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.

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...

* 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...

* Fill jam jars with bird seed, add a pretty tweety label, and top with a doillie. Leave by the door ready to take with you every time you go into the garden...

* At least one morning a week, throughout December eat breakfast the way the French do. Pour cafe au lait into huge big bowls and drink while warming your hands. Fill an lidded enamel jug full of hot chocolate made on the stove and serve the whole family chocolate and croissants. Make Croque Monsieurs and eat at a table topped with a festive gingham table-cloth, accompanied by a play list stuffed with Edith Piaf and Serge Gainsbourg. Nothing could be cosier in a steamy kitchen on a Winter morning.

* Fill the mantlepiece with permanent Christmas Cards. Paste vintage wallpaper over tiny blank canvases and collage a vintage Christmas postcard over it.

* Line the base of a pretty tray with reindeer moss and fill it with pillar candles for an understated fragrant breakfast table centrepiece...

* Teach the kids to knit and work each evening on little squares to be stitched together for a family Granny blanket. Use up old scraps of wool and try not to get too pernickety about the quality of the little one's knitting!

*Fill the prettiest floral vintage bowl you can find with lengths of crocheted lace, mercury glass or silver ornaments and old vintage photographs and place it on your bedside for a bowlful of vintage Christmas cheer.

* I like to think of Christmas decorating as a process of layering, culminating in the decorating of the tree and the lighting of the lights in mid December. Start with scent. Spray a little Christmas into the air. Play Christmas music. Patch cushions and old blankets with floral jingle bells or snowflakes. Add pine cones to a bowl-ful of shiny red apples.Wrap soap in vintage Christmas Hankies and pile into a footed dish. Add a little Christmas to every surface in the house before you begin to decorate...

* Grate a little nutmeg or stir a little cinnamon into your children's bedtime drink and tell them it is Christmas milk...

P.S: Don't forget you can get 550 Puttery Treats here and a few in your in-box monthly when you sign up for the BrocanteHome newsletter!

Good Morning Housekeepers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 
It seems to me that occasionally the universe saves up the rain in order to force us to send the weekend at home instead of dillydallying around garden centres, car boot sales and the God Forsaken nightmare that is the out of town retail centre...

And so it comes to pass that we find ourselves wandering around a grey little house, droplets of rain on the windows like prison bars between us and the garden we long to get stuck into, and a head full of frustration for woebegone plans.

But instead of seething with weather related resentment (a furious waste of time!) we should instead embrace the opportunity to hug our house, play some gorgeous music and putter our way through to the kind of snuggly, sparkly, purposeful Saturday afternoons our hearts will always treasure...

*Set the mood with music played very, very low. Keeping the volume down re-trains our ears to really hear the music and instils a sense of calm. Download Brian Eno's Discreet Music

*If you are feeling rather blah burn pine or rosemary oil to lift your mood.

* Call me daft but I've always found hand-washing my laundry to be a sure fire route to near nirvana... Clean fragile vintage lace by putting it into a jar of soapy water and gently shaking. Leave to soak, then press between towels, pin flat and leave to dry.

*Have a terribly English, cosy little lunch of cucumber sandwiches (salt the cucumber beforehand and leave in a bowl in the fridge) and teeny bite sized chocolate dipped shortbread with Earl Grey tea.

*Do something meditative like shelling peas (serve with feta on warm bread for supper later..) or polishing silver. A repetitive action that allows your mind to wander into that really rather glorious state you occasionally horrify yourself with while driving...

*Make chilly Summer evenings smell deliciously fresh by using coils of dried lemon skin as fire-starters with twigs and bundled newspapers. Dry the skins by baking them in the oven on a very low temperature and storing them in a vintage mason jar away from the light.

*Steep 2oz of fresh rose petals in cider vinegar. Leave in a jar on the sunniest windowsill of your house for ten days, then strain and sprinkle over beetroot salad. Or soak a cotton hanky and apply to your temples to ease tension...

* Waste not, want not. Melt down all your old bar of soap, gently tint with vegetable dye and pour into Madeleine Tins for really rather scrumptious bars of  oyster shaped soap when set...

*Take a headache for an afternoon nap with a cup of rosemary tea. (Steep rosemary in boiling water for five mnutes, strain and pour into the prettiest cup you own). Open the windows in your bedroom and let the rosemary ease your headache as you listen to the rain dancing on the pavements. 

*If you don't have a water butt, run outside and stand your watering cans and garden buckets right way up to catch the rain for watering on dryer days.

*Re-connect with your partner. Designate a gorgeous notebook to a "written conversation". Leave it in your bathroom or a bedside drawer and use it to write down the things it is sometimes hard to say. Sorry. I love you because... please put the bins out... It will in the long term become a gorgeous record of love, forgiveness, hopes and dreams.

Today's list of puttery treats is inspired by a myriad of gorgeous source's from around the internet: all at one time or another featured on the Brocante Pinboard. Read the treat, click the link to discover the visual inspiration and scroll down the image to visit the original source and hopefully set out on a journey of more scrumptiousness than any of us deserve on even the Summeriest of Summer evenings...

* Float a tiny length of blossom in a little finger bowl and put it in your bedside for gently fragrant oh so transient loveliness..

* Sit on the lawn and pick yourself a daisy bouquet...

* Use wine glasses and fabric covered coasters to create cloches for a collection of teeny treasures.

* No more waiting... apparently the time for change is now!

* Collage the inside of cupboard doors with images that make you smile

* Plant succulents in vintage tea-caddies and display in a row on your kitchen windowsill...

* Seek out a length of fabric to die for and use it create a show-stopping shower curtain guaranteed to add a little vintage floral delight to even the plainest of bathrooms...

* Hang a wreath over leaded windows... who said they are only for Christmas?

* Fall in love with Ralph Waldo Emerson. Adopt the pace of nature...

* Frame gorgeous sections of vintage embroidery in a variety of frames and let the gentle art of domestic craftsmanship speak for itself...

* Make and frame leaf silhouettes....

* Add lengths of gorgeous ribbon to the back of a chair for the sheer frippery of it...

* Spray glue starched linen (I can see no other way of doing it?) to the insides of glass fronted cabinets and wardrobes, and show off the intricacy of lace and cutwork...

* Stop saying LOL...

* Fill a jar full of scrap paper dreams, or wishes, or favorite quotes of really silly things the kids said...

* Stitch a doillie on to the front of the plainest tote...

* Fill the tiniest of kitchen wall gaps with a pretty collection of mounted saucers...

* Remember this...

* Sew yourself a Ra-Ra laundry bag...

* Know that "Life isn't about finding yourself, it is about creating yourself..."

* Make a glorious hydrangea garland...

* Let this be your mantra....

* Group really rather fabulous fabric covered bulletins together and re-invent yourself as super duper organized kinda gal...

* Line the inside of the teeniest of cabinets...

* Embroider words that matter to you onto a scrap of gorgeous floral fabric and frame it for posterity...

* Float the head of a pretty flower in a rose sprinkled cup and saucer.

* Get brave, free yourself, dance into the wind...

* Let the kids help you make a little garden in a jar...

* Sew frou frou net rosettes on to a pair of knitted slippers just for the happy loveliness of it...

* Scrawl one of your favorite quotes on to the wall.. you can always paint over it...

* Tie posy's in lengths of pretty lace before standing them in glass vases...

* Frame your favorite love letters and hang them above your bed or display on a tiny easel on your dressing table..

* Fold tiny strips of vintage ephemera (wallpaper, pages from old books, origami paper,etc) around the tops of cocktail sticks and stash them in a little egg-cup or two ready for flagging summer food at garden BBQ's and country picnics.

* Cover a shoe-box in pretty vintage fabric and label it receipts while simultaneously resolving never to lose an important receipt again. Essential if you are a serial taker-backer...

* Choose a vintage recipe card box and fill it with cards documenting special events, outings, parties and holidays in your families life. Note dates, places, addresses, people, menu's and tiny little photos of each event for something that will eventually become a treasured record of some of the teeny tiny details we all too often forget.

* Gift each child in the house a potted plant of their choice for their bedroom and teach them the gentle art of nurture and responsibility...

* Arrange a little collection of teaspoons in a vintage milk jug.

* Stitch tea-dipped doillies on to white bathroom towels aka Sweet Paul...

* Stretch vertical lengths of pretty ribbon across a fabric covered canvas and use teeny tiny pegs (curtain pegs are often decorative and look a little bit fabulous!) to display little notes of decorative inspiration, words of wisdom or essential reminders. Perfect in the kitchen if you use a vintage tea-towel to cover the canvas...

* Transform a pretty table runner into a dress for your little girls favorite doll.

* Add pretty french inspired labels to the edges of your linen closet. Never again will you mistake a fitted sheet for a flat one.

* Use straw shopping baskets in the base of your wardrobe to store scarves, pashminas, shawls, belts, gloves, hats and winter jumpers.

* Use long tall pasta jars to keep knitting needles away from little hands all to willing to use them as Star Wars light sabers. Display with glass jars full of leftover yarn for impromptu knitting projects and gorgeous displays of texture and colour...

* Start a little book of favorite quotes and keep it in your reading basket (Remember? Spectacles, notebook, bookplates, pens, cosy blanket, secret little bar of special chocolate, file for magazine tear sheets, books pending your attention, etc..)

* Spend a day transfering your music collection online and sell old Cd's on MusicMagpie.co.uk or thecdexchange.com

* Find an old photograph of you and your Grandmother and add it to your Comfort Drawer. No-one and nothing offers comfort like a Nana can. don't forget to press a little kiss upon her nose.

* Start a secret stash of "things to do" to help you survive the forthcoming school holidays. Seek out the books of your childhood to be read aloud under the shade of a tree, print out craft ideas from the oodles available on the internet. Gather tissue paper for paper flowers to be strung along the washing line, collect drawing books, new pencils, recipes for kids, a trophy for the winner of whatever, stitch beanbags and cut out fabric dollies ready to be sewn together, add balls and garden croquet, and a small collection of never seen before DVD's for the disaster that is Summer holiday rainy days...

* Attach a single framed picture to each door in the house. I have often thought doors are much under used as little galleries. If you use the same frames on each door, it's content, even if it varies wildly, will add a little whimsy to a long corridor...

* Amass a collection of vintage linen in the crisp colours of Summer ready and available to wrap Summer birthday gifts...

Yesterday vanished in a haze of snow and nonsense, and to say I achieved very little would I think  be rather  over stating the case.


But Housekeepers I was  full of good intentions: and if thinking about being naughty is as bad as doing it, then in my rather  warped mind, writing a list of   scrumptious ways I could improve my house and home is twice as wonderful as actually having done them...
I am clearly off my trolley and that is I think, my prerogative.


1.  Transfer Finleys ridiculous  number of hugely complicated jigsaws into ziplock bags and find them a pretty box to live in. (i.e: one I find acceptable hanging around the living room).
  
2. Make a huge big vat of chicken and lentil soup, because soup, welsh rarebit with crispy bacon and frothy milky mochacchino are the only acceptable foodstuffs when it is snowing.


3. Plant broad beans in little cups and saucers for Finn's "Jack and the Beanstalk" homework.


4. Shake out the sheets and pillowcases in my linen cupboard and re-tie them in gingham ribbon according to size.


5. Clean out the hoover filter and sprinkle some dried lavender buds into the chamber for fluffy carpet freshness.


6.  Cover my big (read ugly) scrapbook in something pretty in order to have somewhere to stick Finn's "art" into, rather than appall my Mum, by chucking it in the bin...


7. Wrap little bundles of oatmeal in muslim, then add to a milky bath to sort out skin chapped by a chilly winter.


8. Create extra little oatmeal bundles tied with ribbon and sprigs of lavender and leave them sitting prettily on the glass cakestand on the pink linen cupboard in my bathroom.


9. Wipe the little panes of glass in the living room window with a tiny bit of washing up liquid to prevent them steaming up with condensation, or indeed being decorated by Jack Frost. (He slips right off  ever so slightly greasy surfaces, bless his  cold heart!)


10. Cross -stitch, french laundry style, tiny little "A's" into the corner of the fluffiest white towels I own. I see no reason why I shouldn't keep the the most scrumptious towels all to myself...


Maybe next week, Housekeepers. Maybe next week.

* Use a vintage casserole or old lidded chamber pot as a counter top kitchen composter...
* Place a sprig of basil on the ledge of your front door to bring you good luck.
* Order a book from Persephone. If you are yet to discover this gorgeous publishing company, start with The HomeMaker and be careful to set aside an entire lovely day to devour it.
* Sew precious vintage buttons in rows upon a sumptuous piece of velvet and store rolled up in your sewing box so you never again have to go rooting for them. You can also do the same thing with earrings...
* Bake cherry scones for afternoon tea under a shady parasol.
* Sew worn out vintage tea-towels together back to back and extend their scrumptiously pretty lifetime...
* Revive the art of Elevenses. Take a break during a vigorous session of housework and sit down to a beautifully presented tray of mint tea and strawberries, or a pretty plate dripping with hot buttered toast and a happy little jar of marmite.
* Wrap toilet rolls in lengths of vintage wallpaper and pile into a basket for a visual bathroom treat.
* My friend Kath keeps thank-you cards and invitations permanently on display in her living room... a lovely visual reminder of friendship, family and social ties...
* Make french style cafe au lait for breakfast by laying two slices of buttered thick white bread into a bowl of sweetened milky coffee and baking until there is a mouth wateringly scrumptious crispy crust. 
* String chandelier crystals onto pastel ribbon (tie a knot after each crystal so they are easily spaced) and loop them across your headboard...
* Tie a little posy of garden roses and leave them on your best friends doorstep.
* Lift up the cistern lid of your loo and sprinkle a little aromatherapy oil into the clean water there...
* Make a little wish tree. Write your dreams sentence by sentence onto lengths of fine ribbon and loop them around a branch or two of curly willow...
* Keep current magazines in a folder made of fabric covered card... Tie ribbon around the spine of the folder and hook the pages of your magazines through them to keep them together...(Fabulous for hiding The National Enquirer and keeping the weekly TV Guide close at hand)
* Poke a hole through the lid of a jam jar and use it to store a ball of string.
* Have a cook nothing day. Eat raw food all day and give your insides a spring clean and the oven a holiday.
* Wrap unused candles in greaseproof paper and store them in a pretty tin in the fridge.
* Cover every bed pillow in the house with at least two pillowcases (and preferably a pillow protector to boot)... Trust me: It feels strangely luxurious!
* Just before you put the kids to bed tonight, sneak upstairs, turn back their sheets and place a tiny little gift hotel style on their pillow.
* Decant lavender scented hand cream into a lidded crystal bonbon dish and put it on your bedside for a lovely hand smoothing ritual before you fall asleep...
* Banish flies by leaving saucers of strong sweetened green tea on window ledges.
* Sprinkle salt onto persistent path weeds for an eco-friendly alterative to weed-killer...
* Lay circles of flocked or textured wallpaper between vintage plates to prevent them damaging each other.
* Steep finely chopped sage leaves in distilled boiling water for one hour. Filter, decant into a pretty pressed glass bottle and voila... gently scented ironing water for laundry day.

 

 

While the joy of regimented (school imposed) routine has brought brisk new efficiency to my domestic affairs, I cannot help but feel a little wanting.

Do you get that, a gnawing ache for sweet satisfaction somewhere? Weird  frustration in your fingertips? Need a teeny tiny thrill or two to see you through the day? Feel the urge for something a little more scrumptious than jam on your cranberry toast?  Like you might find yourself running around the house screaming like a pinny wearing hyena if something doesn't spark your imagination? 

Me too.

So when the novelty of crisp new school uniforms has worn off, and the laundry basket has been attacked with the vengeance of a women wronged by fabric conditioner stinky enough to make her cry,  and when even the thrill of an evening's dalliance  with Marco Pierre White ain't enough to make her happy,  (I can't hold it in any longer. Oh. My. God. Who knew he was soooo divine?), the Vintage Housekeeper needs a puttery treat or six to get her through the night.

Which is, I think a better choice than gin. Though I wouldn't say no to that either.

Take your pick.

*  Set the table in sumptuous style before you go to bed tonight and throw yourself a little cornflake party in the morning.

* Feed the birds. Fill up birdfeeders, buy a diddy little bird house, make fat cakes, and provide our feathered little friends with a daily  saucer of fresh water. Nothing is more enchanting than watching little birds dance around your garden.

* Clear away the last vestiges of summer in the garden. Be kind to your trusty tools by giving them a thorough cleaning and oiling (Use wd40 for the metal parts and boiled linseed oil for the wooden parts) and then reward yourself by going shopping for daffodil, narcissi, hydrangea, crocus and amarylis bulbs...

* Bundle rose bush cuttings and apple tree branches together and  put them in a basket by the fireplace for sweet scented  kindling.

* Turn vintage tray cloths into lavender scented envelopes for matching underwear sets. Pile them prettily in your underwear drawer.

* Make Autumn Chutney and eat with blue cheese jacket potatoes and cider in the garden. Blankets optional.

* Spend a day filling the freezer with chilli's, stew, casseroles and soups ready for cosy afternoons spent snuggling instead of slaving at the stove. Use Marthas helpful freezer labels to  identify what's what...

* Thread laurel leaves onto string, add lavender and rosemary branches and swing the garland across the fireplace... break them off as required and add to real fires for fragranced warmth.

* Stuff the housework. Spray your pillow with a blend of  orange blossom water, vodka, mandarin and bergamot essences and take an afternoon nap. Life is for living. And daydreaming.

* Choose a big, old, nubbly cardigan and hang it near the back door ready for early morning dashes to the laundry line.

* Now I know this might seem a teeny bit anal, but emptying out your pantry and doing a stock take will make you feel dementedly organised and the likelihood of you doubling up on stock cubes will simmer down to nil...

* Mimi please don't tell me off for this one, I'm sure it isn't good library etiquette, but go to the library and stock up on as many library books as they will let you take out (20 here)  and stack them by your bed. Reserve Cold Comfort Farm, Graham Greene novels, all the Elizabeth Berg you haven't read... Nothing compares to literary abundance for when chilly Autumn evenings are drawing in.

* Order a compost bin. They are free in many areas of the uk, and now is as good a time as any to start reducing the amount of waste your household creates. Remember (green) virtue is a grace...

* Start using the Daily HouseKeepers planner page: Give it a go- today print out a weeks worth of planner pages, staple them together and voila! organizational central for the demented Vintage HouseKeeper...

* It's that time of year again. Take yourself on a creative excursion in search of a notebook that makes your heart sing: it's nearly time to start planning the Christmas to end all Christmases...

* Create a proper old fashioned  utility cupboard. Stock up on household candles and tealights, a huge roll of string, replacement bulbs and fuses, glue, parcel/masking tape, drawing pins, wd40, salt for frozen paths, car de-icer, etc, etc.

* Turn the heating up and get naked. Scrub yourself silly with a dry brush then dive into the shower and drown yourself in something milky. Drag a scrumptiously starched white victorian nightie over your head, add woolly silly socks and get into bed. Going to bed stupidly early at least one evening a week will change your life.  Lights out by 9pm please. (I do 8pm, but if that seems a tad mental 9pm will do...)

*  Spray glue a really pretty piece of fabric across the base of your  snuggly jumper drawer. You'll be going in there a lot over the next few months, make it a sight for sore eyes...

* Download or rent an audio book or two, and make washing the dishes a literary sensation.

* Get a notepad, sit down somewhere quiet and write down what your ideal day looks  like. Not the one from your dreams, but the one you've got, but better.  What do you eat for breakfast? What time do you go to bed? How much housework do you do? Do you find time for your art? Tv? What are you wearing? Do you iron your knickers in paradise?? Write it all down and resolve to do  your best to shape your world  the way you authentically wish it was...