No going back now

I am forty one today.  Which means that I am now definitely in my forties.  I didn't mind turning forty a year ago.  I loved my thirties and felt that my forties would be even better.  And besides, there was somehow both a feeling of achievement to it and a sense of still being able to dance across the line back into my thirties if I wanted to.  But now I am definitely forty something.  No turning back.  Mmm - not quite sure what to make of that.

I have taken no photographs today.  But here, for no reason other than I like the image, is one I took a couple of years ago.

Maybe my forties will be the decade where I dress up in nothing but balloons....

Or maybe not.

C.x

Lest you think we don't know...

We were up at 5am in the House of NKK, eating bacon sandwiches and sipping tea.  We would have had champagne but I had to drag myself away from the television at some point and go to work.  Not before the ceremony, the TWO kisses on the balcony and the commentary on the dress.  Sigh.

C.x

Dandelion clocks and DIY

I seem to remember that Easter was the time when DIY stores in the UK went into a frenzy of advertising, as if the resurrection took place so that we could all re-tile the bathroom.  While our tiling days are yet before us in the house of NKK, we have been dabbling in a spot of DIY nonetheless.  Mr. P has been picture framing.

I can't get enough of these old LIFE magazines and have amassed quite a collection now.  But this one is  so trippy that it makes me smile every time I see it.

I indulged in a spot of 'styling' when we hung it up.  So now it hangs above a rather uninspiring tallboy from Ikea that used to live with the lid up revealing a mirror and lots of clutter that had accumulated in the shallow tray underneath.  But now I have closed the flap of the top of the tallboy and put together a jug I found for 20p in a car boot sale last week, and a bowl from Anthropologie that I bought awhile back to keep my earrings in (when I remember).

It's really transformed that corner of the room and now the lovely tile that used to hang gamely trying to hold its own against all that magnolia paint in our rented apartment has some company.

The tile is by Xenia Taler who has nothing to do with the other kind of tiling that goes on at this time of year...

I've been reading that England is awash with dandelion seeds.  So I thought you might like to see this lovely thing, also found last week.  (Okay, so I exaggerated when I said that we did nothing but house-hunting...)

Isn't it just lovely?  I just love dandelion clocks.  It's resin.  How do they do that?

Happy Easter everyone.

C.x

Home sweet home

LOOK!

I have clearly gone into nesting overdrive since we found our house.    And today I made this.  I had these lovely buttons among the treats I bought in Sydney at All Buttons Great and Small which I wrote about here.

And a lovely old jumper that I'd bought two winters ago for $5 in a charity shop.

It's cashmere and was always a little two small for me, but I wore it anyway until the elbows gave out.  So I decided to try my hand at felting.  (I know, boiling cashmere is more than a little decadent, but I reckoned it had probably had enough life as a jumper and might like to be something different now....)

It took three boil washes to get it to a point that I was confident enough to cut into it.  But today I'd had enough of having a doll sized jumper in my wardrobe so I snipped a sleeve off just to see what would happen.  And miraculously, the line held and nothing unravelled.

I already had the photo frame and was a bit bored with the flower photo that had lived in it for years.  And the creamy white backing is a section of course weave cotton from a much bigger piece with red blotches on it (more of which another time).

If I'm honest I wanted the pictures on the buttons to line up nicely with the holes for the thread.  But they wouldn't.  So I've made do with roughly aligning the washing line instead.

But all in all, I have to say I'm chuffed to bits with it.  It'll definitely be coming to the little old lady house.

Phil and Kirstie would be proud...

Hello there,

Thanks so very much for all your best wishes and support. You really are a lovely bunch of people. And of course you're right - it wasn't meant to be and we would likely have had trouble with the seller down the road, so best by far to walk away with a sigh of relief. I can say that now because you are also right that there was something else better out there all along - we have found our house! It's amazing really how life works. You think you want one thing. And then something else comes along and when you see it the thing you thought you wanted no longer is the thing at all. In fact, you wonder what you ever saw in it - dresses, men, menu choices, jobs... It was ever thus. And of course, it also applies to houses. ESPECIALLY to houses.

We thought we were looking for a crofter's cottage in a particular town. At least that's what we found first time around. So we set out to find the same again. In fact, we nearly bought a place that was bigger, better, smarter than that a few days ago in the next town along on the coast. But then the self-evident truth slapped us around a bit until we admitted to each other that it might very well be a decent house, but it wasn't in the right place at all. We have set our hearts on a town and that's where we want to be so there was really no point looking anywhere else. (Location, location, location...) Lots of appointments in random places made and cancelled. And then we were taken to see a house in the perfect spot in 'our' town. Minutes away from the sea and just off the High Street. Such a pretty location. It wasn't exactly love at first sight. This is a little old lady house. With little old lady decor. I couldn't see it at all. But Mr. P was determined.  And then slowly it worked its magic until all the little old lady decor fell away in my mind's eye and I could picture a cool contempory luxury look with lots of space and light.  And that was it.  Sold.

It needs LOTS of work.  I am lying awake at night moving walls around in my head.  Trying to figure out the art of the possible on a strict-ish budget.  But I know we'll get there.  And I can't wait.

Sorry there are no pictures - it really wasn't that kind of holiday.  And the little old lady house is camera-shy for the moment.

And lovely to be back in blogland.  I've missed it.  More soon.

C.x

Best laid plans

Put simply, a week after the completion of the sale of my flat, the seller of the house we'd set our heart on, the house by the sea, decided that the price we had agreed wasn't enough after all. He decided he wanted £50,000 more for the house by the sea.



Fifty thousand pounds! So, as politely as we could, we thanked him kindly and walked away.



And there you have it. No house, just house hunting. About to get on a plane to England. And instead of spending the time buying furniture and thinking about curtain fabric, we'll be doing a mad dash around other people's houses, wondering whether one of them could be ours.

Fingers crossed.

C.x

The best of excuses

It was Mr. P's birthday yesterday.  So of course that could only mean one thing...

I first made this cake in my teens and made it so often I copied it into a notebook (hard to believe I was ever that person).  But then for some reason I stopped and haven't made a chocolate fudge cake for years and years.  It was always going to be something chocolatey for Mr. P.  I tried to push the idea of Nigella's chocolate and ginger as recommended by Annie of Nimble Fingers and Steady Eyebrows but Mr. P was having none of it.  (Sorry Annie, but I will doubtless find another reason to bake that soon...)   And it being his birthday, I couldn't really say no.

It's a simple recipe (see below), which is really just an excuse to make the icing...

... which is oh so sweet, but somehow just perfect.

The cake stand was put to work again, and this is just the cake it was made for....

The weekend wasn't all baking though.  I tried to make an ipad case with this lovely fabric that I mentioned here...

I will post about the disaster that followed another time when I've stopped sulking and figured out how to fix it.  I may be some time.

My head was full of sewing on my way to brunch when I came across this:

I was running late so didn't have time to go an investigate.  I suspect it was for one of the local hairdresser, but what if it was the sewing fairy come to tell me how to fix my fiasco?

Hope you had a lovely weekend.

C.x
Chocolate Fudge Cake
6 oz butter or marg
6 oz dark brown sugar
2 large tablespoons cocoa blended with 2 tablespoons boiling water and left to cool
3 eggs
6oz self raising flour
2 oz ground almonds

Icing
2 oz marg
3 tablespoons milk
1 rounded tablespoon cocoa
8 oz icing sugar

Cake:
Mix all the ingredients together until smooth.  Divide between two 7 inch sandwich tins.  Bake for 25-35 minutes at gas mark 4. (Simple!)

Icing
Place milk, marg and cocoa in a saucepan over low heat until marg melts (do NOT allow to boil).  Cool a little.  Sieve icing sugar into bowl and add cooled mixture.  Beat until smooth  Leave to go completely cold before icing.

Enjoy!