Some pretties (I hope!).

OK, so after my foray into politics I thought it was about time I presented you with some no-brain-activity-required pretty pictures!

Here's my cabinet with all the pretties on it:


Last night we went to the driving range. I also bought some golf shoes so now I'm all kitted out! We stayed for dinner, the food there is so good. We came to conclusion it would be nice to go away on a golfing holiday. It's so nice to be outside in the fresh air doing something fun. I've booked up for a 2-hour lesson every 2 weeks. By the end of the year if I haven't got a swing like Tiger I shall be very disappointed! ;-)

It's just occurred to me I have a busy week next week - going to Paris for 2 days (work, not fun) and then on Sunday 7th I've got a stall here at the Old Dairy Open Farm Sunday! Eek, I haven't made a single thing. I'll have to get cracking this weekend. I'm thinking of making some union jack bags, crochet flower brooches, soap sets, cushion covers. Just keep it nice and simple really. :-)

I'm confined to the house today waiting for the bike that I've ordered to turn up. They say they will deliver between 7am and 3pm, but knowing my luck they will either turn up at 2.55 or not at all! Hope you all have a lovely day in the sunshine!

Spring watch, parakeets and veg plots

I'm watching Spring Watch, which is a lovely show on BBC 2. I'm sad to see Bill Oddy or 'Body' as we like to call him (Tom Hanks is also affectionately known as 'Thanks' in our household) is not presenting the show this year. I just love watching the birds and seeing he chicks grow. It's just a nice show to watch after a hard day at work (I generally roll in as it starts at 8pm!). Chelsea Flower Show has recently been on as I'm sure most of you know. Here's for the shocking revelation - I must confess to not being all that interested in gardening so I've been nodding and smiling (eyes glazing over) as people mention it. Perhaps I haven't quite reached the age where I get excited over hydrangeas (ooh, I knew the name of a plant other than rose or primrose! :-))? In fact, if anyone lives in Sussex and wants a Hydrangea than let me know because I have one going spare. I just get bored in the garden, I love veggie growing because in my head there's a purpose to it, but I haven't inherited my mum's love of gardening. Perhaps as I get older I'll get the bug? Anyway, we have all these beautiful national trust places near by (Sheffield Park Gardens and Wakehurst Place) and I'm just that fussed either way whether we go or not.

As the name of my blog would suggest, I started this blog to record the progress of my veg growing (and renovating our first house). OH and I have been growing veg for a while now, we were quite the trend setters being by far the youngest (early twenties) allotmenteers in our allotment in Wimbledon. We had a large plot of about 30x15 metres, which was head high in brambles and was cleared to ground level in no time. We had quite a lot of succes and even managed to grow Okra (Ladies fingers) and water melons! It's so much fun when things work!

Now, not a lot of people know this, but in South London there are wild parakeets! We used to see them all the time at the allotment! When they filmed 'The African Queen' back in the 50s, they released 2 thousand of them and they have since thrived! There's an interesting fact for you that you can slip into conversation at a party! ;-)

Now of course we no longer have need for an allotment - I have my secret garden, also known as the 'allotment' out the back of our house. I had a look yesterday and the potatoes, broad beans and onions are coming along nicely. We planted out the sweetcorn yesterday (nothing like home grown sweetcorn!) and I have 3 of my tomato plants (grown from seed, now about 3 foot tall!) in an old Belfast sink. No photos I'm afraid, I can rarely be bothered to take any (so lazy!). So you'll have to make do with a photo of me with three chins (god, I need to lose weight!) from Saturday!

[Observe the empty dessert bowl! I don't normally look quite this miserable!]

TTFN

Sian x

Questions - feel free to join in!

Just seen this on another blog so thought i'd have a go. Feel free to join in.

1. What are your current obsessions? rockability and swing clothes, head scarves, wide belts, funky glasses, accessories, interior design


2. Which item from your wardrobe do you wear most often? my wide belts and shirts (think old-school nurse!)

3. What's for dinner? homemade pizza with mozzarella, cheddar, pepper, tomato, olives and onions, with a few fennel seeds

4. Last thing you bought? some cherub candle sconces

5. What are you listening to? Mark Ronson

6. If you were a god/goddess who would you be? Some sort of kick-ass feminin godness type thingy. I don't know! :-)

7. Favorite vacation spots? Barcelona/Northern Spain and Northern France

8. Reading right now? Don't have time to read these days, but I started to read 'That Summer' by Andrew Greig

9. Four words to describe yourself - fidget, enthusiastic, conscientious, honest

10. Guilty pleasure? Heavenly cupcakes from Park Life in Worthing!

11. Who or what makes you laugh until you’re weak? Michael McIntyre or Jimmy Carr


12. Favorite thing to do in the summer? Eat dinner outside

13. Planning to travel to next? Paris beginning of June, work mind you!

14. Best thing you ate or drank lately? Lavender cake - I just LOVE anything with lavender in.

15. When did you last get tipsy? 2004

16. Favorite ever film? Memento, Leon, American History X, Star Wars...and many more.

17. Care to share some wisdom? The only obstacles to your success and the ones you create. If you want it, go for it!

18. Least favorite part of your day? When the alarm goes off!

19. What make/model was your first car? Vauxhall Nova called Naj (11 years ago now!). I saved up £2000 for it starting when I was 16 to when I eventually bought it when I was 18!

20. Favourite song to sing? Not really got one! Probably a Jazz/swing number - easier to sing than warbling rubbish. Edit - this song is ace!

The great MP expenses debate - what are your thoughts?

This story has been running for a good few weeks now: the expenses claims filed by various MPs over the years.

All I've been hearing on the radio and seeing on the TV are various people saying "it's disgusting, I have to work so hard and I don't get this...". I'm not condoning some of the ridiculous claims (clearing a mote, ride-on lawn mowers etc), but I do think we should get a little perspective on this.

1) Their actual annual wages are a pretty pitiful (for the stress involved) £60-£65k a year. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to do their job, certainly not for those wages. I think they should be paid at least twice that and then have no expenses.

2) If you worked for a company and they were actually inviting and encouraging you to claim for things then you would wouldn't you? Common sense should have told some of them that their claims, on tax payers' money, were rather unethical, but nevertheless they are ligitamate under the current system. Surely the system is as much to blame as the individuals abusing it.

3) I hardly think it's fair to say 'I work hard and don't get these privileges' (quoting several members of the public sampled). It's rather like saying 'it's not fair, David Beckham gets paid millions of pounds and I have to work so hard'. You get what you work hard for in this life - if you are ambitious and truly work hard than I think you can accomplish anything, as they have done. I don't begrudge anyone their success. As I say, I wouldn't swap my job for theirs any day!

I'm not sticking up for MPs, far from it, but I do think we should make the system more transparent - give them the pay they deserve for being in the public eye and working hard and let that be it.

Feeling better today as you can probably tell! :-) I would be interested to hear what you all think about this?

Sick as a dog and some makeovers

I've been full of cold all week, struggled into work coughing and spluttering on Monday and Tuesday and promptly got sent home on Tuesday! I think it might be the fact that that I sneezed about 50 times in a row!


Anyway, I thought I'd show you the firescreen makeover I did over the weekend. I used the trusty Dulux Eggshell, I buy the trade stuff that you get at the Dulux trade centres because the paint dries so quickly (I have no patience!). The entire makeover took me about 1 hour. First I took the back off, which was brown and ripped, then I took out the tapestry and cleaned the glass. I put some trade undercoat on (dry in less than 30 mins) and then did one coat of the Dulux duck egg water-based eggshell. While that was drying I stapled some heavy duty French ticking fabric on the back and used some cord that OH's mum got me in a charity shop to finish the edges. I'm really pleased with it, looks so much better than before.


I also distressed the shelves and put some wallpaper in the back.

Bathroom inspiration

While I'm not feeling all that wonderful (sinuses all blocked up, been threatening for weeks!) I thought I'd look on the internet for some bathroom inspiration.

[Bathroom I designed in our old house]

This is my old bathroom, it's quite French inspired and reminds me of a scaled down Parisian hotel bathroom. I love it, but it suited our old house more, which had quite high ceilings, picture rails and white woodwork. When I was designing this bathroom I took loads of cuttings from magazines and tried to recreate some of the ideas using cheaper alternatives. I found the generic and rather boring bathroom suites that were on offer at the time were quite uninspiring, I wanted to create a luxurious bathroom that you would want to relax in. I also wanted to combine my love for all things antique and retro into the bathroom. The mirror and the cabinet are made from MDF which has been distressed. They cost me about £70 in total, I put the blue rose fabric behind the glass - it matched the roman blind we had made (unfortunately I don't have a picture of that!). The bathroom suite was from Bathstore.com. I love all their things, much better quality than lots of other places, yet not over priced. I think this sort of bathroom looks lovely in a Victorian town house.

As much as I love this bathroom, I would like to adopt a slightly different approach in our cottage. I want more old pine and a more rustic look.

[Existing bathroom]

As you can see the bathroom we currently have is a hangover from the 80s. Lovely peach suite, yum! First things first, we need to knock through some walls and remove chimney breasts (don't worry, not proper fire place ones, but small chimney stacks). The cottage used to be a traditional double-fronted, L-shape layout, with the classic side return. In the late 80s this was filled in with a 2-storey extension to create a dining room, a 3rd bedroom and a large landing. When they put this extension in they were not clever enough to realise that there was no longer any need to keep the existing small landing at the top of the stairs.
[Old landing, can just see the old outside wall. On the right is my craft room door and on the top is the bathroom door.]

You see where the door to the bathroom is (above top), well we are going to brick that up, and then make the door to my craft room right on the top of the stairs, making it bigger by about 2 metres square (making it a decent sized double), and then the door to the bathroom will be where this old window is here on the new landing.

[Old window on new landing]

Once we have done all this we will have much more flexibility and will make the bedroom and the bathroom much bigger.

Here's for the fun part - what the bathroom will look like!

I love greys and blues in the bathroom, there's something so relaxing and clean and fresh about those colours. The bathroom will be painted white, with wood pannelling all round. I will probably paint the wood panelling in a blue/grey colour.


For the sink, I want a large Victorian pine wash stand (unpainted) and then I want to plumb in a small belfast sink and have these gorgeous old brass taps.
We will have a seperate white shower with plain white tiles inside. The airing cupboard I want painted MDF with chicken wire and fabric curtains just like my DVD cabinet. The fabric I like is this really pretty cabbages and roses Hatley blue, isn't it pretty? The bath and toilet will probably be the same as our old bathroom - a roll top bath and high level toilet.
[MDF cabinet with curtains and chicken wire]

[Cabbages and roses Hatley blue]

[Wall sconces by bath]

I want to have some sconces by the bath. Rather than spending a fortune on antique brass, I will probably buy modern ones like these and then leave them outside for a bit so that they are naturally tarnished and aged for an authentic look. I would then like a small chandelier. Bathroom lighting is usually so dull, and there's no reason why without good ventilation you can't have beautiful light fittings! I've never bothered about having 'proper' bathroom lights. :-)

[Painted over mantel mirror works perfectly in the bathroom]

[Edwardian blue and white tiles would look perfect in the bathroom]

I like the huge over mantel mirror we currently have in our bathroom, it adds that sense of decandence and luxury that modern bathroom mirrors just don't have. I saw these lovely Edwardian tiles on ebay, aren't they gorgeous? I thought they would look so pretty behind the sink.
[Lovely original window]

Finally for the window dressing, we have a really pretty little window here. I think it would look gorgeous with sweet little curtains and a pelmet. Sairer has some really pretty curtains in her bathroom.
[Sairer's lovely bathroom curtains.]

I hope you have enjoyed my little tour. :-)

Bargain wall cupboard makeover

Back to the weekday slog tomorrow. It's been great having the golf lessons - we went out today on the par 3 course and I managed to hit some amazing shots that I'm really proud of. I've got my my long game sussed (well ish), just need to work on chipping and putting. Anyway, clubs have been ordered I just need some golf clothes - luckily the club we went to is really relaxed, usually you need to be smart casual, but I think you can get away with tracky bottoms and sweatshirt there. We went to this wonderful place near Battle. If you want to have a go it's one of the few places in the country that does a structured course like this. It's in a lovely countryside setting, and has a great restaurant and hotel so you could almost make a holiday out of it!

Here's some before and after photos of the cabinet I got at the Flea Market.

Before:

After:

Bargains galore, golf and pretty flowers

I had so much fun today! OH and I are having golf lessons - we spent an hour and a half today putting, then moved onto the driving range to practice our swing, during which they filmed us to see if we could improve the technique in any way. I am so impressed with the course - the instructor is so good. Owing to his expert instruction, we are now at the stage where we could play a round of golf after just 4 hours of tuition (that's not to say I would WANT to just yet, give it a few days!).

I always had it in my mind that golf is for toffs, business men (networking with clients/colleagues), men who have kids and want to 'get away from it all', and old people. However, I am now eating my words because it's actually great fun, good exercise, you get out in the fresh air and is a great way for us to spend time together.

Naturally, after a hard day golfing ;-) (seriously, my back aches and I do feel exhausted!) I thought I'd make the most of not being in work today and pop into the Lewes Flea Market. It was loaded with goodies today. I spotted a food safe for just £20! I've seen them go for over £100 online. I didn't buy the food safe because we already have one from OH's grandmother's house, but if you want/need one go and grab yourself a bargain. After 5 mins of browsing I had spotted 2 projects that I can't wait to get started on. Firstly, this lovely firescreen for our bedroom (£15) and secondly this wall hanging shelf/cupboard (£22). I have been looking for something to put up in our dining room for ages, but all the shelves I have seen on ebay have been painted up in white, which I'm sure you have gathered is not my cup of tea. So the thought of having to pay £60 for some shelves all painted beautifully in a colour I would then have to go over, well it's just madness really isn't it?! :-) So these will both be painted blue and get the 'Sian' makeover treatment as soon as I have a spare few hours.


I've been so busy lately I've not even been able to truly appreciate the beauty of the Wisteria this year. It's absolutely stunning! Wisteria only flowers for a couple of weeks a year so I like to take as many photos as possible so I thought I would share some with you. There are also some photos from the garden.
[This is the blossom on the crab apple tree - can't wait to make the Jelly again this year!]

Oh god, I'm being all 'twee' and starting to sound like a lady that lunches aren't I? Anyway, I must dash off and rustle up some tea and cakes. ;-)

Brighton Artists open houses 2009

I had a wonderful day today wandering around various Artists houses in Brighton and Hove. I am exhausted though - I didn't realise just how far we had walked today! It's amazing how much talent there is out there, it was really inspiring so if you fancy a cheap day out admiring art and lovely Victorian town houses do go along.

I didn't take my camera (thought it might be taking the micky a bit!), but I thought I would show you some of my favourites:

I am so tempted by this screen print, I love it! It's called true blue gritty kitty by Eve Poland and was £130 framed. If you look on her site, she had the most amazing kitchen. I'm not saying I would have it or want it, but I admire the fact that she has chosen something she likes rather than conforming.

Another artist I really liked was Andrew Wilkey - you get the impression that his paintings have a hidden depth and meaning to them rather than just being pretty pictures. This was my favourite, it's called Daybig.

Mike Edwards also had some really interesting ideas. He used pins, sticky dots and words to create amazing and really quite unique images. Really interesting stuff. I would certainly like to have a go at making my own picture with the sticky dots. :-)

Overall, it was a really inspiring day and I have lots of really good ideas to try and incorporate here so watch this space. :-) I would like to make a large collage picture with a British theme using images and various items.

I hope you have all enjoyed your weekend?

TTFN

Sian x

I'm back!

My goodness, I've been extremely busy the last couple of weeks. In to work early not leaving until 8pm! There just aren't enough hours in the day. It seems in this life you either have bags of time, but no money or money and no time at all. It's hard to get the balance sometimes. I've had lots of compliments on my work this week so it's obviously paying off all my hard work. I have 3 days off next week thank goodness; OH and I are having golf lessons! :-) We are really making the most of our time at the moment - Carpe Diem! :-) I've been wanting to get my pilot's license for years now, but at 5k minimum it's a little out of my price range. Having watched Country File the other night I looked into getting my glider pilot license - it's a fraction of the cost and there are lots of places locally where I could train. I will report back of course as soon as I've had my first lesson. :-)

I have a few thank yous to Clare my 'Freestyle' swap partner. She send me some lovely things - I particularly love her handmade brooch. Very pretty indeed! I made your things a while ago I just haven't made it to the post office so please bare with me!

Also, thank you to Mary Poppins for sending me some extras (heart below) when I ordered some pretty post cards from her. Please do go and visit her blogshop, she has some lovely things.

Also, thanks you to Bekimarie for the PIF pretties (wire heart below). I have packaged up my PIF things to send out so I will be contacting the recipients shortly.


OH's mum found some gorgeous things in her local charity shop (much better than the ones in Worthing near my work!). Look at this lovely tea set.


Here are some photos of the lovely things I've bought and received over the last couple of weeks:[Got this book from OH's uncle who was having a clear out - I hope it wasn't one of your valuable ones? :-)]

[Found a new home for some of my china cups - anyone else have a china addiction?]

[Pretty trug bought from Vintage Amethyst and the red wooden bunting and chalk board below]


Before I head off to eat my home made pizza (yum) here's a 15% off CK voucher. That should help with the 'she saw us coming' prices.

TTFN

Sian x