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

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?

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....

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

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

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

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


Michal Negrin


Royal Delft


Rebecca Taylor


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

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

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

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

Hello Housekeepers, just a flying visit to share a few Brocante related snippets!

1. In honour of BrocanteHome's Fifth Birthday, there is a new Brocante download available on Etsy today. This latest e-book brings together the best of  five years of BrocanteHome in one PDF. Below is the introduction to Life, Love and Vintage Housekeeping and this would, I rather think, be the perfect place for new Brocante-Homers to start, and old timers to reminisce...

"I created BrocanteHome on a cold November afternoon, five years ago when my little boy was just one year old and the home I had created with his Daddy was an oasis of domestic bliss I wanted to share with the world, never imagining, even for a moment, that eventually my little website would become the mainstay of my life, my means to financial support, an emotional prop I can now barely live without, and the link between myself and thousands of like-minded women from across the globe, happy to call themselves Vintage Housekeepers.

A lot has changed in five years and blogging has been an astonishing way of documenting the unforeseen. When Finley was two and a half, his Daddy left me for someone else and life as I knew it was turned on it’s lavender scented head. Where once there were routines and rituals I practiced in order to bond my family together with domestic glue, now there was a hole I needed to fill with a life of my own, a life less ordinary, a life that honoured who I am and who I want to be, while simultaneously providing the stability and security I craved and my little boy desperately needed.

The stories here, much like life, swing between the hilarious and the absurd. Sometimes they are no more than snippets from my vintage housekeeping life, the trials and tribulations of single parenthood, or the calamities I am certain every woman finds herself doing battle with, but only I, it seems, see fit to share with the blogosphere. Occasionally my Brocante Posts have been laugh out loud funny, sometimes tinged with the kind of loneliness that is palpable and once or twice so shamefully embarrassing I can hardly bear to read them again! But at it’s heart BrocanteHome is and always has been about making a home that thrills you right to your fingertips. A home you never want to leave. There are now more than 1500 posts on BrocanteHome touching upon an eclectic range of vintage-related subjects, but every one of the little essays in this collection, whether they be about the horror of dating in your thirties, or the scents that bring your childhood flooding back, are ultimately about the domestic rituals that shape our worlds, and hopefully show you, my reader, how, domesticity does indeed shore against our ruin.

And so here it is: the best of The Brocante Home Chronicles. Five years of my life as a Vintage Housekeeper."

2. I want to say a huge big thank you to everybody who responded to my call for your opinions on the future design of BrocanteHome. It has been something of a revelation and just goes to prove what a wonderful, dedicated, gorgeous audience I have here at Brocante! From your comments and emails, it seems opinion is strongly in favour of a brighter, dottier blog, and I am currently fiddling with a new design (the results of which can be seen in the image at the top of this post), but will probably leave a complete re-design until January, because only someone truly nuts would attempt to change the world this side of Christmas and I'm mad but I'm not that mad!

3. The next Christmas Countdown email goes out this evening, and I have thoroughly enjoyed putting this gorgeous set of emails together! The next one will go out in time for Stir Up Sunday and then the Countdown will begin in earnest on the 24th of November when sign ups for subscription will close, so if you are not signed up yet, get to it, for a scrumptiously cosy, BrocanteHome Christmas!

4. Finally, Season Two of the Vintage Housekeepers Circle is now closed, though a download of this years month long seasonal scrub will land in your in-boxes in the next few days (ready for January??). Many, many thanks to all who took part, and please make sure that you cancel your subscription by going into your Paypal account as soon as possible.

And that's all for now Folks! It is almost the end of the school day and preparations for quite the snuggliest of candle lit high tea's to be eaten before yet another round in the battle that is Junior Monopoly commences,  are in order.

Have a lovely, cosy November evening my Darling Housekeepers....

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

There I will be posting links to new posts on Brocante, news about what I am working on, early invites to new downloads, quick links to all the gorgeousness around the t'internet and links to all the special offers for online retailers I get sent and never quite manage to fit into posts here on Brocante, and you will find all this and more right there in your Facebook stream without ever having to go navigating the waters of the url address bar again. Genius mais non?

In other news, subscription for Season Two of the Vintage Housekeepers Circle is now closed, in time for the launch of all new Christmas Countdown coming later this month. The current season will end on October 31st, following the completion of the current Seasonal Scrub and a few weeks of all new Puttery Treats in celebration of our deliciously fresh, spanking clean homes that I hope you will all enjoy!

In the meantime do add your name to the no-obligation mailing list for Season Three here (starting at the beginning of January 2010) and I would be absolutely delighted to see you over on Facebook...

P.S: Look out for the BrocanteHome 5th Birthday Celebrations coming in November won't you?? Five years online, heavens above where did the time go? How come blogging still feels just as wonderful as ever..?

I do love you all so very, very much, you know?

 

 

 

Oh dear. I've known about Polyvore since the day it opened it's doors and knowing myself as I do, thought it best avoided, if I was to get anything done at all. And then today I was all curled up on the sofa with my laptop on my knee, Christmas In Connecticut on the DVD (Oh what undiscovered joy!), and a long tall glass of hot chai latte at my side and I decided to have a play...

And here I am, a stupid amount of hours later. The baby no more than dipped in the bath (Ok so he's five and no more a baby, but he'll always be my baby, so don't argue with me when I've got PMT coming out of my ears!), the evening meal no more than a token gesture with which to fill our stomachs and the house gone to the dogs...

And all for the most fun you can have wearing furry slippers. I'm always late to the party arent I?

I like to think of it as fashionably so...