Another Fine Use Of Vintage...

....too quick for me to grab the camera, Wilbur had just been sitting on these old imperial scales. I popped him back on, out of curiosity: he weighs 2 pounds. Don't ask me what that is in funny kg language... I can't/won't do metric, but its the same as a large bag of sugar;)

The gerbera plant next to the scales is Being Very Good and has 2 bee-yoo-ti-ful candy pink flahs now. Strange that, as when I bought it 6 or so weeks ago the flowers were cream'n'purple, the way passion fruit flowers are.  When I get my act together I'll put it in a bigger pot... who knows how big it could get or how many flahs we might get...?

In the Rest Of My Life, chaos reigns; the 14 year old has sort-of dropped out again, after 3 clashes with authority at school, each one sensationally mismanaged.... With that, and the long days off I have now that I'm not at the World of Work til after the summer holidays, I'm regularly dipping into The Bad Place that is inertia far too frequently. I've acquired more hauls of vintage frockery, which remain in bags until I can be arsed to to take photos.... I think I need a Plan Of Action...

***************

And now for the bit where I'm Not A Film Blogger But.... some lovely films I've seen recently:

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (1958) - when Liz Taylor died I realised to my shame I'd never seen any of her films, like Butterfield 8, Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, Giant... This is the one with the iconic still of Liz wearing that white slip, great portrayal of family dynamics, especially if you're a daughter-in law...

A Very Long Engagement (2004, Audrey Tautou) - caught this accidentally late the other night and stayed up til stupid o'clock watching it as it was so lovely...

The Graduate (1967) - one I'd somehow never seen, more screamingly funny than I'd expected, and the frocks! The excellent hair! The chairs! The cigarettes! See it if you haven't... And obviously it has a dark undertow of tight morals, jealousies, and why getting married just because you're pregnant, like they had to do back In Them Times was So Wrong...

Moonrise Kingdom (2012, Wes Anderson) - lurved this, very very sweet and beautifully shot. Reminded me of Tim Burton's Big Fish...

Cosmopolis (2012) - I'll say nothing as this is new so don't want to risk a spoiler..... go see it and make your own minds up about this. Will it become seminal? Who can tell...

I Think I'm Becoming A Philater...Er... Stamp Collector!

Image from http://www.bfdc.co.uk


This wasn't going to be my First Post (boom boom!) of The Year, but then The Divine Helga reminded me of my growing Crush on Old Royalty in her post about coming over all Queen Victoria-esque: http://helgavontrollop.blogspot.com/2012/01/feels-like-touch-of-victoria.html




What with the Diamond Jubilee coming up this year there are going to be some yummy stamps being issued by the Royal Mail. Such as this kind of thing.







Image from https://www.myroyalmail.com

There were also these 2007 60th Wedding Anniversary stamps -

a bit of Couture Excellence in black and white:

Image from http://www.bfdc.co.uk

Just before Christmas I picked up a book on more of the Old Lovelies. Its full of splendid pictures of the Victorian and Edwardian ancestors. What with being too busy eating mince pies I haven't scanned it yet, but I'm planning a Bit Of A Feature on the landing wall using images from the book and some of these stamps.


It will all be joining this Jamie Reid poster:





And possibly this photo. I once kidded an impressionable young man these were my grandparents:


(Image by Patrick Lichfield)


.... which reminds me; must decide where we're going this summer!


Image from http://habituallychic.blogspot.com/2011/02/governor-of-bahamas.html.

HabituallyChic's blog has tons of fabulous Duke and Duchess of Windsor photographs. I'm going grab a coffee and sit and sigh over them all now....

Resolutions 2012

1. Must. Not. Have. Any. More. Pretzels. In. The. House. Ever...
2. Must stop buying vintage Quality Street tins. Its getting silly now...
3. Ditto posters. Even ones that are not massive. I do not have enough walls.
4. Must remember that cleaning CAN be relaxing, de-stressing and CAN involve the whole family.
5. Maybe I should start delegating the cooking too, for the same reasons.
6. Will read more books again, even though magazines are easy visual eye candy.*
7. Will sort my books out so they are grouped properly, instead of bunging new ones into random available spaces.

*Have started John Steinbeck and Robert Capa's 1947 "Russian Journal". Saw some fuss in the press about schools allegedly copping out by setting Steinbeck's mere 6-chapter "Of Mice And Men" to year 10 kids. Michael Gove, Minister for Something To Do With Making Children Cleverer, thinks children should read 50 books a year. That's one a week. Maybe he means short-ish books. I'm not tying either of my kids to chairs to make them "achieve" a novel a week...

The Day After Tomorrow...

... is Back To The World Of Work. Although seawater getting into the streets of New York over the past few days does seem a bit familiar too...

What have I done to prepare for re-entering the World Of Hectic? The life that is getting myself into a fit, presentable and coherent state, and managing to prise 2 similarly prepared offspring out the door at an unholy hour of the day? Which I have not had to do since early June? Well, not that much really.

• Last night I dreamt that the 13 year old's friend, who will also be at his new school, was driving a milk float whilst trying to learn Polish by linguaphone. The friend has autism, and the multi-tasking was not going well.
• Tomorrow is the day the 13 year old becomes 14. Having a birthday the day before going back to school is a bit bleurrggghh at the best of times. It being the day before, when he hasn't got a settled sleep pattern, a teetering inclination to go to the new school anyhow after dropping out for a year, etc, is perhaps not the best day to fill him with chocolate, birthday cake 'n' all that. Luckily he hasn't discovered booze or drugs yet...
• So we have a Sort Of Plan. Yesterday we went out and did some lovely spending on things that currently make him happy - hoodies, lego, lunch... so we can spend tomorrow a bit more quietly (but still stuff ourselves with cake). And I will keep my fingers crossed.

As for myself, my sort-of plans to sell, sell, sell lots of vintage loveliness during the summer panned out into procrastination, as I ignored the plastic crates piled high that prevented me from getting to my wardrobe area, and thus forced me to create even more piles of not-put-away clothes. Not a good scene. All that I managed to tick off the list was some speedway badges from the 70's, a wooden chair, and a book. Not much of a dent in the mess that has overtaken my room...

With typical good timing I have, at the eleventh hour, gone into decluttering overdrive, and decided Its All Got To Go. Now. I've spent 2 evenings brutally sorting out what to get rid of. 3 bags for the charity shop, and a 4th ready to fill today of more stuff I don't wear.

Oh, and I did some stupid thrifty fence mending on Saturday too - which involved creating a support for a rotten fence post out of a plastic dustbin filled with bricks from a skip. The neighbour is American, and likes his yard Tidy. Part of his fence leaning into my garden was not doing it for him. And given the hurricane conditions over his homeland, I thought having the fence nice'n'straight would give him a bit of zen. 

So I'm a bit tired, have muscle fatigue, and will probably oversleep on Thursday. Or not be able to sleep a wink in a blitz of over-exhausted insomnia.

Sunday Inspiration

 Ok, I just wrote, and abandoned, a post moaning about it being halfway through the holidays, feeling unspecifically frazzled, and generally getting all glass half empty, so instead there's going to be some Lovely Pictures.

I was looking at this magazine on the train and just gawped at this photo

The colours, the stuff, the dark grey, the white mirror...

Love old tile patterns. Even though this one's decided to be the wrong way round

Opera wallpaper, Cole & Son 

We're getting a bit of a purple'n'blue theme going on here.

Purple tumbler by Evitavonni.

It's only £82.21...

And I'd quite like the stairs too

 Hayworth sofa, John Lewis

And this velvet one

Ackroyd sofa for Marks and Spencer by Conran

I'm going to have to make do with a velvet cushion I have in this colour

It was from Woolworths...

 Another variation on the Royal stamps theme

By Annie Little

And I love this light fitting

RGB pendant lamp, Fredrik Mattson at InForm

Very naughtily working out how to make a tribute version...

I sort of like this table-bench idea

Very space-saving

So much that I've been wasting a bit too much time 

working out if I could do something like it

Now these two images are for Kim and her Eiffel Towers

Have a look at her fabulous European kitchen here:

http://kimmy-randomness.blogspot.com/

Conran Shop

Kate Thornton Design - "We Love Paris"*

And these are just because they are sooooo cute...

No one would notice if I sneaked them into my kitchen, right?

All images from September's Living etc, except for *

Time To Be Wonder Woman (Again)

 OK, I have just looked around me and seen the following state of slovenly mess.

Be quietly appalled:

Look, more activity-avoidance blogging. And ice cream eating.

And generally living like a pig.

Rough pile of paperwork on the left is the Important Stuff I Should Get Done.

Such as, get school uniform sorted, cancel a magazine subscription, get the unused Tesco tokens exchanged for a day out AT A WELL KNOWN CHOCOLATE FACTORY, book the 12 year old in for the filling the dentist told us a fortnight ago he needed, plus various nonsense to do with utility people, pension schemes, etc....

(I'd be lying if I was ever to put on my CV that I'm good at prioritising)

The pile on the right is a diagram to work out, in my mathmatically-dyslexic way, how many floor tiles I need for the dining room/kitchen, a map of Brighton (the boyfriend was trying to show me the Wrong Way To His Hotel he once took when Very, Very Drunk), a fan letter from Domino's Pizza addressed to  "Valued Customer" (aka Slutty And Undomesticated), more random bits of paper loosely relating to the first pile, and a load of floor tiles.

To the right of the laptop is some random carrier bag that seems to always be in my handbag - apart from today - and a London A-Z. Oh, and the EXTRA SUNBLOCK I had to buy last week when I forgot to put it on everyone one day. This stuff's brill - Solait, factor 50, it rolls on green and smells like melon. Can't get better than that...

The wooden cd box at the back of the table is from an idea I had while watching Cars 2 yesterday - I'm going to put it on the wall and put my tacky 60s Blackpool metal ashtrays and some vintage seaside postcards in it. I tend to get idle ideas like that while watching colourful films... you know how the mind just drifts.

These are my excuses for The Mess:

 I've made a start on the flooring - it will be slate-effect vinyl all the way through the dining room into the kitchen. You can see the ancient, chipped, mish-mash of the 2 floorings I'm replacing. More upheaval, and more things in the wrong place for a while.

The printer is dumped on the table as I was copying stuff for the school bus pass malarkey. The ink was too low to do more than 2 sheets. So,off  to the old-school photocopying shop I went. And then came back with ink and another fan for this humid-beyond-living-memory weather.... assembled the fan, decided we all needed late afternoon ice cream... browsed some blogs, and realised that I was going to have to get a move on to get us down to Kent to see my dad tomorrow. No packing done yet! A bit of Wonder Woman magic needed here....

So This Is Where We Went...

.... Brighton!!!

 Mostly around the North Laines...

Click on this one and enlarge the picture to see the notice in the window!

Some Snap-Happy Tourist reflected in the window. Not me...

 Tableau of superheroes'n'kitsch in the window display

 

The fantastic roofline of The Pavilion

Very thoughtful recycling opportunities

New Kitchen Catch-Up

Earlier this year I started working out a new layout for the titchy, vintage-adorned but utterly impractical kitchen, in its original state above. More here:
http://trashsparkle.blogspot.com/2011/04/before-mayhem-descends.html

As I hadn't got round to putting up the finished pictures, this post is a bit photo-heavy so as to give a visual recap to the lovely followers I've gained since the makeover started... its been quite a while ;)

This is how it was going to be, minus the horrible, indented, grime-catching 1990's doors:

It had to be another shoestring-project - existing cupboards, new doors and worktop c/o B&Q sale, sink and tap from ebay, a bit of assistance from a plumber and a kitchen fitter..... This is just after it was fitted:

Since this stage, I've sanded and painted the walls, put up shelves and worked some of the vintage stuff back in:

 Keef hasn't been hung back up on the wall yet... can't decide where to put him.

 Picked up the old soda siphon at the carboot last weekend. It's from W.E. Coombs, Northampton.

Some of the Hornsea has made it back onto the shelves; there's still some in storage.

 I love a good display of bashed-up frying pans...

The newspaper-collaged-paint-tin is the compost bin. 

Just waiting for a sample of floor tile from ebay, then the floor will become slate-effect vinyl.

So, that's the tour of the kitchen ;)