Sofas... And A Trio Of Zebras

Seeing as I spend a fair bit of time on my sofa, I thought I would show you some that are on my wishlist:

This divine purple velvet chesterfield from Sofa Workshop.

It's a 4-figure price... it's so not going to happen.

Jean-Paul Gaultier for Roche Bobois.

Oh, and the trio of zebras? Have a peek at p.189 in April's Elle Decoration. Jonathan Adler and Simon Doonan have a little zebra family "spectating" at their ping pong table. Really sweet. I wonder if they've been animatronic'd, so their heads follow the path of the ball?

I Love These!

A new find today, from of all places, my BANK. Well, not them as such. But a 15 minute wait to see a Useless Customer Advisor meant a flick thru the natwest free magazine! Not purely dullsville; there were smatterings of style-stuff, wouldyabelieveit?? So on page 25 were some cute bags..... Envirosax, available thru their own site, and Amazon et al...

Quick Fix Decor!

In today's earlier post I demonstrated how rubbish I am at accomplishing tasks requiring planning, measuring, alignment and the use of power tools. Here are some examples of how the house is being temporarily prettied up while I fritter away valuable house-finishing time by lying on the sofa with Elle Decoration. Note the 2 large canvasses on the stairwell almost cover up the unpainted bits...

In a similar vein of hide-it-until-I-fix-it, the pink metallic wrapping paper is hiding some very serious wall-sanding which needs to be done. The mirror is just so cute - green gloss. Who loved it that much before I found it?

My library-cum-dressing-area, or rather the narrow landing!  



Decluttering

Hello, and happy new year!

This morning I am feeling like a lop-sided giraffe. I am having difficulty turning my head left. Not really a problem as I do not, and do not ever intend to, cycle anywhere. However it is a bit ouch. Which means time to do the exercises my chiropractor told me to do everyday. But laziness = not doing them everyday = seized up neck = exercises done as emergency measures to alleviate seized up neck... Anyhows, everything today is looking a bit like I've got sea legs/inner ear infection balance malfunction. The laptop is at a really strange angle. Its either that my rotten floor joists really are sinking or else my head must be tilted as a result of this neck thing. Will I get funny looks later in B&Q?

Ah, yes, decluttering. Everyone seems to be doing some. Mostly filing cabinets, aka black holes. I have so far done far less than I wanted to, as I got no further than making a heap of unworn clothes on the bedroom floor before Christmas. I have instead resorted to flicking through magazines looking fruitlessly for pictures of houses with actual stuff crammed into them. Either people who have stuff  hide it well, or actually have a life and don't bother trying to get magazines to feature their homes...

I would post a photo of how the kitchen table looks this morning but a written description is, perhaps, less scary. On said table there are:

• 3 pairs of school trousers waiting to be mended. They have been there for a very long time
• A tin of Quality Street containing just the toffees, which evidently no one is going to eat so they may as well be thrown away
• The christmas cards, to be cut into next year's labels instead of being slung in a carrier bag in the loft and being cut into labels hurriedly on christmas eve
• A new packet of scissors
• A tube of toothpaste - for the 11 year old's spot
• A load of bubble wrap from christmas pressies
• Last year's calendar
• One of the kid's christmas stockings
• Various ipod cables/phone chargers
• A string of sequins and 2 packets of beads
• Some plastic bags to go upstairs as bathroom binliners
• A new packet of thank you cards 

Which proves a) there is far too much inertia at Trashsparkle Towers, and b) I maybe ought to get some of those wonderful Holding Company stair baskets.

On a more positive note, in a bid to have Less Stuff In My Life I have:

• Cancelled one of my 4, yes, shamefully, 4!!!!, magazine subscriptions. Which is 25% less magazines to take up shelf space, and will mean 25% less time wasted lying on the sofa. In theory...
• Reduced the price of 2 of the books on my Amazon inventory. To hell with it, they will sell.
• Considered being more efficient by moving all things "for sale" to boxes under my bed. And then straightening up the deformed billy bookcase, by emptying it, bolting it to the wall, and re-arranging the remaining books and mags. Note, we are merely considering at this stage...
• Actually put the clothes from the sorted-out heap into a bag. Well, only about a third of the pile, as I was obviously feeling more ruthless the day I created the heap.

Trashsparkle's Thursday Televisual Treats

Earlier tonight Trashsparkle was zonked - brain absolutely addled by the day's academic complexities, and so had to have a bit of a lie-down on the sofa. Flicked through LivingEtc, and found myself quite fancying a papier mache zebra for the lounge.

Revived by the tonic of an-approved-of-by-Gillian-McKeith raw carrot in time for the always-delightful It Takes Two. Finding it a bit hard to see exactly what botox Patsy Kensit has had, or it could just be the tv screen badly needs cleaning. Have a gut feeling it'll be Gavin doing the sad we're-leaving dancey bit at the end this weekend, though the poor lad seems to think he's still in with a chance now that he's worked out you need to do a bit of acting during the dancing. He 'fessed up the other evening to spending A LOT of time in front of the mirror - and I don't think Gavin knows about irony, the little lambkin that he is.

And then, joy of joy, it was a whole hour of Keef, with the god that is Andrew Graham-Dixon thrown in for extra eye candy. The Keef book has, naturally, been on the Christmas list for the past 2 weeks....

 ps Yesterday's indecisive day-off resulted in a chance find of a gorgeous G-Plan style 60s wooden armchair in a charity shop - I only went in for a cardigan!

...Tonight's Excuse For Missing Most Of It Takes Two Because I'm Still Cooking Dinner Is...

... because I couldn't stop flicking thru World of Interiors. Beryl Bainbridge's house!!!! All restored, post-modernistly apparently, to funereal gothic gloom and catholic kitsch since her ex ripped it back to modernism in the 1960's

And the Chilean miners! About to get number 18 out. Mr Lovely President - now then, did  he really not know about the dangerous mining conditions his people worked under, about the exploitative managements of those mines??? Um, what a lovely pr exercise this is for him...

Get Thee To A Duvet

A very zonked Thursday, despite the glowingly gorgeous weather  - not helping, and in fact sabotaging, my energy levels by hitting the Fox's Crunch Creams after dinner. Alas nothing more sophisticated in the trashsparkle cupboards. I want to be snuggled up in my duvet, but its only 8.30something, and the small people need herding up to their lairs before me and the duvet renew our acquaintance. Oh, and the dishwasher fairy needs to be made to sort out them dishes...

In fact, talking about the small people, they are both lurking around in here, attacking more biscuits. A tribe of healthiness, that's us. If the emo finds my blog and hacks it, it'll become full of small, sweary words. Maybe I should move those biscuits?

Elle Decoration had arrived by the time I got home today - ooohh, lots of post-work sofa time. I took in the fact they'd described a mid-grey bathroom colour as "lush" before snooze-mode descended... a lot of snores (oh no I don't, oh yes you do) later the phone woke me up. "Leeeesa" wanted to tell me my computer was having some sort of relationship with "mah-leeesh-us" something or other. Should have asked her to define "mah-leeesh-us".

And Miss Claudia was wearing the 11 year old's jumper. Except he doesn't wear his down to the knees, or with heels.

And I really, really, will put some photos up soon so you can see my little collections of dust'n'trash...

Kitchen Sink Drama

To make amends to anyone whose stomach is churning after my description of the woefully-toxic kitchen, I am going to tell you about my bookcase.

It is the ubiquitous bookcase-named-after-a-goat, purchased solely to house the embarassingly large stash of house mags I accumulate . In these magazines are pictures of other people's kitchens, houses, lives... the ones where the living is effortlessly easy, and the stylist has primped the place for hours.

Somewhere between these magazines and my kitchen-from-hell stands my work in progress. An inherited 90's throwback, some of which I freecycled in favour of freestanding sideboards, with a pretty whitewashed brick wall (it was practical thermal insulation I stripped off, I learn later). And then it sort of morphed into a repository for all my vintage bits and pieces, and remains a more-than-one's-a-crowd nightmare where you have to be a contortionist to use the oven.

In the absence of a) cash, b) willpower and c) diy competence, I have ironically hung a fantastic 50's English Electric Company advert on the wall: "Whatever the size of your home, you've room for a refrigerator". As well as a black n white photo of Keef over the oven...

Maybe somewhere there's a mathematician with the inclination to come up with a formula to calculate how much time and money I've wasted on magazines x the amount I hate my kitchen. Until then, I think I just live in the wrong house...