Breathing

Hello again, sorry about the loooooooong gap between my posts of late, I feel like I can finally breathe again..it's just like we have been holding our breath for one whole month waiting to see what will happen with jobs, the house and all that horrid boring, scary stuff. Then of course there was the snow too, that really threw a spanner in the works...

looks like someone went mad with a foam fire extinguisher!

Pete has just this week, started a job doing something he was doing when we first met 20 years ago and has interviews lined up this month for better ones he'll hopefully be doing in 20 years from now. I can't tell you how many application forms have been filled in and phone calls made.It has been one long nightmare. I've always said it's better to have a couple of strings to your bow so that there's at least another skill to fall back on when you need to...and believe me, as much as he didn't really want to do that job again, he needed to.
Apart from holding my breath and turning blue and my brain trying to escape daily from my head, (and the horrid hospital visits as well) some nice things have been happening too.

I'll let you in on a secret....

My lovely Grannie who passed away last February left me a bit of money and it took nearly a whole year to arrive at my door but boy, was the timing perfect. The mortgage was paid just one day late, the bills were paid and the scary telephone calls I was going to have to make were put off just in the nick of time. It was like she had waited until we really needed it, until we had no more doors to go through and no more answers.She allowed us to breathe again. Big deeeeeep breaths of relief.
I felt sad at the thought of not being able to have something to remember my Grannie by, I have the memories and the photos, but I really would have liked something to look at every day and know that my Grannie had given me the pennies to buy it with. I had known for some time about the money and had months to think of things to spend it on.
I'm not a posh jewelery person, I dont wear a wedding or engagement ring and the necklaces and the rings that I do own are like those huge big chunky ones like Trinny wears (gardeners hands..I'll never be dainty, see) so it got me thinking of other things, a vintage caravan, some some vintage pretties, a trip to the seaside...oooh the possibilities of flittering away pennies on pretty things were almost endless!
Then the shit hit the fan when Pete lost his job and all these fantasies were gone in a flash.

I did however have enough left for one thing and it only came to me whilst staring out the window across the garden whilst wondering how we would ever have got out of this mess if it hadn't been for her thinking of us and the perfect timing that made it all be ok.

summer 2008

The rose arbour at the bottom of the garden had completely got out of hand, huge 15' whips of evil thorny lengths were dangling half way across the neighbours garden and it became so big that it had broken through the roof of the arbour, the fence and the wooden rail that it rested on.It became somewhere we no longer sat under without getting scratched or bits landing on you from above. Beautiful as it was with its little pompoms of pink and white, it was just too big for the space. Such a shame, but this garden is always evolving, so out it came.The poor, now rotten arbour that Pete had built came with it and made some very welcome firewood.


I am now the proud owner of a summerhouse.
Put up by Harry and Pete on the coldest day ever inbetween flurries of yet more snow (I made tea and supervised the doings)

Harry in his mad hat and his Dad's boots

It was something Grannie always had at each house, something we often got told off for mucking about in, or spinning around in the case of the Victorian one at her beautiful Manor House and something she had once bought as a present for my mum too.

It still needs quite a lot more work, we will 'vintagey-fy' it and put proper slate tiles on the roof like we did with the chicken house, paint it green and cream and I have a garage full of spare furniture to decorate it with.The garden will be rejigged, the awkward to cut hedge has gone, the pond will be moved and a trellis-topped (and honeysuckle covered) wall will be built out of old bricks (by Stinky George if he ever stirs from that permanent teenage sleep) but at the moment in the constant rain, it all looks rather awful and very muddy.
I can't wait. Roll on Spring, roll on Summer.
I'll sit there with my cup of tea,with no doubt a few creatures around me listening to radio 2 on my Roberts radio in my vintagey-fied summerhouse with its bunting up and be in utter bliss.

Thankyou Grannie. Thankyou so much.

The good,The bad and the downright lovely...

Wooooosh..there it goes, that was the year then, all over and done with for another twelve months.Here's to a good,prosperous and healthy 2010..Happy New Year!!
I'm not a great fan of December, I have to admit. I love the build up and the trimmings and excitement, reading everyone else's blogs and living the season through other's eyes but bad things have a tendancy to happen around this time of year for us so I'm not what you would call the life and soul of any party.
When I was younger my Grandparents both died, my Granny 'Mopsey' on Christmas day then several years later, my Grandpa 'Pop' on Boxing day. I always think of how my Dad kept a brave face all over Christmas, we never knew till later. There have been various other things happen in Decembers past which I wont dredge up, but it is a strange month which I tend to go a bit quiet in.
My parents are in Thailand at the moment, celebrating their Christmas and New Year Thai style with my sister and her family. It's a Christmas holiday they cut short back in 2004 that they are now having good and proper.
Yes, that 2004, that Christmas in paradise, that boxing day Tsunami.
I watched a program the other night that showed the full horror of the Tsunami as caught on peoples cameras. I kept thinking about it again and again, seven members of my family would have been there on that very beach on that very same Boxing day but through a strange twist of fate, came home early because of Josie being ill. Their hotel was totally destroyed by the water. It sends a shiver down your spine.So, Christmas for me, and I know it's a bit gloomy, means I tend to be thinking about those people who may be having a tough time or who are remembering loved ones. I really dislike the commercialism of it all and the endless buy, buy, buy adverts on TV.
Onto some cheerier things now, I had some lovely surprisesrecently, really unexpected ones, firstly I won a competition.. one of those easy peasy 'missing word' ones, I entered on a whim late one night.Never in a million years did I think my name would be drawn out of the hat, but low and behold, those lovely people at Cabbages & Roses sent me £50 worth of Burt's Bees goodies the very next day, all beautifully wrapped in C&R paper and smelling coconut-honey-minty gorgeous.. Needless to say I saved it all for opening on Christmas day..Just look at that cute polka dot bag!!! purrrrrrfect for a polka dot nut like me. Then, my lovely facebook buddy Julie in Sweden (swedishhouse blog) sent me the most gorgeous old Swedish toadstool candleholders.. she knew I was down in the dumps after a particularly miserable facebook post and tagged them with my name in a photo saying these are heading your way! Then as if things couldn't be any lovelier, one of my favourite blogging ladies, Steph sent a lovely parcel of vintagey goodies to cheer me up even more. oh I've missed the Russian cocktail sticks out the photo! they're such pretty colours too.

I can't begin to tell you how lovely it is when someone you are yet to meet does something like that. LOVELY it is...just lovely.
I'm still so behind with everything, right now I'm meant to be making some roman blinds for the dining room as they were next on the 'to do' list (which is currently at least four A4 pages long) I have had the white linen fabric for months but seeing as I can't afford the batons to go in them and they would look like big baggy knickers hanging at my window, maybe it's not such a bad thing. I did manage to finish my patchwork cushion at last and after a lot of deliberating backed it with some Cath kidston fabric I found on eBay that normally only comes in oilcloth items..yes Mel, it's Provence rose! well spotted! (the lady who sells it is in Hong Kong, so it must be where the CK things are made) My mum gave me some money for Christmas and told me I would be in trouble if it was spent on bills or food and wanted to see what I bought with it, real proof of pretty stuff..so, after I had hankered after that patchwork throw at the Malvern flea fair back in September..you know,'the one that got away' and I saw these four vintage placemats on Louise Loves, I knew that they would most certainly fill that void. I hand stitched two pairs of the mats together to make them into cushions, just as Louise suggested,backed with some vintage French linen..oooh 1930's prettiness! The colours seem to be very Spring-like and fresh. I wonder what all the fabrics had been before?I suppose the bad thing is that Pete still hasn't got a proper job, the agency work finished and we are quite literally clutching at straws and living off fresh air (and Quality Street sweeties morning,noon and night) but when you find messages like this on the fridge door, it can't be all that bad... can it?I've got a mad busy week next week with horrid prodding biopsy things going on again..yuk (six months comes round too quickly for my liking) and some very much needed extra days at work so I hope you'll forgive my utter rubbishness at message replying yet again x

ps..my front door is painted in OLIVE by Farrow & Ball!! I forgot to reply to you earlier Claire and Kristina..sorry! xx
I always find their colours come out much lighter than on the chart, so it does look very similar to Cooking apple green!