Winter garden

Hello there,

I have a sore throat and earache.  Whoa is me.  I've slept most of the day today.  But the weekend - the weekend was a delight.  Much rummaging and pottering and gossiping and drinking and eating and general merriment.  Which probably led to the grots today, but worth it.  We had a sprinkling of snow on Saturday.  Enough to make it look pretty by the sea without too much disruption.

We walked through the churchyard on the way to the sea and came across this.  Just beautiful.

The snowfall overnight meant the garden was entirely transformed on Sunday.  I haven't shown you the garden yet because it's a complete tip.  But there is nothing like snow to pretty things up.  Here, then, is my garden.  Or at least little bits of it, dressed in white.

Off to dose up on hot toddy now.  

C.x

Glow

Hello everybody,

Brrr.  Hope you're managing to stay warm.  It's sooo cold here, but beautifully sunny so that's okay. And I'm trying to contain my excitement because we have visitors coming for the weekend.  Two whole days of eating and drinking and chatting and general girliness.  And it's finally given us the incentive to sort out the bedroom that we've been using as a dumping ground since we moved in.  So this is how it looks now.

I made the lampshade this morning.  Can I just say that again - I made the lampshade this morning.  Yes indeed.  As my sister will tell you, I am a bit obsessed with lampshades at the moment.  It's so difficult to find nice ones for anything approaching a reasonable price.  And then it occurred to me that I could make my own. 

It was a bit fiddly and I needed to call in Mr. P to help at some point.  I suspect it's the kind of thing that gets easier with practice.  Which is good because I have a second kit and am waiting for some Etsy fabric to cover it with.  

Like it?

Have a lovely weekend.

C.x

Not a great first date

First, just to let you know that service from the house of NKK will be intermittent at best in the next few weeks.  Posts will be random and commentary on all your lovely blogs will likely be lacking.  For tomorrow, we are off to see our house by the sea.  Hurray!  Then back for three weeks and then sailing out for good.  It'll be a bit of a roller coaster ride.


Okay, so to my date with Prints Charming.   I have such a feast of colour for you today. 

You will be pleased to know that I did not let you down.  I did not swear once (well, not out loud anyway...).  As to the rest...


It was not a very auspicious start.  I arrived 45 minutes late.  I hate being late.  I am rarely so.  My only excuse is that my life is even more chaotic than usual at the moment.  So, I got the dunce's chair rammed into the back corner with the edge of the table and the table leg to contend with.  Not so good.

Luckily the lovely women of Prints Charming allowed me to think it was no big deal and chatted away while I got my act together.   


I am left handed.  When it comes to hand sewing, this usually makes your average right handed seamstress run away screaming.    But they managed to remain quite composed.  I kept forgetting to tie the knot to start a stitch, so it kept slipping through.  No cursing please.  Big sigh and start again.  

What really killed me was the chain stitch.  I understood completely the theory, but I kept forgetting to anchor each stitch so that it all came unravelled in a most annoying way.  (You are allowed to laugh, by the way.  I won't be the least offended.)It wasn't helped by the fact that I kept getting distracted, wanting to take photos of all the lovely treats they'd bought with them and had strewn around the place.

And I was mesmerised by the detail of the sample work everywhere.

Not to mention the teacher's necklace.

But it seems there really is no short cut to the swear a lot/rip it/start again mode of learning that I have developed this year.


Undaunted, I came away armed with two instruction books (hurray - there's a book for it!).

And after much consideration on colour choice, these lovely threads.

They will be used to adorn (sic) this lovely blue bird.

You will understand from the scraggy bits of thread messing up the place that I already have plans in the swearing/rip it out/start again department.

More soon I hope from our house by the sea!


C.x

Pure escapism

Recently, I've come across Anthology Magazine.  It's published every quarter and is absolutely delicious. 

                                                                                 (All photos from Anthology Magazine.)

                                                                                (All photos from Anthology Magazine.)

I have an idea to do a sort of 'sea wall' in our new house, full of all sorts of things from Etsy and ebay and flea markets  all loosely related to the sea.  But really, I just want to arrange for everything in this house to be delivered to my door.  Sigh.

And yesterday, they featured this collection:

(All photos from Anthology Magazine.)

Clearly, they are stealing my ideas :)

C.x

Ups and downs

We are due to receive planning permission for the extension to the house by the sea tomorrow.  Today we got an email from the Council saying that the archeological service has marked our application.  This is not good.  I have visions of having to dig the foundations with a teaspoon.  Hopefully, we will be able to convince them that a close built in the 60s isn't the obvious place for pirate treasure.  And if it were, wouldn't they have found it in the 60s?   Fingers crossed.

Slim pickings at the flea market this weekend.

But I did snag this lovely at the charity shop down the road.

It may not win any prizes, but I love it.

C.x

Wired

Thanks so much for all your good wishes.  You really are lovely, and I am so glad you want to share this new phase with me.

So, how many electric sockets do you have in your house?  And are you happy with their location, or do you find yourself trailing extension cords around the place so you can do the ironing while you watch the tele, or do you have to drag the mixer out from a corner every time you use it or walk half way around your house with the kettle in your hand to make a brew, or get half way up the stairs when the Hoover konks out and you're left with a flex dangling in mid air over the banisters?  And if you were given a chance to start again, would you know exactly where the sockets should go?  And the radiators?

These are the things that are keeping me awake at night at the moment.  I had what felt like 5 minutes to walk around the building site that is our house by the sea last week with two builders who wanted to know where everything would go.  In rooms that look like this

.  To be fair, they're not all that minimalist.  Most look like this:

And the kitchen's practically finished:

(Just kidding...)

And all things considered, I think I had a pretty good idea of what would go where.  (When we finished, the builders told me I could run a war I was so decisive.  That's a good thing, right?)  But now, everyone I speak to tells me that you can never have too many sockets.  And I'm not there anymore to figure it out.    Still, I have my own collection of extra length extension cords to fall back on.

And I have also chosen bathrooms, carpets,  wooden flooring, interior doors, a kitchen, taps, and tiles.  But bad for 10 days.

But in case you thought you'd tuned into the wrong blog, I have also been buying fripperies.  What do you think a girl needs most when she has a hall that looks like this?

Why, THIS, of course!

Isn't it just lovely?!  I'm thinking it needs a new cushion cover, but then I'm so handy with a needle that that shouldn't present any problem...

I bought it at a vintage fair near the house.  I was so excited I had to tell the poor guy selling it all about the 60s house it would be going to live in.  He tried hard to pretend he gave a fiddle.

Other than that, I was very good, except for one complete frippery which I couldn't resist.

It was only a tenner and the label said it still worked but needed a battery.  Of course it was only when I got it home that I realised that it needs one of those big old square batteries that you can't just pick up in the local Homebase.  So now I'm on the hunt for the right battery.

All in all, I think it's a good thing that I'm back in Manhattan.  Otherwise I'd be tormenting the builders and sneaking stuff in under the dust sheets.

C.x

All change, please. All change.

So, I have big news.  I resigned yesterday.  And we are moving back to England.  I have been bursting to tell you for the longest time, but somehow it didn't seem right to tell you lovely ladies when my team didn't know.  Pretty much no one knew actually.  But now I want to shout it from the rooftops.  There are BIG changes ahead in the house of NKK.  I've never bungie jumped (I'm a bit of a scaredy cat like that). But this is how I imagine bungie jumping to be - scary and thrilling and a little bit edgy.  In three months we sail out of New York on the Queen Mary II (delusions of grandeur, I know...).  And then we go to live in our house by the sea.  Hurray!

C.x

Not quite AWOL

Hello there,

Just to say that I am gadding about and full of news, but it'll be a week or more before I can get my act together and post properly.  For now, I just wanted to say that we have completed on the purchase of the old lady house by the sea.  HURRAY!  There's about 12 weeks of buildings work and dust before I can get to the fun part of decorating etc.  My mind is spinning with choices of everything from carpets to where the radiators will go.  And it's all being done at a mad fast forward speed because I have to go back to work on Monday.  For now we're 'glamping', which basically means living in an empty house with a few sticks of random furniture, a camping stove and the blessings of hot water and a loo.  (It's amazing how little you need when you put your mind to it.)  But I miss being able to share it all with you, so will be full of news when I'm back.

Stay tuned!

C.x

At it again

I have written before that my natural instinct is to looks to books as having the answers to everything.  I am busy decorating my little old lady house in my head (the finance and legal bods haven't registered the same sense or urgency), and I am accumulating a small collection of books to help me do this.  I love these books.  They confirm my view that it is cool to be rummaging through flea markets and craft fairs for that special something that speaks to me and will make our old lady house ours.  And they have such pretty pictures...

(if anyone knows where to get this picture of the Queen, I'd love to hear from you :)

This kitchen belongs to Aurelie Mathigot, the crochet queen, who seems to be able to make just about anything with a hook and yarn.

And I love this yellow collection where the grey slate is such a fab backdrop to the blossom and retro kitchen ware that you might not look at twice on its own.

I also crave the simplicity of this kitchen set up.  If and when we ever get this house, I'm planning on plain white cupboards to counter level and shelves on top.

I had vague impressions of this kind of collection for my own sideboard when I bought the Danish vase last week.  But the best thing about Decorate is that it has got me thinking about room plans.  So I have enrolled Mr. P to draw up rooms to scale and cut outs of our furniture so that I can literally play house.  A poor substitute for the real thing, but still...

I love this Ercol-style furniture, and have unearthed a fab nest of tables on John Lewis's website.  A girl can dream...

More cupboards with shelves overhead, this time from a house in Brooklyn...

And finally the clean lines of this house from Perfect English Cottages.

I know there are hundreds of websites out there with just this kind of inspirational content.  And I do look at them.  But to me, there's no substitute for settling down with a cup of tea or a glass or wine to lose myself in these pages.  I love the weight and feel of them, and how the content slowly reveals itself as I flick through.  And I usually have my ipad on hand to search on ebay or look up an idea if the inspiration hits me.  So hooray for books, I say.  It's also a little bit more than that.  In truth, I am having a shocker of a time at work at the moment and burying myself in these books, dreaming about my old lady house by the sea, is just the antidote I need.  If only the money and legal people could get their act together...

C.x