibilities of the rather wonderful little delight that is the Wordpress Plug-In.

A couple of months later and though I am almost bald with worry about such a big change, most of the Blogger posts have been imported and organized and we are ready to roll...

Wanna go see?

View the front of the site here at http://www.brocantehome.net

and hop straight to the blog by clicking http://www.brocantehome.net/blog/

And please, please, please don't forget to leave your thoughts in the comments or contact box.
I've always been a girl open to suggestion!

See you at BrocanteHome.Net very, very soon.x

See You Soon!

2010-04-28T04:40:00.000-07:00

Hello Darlings, now please don't panic, because my See You Soon is there for a very good reason indeed. While it might at first glance seem as though I have quit the blogging party to go strutt my stuff at the nightclub around the corner, in actual fact, I am very, very, very busy working on a little something behind the scenes, and all will be revealed hopefully by the end of next week.

If by then I haven't suffocated under the mountain of laundry I am steadfastly ignoring whilst all my efforts are concentrated on re-igniting my little old blogging flame, I will meet you here then, and in the meantime, for all those of you who cannot live without a fix of Brocante in your homemaking day, the Puttery Post will be in your in-boxes as usual.

Till then my Sweets, I bid you adieu...x

Housekeepers Carousel

2010-04-21T03:42:00.000-07:00

All images credited on my Pinboard.

Woo hoo! The Carousel is back in town, so hop on board and lets go for a spin around all that is scrumptious in this lovely little world!! Oh Ok, enough already with the over-enthusiastic exclamation marks. Grey chin hair proves beyond all reasonable doubt that I am not a teenager...

* So first up, my April collage above. Crocheted squares, saucers full of pastel buttons, roses, ballet slippers, a desk I wish I could set up shop at, and right there in the middle, a portrait by the great Russian artist, Valentin Alexandroitsch Serow, called Children, taking centre stage because standing there that little boy looks just like my Finn did this morning before he left for school in his Summer school uniform of shorts, shirt and requisite, Year One, gap, where the teeth used to be...

* Next along, these divine Miette Wallpaper Cookies spotted on Design Sponge. Did you ever see such pretties? And oh the possibilities if you are clever enough to translate pattern into baked goods! Me I can't even turn cookie dough into baked goods so the chances of getting fancy with an icing bag are slim to none, because although my darling sister bought me the retro inspired Tala icing bag tin for my birthday I am yet to get to grips with filling it properly, let alone doing swoon-worthy florals on (burnt) biscuits. Still, a girl can dream can't she?

* Moving quickly on, High Wages by Dorothy Whipple, which was quite the finest example of early twentieth century girl power I have read in a long time, telling as it does the tale of a young girl who equipped with talent and a good eye, takes herself off from the dress shop floor on which she works to the ranks of owner in a period when both her sex and social class went vastly against her. Though my copy of High Wages was the orange and white Penguin, one shilling version bought for a song on AbeBooks, it has not so recently been re-issued by Persephone (with a foreword by Jane Brocket) and is I think, required reading for any woman doubting she has the gall to set up by herself. Or for she who has ever known the futility of loving a man tied to a marriage he cannot leave.
(Ooooh and while I'm on the subject of Persephone look out for Paperback Reader's "Persephone Reading Week", running between May 3rd and May 9th, now won't you?)

* Dreaming about a long car journey. An afternoon nap on a very hot day. Remembering how it was to be pregnant through the hottest Summer this century. Mistaking wind for the flutter of a baby in my stomach. Dipping ginger biscuits in melted chocolate. Wearing a silk slip. Wrapping old books up in ribbon tied parcels just for the hell of it. Waking up with violent scent of hydrangeas engulfing my bedroom. Feeling momentarily, bizarrely, petrified by it. Assaulted by fragrance before I have opened my eyes. Seeing Sophie Dahl reading the very copy of the collected works of Dorothy Parker I have hidden under my bed for fifteen years just in case my Mum takes it into her head to demand it back (you can't have it, so let it go Mummy!). Misty Morning, Albert Bridge. Dwelling on disappointment...

"Disappointment is considered bad. A thoughtless prejudice. How, if not through disappointment, should we discover what we have expected and hoped for? And where, if not in this discovery, should self-knowledge lie? So, how could one gain clarity about oneself without disappointment? We shouldn’t suffer disappointment sighing at something our lives would be better without. We should seek it, track it down, collect it. One who would really like to know himself would have to be a restless, fanatical collector of disappointments, and seeking disappointing experiences must be like an addiction, the all-determining addiction of his life, for it would stand so clearly before his eyes that disappointment is not a hot, destroying poison, but rather a cool, calming balm that opens our eyes to the real contours of ourselves.”

Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon

* Now contemplating Christmas in April. Quite accidentally, because LoveFilm, in their infinite wisdom have seen fit to send me Christmas Holiday, when I was hoping for Once. Still an afternoon with Deanna Durbin is never a wasted one, and throw in a teapot full of Earl Grey and this years Christmas Planner and I do believe I've got myself a par-tay. Albeit a dememntedly out of season one, but apparently that's how we roll around here: I have watched this Target Christmas advert a few times over, because I have never heard Rachel Ashwell speak (she's got a kind of transatlantic thing going on, as I suppose you might expect), and in one scene during this little video she is, fleetingly, the spitting image of Alison Steadman of Abigails Party and Gavin and Stacey fame...

* Still feeling astonished that I didn't know Cath Kidston and Kirstie Allsop were cousins. Though as my parents like to (frequently) remind me, the gaps in my knowledge are chasms devoid not only of geography and world events, but clearly that which I purport to know. But there you have it. I'm a purporter. One shouldn't trust me further than you can throw me. Dear Darling daughter, we love you, but you are thick.

* And finally, in celebration of National Poetry month, Katherine Mansfield's Camomile Tea, because occasionally melancholy comes wrapped in gratitude and contentment.

Outside the sky is light with stars;
There’s a hollow roaring from the sea.
And, alas! for the little almond flowers,
The wind is shaking the almond tree.

How little I thought, a year ago,
In the horrible cottage upon the Lee
That he and I should be sitting so
And sipping a cup of camomile tea.

Light as feathers the witches fly,
The horn of the moon is plain to see;
By a firefly under a jonquil flower
A goblin toasts a bumble-bee.

We might be fifty, we might be five,
So snug, so compact, so wise are we!
Under the kitchen-table leg
My knee is pressing against his knee.

Our shutters are shut, the fire is low,
The tap is dripping peacefully;
The saucepan shadows on the wall
Are black and round and plain to see.

Have a lovely week Housekeepers.

Free Dividers For Your Housekeepers Planner

2010-04-20T04:56:00.000-07:00

Hello Housekeepers, this is a drive by post to point you in the direction of a new set of free dividers for your Housekeepers Planner. The dividers are simple in design and split your planner into eleven categories:

Calendar and Routines
Addresses and To-do's
Meal Planning and Recipes
Housekeeping and Care Instructions
Shopping Lists and Receipts
Insurance and Inventory
School and Medical Records
Financial Records and Banking
Decorating and Puttery Treats
Miscellania and Grace Notes
Blogging and the Internet

You can download the dividers here and for those of you who have requested a few screenshots of the planner itself, please find afew examples from the sixty pages included, below...

And if that doesn't persuade you that life is scrumptiously easier when you are the proud owner of a BrocanteHome Vintage Housekeepers Planner then I'll be darned if I know what will!

Don't forget that you can download the free set of blank planner pages that accompany the planner here, and by special request I am working on a new PDF scrumptiously packed with every home-made cleaning recipe I have ever mentioned on BrocanteHome and many more besides, so keep an eye out for that in the next few days...

Have a gorgeous day Housekeepers, and as always, please accept my great big thank you kisses for supporting BrocanteHome. I hope you all know how very much my little Finn and I appreciate it...

Slow Love by Dominique Browning

2010-04-19T04:03:00.000-07:00

If books are literary medicine then Dominique Browning's "Around the House and Garden" should be the salve prescribed to every woman who finds herself abandoned in the former marital home.

When Mark left I truly believed that I would never come to terms with it: that the memories scratched on to every surface he had previously called home would eat me up until there was none of me left. But it didn't happen. Of course it didn't happen: we women are stronger than that. We keep on keeping on until the day comes when memories are simply that: no longer threatening to have us coming undone at every turn but lying, still, washed, harmless, beneath everything we have created since.

Though it is true that, four years later, I still sleep on the far left side of the bed, clinging on to the edge for fear that my very presence will sully someone else's dreams, elsewhere Mark's shadow no longer haunts the house. This is my house now and I lay claim to everything in it: to the treasures I have found and bought without his consultation, the remnants of relationships I have enjoyed in his wake, the evidence of our little boy growing up without his Fathers constant sleight of hand. This is my life now: and though in many ways it a lesser life than the one before, though the car doesn't work, the living room fire died, the house is falling down and today, oh joy of all bloody horrible joys, even the toilet has given up the ghost and requires the administering of a bucket of water to flush it: regardless of all of that, this is my life now and in my own quiet, barely acknowledged way, I celebrate it daily.

Along the journey from Hysteria to Acceptance (making stops at Sorrow and Complete
and Utter Madness long the way!) I was supported by the voices of women, both family and friends, my darling, precious Brocante readers, and when everyone else was tucked up in their own beds and it was just me and my four walls, the voices of women in the books I used as talismans against my own self destruction. Books written by women who had already tread the boards of marital failure and lived to exquisitely tell the tale.

That the arrival of a gift from Sarah Ban Breathnach, containing the 10th anniversary edition of Simple Abundance and a copy of Moving On should have been so timely, arriving as it did just a month before Mark left, strikes me now as rather spookily foretelling, and looking back, I remember receiving the beautiful pink and green parcel and going upstairs to our bedroom to jealously guard it, closing the door behind me and opening it in floods of tears and not really knowing why. Knowing only that though there was something seriously wrong with my relationship and that this gift from the stranger who had effectively shaped the woman I was, acknowledged that somehow I was still worthwhile and there would always be a tomorrow.

But at that time, though I tucked Moving On into my Comfort Drawer, I couldn't bring myself to read it because I simply wasn't ready, so in the weeks that followed, weeks when I couldn't write and lived on cucumber, in those weeks, I read and re-read Dominique Browning's "Around the House and In the Garden", a book I discovered through the pages of Romancing the Ordinary, and a book that would come to be my guide to allowing your house to gently heal your heart.

And so it was. That Summer of 2006 I trawled nurseries and boot sales every weekend while my son was spirited away by his Father. The house never looked lovelier, and though for a while I believed that Mark would be seduced homeward by the pretty auriculas in the little laundry room or the candles constantly burning on the mantelpiece, eventually I came to understand that I had to do it for myself, or not do it at all, for there was nothing to be gained by domestic ritual or puttery prettiness other than the peace it cloaked my shoulders in. That it was indeed time to move on...

So I did. Sarah Ban Breathnach did. And Dominique Browning did, until the day came when the magazine she edited collapsed and once again life changed shape. A calamitous fate no doubt for Browning, but a serendipitous one for us, as she has once again put pen to paper to transcribe her elegant telling of what it is to have your world up-ended, and yet again have to re-invent the future you had so cautiously etched upon your heart.

Slow Love (excerpted in the New York Times magazine here) tells the story of what happened to Dominique after the rug was pulled from under her career and how as a result she embraced a new way of living, described in her own words as "engaging with the world in a deeper, more meaningful way, learning to appreciate the beauty of everyday moments, and taking time to share them with one another", inspired by the aftermath of navigating all the "speed bumps" we encounter in life, "the ones that surprise and challenge us, and the ones we put there ourselves, with purposefulness".

That we should be so sharply defined by what we do, is an error integral only to life in the 21st century, but in Slow Love, Dominique Browning sets about exploring what it is to exist without the confines of a job title, and after an all too necessary period spent lolling about in pyjama wearing despair, sets about showing us yet again that there is life after the mini deaths we mourn so very, very deeply.

So until Slow Love is published I am prowling around Dominique's blog, and remembering the kind of clarity one gains in the aftershock of losing what we once held dear.

Life goes on, Readers. If there is one thing I know for sure, life goes on.

Housekeepers Question Time!

2010-04-09T02:02:00.000-07:00

Finley is six now and more often than we ever did before I find we are coming to the sort of blows that usually have me bursting a blood vessel in the effort not to scream and stamp my slipper shod feet while he looks back at me with the kind of nonchalance a little boy only wears when he is busy internally marking another cross on the "there she goes again" chart.

The cause of our arguments?

Mess. Finley is a one boy mess machine. And this is no ordinary mess. This is Finley mess, this is Sensory Processing Disorder I can't stop bouncing off the wall's mess. This is my head is very busy thinking great big thoughts and I'm sorry but disorder doesn't register in my brain kind of mess. The kind of mess that shouts with sheer, utter joy twenty four seven and has his teacher shaking her head in utter bewilderment at me and declaring, "We've never had a child like him." The kind of mess that wears holes in the new school trousers I seem to be buying fortnightly. The kind of mess that falls off chairs and leaves a trail of crumbs everywhere it goes. The kind of mess with a permanently snotty nose, dirty fingernails and a couldn't care less attitude to a level of desperate untidiness that makes all grown up, desperately tired Mommies want to hug it away, disinfect him from head to foot and take a chuggy chuggy train ride to a place where scrumptious little boys don't dash around the house breaking, quite accidentally, everything in their path.

I love my Finley to bits but I am fighting a permanent battle against chaos, and I am starting to wonder whether perhaps now is the time to draw the line: to get all hard-line about the mess and start inflicting rules and chores and Mommy directives to save me going completely off my head. Don't get me wrong: I'm no pushover, but perhaps because I've been so consumed by making allowances for a condition that dictates his ability to keep still, and focus and organize everything from his school-work to his thoroughly haphazard attitude to clothes, I have let him get away with a bit more than the average Mommy would generally tolerate. I worry that what is oblivion to mess will one day develop into a complete lack of respect for she who has to clear it up.

So my question for today is this: should our babba's have babba related chores?

Finley is six- how much do you, or did you expect of your six year olds with regard to keeping his or her corner of the world tidy? Is interrupting playtime to set your child up with a duster and polish tantamount to evil?. Am I on the road to ruin by allowing him to be a child while I bang my head against a flock wall? Is it too late to inflict a little tidiness upon his gloriously happy, carefree, curly topped soul?

Help Housekeepers!

A Very Puttery March

2010-04-07T03:11:00.000-07:00

Already we have said goodbye to March and April is shimmying her flirty little self on our doorsteps, suffering as always from a touch of weather related schizophrenia and promising more than she has got to give, while we Vintage Housekeepers fling open windows willy-nilly and dream of accessorising our aprons with a pair of twinkly flip-flops and a rosy pink pedicure.

On the Brocante Puttery Post last month we were busy doing our best to breach the goose-pimply distance between Winter and Spring by embracing the teeniest of Puttery Treats: little bits of lovely nothing that at once pamper our soul and remind us why home-making the BrocanteHome way is so utterly central to our way of life- from taking vinegar baths to creating a household mission statement, discovering the benefits of tulips and treasure hunting for the perfect vintage dusting gloves to pop into our housekeepers box, printing "Family Cards" and celebrating National Fragrance day, and much, much more. But my absolute favourites from last month?

Chamomile Sunday from March 28th

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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Should the Puttery Post take your fancy you can sign up for a years subscription on Etsy, (the cheapest option!) or pay by monthly subscription here and get my emails delivered direct to your in-box or should you prefer you can simply download each months Puttery treats for $3.00 a month below...

To buy and download January's Puttery Treats click here...

To buy and download February's Puttery Treats click here...

And to buy and download all of March's Puttery Treats click here...

Happy April Housekeepers!

An Easter Wedding

2010-04-06T09:22:00.000-07:00

The Bride and Groom and our little Munchkins.

My gorgeous Mum and Dad.

My sister Helen, Barbie and me...

The Sisters...

The men in black and their little white Princess ...

And so it came to pass that three generations of our family set sail from our respective parts of England and swooshed our way up various motorways to gather on Good Friday in a hotel in Lincolnshire for the marriage of my Mum's sister Barbie to Steve, otherwise known by the little people as Steve-Break-The-Light because once upon a time he did and it is apparent that some things are never forgotten.

All went swimmingly. My dad gave Barbie away with panache and informed the gathered congregation that as a child she had had him and Mum deeply harassed and he had been wanting to give her away ever since while I spent an inordinate amount of time asking passing pretty cousins to check the whereabouts of my eyelashes which owing to my truly dreadful ability with make-up and glue were dangling somewhere in my cleavage like spiky spiders for most of the wedding.

But despite such spiky handicaps, my Darlings, I still managed to catch the bouquet by proxy. By proxy because I wasn't actually there when Barbie threw it, and it was in fact Helen who caught it, but as the very thought of getting married again gives her the heebie-jeebies, she delivered said bouquet to me, and so I declared it a valid catch, at which point, Richard with the fear of God in his eyes, took me aside and told me, quite sternly, "not to be getting any ideas" and my Mum in defence of my honour informed him that she would never allow her 38 year old baby to marry a man who bore more than a passing resemblance to Heston Blumenthal regardless so let that be the end of the discussion.

And it was, and we went down a line kissing strangers with me introducing everyone to Heston, declaring my intention to run away with the best man who looked in need of a wife brave enough to tackle various sartorial mis-demeanours, and moaning to unsuspecting old ladies about the headache brought about by the application of Cheryl Cole false eyelashes and the impossibility of dating a refusenik. And then I sat down and behaved myself for ten minutes, until the service of roasted red pepper soup, when having worn myself out pinching Richard while nobody else was looking, mid-wedding exhaustion set in and the eyelashes were peeled off and abandoned altogether because sadly, glamour was never my forte and it is clear from the photos above that though I come from a clan of glamorous slithers of women who all look spookily similar, I am in fact an interloper from the Land of the Brunette Giantesses and will one day have no choice but to step out in search of my people.

Still nobody noticed the intruder in their wake, until she (I) decided to scare the horses and took to the dance floor to perform a rendition of Greased Lightening that had Richard shaking his head in sorrow and shame and my Mum in convulsions. Some sort of divine red sorbet was served, champagne drank and a delicious platter of cheese served at half past goodness knows when, by which time the little boys had abandoned their aviators in favour of skidding on their knees across the dance-floor and many men in earrings, (because it seems that, despite all pertinent advice to the contrary, diamond earrings are all the rage with middle aged men in outback of Lincolnshire) had joined them in an effort to bring on the kind of heart-attack ready red cheeks that only occur after a little too much beer inspired Dad-dancing to Showaddywaddy.

The night lingered on. Little Kiera, the blonde darling above, continued to shine, and ultimately all our side of the family ended up squeezed into one corner of the room, perched on each others knees and squashed up on three sofas, where the true extent of the effort exerted by my sister to be sociable was seen in her glazed borderline-demented grin, Richard spilled an entire glass of wine down my front (Though this is much disputed, as it was my wine and I concede that I was indeed holding, said glass at the time), and Barbie, in all her lovely wedding glory turned out to be parading the price label on the soles of her wedding shoes.

It was lovely. About ritual and celebration, family, pretty dresses and kids (read Finley) that wander around in search of balloons while speeches stuffed full of love are made and glasses raised in joy.

Dear Barbie and Steve, Steve-Break-The-Light , please, please, please can we do it all over again next week?

Free Vintage Images

2010-04-01T01:18:00.000-07:00

The Soot Fairies by Arthur Rackham.

The Meeting In the Meadow by Joyce L. Brisley

And The Sewing Party by Cicely Englefield

After a week spent hunting for the kind of vintage ephemera that makes my toes scrunch up with happiness, I am thrilled to offer you three lovely images from my own collection, scanned and optimised for your pleasure and now yours for the taking. Simply click on each image in turn to view the full sized version, then right click it and save it to your computer to use however you will...

Have a lovely day won't you?

P.S: Have you bought your Vintage Housekeepers Planner yet? It's quite the most perfect project for the Easter holiday for old fashioned homemakers across the land...

Alisa Noble

2010-03-31T03:42:00.000-07:00

Oh my goodness I have been meaning to share these these gorgeous journal pages from Alisa Noble of Life Is A Beautiful Place To Be fame for the longest time, because not only are they scrumptiously lovely (as all of Alisa's work is, they were also inspired by my very own Puttery Post and I'm not sure there is a higher compliment than to have your work inspire something you so ardently admire yourself...

Based on two posts from the beginning of January, Alisa has taken my suggestions for choosing a word to inspire you throughout 2010 and creating a list of books you want to work your way through monthly (come hell, high water or a brand new Marion Keyes!) and created the kind of pretty I couldn't put together if you offered me free reign in the Brocante's of Paris as a reward...

But then that is the purpose of the Puttery Post: it isn't about inflicting my puttery will upon you, it is about giving you daily starting points for thinking, and dreaming, and home-making and creating, and from those starting points letting your imagination fly, whether I'm asking you to create a garden journal or take a chamomile bath... the degree of lovely, you see, is always up to you.

Thank you Alisa, for being one of my Vintage Housekeepers, and for being so very, very talented.

Nostalgia Organics

2010-03-30T03:59:00.000-07:00

Some days I get happy because the world is stuffed with wonderful things just waiting to be discovered. On my joy list this week? Finley's Egyptian dance (laugh out loud funny!), Dorothy Whipple's "High Wages" (I have acquired a lovely vintage orange and white Penguin edition this weekend), the cream chiffon top I am wearing to my Barbie's wedding on Good Friday, this utterly divine idea for storing ribbon, and the Delicious Miss Dahl, because no matter whether Sophie does or doesn't live on the scrumptiously pretty set and despite all the snarking her cookery program has inspired in grown men who should know better than to dress their envy in vitriol, I am thoroughly enjoying this series and won't hear another word against it! Do you hear me Giles Coren? Girls like us ADORE watching girls just like us (but prettier!) whip up a rhubarb and rosewater version of Eton mess in the prettiest kitchen in the world and no amount of schoolboy twittery sniping is going to changes our minds ok??

Anyway what was I getting to? Ooooh yes Nostalgia Organics. Because Elea Lutz's darling joyful website makes me smile and who couldn't love a bar of organic everything, citrussy-lemongrass exfoliating soap wrapped in vintage inspired fabric and christened Happy Days Soap? The whole matter just oozes joy and a positive spin on the damn caboodle that is living in the twenty first century doesn't it? I mean who needs to stress about who to vote for in an up-coming election when one could take a shower that makes us smile, dab a bit of Dilly Dally on our pulse points and set about creating something that will have us swoon in sheer rhubarby delight...

Happy days. Because we have to pocket them. And line them with lavender. And bake from the heart and love with all we've got and read all that makes us want to explode with inspiration and seek joy for the hell of it. Because even if the country is going to the dog's, and no amount of that nice Mr Cameron can save it, we can make our own worlds, the worlds within our own four walls as joyful as possible and Nostalgia Organics is a company making that kind of joy it's raison d'etre...

Happy days my Sweets.

Modern Butterflies

2010-03-30T01:23:00.000-07:00

"The Butterfly who loves cigarettes, but can never learn to lay a fire...
The Butterfly who adores dancing but is to nervy to dust a room...
The Butterfly who lives on the phone but never has time to answer a letter...
The Butterfly who delights in matinees but household shopping makes her tired...
The Butterfly who devours fiction, but cannot cook a dish to save her life!"

There is a case it seems for not having too much fun. One could you see, be accused of being a Modern Butterfly and I trust you wouldn't want that...

Me Darlings? Why I am far too nervy to dust a room...

Doing the Next Thing

2010-03-29T04:24:00.000-07:00

"What is the hardest thing in the world to do?
Not in the least what most people might suppose it is, yet if we are brought up sharp we all discover what our greatest difficulty is.

It is doing the next thing, whatever that may be.

Most of us know the difficulty only too well. The last thing we can do, or feel inclined to do, is the next thing, the duty or the task that stares us in the face asking to be got through. Anything but this. The next thing but one is easy enough, and we should enjoy tackling it. But the next thing...No! it's beyond us. And it's always there, we can't get away from it.
But there's another way of looking at it. If it is an obstacle it is also an opportunity. Doing the next thing is a panacea for nearly all our woes.

You live in Botheration Buildings and you long to move to Peace Place.
That is you have dozens of things to to, business of all kinds to get through, endless matters to arrange and you are bewildered and feel you will never get through them. You seem on the verge of apoplexy or insanity. Keep cool. Do the next thing; get it over as quickly as possible, and the battle is as good as won. You will have got up steam.

"But what is the next thing?"
Generally that is clear enough - if you are only willing to do it. If not, it is any one of the crowd of things waiting to be done. Which of them you choose matters little; do it- and the muddle begins to straighten out, and you can go ahead with the rest.
It's the same with an attack of the blues. We all get this horrible complaint at times and it is always worst when we can discover no cause for it. It just comes - and down we go.

Can't do anything, don't know what's the matter, but do know that everything's wrong.
Gloomy thoughts, dreadful forebodings, hopeless inertia. You know all about it; you've had it too often.
There is one cure for this malady- do the next thing, and do it straight away. And the next thing is probably something quite simple. It may be putting your boots on, writing a letter, making up your cash account, straightening your table. Anyhow, there it is. Do it and you'll feel more than better. You will be all right. The exertion will shake off the heaviness and set up a healthy chemical action of the brain. You will forget your wretched self- the cause of your misery.

And blunders!
We are always making them, even the wisest and the cleverest of us and sometimes they seem to have made shipwrecks of our lives. Nonsense! We must start afresh, and rebuild what we have stupidly knocked down. Here too, the only way to put things right is to do the next thing. And as with bothers and blues, that next thing is generally obvious and simple. It isn't quite obvious? Well do something, and that will be the next thing.

As an Oxford coach used to say to a crew before a race...
"If your button gets out of the rigger, do any blessed thing- but go on rowing. " There's always one thing that you can do. Do that, and you'll do the rest.

Go on, but don't go on sitting still."

By W.C.Buncher, 1922.

Pages For Your Housekeeper's Planner

2010-03-26T03:01:00.000-07:00

Happy Friday Housekeepers!
Today for your home-making pleasure, those of you who have bought the Vintage Housekeepers Planner can download ten pages of blank forms to customise to your hearts content, absolutely free of charge. Based on some of the planner pages already included in your download, but with all Brocante formatting removed, you can now plan anything you like: from what to pack in your holiday suitcase to what you have got stored in the deep, dark cupboard under the stairs...

Download the blank planner pages here and as always stay tuned: I've got more pages for your planner coming very soon.

P. S: Apologies to those of you who had been trying to buy my 550 Puttery Treats Download on Etsy, I hadn't realised it had sold out, but have now re-listed it. Easter is just the perfect time to get a little puttery isn't it?

Housekeepers Carousel

2010-03-25T06:16:00.000-07:00

All images credited on my pinboard.

Hello Sweethearts, is it just me or does it feel like many moons ago that the Carousel came to town?

After two weeks of miserable sickness for poor Finley, I have, with my heart a little in my mouth and a list full of "what to do's" for the teacher, delivered him back to school and spent a rather darling morning gathering my thoughts, hanging out a silly amount of laundry and conjuring up this scrumptious little list of all that has inspired me while I have been doing my duty as a slightly grouchy Nurse Mummy, pinned to the sofa with a rather large six year old attached to my chest...

* First of all I must confess to going on something of an Elizabeth Taylor bender which I think you will agree is no bad thing when we are talking about a woman who can write something as quietly harrowing as "A Game of Hide and Seek", a book that will have every woman with even the merest hint of fire in her belly biting back the kind of tears she has long refused to let rise. Though I have read it before, this time around it seemed to cut that much deeper: consider for example this passage...

"When she married Charles, she had seemed to wed also a social order. A convert to it, and to provincial life, and keeping house, she had pursued it frantically and as if she feared censure. No-one had entertained more methodically, or better bolstered up social interplay. She had been indefatigable in writing letters of condolence, telegrams of congratulations; remembered birthdays and anniversaries; remembered bread-and butter letters and telephone messages after parties. She had tried to do everything right for her daughter; had never missed a speech-day or an end of term concert; had talked to form-mistresses and shown interest, as they themselves put it.

But now she flouted what she had hepled to create- an illusion of society, an oiling of wheels which went round but not forwards, conventions which could only exist so long as emotion was in abeyance"

And this one...

" When she and the other women discussed recipes, children's ailments, clothes, she entered in, and offered up with forced enthusiasm. "It is all my world!" she seemed to declare. "To make a really spongy, sponge cake, my whole ambition!" When she reached home, she would despise herself, and idly wondered if any of the others were playing the same game."

Any? Or all of them? All of us? It is I think the line "as long as emotion was in abeyance" that is most painful for me. I see it all the time. The lies women tell themselves. The lies they live with utter dedication to their own containment. The rituals they use as walls between their lives and their authentic selves. I see it and I contribute to it because I know no other way to confront it without bringing my world and other peoples tumbling down. Elizabeth Taylor saw it and she described it and there is a bit of me that needs to know whether she had more guts than I do, so though I am currently drowning in her writing, and awaiting a few modern film versions of her work (Angel and Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont are on my Lovefilm list), I have placed The Other Elizabeth Taylor on order and await it with much anticipation...

P.S: The Atlantic article referenced in one of the rather caustic Amazon reviews is here...

* Next up, after that rather hysterical start: a video that had me hysterical in quite the opposite sense of the word. Discovered at NieNie, Solid Potato Salad had me in happy fits and Finn falling off the sofa with tears rolling down his face, rather setting his recovery back with the effort required to practise getting his legs over his head while warbling about salad...

* Then on to quite a severe bout of creative jealousy, because I never saw a lovelier thing than this Pam Garrison piece of scrumptious, bohemian, vintage and homely stitching for the sheer sake of creating something for us all to drool over.
Hopping all over the internet for details of the film version of Cheerful Weather for the Wedding, David Tenant was supposed to be filming in 2007 and coming up with exactly nothing. Wondering what happened to it.
Drinking Ginger Cordial to ease a poorly tummy. Nursing ambition until the time is right.

* Dwelling on my favourite words: Debauchery. Shine.Verdigris. Comely. Home. Pernicious. Epiphany. Dalliance. Scrumptious. Fleeting. Mummy. Peccadillo. Violet. Divinity. Euphoria. Camellia. Madeleine. Ingénue. Erotica. Cosy. Lassitude. Aubergine. Friend. Chartreuse. Library. Serendipity. Thou. Pyjamas. Pomegranate. Ethereal. Sensual. Bruise...

* Playing The Girl by City and Colour over and over. "You sacrificed so much of your life in order for this to work. While I'm off chasing my dreams. Sailing around the world..."

* Feeling outraged on Martha Stewart's behalf after one of her former close friends sold out and wrote a book about their former friendship, The Best of Friends: Martha and Me But sadly, not outraged enough not to have ordered it because I am a salacious gossip and an utter hypocrite. I apologise. Bitchy curiousity becomes me. Also on the subject of Martha, hearing rumours that the Hallmark channel will be running re-runs of much of Martha's TV back catalogue from March 29th, which may be good news for British Sky TV viewers who might just be able to watch her for the first time this side of the Atlantic...

* And finally amusing myself with Colorstrology from Pantone, and discovering that my birth date means that my colorstrology colour is Basil, which makes me innovative, expressive and an originator and goes on describe us Basil people as...

"..Likeable and fun to have around. You seem to know what position to play when inter-acting with other people. You have a quiet self-assurance that lends you ease in communicating or dealing with others. It is important for you to be active and learning new things. Your personal colour embodies life and vitality. Wearing and meditating, or surrounding yourself with the colour Basil keeps you young and thriving. It can also be a strong aid when dealing with finance and health concerns."

To which I say "hmmmmm".

What's your Colorstrology colour, pray tell?

My Sick Babba

2010-03-22T04:14:00.000-07:00

Hello Sweeties, this is just a quick note to apologise for the lack of Alison around these parts in the last week. Finley hasn't been well for a week and together we have endured sleepless nights and, over the weekend, (my birthday weekend, sob!) a rather scary visit to the hospital so we are utterly exhausted and due to spend yet another afternoon on the sofa while we wait for signs that he is on the mend.

As soon as he can spare me I will be back online, m'darlings. Have a lovely week.x

Sophie Dahl

2010-03-17T04:48:00.000-07:00

There are women in this world I fall head over heels in love with and from the moment she tumbled down the catwalk, all cleavage and pale flesh, wide eyes and bambi-style bewilderment, Roald Dahl's granddaughter was one of them.

Perhaps it's because she looks so very like my Mum. Perhaps it's because Playing With the Grown Ups, her vivid,semi-autobiographical novel was jam-packed with the kind of terribly English, whimsical description we Vintage Housekeepers adore. Perhaps it's because her perfume column in Vogue makes me want to drown in her scented words, or perhaps it's because she manages to combine beauty, with intelligence and a gorgeous dose of the kind of authentic frippery that always inspires both envy and adoration in my all too willing soul.

Next Tuesday evening marks the first of six programmes, turning Sophie's book, The Voluptuous Delights of Miss Dahl, into the kind of scrumptious cookery programme that is more about lifestyle than it is about the food. While I suspect comparisons between Sophie Dahl and Nigella Lawson are inevitable, the recipes in Sophie's book are lighter and somehow frillier than the delicious cream drowned stodge Nigela is prone to serving up, and each week is themed rather fabulously, around emotion and the kind of ritual I suspect we will all relate to, with episode one being dedicated to the art of enjoying a "Selfish Day"...

"Sophie Dahl revels in the joy of cooking for one on a purely selfish day. Shutting the world away and answering to no-one on a day that is indulgently independent means cruising the food boutiques and cooking simple dishes with the finest of ingredients.Her selfish day begins at breakfast with her take on an omelette Arnold Bennett and the preparation of peanut butter fudge.
After a sweep of the local cheese shop she's assembling a buffalo mozzarella bruschetta with shaved fennel and courgette salad for lunch.
Finally, inspired by a picture of an old Hollywood screen siren and an art deco cocktail shaker picked up in a second-hand shop, it's time for dirty martinis and a dinner of roasted halibut with spinach and watercress sauce, healthy sweet potato chips and wild mushrooms, followed by rich chocolate pots with brandy soaked cherries.
By the end of the day, Sophie feels ready to share again...maybe."

Sounds wonderful mais non? Mais Oui! If for nothing else, watch it and weep over the gorgeous, bunting festooned garden tableaux to which Sophie delivers her rose petal sprinkled meringue...

I can't wait!

The Delicious Miss Dahl, BBC 2, March 23rd, 8.30pm

That Was the Week That Was

2010-03-15T04:29:00.000-07:00

Welcome to a scrumptious new week Housekeepers! And here I am, hands liberally doused in Wild Roses after half an hour spent rather blissfully hand-washing my smalls, (because cheap thrills have always been my bag!) and reflecting on what has turned out to be a quite lovely few days in which I do hope you didn't notice I quite simply didn't get around to blogging a single word...

You see my darlings I was busy, fit to bust, living! Yes indeed, while I am more likely to be found hanging around the corridors of my Google Reader and browsing the aisles of Amazon, last week I stepped out my front door (a door let it be known, in dire need of painting!) and went dilly-dallying all over the North West. I shopped for England. And Mothers Day. And Richards Birthday. I walked till my big old legs ached and watched more movies than I remember watching in a long, long time. I read. Of course I read. I ate blueberry yoghurt and ginger muffins and drank elderflower water till it came out of my ears. I bought my Dad a huge big pot of the all new really rather fabulous Marmite X-O from Selfridges, because he is a lover not a fighter and dragged by the ears by my son, I even attended a rather frighteningly happy clappy Mothers Day Service at the church next door. Because one has to show one's face occasionally or else the Vicar who passes my door a hundred times a day reserves a really rather spectacular "Well aren't you the scum of the earth" face, just for my benefit methinks, if I do not, while poor little Finley believes that if he finds a leaflet in his school bag inviting him to church, he has probably been personally invited by God and will be struck down if he doesn't go. So the long and the short of it is that we went. And quite frankly it was as awful as I could have ever dared hope and let it be hereby noted that our dear vicar resides over his Parish with all the smarmy smug charm of a cross between Hugh Hefner and Peter Mandleson, and were it not for the fact that religion takes place in churches I often wonder if I could get around to liking it and the whole business of contemplating all that might exist beyond my own deeply limited imagination.

But enough already with my religious ranting and let me get to my lists...

Things I Watched Last Week
* Motherhood. In a moment of sheer extravagance I chucked it into my trolley in the supermarket and spent Saturday night in the company of Uma Thurman as she thoroughly over-dramatised what it is to be a harassed blogging Mummy. Luckily for her I do so enjoy watching a bit of the kind of dramatics I usually only experience in my own head and there was much tenderness to be found in this little film so should you find yourself with an hour or two to spare I really rather recommend it...

* Alice In Wonderland. Hmmm. I'm still not sure how I feel about this visually stunning spectacle. It was a kind of spliced and diced version of a story we know and love. and that is fine but... oh but, oh but, oh but oh....Suffice to say that while I found Helena Bonham-Cater beguiling in the extreme, Finley thought she was utterly terrifying. Oh and Johnny Depp's Scottish accent made me giggle.

Things I Read Last Week
* 84 Charring Cross Road. For the love of books. Read every morning while I drank lemon tea and ate Munchy Seeds. As if those darling letters had popped through my own letter-box and I was reading them over breakfast. The perfect bite-sized literary treat. Read it as soon as possible. That I must insist upon.

* At Mrs Lippincotes. This months book choice. And it was plain old WONDERFUL. More later in the week on this very subject. I promise.

Things I Baked. And Ate. And Swooned Over.
* Easter Biscuits. Because Marks and Spencer's version are a short-lived joy and being a bad person I want to eat them all year around so I hunted out a similar recipe, added dried cranberries and lemon juice and lo and behold my very own, burnt around the edges version of my current elevenses of choice. Delicious.

Things that Made Me Happy.
* A card in the shape of a handbag with a heart shaped chocolate inside made at the fair hands of my own little munchkin for Mothers Day, and accompanied by a copy of the Julie and Julia DVD, which I am thoroughly looking forward to sitting down to this evening with a great big pile of magazines ripe for culling. Because I am a Mummy. And a Woman. And I can multi-task on a Monday night if I feel like it.

* A man dressed in an African Tribal affair in the centre of Liverpool, banging a big old drum and singing Robbie Williams songs. Because we are so terribly cultural in Liverpool don't you know? And he made me feel like dancing right there in front of Primark.

* Oh and speaking of Liverpool: Come Dine With Me with Claire Sweeney and Tom O'Connor and the mean lady out of Kim and Aggie who fancies herself something shocking and can't cook for a big clock but made Richard and I laugh until tears ran down our cheeks last night....

Oooh I could go on and on. You see last week I stopped letting PMT get the better of me, and decided to consider my glass full to over-flowing with somewhat invisible liquid and enjoy myself, all day every day, just because enjoyment is a choice and we are allowed to choose happiness and it's ok-ness everytime. And so I did. And Mum's roast dinner was divine and Finley waking me up at three o'clock in the morning to discuss goodness knows what wasn't the end of the world and even being forced to endure Snakes On A Plane wasn't worth crying about, because there is a huge bouquet of peach roses on the mantle-piece and a new Amazon parcel full of wonder waiting in the porch and today is the start of another week I can bless with all manner of inspiration, should I so feel like it...

Bit's of loveliness happen all day everyday don't they, so I'm off to empty the washing machine.
Glass full to over-flowing. Glass full to over-flowing. Glass full to over-flowing. Keep saying it and one day you will believe it: I'm living proof of that, because perhaps its true: love life and maybe it does love you back.

Hello Darling Spring...

2010-03-10T02:53:00.000-08:00

Spring is such a gift isn't it? We muddle our way through Winter trying to see through the blankety walls we build between ourselves and real life, cursing cold and snow and bin- men who abandon our wheelie bins on frost covered paths, and it feels as though it will go on forever. That never again will the sun make the dust dance, nor will we dare to step outside without three thermal vests and the lesser spotted Long Johns...

But no sooner are we resigned to a life rich in hot chocolate and frost bite, then lo and behold, with a flick of her glittery wand, Mother Nature banishes Winter and Spring settles upon our souls, inviting us to run to the school gates without a coat and pop into the garden three times a day to watch the buds of our chamelia unfurl before our eyes. Inviting us, most curiously, to be better than who we already are.

This morning I woke up terribly early, the gnaw of period pain interrupting a gloriously vivid dream and making it impossible to sleep. And so I tumbled out of bed, all mussy hair and ruffled white nightie and crept like the ghost of myself, down the stairs.
And there it was: Spring. Right there in my living room! She'd let herself in, all green and bright and beautiful. The ivy wrapped around the tree outside my window suddenly alive again. The sky the kind of crisp blue only Spring can deliver. The milkman whistling and jangling and happy.

And so I sat and did nothing. Staring at the sun making patterns on my Victorian floorboards, doing nothing, reading nothing, sipping peppermint tea and making reckless plans. Dwelling on a weekend full of sorrow for a friends loss, fear of the kind of sinister goings on that have a nearby house and it's occupants held up by knife-point, and sensing that my relationship is in jeopardy because I'm too old for living right there in the moment with no plans for tomorrow. Because without plans we are lost. Because without plans we are at the mercy of trusting every fluttery emotion, unable to wrap ourselves up in the certainty of a bigger picture, no matter how vaguely sketched. Because without plans we drift, and nobody appreciates a drifter. Because as always my Darlings I am a slave to my hormones and my emotions cannot always be trusted, no matter how lyrically I might spill them out...

It is a time for starting again, Spring isn't it? A time for shrugging off cocoons and fluttering our wings again. For getting a grip on what is and not what we hoped it might be, choosing to re-invent the same scrumptious wheel, and popping possibility like paracetamol, unhindered by the debilitating comforts of Winter and not yet exhausted by the heat of Summer.

Spring I think, is more than anything, about celebrating life: new baby bunnies, frolicking lambs and ours. Our lives! It is about saying this isn't all there is and on this, the first day of my self-declared Spring, I can go out and chase life up and down the lane! I can channel Alice and admit that I used to be much muchier, that somewhere along the way I lost my muchiness and today, today my friends I am going to hunt high and low for it, and take no nonsense and remember to be myself and see the Doctor about my twitchy eye and make lemon curd and a birthday cake for Richard with hopes for tomorrow baked right there in the topping and hang out a line full of lavender scented aprons just because I can and sweep the front path and work on the project that makes me feel giddy and resist screeching when my son's teacher fails to notice that yet again he isn't in the line of children she is supposed to be delivering safely on to the playground, and instead go into the classroom myself and get him and the coat he hasn't quite managed to pull on and issue my icy, but effective "I'm so disappointed in you again Lady" face to dear old teacher, and whisper the (probably unlikely threat) of a letter of complaint and take him home and stuff him full of love and gluten free cornflake cakes and make the damn cardboard house for the school project that has turned into an a quite hideous display of parental talent and ostentation and maybe sign myself up for a course in anger management while I'm at it?

Ah Spring. You are quite the devil aren't you? Who knew you could inspire such emotion? Muchiness ebb's and flows, but as sure as Easter eggs are chocolate, you return, and I for one, adore you.

The Vintage Housekeeper's Planner Is Here!

2010-03-09T05:26:00.000-08:00

Heavens above would you look at this, the day I'm not sure any of us believed would ever come has finally arrived! Yes my scrumptious, patient Housekeepers, the BrocanteHome Vintage Housekeepers Planner is finally available and I do believe it was worth waiting for!

With sixty downloadable pages, charts, logs and forms there is absolutely everything you need to start to plan a life more organized: a home-maker's dream of routines, rituals, accounts, and records that will I hope make all the difference to your life as a Vintage Housekeeper and help you create the space, time and money to enjoy as many Puttery Treats as you feel you need: because that's what organization is all about really isn't? Shoving the dull stuff out the way so you can get on with living a truly fabulous life!

So what is included in the download? Are you ready for this??

The Housekeepers Creed

A Page-A- Month 2010 Calendar

Dates To Remember

Morning Routine Planner

Evening Routine Planner

Weekly Routine Planner

Daily Planner Page

Weekly Meal Planner

Monthly Dinner Planner

Shopping List

Kid's Chore's Start Chart

Favourite Family Recipe Cards

Freezer Stock List

Pantry Stores

Dinner Party Record

Grocery Price Check

Important Addresses

Birthday Gift Record

Insurance Organizer

Valuable Items Inventory

Electrical Goods Record

Credit and Debit Card Log

Bank Account Record

Everyday Spending Log

Housekeepers Weekly Budget

Housekeepers Monthly Budget

Medical Record

Medical Appointment Log

School Record

School Attendance Log

Parent and Teacher Discussion Record

Babysitter Information

Emergency Caregiver Information

Gardeners Annual Tasks

Seed Starting Notes

Houseplant Care

Our Pet Log

Internet Password Log

Online Order Record

Ebay Sales

Ebay Purchases

Book Wish List

Library Book Record

Favourite Puttery Treats

Decorating Organizer

Weekly Gratitude

and

21 Lovely Things.

I have based the Planner on the original Brocante Planner with a new design and colour scheme and many, many more pages and organizing ideas. Over the next year I will continue to offer free add-ons (blank pages, dividers and worksheets coming free to all Planner buyers next week!) and supplemental packs for sale (by popular request, for Empty Nesters, new Mummies, special events etc...) and this should mean that in the long term you will be able to organize your entire life through the little dotty wonder that is the Vintage Housekeepers Planner...

Should you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact me here and in the meantime go right ahead and press the button below and buy yourself a teeny dose of bliss for just $17.50...

Oh what it is to be organized Housekeepers!

Because There Is No Milk In the House

2010-03-05T07:21:00.000-08:00

Friday. Though there are things to be done and food to be bought, you return from the school gates and curl up with a book you need to finish before evening when the playground mummies will gather to discuss it. Though you are one hundred and seventy pages in, there are more than three hundred pages left before you will be able to deliver your view from an educated standpoint without sounding like you have gathered opinion from one of the many on the internet now seemingly shaping your personality.
You read and because there is no milk in the house, drink sweet black coffee, pulling a musty scented blanket up to your chin and turning your phone on to silent so it's shrill ring will not disturb a world inhabited by gay men and sneering politicians. You lose yourself in it and everything beyond your sofa and the furtive realm of Conservative Britain circa 1986 ceases to exist, though guilt weighs heavily on such absorption.
You are avoiding yourself: this you know for sure.

You are frightened of the weekend stretching ahead of you. A weekend that by your own insistence, you will spend alone: face to face with what you want. What you need. But before that there is an inevitable end to deal with: a story rich in vice and greed imploding on itself. With just ten pages left, at midday you find can't bear it, so you get up, unravelling your blanket like so many bandages. You find Mrs Lippincotes neatly packaged in the porch and gather it up with a fistful of bills. Then you cook plain pasta and eat it sprinkled with nothing but black pepper from a bowl older than everybody you know. Your skin feels tight, shrivelling up, no doubt, in anticipation of your 38th birthday in a few weeks time. There is no milk in the house. Your burn your thumb. For the second day running you bite back tears.

The thought of housework appals you. Days like this come rarely now, so you allow yourself the petty indulgences of self inflicted melancholy. You read the last ten pages of the book and tap two fingers into the fleshy side of the palm over and over again. You have stepped outside yourself and don't want to step back in to the obligations of housework. Or childcare. Or behaving like a normal human being. Though reading in the middle of the day strikes you as something akin to sin, you don't want to stop, so when you put down the most deserving of Man Booker Prize winning book club choice you barely allow yourself time to cross the decades before plummeting into Elizabeth Taylor's story of a woman unwilling to conform.

Reading in the middle of the day. You suppress a tsk and carry on.

There are just two hours left now until real life will drag you back on to the playground to pick up a child still so very high on what it is to be. Suddenly having no milk in the house strikes you as the worst kind of abbhoration: the most telling sort of domestic neglect. Tonight you must go to book-club and pretend to be normal. The sort of woman mindful of what is in her fridge. You shove feet into boots as comfortable as slippers and go out into a shock of sunshine. You must not bring a child into a house without milk. Children need milk the way Middle England needs wine: for fortitude and back-bone. Comfort and strength. You walk along, opinion springing unbidden to your mind. Opinion that will die a death on your tongue when faced with the good housewives of Aughton later on. But no matter, you know what you know.

You walk home the long way, up the hill, huffing and puffing with life. The weekend is here. There is milk in the house. You are still capable of independant thought even if you cannot express it. Not so much unwilling to conform as unable. But all is well.
All is well regardless. You dab another drop of Rescue Remedy under your tongue and try to come to terms with it.

Housekeepers Carousel

2010-03-04T05:21:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my second Housekeepers Carousel: a quick round-up of all the things that stirring my emotions this week...

*First up, Sulamith Wulfing. When I was a little girl my Mum owned a book called "Childhood" which combined Khalil Gibran quotes with images, like the one above, that at once bewitched me and sent a little shiver running down my childhood spine. The other day while hopping around the internet I came across that same beautiful art all over again, and for a little while I was a girl again, stirred by the beauty but still bewildered by the sorrow in the eyes of the children described.

* Next, music, because I feel like dancing this week. And throwing every window in the house open and saying hello to my chamelia which has finally got around to blooming and wearing a frilly pinny to serenade the mop brush, and having a little cry because relationships are so bloody hard, and seeking comfort in yesterday and worrying a little bit about tomorrow and mostly just playing First Aid's "Ghost Town", the first song in the player above, over and over again because the words spike me, then mixing it all up with a whole dose of happy and memories and the kinds of songs one should really only play in the car so no-one need ever discover just how ludicrous you really are. And yes, I am talking about Rupert Holmes "Pina Colada" song. Click the arrows to hear whats on my (eclectic!) playlist this week...

* Watching Vanity Fair with Reece Witherspoon as I write. Eating a tiny lunch of gouda cheese and yellow plums. Considering getting off my bottom to walk to the post office and procure a Cadbury's cream egg. Waiting for the delivery of The Nine Rooms of Happiness and Keeping the House, because rumour has it, it is some kind of wonderful. But rumour could of course be wrong so I will keep you posted!

* Thrilled by the Joy Junket manifesto. Making room for (even) more joy. Waiting with bated breath for mail order to arrive at Anthropologie.Co.Uk (Any minute now!). Feeling overwhelmed by the possibilities provided by Wordpress. Irrationally excited for Cath Kidston. Horrified by the bitterness of Middle England in their reaction to her success. Making this Mark Twain quote my mantra...

"Any so-called material thing that you want is merely a symbol. You want it not for itself, but because it will content your spirit for the moment."

* And seeing a bit of everyone of us in this snippet I found I don't know where, (but please feel free to enlighten me if you do)...

" These are the kind of girls who hang dream catchers above their bed, who eat pomegranates and read old history books for fun. These are the kind of girls who take pictures of their hands with disposable cameras and wallpaper their bathrooms with pretty roses. These girls sketch eyes and mouths and little drawings all over things, they look you right in the eye and almost through you when you speak to them.

These girls camp out in their backyards for fun, they light candles everywhere, and if you visit them at home they usually have all sorts of animals. Their wardrobes are filled with silk robes and bows and hats, they drink tall glasses of milk and snack on chocolate while they watch the sun rise. These are the kind of girls who ride bikes through the city to the cinema that plays old movies in the middle of the day. They watch "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and "Rosemary's Baby". These are the kind of girls who are quiet in public. They were the kind of girls who put too many marshmallows in their hot chocolate and when the sun came down, lit the fire and pretended to be in the North Pole. They would water colour things they couldn't see, and eat French toast for lunch. These girls were the kind of girls who always believed in unicorns, they believed in the power of love and dreams. They were the kind of girls who gazed out of windows at bigger worlds, and rain made them think of faeries and tree houses. In the Summer they read Jane Austen and listened to Fleetwood Mac while sipping cold tomato juice.

They told ghost stories under huge floral sheets, candles glowing beneath their faces. The spooky endings made them scream and laugh. They huddled together so they wouldn't get too scared. Every sound outside made them jump."

Rosy Royledge Shelf Trim

2010-03-03T03:19:00.000-08:00

There can't be a prettier sight than opening a cupboard and seeing shelves trimmed with roses which is why discovering lengths of vintage Royledge paper edging ($8.99: auction ends March 8th 2010) on Ebay is always such a pleasure, with the rosy length above being a particularly scrumptious example...

Royledge was a company producing the most scrumptious of shelf trim, lining and a collection of rather fabulous "Roillies", aka paper doillies, most pertinently from a vintage housekeeping aesthetic in the 1940's and 1950's. While shelf trim and lining from other companies can often be found while treasure hunting it is the site of box of Royledge trim that most delights my heart, because it is so often scattered in the kind of pretty florals we all adore in color schemes that haven't dated...

There is just something so puttery about lining and edging shelves in happy little patterns that I can't resist, though of course exactly the same effect can be achieved with lengths of vintage lace or ruffly trim...

Let Sleeping Babies Lie

2010-03-02T01:43:00.000-08:00

Just because I never want to forget how precious he looks when he is asleep.

A Very Puttery February

2010-03-01T07:15:00.000-08:00

Goodness, commit to doing something once a month and in the blink of an eye, a whole month passes by. Because, yes Sweethearts, it is time for all my Puttery Post lovelies to check their in-boxes all over again and discover this months Puttery Treats waiting to be collected in one easy download...

February was I think, a rather fabulous puttery month, jam-packed with a series of treats created by little old me and designed to deliver a little good old fashioned homemaking efficiency to your door with all the scrumptiousness you have come to expect from BrocanteHome. Between de-stinking slippers, writing "Happiness" cards and wafting up home-made tumble dryer softener, this month on the Puttery Post we also got to grips with the menace that is the abundance of chargers we are now required to own, organized a Read Me Later file, mixed up some flu-fighting home-made hand sanitizer, chose a "Flower Book", created some "Just Because" bowls and awarded someone we love with dinner on an "Aren't You Wonderful" plate...

All that and much more! But my favourites this month?

The Read Me Next Shelf from February 3rd

If you are anything like me you probably have a barely checked book fetish, and find yourself acquiring book after book with hardly a good hour to spare to read!

While words may be essential to your survival, the constant acquisition of new books is bad for your purse, so today let's do battle with "Gotta have New Books Syndrome!" and instead establish a system to read what we already own before we go trawling the second-hand book shops for one more vintage literary treasure to add to our collection...

1. First choose a place where "books you haven't read" are going to live. Empty a bookshelf, choose a big basket, or allocate a window ledge on which to store them: preferably somewhere you pass frequently so you will be constantly reminded what is available to read...

2. Scour the entire house for all the books you haven't read, then sort them into two piles: books you won't read in a million years and books you still plan on reading.

3. Give away or recycle the books you won't read in a million years. Today!!

4. Place all the other books on your "Read Me Next" shelf. Add library books and borrowed books while you are at it...

5. Finally (and this is key) make a list of the books you haven't read in the back of your Book Journal and tick them off one by one...

Only when the shelf is empty are you allowed to go book shopping!

*************

And The Bedside Table from February 11th

I always think that the bedside drawer is the one place in the house we should regard as sacred: that it is a private, secret, cosy place that at once speaks of our more sensual selves, whilst providing a comforting space in which to keep those things that safeguard us in the middle of the night.

Today let's tip out all of the nonsense we have accumulated over a lifetime of shoving in goodness knows what and re-invent our private little worlds in a way that does just justice to who we are and what we need when we are snuggled up under the cosiest of quilts.

Empty the drawer and return anything that doesn't belong in it to its rightful home. Wipe the drawer out with a cloth scented with lemon juice and lavender oil, then go through your stash of vintage linen and source a pretty embroidered runner or tray cloth to use to line your drawer.

Now comes the fun part: choosing the items to put back in your drawer.

First of all think practically: every bedside drawer should contain a spare set of house and car keys, a spare mobile phone with pay as you go credit available, a torch, a packet of matches and a couple of household candles. (Don't forget to copy a short list of emergency and family telephone numbers on to the back of a vintage postcard in case the mobile fails).

Next up, add spare reading glasses, a tiny little photograph album with your most treasured family photographs in, your journal, a couple of the kind of pens that make you smile, some pillow spray, paper handkerchiefs, lavender sleep balm, aspirin and herbal sleeping tablets.

Other ideas? A small packet of facial wipes. Private letters wrapped in a hankie and tied in a bow. A tube of hand cream or preferably an all purpose balm like the very wonderful night-stand classic that is Elizabeth Arden's Eight Hour Cream. Bach Sleep Remedy. Massage oil. A tiny notepad. A pretty embroidered handkerchief. Vic's Vapour Rub. A packet of parma violets for sweet breath first thing in the morning. Lip balm. A book that is important to you. A secret bar of the darkest, most scrumptious chocolate you can find. A bundle of short lengths of ribbon for book-marking. A little batch of post-it notes. A pashmina folded flat for draping around cold shoulders.

And of course anything else you need beside your bed. Night night Housekeepers..

****************
Should the Puttery Post take your fancy you can sign up for a years subscription on Etsy, (the cheapest option!) or pay by monthly subscription here and get my emails delivered direct to your in-box or should you prefer you can simply download each months Puttery treats for $3.00 a month below...

To buy and download January's Puttery Treats click here...

And to buy and download February's Puttery Treats click here...

Cheerful Weather for the Wedding.

2010-03-01T02:40:00.000-08:00

Sunday was lost to the efforts of enduring culinary and alcoholic excess following an evening of Greek dancing in the bosom of almost my entire family as we gathered to watched Uncle Kosta do his thing with a bauzouki.

Much too much merry-ment meant a bedtime of some un-godly hour and the next day the debilitating effects of taramasalata induced exhaustion meant that it wasn't until four o'clock in the afternoon that it struck me that as 2010 was not a leap year, I would neither have to ask Richard to marry me, nor have time to review Julia Strachey's Cheerful Weather for the Wedding, before a bunch of white rabbits flung another month at us...

And so never one to dodge my obligations I pulled on my thermal jim-jams and snuggled up beneath a pin-tucked quilt, with my 1978 Penguin version of the book (68p on AbeBooks!) and a bar of medicinal chocolate, then set about reading from start to finish this promising little novella, certain in the knowledge that my brain wasn't quite up to scratch and thus my opinions of what followed may not be quite as reliable as those proffered by a woman declaring a Vintage Read Along really should be!

Seventy-eight pages later, the book was finished and I was perplexed. While it doesn't take much to perplex me in conversation, when it comes to books it is rare that I reach the end and don't quite know what to feel.

Cheerful Weather for the Wedding was Julia's first novel and was written in 1932. It describes one day in the life of a family, an important day for this is the one, that Mrs Thatcham, a middle class widow, would marry her daughter Dolly, to the Hon. Owen Bingham. And thus we are hurled into the heart of Mrs Thatham's house in the country, resplendent with all the domestic detail we Vintage Housekeepers adore, then like uninvited guests to someone else's family wedding, required to prowl around the house and observe the comings and chaotic goings of a family in flux.

Though as readers we are always observers, while reading this novel I could not shake of the sense that I was looking from the outside in, and like any gate-crasher at a party, found myself quite unable to get a good grip on what was going on.

Dolly is, from the off, rather a darling, but she is troubled on what should be the happiest day of her life, and after a rather alarming moment in front of the drawing room mirror, when in writing akin to quite the most awful of horror pulp, the potted ferns dance "menacingly" like "jungles in the Congo" and Dolly's white face is reflected "like a phosphorescent orchid blooming alone there in the twilight swamp", her eyes spin in her head "ceaselessly" for five or six minutes until the spell is broken by her Mother's appearance in the room, and thereafter she is banished to her bed-room to begin her preparations for her marriage, while assorted relations begin to arrive and thereafter take centre stage, greeted in turn by Mrs Thatcham who rushes about all of a fluster, bewildered by the jinks in her well laid plans and given to the most dramatic and comical of declarations when that same bewilderment reaches a frenzy.

And so it goes on. We meet various curious aunties, children and cousins, curious only in the way other peoples families often appears to us and we sit through a series of set pieces between relations and domestic staff, many quite hilarious in tone, until it becomes clear that is Dolly's friend Joseph who is both the pivotal character and the most restless, looking as we are, from the outside in at a family he fails to understand.

The language though occasionally stilted by age, is lovely enough to engage us, and the story is played out like the very best of theatre with even the wedding itself taking place off-set, while we wait, with bated breath, for the return of the family, and the answer to all the questions presented by a conversation between Dolly and Joseph that took place just before she left to be married.

And then in a crescendo of a last chapter we are richly, if not rather bizarrely rewarded by the kind of revelation we could only have hoped for. Though I cannot say any more without revealing the story, it transpires that there is good reason for Joseph's behaviour, and the family come's undone in the light of the kind of truth Dolly presumably hoped would never be spoken out loud. A truth, who's impact is quite hysterically diluted by the funniest, and certainly the oddest misunderstanding about the difference between Albania and Albino's. Though maybe it wasn't a misunderstanding at all? In all honesty I couldn't say, because therein lies the part that most perplexed me. Albino or Albanian? Or both? I have no idea.

Perhaps you should read it and enlighten me? Or perhaps I should re-read it and try to make sense of it on an evening when comprehension isn't compromised by memories of a night, when rather than being a gatecrasher at a party, I was instead right there at the heart of it...

P.S: The March book is At Mrs Lippincotes by Elizabeth Taylor. Do come read along...

Synaesthesia

2010-02-26T01:50:00.000-08:00

"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.

Housekeepers Carousel

2010-02-25T03:30:00.000-08:00

Ok Sweetie Pies, I am kicking off a new feature here on BrocanteHome this morning. The Housekeepers Carousel will be a weekly post listing all the lots and lots of little things I think about telling you all week long, but which neither warrant an entire post to themselves, or I simply can't find the time to share. It will be a list of "where I'm at's", "I'm so in love with that's", short quotes, links to die for, moans and groans, things to watch and lot's of other Brocante loveliness, hints and tips not to be missed. I kinda hope it fills a gap...

*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!

Marble Rose

2010-02-24T01:38:00.000-08:00

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.

The Artistic Mother

2010-02-23T03:18:00.000-08:00

There comes a point when one must decide what is more important: eating or reading?

Recently I seem to be happening across so many books I long not just to borrow from the library, but to own for long enough to sit on a shelf above my desk and inspire me daily thereafter. Which would not be a problem were it not for the fact that I really rather must keep these thighs as well padded as they are, and occasionally pop a morsel or two into the permanently open mouth of my very own chickadee.

You see Darlings, I believe in literary serendipity: that books will find you when you need them most, and today The Artistic Mother found me at a time when it seems I am almost permanently pre-occupied by the struggle between personal creative ambition and the constant, nagging guilt that somehow my (financially essential) working life compromises my ability to be the kind of contented, focused and devoted Mother, a single-parented child should be guaranteed.

And so, because for every problem I encounter in life, for every dubious emotion I ever feel, I seek affirmation or solution between the pages of a book, it seems I am helpless to resist another addition to my self-help shelf. As we speak The Artistic Mother is making the arduous journey from America to Liverpool, and I have no doubt, (because sadly I never doubt the written word), that a little spoon of life-changing medicine will thud through my postbox any day now.

Tis an addiction. My name is Alison May and I am addicted to books.

Tis an addiction. My name is Alison May and as a direct consequence of my addiction to books, I live on beans on toast, spiced up with a splash of worcester sauce. Or marmite. Or a sprinkle of cheese if I'm feeling flush!

Ugh. I ache to write housekeeping poetry and instead I ramble on about cheese. Too many big issues packed into one tiny post.

Forgive me, I know not what I do.

Housekeepers Question Time!

2010-02-22T02:00:00.000-08:00

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??

Little Things Long Remembered

2010-02-16T05:24:00.000-08:00

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!

Thursday Pinboard

2010-02-11T05:02:00.000-08:00

All images credited on the Brocante Pinboard

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.

Adobe Digital Editions

2010-02-09T01:47:00.000-08:00

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?

Puttery Treats For Valentines Day

2010-02-08T12:21:00.000-08:00

* 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...

Housekeepers Mission Lists

2010-02-08T03:38:00.000-08:00

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!

Victorian Beckham Plays Housewife

2010-02-08T02:22:00.000-08:00

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

Housekeepers Question Time!

2010-02-07T08:55:00.000-08:00

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?

When it comes to housekeeping m'dear are you glamorous or grungy?

Old (HouseWives) Tales, No.2

2010-02-05T01:40:00.000-08:00

"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..."

The Scrub Shopping List, Part One

2010-02-04T12:26:00.001-08:00

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!

Happy Loves Rosie - The Shop!

2010-02-04T01:44:00.000-08:00

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 Very Puttery January

2010-02-03T00:58:00.000-08:00

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!

A Glass of Blessings By Barbara Pym

2010-02-02T08:54:00.000-08:00

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...

Crash, Bang, Tranquility!

2010-02-02T03:36:00.000-08:00

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.

Housekeepers Question Time!

2010-01-29T03:10:00.000-08:00

I do something very, very naughty. Something people frequently tell me, makes me a bad person. And I must confess that I do it daily and I do it with abandon! I do it, my little Kettle Chips, just because I can!

This terrible misdemeanor makes visitors to my house shake their heads in minor disgust. I try to explain myself and they look at me as if to say you poor misguided fool, and then they go back to their immaculate lives safe in the knowledge that they would never dream of writing in books. Because yes Housekeepers, that is what I am talking about: writing in books. May I rot in hell.

I write in them. I scrawl my thoughts in the margins. I take a propelling pencil and mark great big circles around paragraphs I like, and if I am feeling particuarly vexed I doodle elaborate flowerscapes between sentences. I note down the dates I started and finished the book on the last page and write my name and the date I happened across it on the first. I stuff the pages full of heart shaped post-it notes and vintage postcards with quotes scrawled on the back. I stick ad-libris stickers on the inner cover and tie fine ribbon around the pages to mark my place and hold all my bits and bobs of paper in. And worst of all sometimes I fold back the corners of pages I want to read again and fail to panic should the pages be stained with who knows what.

It is not that I do not have respect for the written word, it is in fact because I consider them to be living, breathing entities crying out out to be interacted with, that I fail to consider it sacriligious to be slightly more at one with my current reading matter than I probably should be.
And further to that, I consider the books I so call "ruin" to be mine and do not wish to operate a public lending library from my living room (though for the sake of all the librarians amongst us, I promise I don't do it to books borrowed!).
I like it that I can pick up a book once adored and merely from the dates inside it or a phrase underlined with occasional nib-breaking venom, read not only the book, but a moment in my own personal history. I don't want to kiss them goodbye and bow my head in shame when she who is after borrowing them reads my occasionally private responses to literary wisdom. But then those I am willing to lend are not usually those that have inspired such outrageous behavior in the first place and thus I am happy to bin them or lend them or recycle them and thereafter never give them another thought.

Is there something wrong with me? Is this the kind of confession I should have made to the literary equivalent of a priest? Have I gone down in your estimation or are you are a book scribbler too? Are we, the book scribbling few, a menace to society and so utterly unable to contain our thoughts we have to spill them out wherever we can??

You tell me Housekeepers...

Till Monday!

2010-01-28T14:37:00.000-08:00

Hello Sweetie Pies, just a quick note before I crawl into bed after a day jam-packed with writing and ironing and shopping in preparation for taking a few days off to spend the weekend at my little sister's house in Witney with Richard and Finn.

Though I am thoroughly exhausted , I've had such a lovely week, made truly scrumptious by all your (often fascinating!) contributions to The Great Tea-Towel Debate, and topped off with the news that BrocanteHome was The Dorset Cereals Little Blog winner for December which has really rather made my day!

I will be back on Monday, raring to go with preparations for The Seasonal Scrub, and in the meantime I leave you with a gorgeous vintage advertisement for a glorious collection of Oriental American novelties just because it is plain old fabulous (Click the image to take a closer look at the prism-ed chandelier!), and should you feel like popping by again tomorrow afternoon, the second in the series of Housekeepers Question Time will be up, begging a question liable to leave many a book lover a-shuddering...

Have a lovely weekend Housekeepers!

Is Gratitude Ruining Our Lives?

2010-01-28T02:36:00.000-08:00

Gratitude is all. You have heard me say that sentence more times than either of us can count, because I believed it and I wanted you to believe it too. I wanted you to look at your life and say this is enough and for that I am grateful, so thank you Universe. Or thank you God. Or even thank you ME. I believed that being grateful was its own reward. That constantly stamping on the hunger for more (now, again) was the answer to contentment, to living joyously in the moment and avoiding the constant, gnawing need to be someone you weren't.

But what if I was wrong?

What if gratitude and contentment merely curtail ambition: personal, domestic, financial or otherwise? What if gratitude teaches you to accept the status quo and by it's very nature insists that anything else both smacks of greed and somehow goes against the natural order of either the universe or should you be a believer, Gods will? My dear, precious Housekeepers, what if gratitude is ruining our lives?

I have been keeping a gratitude journal for more than twelve years now. When the mood strikes me I write down all that I am grateful for: a pretty sunset, a day without the kind of unexpected bills that threaten to cripple me, a kind word, food that made me swoon, my little boy, a tidy room, a haircut I inflicted upon myself without disaster, this little house, BrocanteHome, Russell Brand (Ha ha!), friends, hugs, tears.
It is in fact probably the most telling of my journals, a barometer of mood and emotion I trust to tell exactly how it was.
But here's the thing: I have been grateful for the SAME THINGS for twelve years. I have been so busy been grateful that my little world hasn't come to a grinding halt or left me buried under the detrius of my inate ability to self-destruct that I have forgotten that in order for life to progress, in order to reach our full potential as human beings we have to ask for more. Of ourselves. Of the universe. Of life in general.

As I get older I am beginning to accept that the universe moves in peculiar ways. Ways I will never understand but ways that ultimately present me with a situation I will embrace or perhaps just come to terms with. I am grateful that I am able to move through each day without the kind of regret or bitterness I see casting shadows over other peoples lives, grateful that I can exist in moments that weren't in the plan and yet still feel like dancing, and more than that, that regardless of everything, I am still capable of accepting of what went yesterday, being grateful for today and desperately, desperately hopeful for tomorrow.

I don't think I am saying that life hasn't served me well. All the tiny joys add up to a deep-rooted sense of contentment I am proud of. I think what I am saying is that life is short and it is all very well ambling through a life that presents no challenges, accepting what is offered and hiding under a cosy quilt when the pain gets too much but carry on this way and in another twelve years I will be fifty and still feeling grateful that I didn't burn the casserole. That the chamelia has bloomed again, and there is enough money in the gas meter to see me through another night.
That scrape through the silky surface of contentment and what you will find is a woman who bought into the platitudes she sold herself. The my time will come's. The I don't deserve it's and the god forsaken, maybe tomorrows.

I think what I am really saying is that gratitude isn't enough. That gratitude, dear darling gratitude, needs a plan. That it isn't enough to sit back and let life take it's course, and offer smidgens of thanks because something inside you suspects you aren't worthy of anything more: that it is in fact this very attitude, this belief that gratitude is enough to manifest all your hearts desires, this arrogance, that is holding you back. And that even more than that: at every corner we are wimping out. Too afraid to truly question whether we are happy to tolerate the staus quo because the thought of what could be if we dared to dream scares the living daylight's out of us! That what we actually have to do is embrace Marianne Williamson's Everyday Grace:

My deepest fear is not that I am inadequate
My deepest fear is that I am powerful beyond all measure
It is my light, not my dark that frightens me
I ask myself, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually who am I not to be? I am a child of God. My playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around me.
I am meant to shine as children do...

Because there is so much to be learned from those few lines. You see children don't accept the status quo. Yes they are content when their immediate needs are met, but otherwise they are constantly questioning things, always trying to learn more, demanding what they want and never resting until they get it. Children shine because they haven't learned to numb their desires with gratitude for what already exists. Children shine because their intrinsic need for more drives them until life see's fit to stamp all over ambition, and in the end only the strongest survive with their will intact to fight for who they know they can be.

I won't be giving up my Gratitude Journal. It is a tool for self-realisation I have long appreciated. But I want to SHINE. I want to strive for shininess and instead of being grateful for all the little platitudes I sprinkle before me on my journey towards it, I want to teach myself to offer gratitude for that which I have achieved. Those moments when I abandon playing small, and finally start striving for something more...

Look lively Sweetheart: I am on the road to brilliance and fabulosity. Who knows where it could take me!

The Scrub Club

2010-01-27T06:58:00.000-08:00

Darlings the BrocanteHome Seasonal Scrub will commence on Sunday the 7th of February for all those interested in getting your house ship-shape for Spring!

I will be posting all manner of scrub related wot-nots here over the next three weeks and for those of you who have never done a Brocantehome Scrub, nor taken part in the Vintage Housekeepers Circle, I have put together a fabulous new download detailing both a week and a month long top-to-bottom clean from previous seasons on the Circle...

What's Included in the Download?

27 Pre-Scrub To-Do's
Tiny little puttery treats you can do today!
Cleaning Arithmatic
28 easy-peasy recipes for home-mad cleaning products.
Order of Works
A fabulous framework for cleaning the house the Brocante Way!
The Quick Fix
A scrub you can do in just seven days...
The Month Long Scrub
Detailed instructons for doing a truly thorough scrub over a period of four weeks (with time off at weekends!).
58 Post-Scrub Puttery Treats
Because a little celebration is always in order after a good old-fashioned scrub!
Good Habits
A final note on maintaining scrumptiously fresh order long after the Scrub is done and dusted...

Sounds fabulous mais oui? Just what you need to turn a chore into a celebration? Good, I'm so glad!

Order the download here for just $5.00 and don't forget to pop over as often as you can to BrocanteHome for more puttery treats and good old fashioned advice passed on from one housekeeper to another...

Sweet Paul Magazine

2010-01-25T08:48:00.000-08:00

I do so wish that when it comes to Sweet Paul, I wasn't always quite so gushingly embarrassingly gushing. But there you have it. Show me a man who can wrap a chair in a sweater and make it look covetable, while popping a home-made fig bruschetta in his mouth and dreaming up a Martha Stewart Organize Your Little Ass Off Pill to show the masses how to keep their bra drawers in tidy check and I my friends am liable to gush all over the shop.

Then tell me the same oh so very talented Norwegian/American fusion stylist is about to launch his very own little magazine full to the online brim with Sweet Pauli-isms and it is quite possible I will expire.

Do be a dear and pass me the smelling salts won't you? Spring 2010 is just around the corner.

A Room of One's Own

2010-01-25T05:44:00.000-08:00

Today is "A Room of One's Own Day", a National celebration of both Virginia Woolf's birthday and her premise that women will never reach their creative capacity while hampered by domestic duty. And oh how we know, even more than three quarters of a century later, exactly what she was talking about...

And so here on Brocante, in celebration of a woman who so often spoke for all of us, I hereby offer you a little collection of Virginia Woolf quotes that have been scrawled in the papery debris of my life for many a year now. Quotes, which if taken line by line, could make the starting points of quite the most fabulous set of blog posts... I dare ya, hell perhaps I even dare myself!

"Really I don't like human nature, unless all candied over with art"
Oh well put Virginia! People can be awfully bothersome in real life and so utterly charming on paper. Let me live my life between the pages of a book...

"The truth is I often like women. I like their unconventionality. I like their completeness. I like their anonymity."
Are we complete? More complete than men? What is our completeness for? A protective shield of authenticity, real or otherwise? Do you feel complete? What if we revealed all the holes? What then Virginia??

"You cannot find peace by avoiding life."
I do that. I hush myself. I hide and behave and play a part. All the time the chorus in my head gets louder. And more than this I see women everywhere avoiding life. On purpose! Fear a madness we consume like so much chocolate compromising everything we should be.

"My own brain is to me the most unnacountable piece of machinery- always buzzing, humming, soaring, diving and then buried in mud. And why? What's this passion for?"
And then this. So alert, so alive, chasing concentration, some bewildering ecstacy, applause, exhaustion. One sparkly day, three muddy months and on and on and on.

Because what comes out of that one sparkly day is worth whatever it costs thereafter? Yes, yes, that is it: because it is the sparkly days that propel us towards our dreams: the sparkly days that give us the power to sieze a room of our own and create within it something that matters. The sparkly days that will have us do what Virginia Woolf decreed and "arrange the pieces that come our way" in a way that leaves it's glittering mark behind us.

Those of us who cannot help but create are always willing to pay the price. How will you set about creating a room of your own today?

Housekeepers Question Time!

2010-01-22T09:03:00.000-08:00

This being the kind of worry peturbing my little brain when I try to sleep, I thought it wise to get a consensus from you my lovely Housekeepers and thereafter make the decision to proceed armed with the wisdom of the home-making masses.

My question you see is this: is it bad home-making practise to have just one type of tea-towel hanging around the kitchen? A kind of does it all affair, changed routinely after dinner on a daily basis, but put to use for whatever it is called for, whether that be drying dishes, wiping hands, mopping up spills, or rubbing babba's faces? Or should the good housekeeper have two, or even three tea-towels on the go? A traditional one for drying dishes, a lightweight terry towelling affair for the drying of hands, and a linen one for glass and silverware?

Is it filthy to run the one towel does it all system? Or does it strike of domestic paranoia to run the two/three towel system, shrieking in an un-godly manner should an unsuspecting soul dry a tea-cup with the hand-towel or vice versa and doubling or tripling your laundry load of household linen?

How often do you change your tea-towels? Are you a one or two towel household? What kind of tea-towels do you prefer? Are you operating a kind of tea-towel heirarchy with one darling specimen decorating the kitchen but unavailable for daily use while you keep another manky old version stashed under the skin, ready to whip out at a monents notice? Are you, my little puddle duck, a tea-towel snob??

I was just wondering.

The Seasonal Scrub

2010-01-22T00:16:00.000-08:00

Rally the troops m'darling, I am scheduling in a good old fashioned Seasonal Scrub, which is BrocanteHome parlance (for those of you not in the know), for a Spring clean!

I am suggesting the second week in February for a thorough top to bottoming and there will be more details in the free- newsletter going out early next week so make sure you are all signed up.

Mops at the ready Housekeepers! It's time to get our scrub on...

The Quiet War

2010-01-21T04:38:00.000-08:00

It started, as these things are prone, quite innocuously. While in the midst of decorating the bathroom, I arranged a few green books and placed Bert and Ethel beside them, then went off to do puttery things with a little pile of jasmin scented soap, before recoiling in absolute horror when I noticed a grey hair in my EYEBROW and turning my attention to plucking the little blighter out while shouting hello to Richard who had just arrived and would react in what can only be described as glee were he the one to spot said eyebrow.

The next morning I got up to find that Ethel and Bert had been busy in the night re-arranging the books, while further investigation revealed that to Finley's disgust, it was a certain Mr Richard, (who prefers things to be orderely and cannot fathom my topsy-turvy way of life) who had seen fit to dabble with things he shouldn't and as such willy-nilly interference could not be tolerated Finley would have no choice but to apply his six year old interior design skills and inflict new order on my little ceramic book-end peoples way of life.

And so I found myself staring at this darling little configuration while performing my morning absolutions and simultaneously worrying that this was a sympton of my son's discontent at sharing a little bit of his Mummie's life with another man.

Because, you know, these things require worrying about. You can't just go gung-ho and install a giant of a man where once there was a Daddy-shaped hole. You have to tread carefully. You have to quiz and interview said man and make sure he is worthy of your little treasures adoration. You have to watch them carefully together for signs of intolerance on either part and lose sleep at night worrying how the patchwork quilt that is splintered family life can be stitched together to include a whole new person. Seven months on you have to quietly make sure that this new person neither spends every minute of every day stealing kisses from you behind your son's back, nor stays away long enough to allow said son to entertain the notion that large man doesn't matter an awful lot to precious Mummy, when man in question is very much loved indeed.

Three days later, while drilling holes from which to hang the new bathroom cabinet, Richard, in what I can only describe as an act of utter rebellion, inflicted this, quite dreadful arrangement on our poor fragile souls and when Finley went to the bathroom at five o'clock the next morning I heard his shuffles of giggly outrage and thus began another round in a territory war that probably only exists in my own mind.

Because Richard and Finn are friends. They play table football together and discuss Spiderman with the kind of enthusiasm I couldn't rustle up in a month of Sundays. It is his hand Finley looks for when we go out together, him he sprawls across when we watch television together, if only so he can peer at him close enough to confirm that Richard's nose is too small and his head too big while announcing to anyone that will listen that in a certain light his glasses give him a look of Gok Wan without the earring or Chinese heritage.

But still his loyalties are divided. All of a sudden he is questioning why Daddy doesn't live in this house. Sobbing when Mark goes home. Asking to ring him at strange hours in the night. Though the relationship between Mark and Richard and I is amiable enough to tolerate an hour spent altogether while Mark teaches Finley to play chess and Richard and I discuss our day, and I am careful to make the other a natural part of the conversation when either Mark or Richard is not present so Finley does not imagine that any sense of competition exists between them.

Yet, regardless, children will find a way to quietly protest. To kick out when they imagine the natural order of what should be is threatened. To try to manipulate the harassed minds of a Mummy already racked with guilt for failing to hold her family together, and consequently, almost four years later, having no choice but to try and grasp a little bit of grown-up happiness with someone who has her waking up daily with a smile pinned to her face at the very thought of him.

Finley isn't a difficut child, he is an absolute darling, but childrens worlds are simple, so though he exists in the muddy water that is parental seperation, for a perceptive child it must be terribly difficult to navigate a school enviroment in which almost all the local Mummies and Daddies live together and great big boyfriends of the sort who fiddle with your Mummies books are almost unheard of!

He doesn't resent Richard, he looks up to him and enjoys the time we spent together. He just doesn't understand why we need him. Doesn't really understand what he is for, though Richard for his part is quietly patient, careful never to inflict his will upon my child, nor tread upon his tiny toes. Respectful, exceedingly kind and quietly honoured to be invited into the crazy hub of our haphazard hearts.

And so I am letting this quiet war rage on. It is for all intents and purposes a game neither of them are winning. The first in a series of battles? A game that makes them giggle. A game I have to try not to referee because they are merely muddling out a relationship between them, even when I am all but desperate to arrange Ethel and Bert in a way that suits me and has nothing to do with either of them!

Perhaps I should make it clear to all concerned that when it comes to re-arranging the household trinkets, it's my way or the highway?

Hurtful Stories of the House-Proud

2010-01-21T02:09:00.000-08:00

The Problem (Circa 1930's)...

Why are people so cruel? My life is being ruined by the stories that are going around about me, and all without foundation. I happen to live in a very house-proud neighbourhood, where nearly all the women spend morning, noon and night in housework and boast that you can see yourself in the kitchen stove, eat your dinner off any floor in the house and all the rest of it. Well I believe that a woman should keep her house clean and tidy, but I also believe that a woman should keep her mind alive, by reading good books, listening to good music, seeing good films, and so on. What is the result? My neighbours whisper among themselves that I am a sloven and a gadabout; they openly pity my husband and even commiserate in a veiled way with my children.

What am I to do about it?

The Answer...

It sounds perhaps a cowardly course to suggest, but if it be anyhow possible move to another district. The admirable housewives by whom you are surrounded will never understand your point of view, and nothing will ever stop them cackling over their own spotless nests.

That is what they are really doing. They do not really mean what they say about you but they simply can't resist the opportunity which you offer them of boasting how perfectly their homes are kept. Also they are a little resentful because you have something which they do not and cannot possess- an appreciation of things of the mind.

If you cannot move- and moving house is always an expensive and frequently an inconvenient business, enlist the active support of your husband in a determined campaign against these hurtful stories. you say he is openly pitied; well get him to proclaim loudly and forcefully whenever the opportunity occurs how marvellously you do the three jobs of running the home, keeping y ourself abreast of modern culture, and minding your own business. Do not, of course, bring the children into your campaign in any way

Your husband might still be pitied, but at least the two of you will be showing a united front and you will have the support of his sympathy and understanding. The chances are that before long your neighbours will give you both up as un-understandable and will cease to gossip about your affairs.

Be very careful not to give them any real reason for their stories of your slovenliness.

Taken from the charming "Everybody's Best Friend" by Mr Harold Wheeler.

A Collection A Day

2010-01-19T08:41:00.000-08:00

A Collection a Day is a new project by artist Lisa Congden who has set about documenting all the collections in her life, whether they be real or imagined...

Eighteen days in to the project Lisa has featured pegs, string, vintage portraits and packing labels, a row of eucalyptus leaves, playing cards and a set of vintage missals, each set photographed or hand-drawn by her own fair hands, each set making the commonplace look quietly extra-ordinary.

In her own words, Lisa, who admits to having been obsessed with archiving, organizing and displaying her collections since she was a girl, describes the act of collecting and documenting those collections as "as old as the hills" and goes on to say:

I want onlookers here to know that I do not profess to be doing anything new or unique or ingenious. I am embarking on this project because I love my collections, and I want to document them in a way that makes sense to me, and share them with whoever might be interested in looking at them.

A statement which owing to the sentence "I want to document them in a way that makes sense to me..." resounded loudly with me, because we can be so very sheep-like when it comes to arranging our personal "collections" can't we?

So very willing to follow the crowds when it comes to asserting our opinions. So frightened of wandering off the path much trodden that we dare not make shapes of our own, live a truly authentic life, create a house that disappoints the Jones but thrills us to the core, or even arrange our little blogs, our very own collections of scraps and inspiration in a way that makes sense to us, without feeling an almost constant pressure to please some imaginary panel of good taste makers...

We don't have to. We really don't. We take Lisa's lead and create whole worlds that make sense to us, and you know what, we can start today...

Lucia Soaps

2010-01-19T00:23:00.000-08:00

Part of my New Years promise to myself was to stop wasting my precious pennies on frivolous periphials while simultaneously watching my way of life shimmer down the slippery slope to poverty-ville.

I am in the habit you see, of appeasing my need for goodness knows what with little piles of utter nonsense and Housekeepers, dear darling Housekeepers, trust me:- six bars of baby soap, an over-sized bottle of lemon juice, a Pot Noodle, Take a Break magazine, and a bottle of the kind of cheap red wine liable to be downfall in the near future, simply doesn't touch the sides of contentment on any level at all.

What I am seeking is a little luxury and what I am buying is a big pile of junk. Ugly junk. Banal boring dull, what is it good for junk. Literary junk. Alcoholic junk. Junk, junk and yet more bloody junk, all adding up to a whole lot more money than anyone can afford to spend on junk when her heart yearns for beauty. For momentary culinary pleasure. For words that inspire her to do something wonderful. For objects she will treasure and everyday necessities that have her feeling positively demented about getting on with the same necessities in hand.

Which is my little pumpkins, my rather long-winded, all round the houses way of saying, now goodness me, would you look at that beautiful soap! Because yes indeed, soap is what it is, soap in bottles with patterns to sell the cat for, soap in fragrances as inviting as Pomegranate & Redcurrant, and Sea Watercress & Chai, soap that would beautify any bathroom and at £8.00 in the UK from the gorgeous Hush, and $11.00 from ShoeString Home in the US, soap that won't break the bank if we are only willing to sacrifice a little junk..

So this is my plan: I am going on a JUNK DIET. I am giving up cheap chocolate and sugar-free lemonade by the bucket-load. I am giving up trawling the pound shops, and seeking two for ones I don't need, buying weekly magazines, supermarket paperbacks, piles of cheap anything and cardigans that disintegrate into holes after one spin through a delicate wash. I'm done. I'm keeping my purse in my pocket and instead saving my pennies to buy real treats. Pretties that make my heart sing! Soap that makes me feel proud! Books that improve my cabbaged little mind!

Are you with me, or are you with me? The time for teeny luxury is now...

KewPies

2010-01-18T08:06:00.000-08:00

Though occasionally I fall in love with some of the scrappiest, shabbiest most charming of hand-crafted dolls like those produced by Nicki of Nostalgia at the StoneHouse fame, I have never otherwise been a dolly kinda woman. In fact I would go as far as to say that I find those who are a tiny bit odd, with a special dose of my own brand of bemusement reserved for the kind of dear lady who piles her bed with teddy bears and talks in a squeaky voice when she wants something from her husband.
You see I just cannot fathom the kind of mind that delights too voraciously in the thrills of childhood when there is a whole grown-up world to be explored; the kind of woman channelling her inner child because she imagines it is cute, or the kind of man willing to tolerate the frilly-silly antics of the child-women...

But enough about me and my much sallied aggressive opinion, especially when I am sitting here at my shivery-cold desk with the specific intention of informing you that though I may not be a "dolly kinda woman", there is a special place in my heart for the Kewpie, love-child of the much talented Rose O'Neill and adored Darling of many a little girl (and grown women!) for almost a century, which mean m'dears that you are more than entitled to declare me something of a hypocrite after the rant that is the first paragraph of this post...

But oh how cute they are: that darling little quiff atop their little round heads! The podgy little hands! The little pot belly so familiar to Mommies across the world! They are just babba's personified without too much of the "baby made plastic" so typical of the quite terrifying baby doll's currently on the market, so often now equipped with far too many bodily functions and usually bearing the kind of expression even the most dedicated of pint-sized Mummies couldn't love...

But more than the dolls themselves I am just mad about Rose O'Neills illustrations. The two above can be downloaded as pages to colour in here and are scrumptiously perfect examples of the way Miss O'Neill was so effortlessly able to capture the heart-wrenching innocence of all our children, while a quick search for Rose O'Neill on Ebay reveals vintage magazine illustrations, cartoons from KewpieVille and postcards, often accompanied by witty little poems of the kind sure to delight even the most hardened all growed up hearts...

While I hardly think spending one's time dressing dollies in even the most divine of vintage wares is a suitable past-time for a grown woman (Lordy! Get off your high horse Lady!), even I can imagine inviting a little Kewpie into my home as a celebration of the little girl I used to be, or a reminder of what a little curly quiffed chubster my little Finn once was, because as the poem Rachel Ashwell dedicates to her recently departed Mum in Shabby Chic Interiors suggests, perhaps inside we are all just "bigger little girls"...

"Mother is just a little girl who trod my path before me;
Just a bigger, wiser little girl who ran ahead-
Bigger, wiser, stronger girl who always watches o'er me,
One who knows the pitfalls in the rugged road I tread.

Mother is a playmate who will always treat me kindly-
Playmate who will yield me what true happiness demands.
She will never let my feet stray into brambles blindly-
Mother's just a bigger little girl who understands.

Mother is an older playmate who'll befriend me-
Yesteryear she travelled in the path thats mine today.
Never need I fear a foe from which she might defend me
Faithful little pal who ran ahead and learned the way."

P.S: Please note my love of KewPies, does not and will not ever extend to this...

Thursday PinBoard

2010-01-14T03:28:00.000-08:00

All images credited on the Pinboard.

A longing for Spring. For daffodills and jam-jars full of paper-whites. Enough already with snow smutty with boredom. A Sunday morning in bed with warm Camembert, french bread and The September Issue. Blown away by Grace Coddington. Astonished yet again at how willing other women are to hurt each other.

Laughing two pages in to Januarys book choice:

" I was sure that Father Bode was equally worthy of eating smoked salmon and grouse or whatever luncheon the hostesses might care to provide. Then it occurred to me that he might well be the kind of person who would prefer tinned salmon, though I was ashamed of the unworthy thought for I knew him to be a good man."

Embracing a divine Bohemian manifesto and watching talent quietly unfurl. Aching to learn to knit and drinking too much hot chocolate. Wearing my Winter uniform of ugly blubber. Barking back at that persistent black dog. Staying up too late. Watching Richard sleep. Wondering what he thinks of. Poking him awake till I exist again.

Hounded by a smell I cannot shift in the fridge. Wasting delicious hours at a time drawing on Odosketch. Sniffing at the perfume of my pink scarf. Watching Laurel and Hardy in Spanish. Getting to grips with Photoshop (at last!). Feeling over-whelmed. Feeling under-whelmed.

Sick of wellies.

What We Want

2010-01-13T00:20:00.000-08:00

What we want

is never simple.

We move among the things

we thought we wanted

and these things bear our names-

now they want us.

But what we want appears

in dreams, wearing disguises.

We fall past,

holding out our arms

and in the morning

our arms ache.

We don't remember the dream

but the dream remembers us.

It is there all day

as an animal is there

under the table,

as the stars are there

even in full sun.

Linda Pastan

Pretty Labels For Housekeepers

2010-01-12T01:48:00.000-08:00

If I could give each and everyone of you a tiny little gift, then these orgeous little books full of labels and stickers would be it because they are quite simply the putteriest, prettiest, cheapest little treat a housekeeper could have…

Coming from two of my favourite companies both the French General labels and the Cath Kidston stickers are equally as charming...

And there is just no end to the things you can do with them, from labelling home-made stores of jams and chutneys to creating the prettiest freezer around, using them as book-plates, wrapping books in vintage paper and labelling them, popping them on gifts, using them to prettify the plainest of envelopes, creating little tissue paper wrapped blocks of the plainest soap to bring a little French style chic to the bathroom, labelling home-made cleaning products and using them to add a darling little touch of home to brown-paper bags of sandwiches…

Truly I am obsessed with them: all my friends have received them as little gifts from me, and every time I think I have worn out their uses I will discover something else just begging to be labelled with a little bit of love...

The Comfort Drawer

2010-01-11T13:42:00.000-08:00

Just before Christmas, in a list of Puttery Treats for December, I do believe I urged you to clear out your Comfort Drawer...

* Clear out your Comfort Drawer! It is Christmas and thus the season when all kinds of comforting nonsense will be bestowed upon you so I rather think it is time to indulge yourself with all the little pampering treats you have stashed since our Darling Sarah Ban Breathnach first suggested it in Simple Abundance. Empty the drawer and run a bubble bath. Eat that gorgeous chilli and lime chocolate you were saving for a rainy day and light the candle you usually save to burn on the days when somebody put your head on upside down. The little book you have always kept in your comfort drawer? Put it back on the shelf. It is time to find a new reassuring voice. Same with the cd's and the dvd's. Even comfort gets old. Spend December smothering yourself in the cosy and come January we can start scrumptiously afresh...

and now, in just the blink of kohl-smudged eye, January is upon us and it is time to get busy!

It has been over ten years since Simple Abundance was published and if like me you were scrumptiously seduced by the very idea of a Comfort Drawer way back then, you have probably nurtured that little private space for all these years, shuffling your little comforts around, adding tiny little bits of this and that each Christmas and occasionally forgetting there is a little bit of cozy heaven waiting for you at all...

So how about we start again? How about we take everything out, fill it full of loveliness and make it a habit to keep it stocked with the kind of teeny tokens of comfort we can learn to rely upon when our days seems greyer than they should?

1. Take out everything already living inside your Comfort Drawer and (this is important!) put them away. Carry soap to the bathroom, chocolate to the kitchen and books back to the shelves. We need a clean slate and we won't have that if we fall back on old comforts...

2. Clean out the drawer, then wipe around the inside with a cloth spritzed with your favourite scent or aromatherapy oil.

3. Now line the drawer with something really pretty. There isn't any hurry so take your time seeking out the perfect drawer liner or length of vintage wallpaper. This is your very own little cozy corner of the universe and you want it to be heart-stoppingly pretty...

4. Now you can start to fill your little space. The purpose of the Comfort Drawer in my eyes, is to have a place where you can keep all those things that make you feel special: the things you seek out when you are exhausted or sad: the little bits of luxury that make you feel pampered when the whole world feels dull. Memories that are like a hug...

Ideas?

Violet Lavender Water for your very own pillowcase. A ribbon-tied clutch of love-letters from your partner. Dark chocolate studded with lavender. A silk handkerchief for really sad days. A CD that reminds you of being sixteen. The perfume your Nana wore. Mrs Miniver. A hot water bottle. A packet of Dead Sea Salt for relaxing baths. Your baby's first little lock of hair. Rescue Remedy. A tiny photograph album stuffed full of your family's most precious moments.Pillow Spray. A packet of tea-biscuits you don't want anyone else to steal. Crab Apple Flower Remedy (for when you can barely look at yourself...). A special scented candle. A little journal full of your favourite quotes. Valerian tea for sleepless nights. Pretty notelets for heartfelt letters. A DVD that always makes you smile. Posh toothpaste (yes really!). An emergency tin of Heinz Tomato soup. A pashmina to wrap yourself up in. Violet pastilles. Gourmet hot chocolate (strictly for grown ups). A book of comforting prayers. Peppermint tea for bloaty tummy days. A Short Guide To A Happy Life, etc, etc....

And a Project...

Create a Wonderful Me Journal to live in your Comfort Drawer. Seek out the prettiest journal you can find and decorate or collage it to your hearts delight. Paste in photographs of you looking your best. Thank-you notes from those who appreciate you. Print-outs of email and blog comments that made your day. Images of the things you make Love notes from your children. Cards that really mattered. Copies of certificates of achievements. Those little post-it notes your partner sticks on your pillow- in short anything that says "You are great!", "How clever are you!", "You made my day!", "You are shaping my world" or simply "I love you..."

A little book designed to make you feel special on the days you feel a bit rubbish. A little book that makes you feel special because some days you just plain old forget that you really are...

BrocanteHome Lives Here

2010-01-11T03:30:00.000-08:00

My favorite Christmas present because without this teeny tiny cottage there would be no BrocanteHome and without BrocanteHome this teeny tiny cottage wouldn't be such a scrumptiously cosy, puttery place to live...

Another thoughtful, lovely little gift from my gorgeous sister Helen, procured apparently on NotOnTheHighStreet.Com

Vintage Domestic Fiction 2010

2010-01-08T05:39:00.000-08:00

And so begins another year of reading. Last year I feel was somewhat lost to a litany of lazy reading and I am eager to get back to curling up with the kind of early to mid-twentieth century domestic fiction that really makes my heart sing.

One of the first projects I suggested on the Puttery Post for 2010 was inspired by National Book Blitz Month...

" It is National Book Blitz Month: the month an entire nation is urged to bury it's head in a book or twenty nine, discover something new or get to know it's favorite authors all over again...

And so in honour of the occasion, might I suggest you set upon creating a list of must-read books for 2010? Choose a book for every month of the year: books you have always planned to read but have never found the time, books from one particular author or books that will teach you everything you need to know about a subject that makes your heart a little giddy...

Note the books down in your book journal (You do have one don't you?), create an Amazon Wishlist to remind you of your book choices or put all twelve books on order at your local library.

While other books will no doubt tickle your fancy throughout the year, make a commitment to read your chosen books along the way and end the year a little more knowledgeable, familiar with an author who will feel like a life long friend or indeed throughly inspired by the kind of classic writing that will be written on your heart thereafter...

A Puttery Treat with the power to change your life methinks...."

And as she in charge of living the puttery dream I rather think it is my duty to commit out loud to my very own reading list for the next twelve months. So without further ado, here it is. Feel free to create your own list, put it on your blog, read my monthly reviews, or indeed read along with me and throw in your own twopenneth...

January.
A Glass of Blessings.

Having been gently thrilled with both Excellent Women and Jane and Prudence I found myself searching for my next journey into Barbara Pyms thoroughly charming, terribly British imagination and happened across "A Glass of Blessings",described thus in a review on Amazon...

"We are in 1950s London with an excellent cast of characters. The pathalogically domesticated Keith, forever washing down paintwork and boiling discloths in Tide; Father Thames, the gourmet priest with a penchant for Lapsang Souchong which can never be satisfied at parish get-togethers; and the kleptomaniac Wilf Bason, housekeeper at the clergy house, whose idea of a suitable meal for Lent is fried octopus; these are among the best."

I can't wait.

February
Cheerful Weather For the Wedding.

Cheerful Weather For the Wedding has been on my list of "must reads" for a long time and I was thrilled when Persephone published it with such a beautiful cover. Set during just one day, the book describes the tangled emotion and chaos leading up to and after a family wedding, and is described by The Guardian as "A brilliant, bittersweet upstairs-downstairs comedy”.

March
At Mrs Lippincote's

Elizabeth Taylors writing is an absolute joy so I'm looking forward to At Mrs Lippincote's, the story of an Army wife struggling to meet her husbands high ideals, described in an Amazon review thus...

"Billeted temporarily to the village and home of the eponymous Mrs. Lippincote to be near her husband, an officer in the RAF, Julia Davenant is expected to be a model officer's wife, serving meals to her husband's commanding officers, joining in the fun had by his fellows and their wives, and behaving so as not to attract attention or to embarrass him. Reminded of these obligations by the model of the domestic Lippincotes that surrounds her in her new home, she chooses instead to escape into an inner world of observation and intellectual reflection as she cares for her husband, her sickly son, and her husband's censorious "odd woman" cousin Eleanor who serves as both company and as foil for the nonconformist Julia."

April
The Scent of Water

Having never heard of Elizabeth Goudge, (shame on me) this is the one book of all those I have chosen for the year that I am looking forward to because there is no greater joy than discovering an author others are raving about.
The Scent of Water tells the tale of a woman leaving city life and adapting to the quirks and eccentricities of life in the countryside house she has inherited. Described as enchanting by more than one reviewer, April cannot come soon enough for me.

May
Young Hearts Crying

It is my belief that one has to steel one's emotions before attempting to read a Richard Yates novel, so devastating are they both in terms of storyline and powerful writing. Having adored Revolutionary Road, Eleven Kinds of Loneliness and the wonderful Easter Parade, this description of the decay of a marriage over thirty years looks set to break my heart all over again, which is why I am choosing May as the month to read it, being after all the Springiest, happiest month of the entire year.

June
The Girls of Slender Means

Wanna hear a confession? I have avoided Muriel Spark all my life because her reputation as "funny" goes before her and that makes me think she is the vintage equivalent of Kathy Lette and there goes a woman who gives me tummy ache. However now that I am all growed up and know that funny can deftly disguise what is both bleak and harrowing, I am ready to give this much loved writer a chance to write her way into my heart.
So avoiding the obvious and opting for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, I am instead going for The Girls of Slender Means, an apparent dictionary of a book described by one reader on Amazon as "the best novel ever"- an accolade I can hardly resist...

July
The Brimming Cup: -1921

The Home-Maker was my favorite read of 2008 and I'm really not sure why it has taken me so long to read another of Dorothy Canfield-Fishers books. As I know nothing about The Brimming Cup this book is going to be something of an unknown quantity on the list, but luckily I'm the kind of girl who really rather enjoys surprises. Wish me luck...though if the writing is as good as that in The Home-Maker, I just won't need it.

August
Few Eggs and No Oranges: Vere Hodgson's Diary, 1940-45

The second on my list of books from Persephone is Few Eggs and No Oranges, a title I find curiously inviting speaking as it does of shopping lists and rations. As I am over-fond of the kind of wartime historical nonsense novels it really doesn't do to speak of in these circles, I am looking forward to a book that pulls no punches about the realities of war-time London and a diary I can dip in and out of seemed the obvious choice for a month likely to be busy with so much to see and do beyond the reading chair.

September
A House and Its Head

And with a new season, a complete change of pace designed to have me dipping into a murder most gruesome and a witty novel stuffed with Edwardian family politics from the much celebrated Ivy Comptom- Burnett.

October
Nightingale Wood

Everybody adores Cold Comfort Farm and I have heard good things about Stella Gibbons' further comedy of manners Nightingale Wood, not least that Sophie Dahl (who I totally heart) has described it as a "fairytale".
Taking a similar format of stranding a girl with a head full of frippery in the dourest circumstances peopled by a range of eccentric characters, rumour has it that this will be the kind of giddy romp just right for curling up with as the nights draw in.

November
The Fountain Overflows

While I have never really taken to magic realism as a genre in it’s own right, of all the books on the list this is perhaps the one I am most excited about, if only because of this review:

"I have been reading, reading, reading for fifty plus years. Oddly I don't dream about books, but this one was an exception. The character Cordelia came to haunt my sleep, lively and unforgettable. A vivid, surprising, unpredictable, eccentric, and thoroughly original work. Seek it out."

And another that declares that Rebecca West's novel about a gifted family perpetually down on it's luck is her favorite book in the world. Perhaps it will be mine.

December
Wild Strawberries

Finally we come to the last book of the year, Wild Strawberries, a light-hearted "witty romp through English Country-house life at its most delightfully absurd",deliberately chosen, first because a comedy of manners will not to be at odds with the joy of the festive season, and secondly because it is the first of a series of books featuring the Leslie family, that will I hope take me sailing into 2011 possessed by the need to live in their world that little bit longer...

Old (House) Wives Tales No:1

2010-01-07T07:45:00.000-08:00

Aprons

"The girl who gets her apron very wet while washing up is likely to marry a drunkard."

The Vintage Table

2010-01-07T03:16:00.000-08:00

Published just a little bit too late to have Santa arrange to drop it down the chimney, The Vintage Tableby Victoria magazines own Jacqueline DeMontravel is on my wish-list for the New Year...

"By loosely mixing modern accents you’ve bought on a whim with vintage elements earned by combing flea markets, you can create tabletops and arrangements that look timeless and classic even as they speak to your mood. Much of the fun comes from knowing you’re using pieces that have personal meaning, and The Vintage Table offers all the guidance you need to discover gems among family heirlooms, textiles, and antiques store offerings. Whether you’re making napkins by repurposing old aprons or collecting stylish pastry boxes from your favorite bakery to be used as a signature centerpiece for your dining room, the pieces themselves become your décor, and they will bring you the same pleasure as a beloved painting that still surprises you every time you look at it.

From creating a party that plays on nostalgia, such as a fairy theme for children or a Mother’s Day celebration at which guests dress in aprons that recall Betty Crocker, to a more opulent affair starring all your finest objects, the possibilities in these pages show how setting the scene can be a festive and imaginative process."
s
Right up our street, mais non?

Commenting Glitch

2010-01-06T09:54:00.000-08:00

In my usual impeccable style I fiddled with what shouldn't be fiddled with and accidentally deleted my Disqus commenting system taking all your lovely and oh so very appreciated comments with it. I am working on getting it re-installed but in the meantime forgive me if things seem a little quiet around here...

You know what I'm like!

Cath Kidston, MBE

2010-01-06T05:04:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to our lovely Cath, who has been awarded an MBE for services to business in this years Honours List.

It gives me great pleasure to know that a woman who has effectively shaped the lifestyle aesthetic of a nation is being recognised by the country that inspires that very aesthetic and Cath Kidston is an inspiration to every one of us sailing through the days on the wings of that which we are absolutely passionate about, and thoroughly committed to, no matter what life throws at us along the way...

In other Cath related news, dear little Stanley popped into my in-box to let me know that this month marks the beginning of the Cath Kidston Book Club.

Said Stanley:

"This month we are launching our brand new bookclub and we would love for our customers to get involved. Simply tell us about the books you love and why. The best reviews will then be printed in the Cath Kidston magazine and you could even have your favorite book with your review on sale in our shops and on our website. Simply email us your favorites at bookworm@cathkidston.com

Happy reading!x

Which rather joyously ties in with one of the first Puttery Treats on my all new Puttery Post programme: the twelve books of the New Year, with my choices being posted here soon...

Get reading my little HoneyBuns!

Chionophobia

2010-01-06T01:36:00.000-08:00

Agreed. It does indeed look as if I am living in a picture postcard, and I do believe the lane has never looked more beautiful. But dear, oh deah, oh dear the whole snowy caboodle is giving me the heeby-jeebies and with school closed for another day I have no choice but to live through another day of white cabin fever, grinning manically as a babba with another unexpected day of school, fashions baby snowmen on my front path and the men in my life treat the perils of ice and snow with careless disregard and insist on carrying on with business as usual, so I find myself checking on their whereabouts every half hour, having palpitations if they don't answer the phone and proving myself to be my Daddy's very own stalker.

I am trying to be calm and sounding loony. Feel free to laugh out loud at my histrionics.

This too will pass. This too will surely pass.

The Good Time Girl Clock

2010-01-05T04:41:00.000-08:00

Oh my. While I am all about embracing domestic routine to free you from the tyranny of housework, this is the kind of demented idea liable to have me burning my entire underwear collection!

Imagine having to clock in and clock off the housework. What would happen if (horrors!) the clock revealed you weren't a good girl at all, but a very bad housewife indeed, what then pray tell?? Would Mr Jones dock your housekeeping money or bend you over his knee??

It's no wonder the Feminist movement gathered such huge momentum a decade later is it?

Suspended Animation

2010-01-05T02:45:00.000-08:00

I've said it before and I will say it again, oh but the best laid plans of mice and housekeepers! I started the New Year abundant with plans for carefully ordered routines. The kind of routines that would change my life, shift ten pounds off my lardy bottom and finally allow me the time and creative space to re-invent myself as the superstar vintage housekeeper I always dreamed I'd be!

And for one day, and one day only, it all went swimmingly. On the first Monday of the New Year I had one little boy safely ensconced in school, the laundry washed, pressed and smelling of violets by midday, a stomach mildly thrilled by a detox day abundant with pineapple, and half a pretty new blog design in place by three o'clock. I was, for one day only, the epitome of a Mommy managing the whole work/life/me (me me) balance with aplomb and I went to bed patting myself on the head and drifted off to sleep in sheets fragranced with the sweet scent of good housekeeping, never for a moment taking into account that the universe takes rip-roaring pleasure in laughing at my expense...

Today I slept in. And Finley didn't feel like getting up and there was much screaming in evidence and worst of all, my lane was up to it's ivy sprinkled eyeballs in knee deep snow and just as I gritted my teeth and forced myself to plunge my size seven spotty wellies into the white carpet that was my path, a women leaned out of her car and shouted "Go back in, school is cancelled!", which is I think you will agree the kind of statement likely to have a six year old doing snowy somersaults and a busy mummy ready to string herself from the nearest tree by her earmuffs. How in heavens name do Mummys who don't work at home manage??

And so instead of pineapple and turned out cupboards there will be sweet cocoa, sniffles and table football. Instead of an afternoon spent wrapping up tree ornaments and laying them lovingly in egg boxes there will be Mr Magoriums Wonder Emporium, tartan pyjamas, cheese and marmite toasties and much effort applied to tackling Dracula for the next round of the playground Mummies Book Club.

One could I suppose carry on regardless, but where would be the magic in that? Though a big part of me is growling with resentment, the little girl still inside me recognizes snowy days as the joyous gift they are and I rather think I owe it to my babba to make this the kind of rare day he tucks into his memory box.

The housework can wait. I am in charge of the magic around here...

Madonna Plays Housewife

2010-01-03T12:13:00.000-08:00

And so I kick off 2010 with the ultimate modern female icon pretending that she washes dishes and peels onions just like the rest of us. Only in leopardskin and lace. As you do.

Photographed by the really rather fabulous Stephen Klein for a shoot for Dolce and Gabbana in Italian Vogue, I think we would all agree that Madonna has never looked better. Mais non? But I can't decide whether to be thrilled or insulted by the very idea that she is one of us...

And then I find the very thought of posing that question mildly ludicrous when we are merely talking about a popstar selling dresses and not a one woman campaign to put every housewife in the land to shame...

Happy New Year my Darling Housekeepers!

Erma Bombeck On Christmas

2009-12-20T14:01:00.000-08:00

"There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child. Time, self-pity, bitterness, and exhaustion can take Christmas out of the child, but you cannot take the child out of Christmas..."

Erma Bombeck

Christmas Entertainment Spots

2009-12-17T01:37:00.000-08:00

Because these ever so slightly risque little animations make me giggle every time I see them and you all know that anything with a vintage image or two gets me over-excited. Bless my little heart...

Twas the Week Before Christmas...

2009-12-16T05:15:00.000-08:00

..And not a child in the house was washed. Mostly because the only child I've got has with his usual impeccable timing decided that this was just a downright lovely week to stay at home with a silly temperature and get under Mummy's feet while she did her up-most to put on the pantomime that is Christmas!

Oh my but it was a such a darling weekend. We went to see Nativity which was quite the most festively tear-blinkingly lovely film I've ever seen (though Finley hid behind his hands throughout and thereafter declared it "terrifying"), then spent Saturday tra-la-la-ing around the kind of enormous big shopping mall that brings out the Christmas beast in the most unlikely of candidates. There was gnocchi and red wine in Carluccios, a journal that made me swoon procurred in Selfridges for brain-storming the details of my top-secret project for 2010, and a handful of gifts bought for stockings...

And then it was on to baby-sit a beautiful house. The kind of house I wanted to shove in my handbag and refuse to give back. The kind of well appointed house where lo and behold everything works, and one doesn't have to peel away the seal of the fridge to grab the milk or faff about with the mysteries of digital television in order to sit down and feel positively faint at the sight of Robbie Williams dueting with my beloved Olly (my cards are on the table there aren't they!). The kind of house where life is easy because money makes it that way and thoughts and idea's come-a-tumbling because it belongs to someone else and one need not worry about the memories lining the minamalist surfaces but can instead curl up on the couch and wait for gorgeous boyfriend to do something spectacular with haddock and gorgonzola.

The next day after breakfast-a-deux we went hunting for a Christmas tree, though the very thought of dragging a tree into the house before the ritual that is Tree-Decorating Day on the 17th was giving me palpitations and I could barely explain such vaguely ludicrous trauma to Richard who set about his mission with all the enthusiasm of a festive elf. And so it was that we stood dithering in quite the coldest "room" full of trees, debating the merits of a most peculiar blue tree and finally settling upon an eight foot tree with a long trunk and well balanced branches just perfect for the eclectic, rather bonkers collection of decorations I intend to throw at it in the next few days, and which could I suspect bring about the early death of what has been a beautiful friendship with a man whose heart hurts in the midst of all my "junk".

And then we went to collect my little boy who had spent the afternoon following a reindeer driven sleigh carrying Santa and had developed a temperature in the early forties for his trouble. A little boy who spent the next two days slipping deliriously in and out of sleep, chattering to himself and resisting all attempts to make him comfortable, then sprang out of bed this morning, dragged on his party tie and declared himself well enough to attend the Christmas Shebang in school!

So here I am: a week before Christmas with a naked tree gracing my dining room and a list as long as my arm of jobs that need doing. And am I doing them? Well...the short answer is no. I figure Christmas will still be on it's way tomorrow and this afternoon it would be ok to make the house twinkly for a little boy liable to be exhausted after a day partying. I think it would be perfectly fine to re-read a lovely little post about Brocantehome that made me cry (I love the idea of being someone's blog-crush!), indulge my new piccallili fetish and scribble in my new journal.

Christmas will still be on it's way tomorrow...

Puttery Post!

2009-12-11T07:24:00.000-08:00

Hello Housekeepers! At the beginning of the week I sent out details of the all-new Puttery Post for 2010 in the Brocante Newsletter, but quite forgot to mention it here. And so for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about and all those of you who have been kind enough to sign up already (thank-you, thank you, thank you!) I hereby provide a few more details...

Each Puttery Post email will be in your in-box first thing in the morning and will include one teeny tiny ALL-NEW puttery treat with which to brighten your day! Based around an (accessible!) calendar of vintage housekeeping routines, rituals and celebrations it will hopefully show you the way to create routine while reminding you to honour the teeny tiny things that go such a long way to making life so scrumptious! Alongside a list of lovely little BrocanteHome-made celebrations I will be also basing the treats around seasonal delights and annual celebrations like Easter and Valentines alongside lesser known calendar events like St Bastilles Day and Friendship day to ensure we always have a little something to celebrate! And at the end of each month I will send you a link to a pretty download with all of the puttery treats mailed to you listed so you have a copy to slip into your BrocanteHome Housekeepers Planner...

There are two ways to pay, either a tiny amount monthly or a reduced rate annual subscription both of which you can find in my Etsy store and should you have any questions, please, please do not hesitate to ask me and I will do my best to help on Monday morning when I return from house-sitting something beeeeeeeeeuuuuuutiful with Richard.

Have a lovely weekend Darlings.x

P.S: Someone has been kind enough to nominate BrocanteHome for a Little Blog Award and I would really appreciate it if you would pop over and vote for me, pretty please....

Among His Effects We Found A Photograph

2009-12-11T06:46:00.000-08:00

My Mother is beautiful as a flapper

She is so in love

that she has been gazing

secretly at my father

for forty years.

He’s in uniform,

with puttees and swagger stick,

a tiny cork mustache

bobbing above a shore line of teeth.

They are “poor but happy.”

In his hand is a lost book

he had memorized,

with a thousand clear answers

to everything.

Ed Ochester

Lonny

2009-12-11T06:37:00.000-08:00

You know the latest issue of Lonny is online don't you Housekeepers? What a treat!