Flibbertygibbet

Ups and a very big down

Lots of stuff going on yesterday, a lot of running around, lots of stress but was slowly getting everything sorted and was pleased. The very big down was that I had a bit of a prang in the car last night. Very upset about it although all concerned, even vehicles, are ok. But very sobering. Has made me nervous about driving. Was considering driving to the airport to pick up my friends at the weekend, but would have been a bit uncertain about doing it anyway and now won't do it. It's also a long way, and I'm working all the hours I have to get things ready for the visitors, plus I now have freelance work to do too. Doesn't stop me feeling bad about it though. Plus it feels like the house will never be ready.

But it will have to be.

R u a D G?*

I wanted to use code. Because it almost seems like a dirty little secret.

Are you a Domestic Goddess? I'm not, I know that. But I think I rather aspire to be a Brocante Vintage Housekeeper.

Snippets in here made my heart sing - indeed they twanged my apron strings. After reading it, I finished tidying the kitchen in about seven minutes, and bolted out to the line to take in the washing and peg out another load. As I paired the socks as I went along (hitherto - a very Brocante word, I'm thinking - I would just throw it all in the basket and then try to sort it out later, which usually involves trying to match up sixteen pairs of navy and black socks, often in the dimmed bedroom lights in the evening, it's lucky I'm not blind by now) I made great progress, though I was cradling innumerable pairs of socks and clutching a handful of pegs as I whizzed through it, and then thought - it would be so useful if I had a pocket... and then realised that I did. I had unconsciously adopted the 'Wear a Pinny' commandment and was sporting my June Tie One On Apron.

Wow, that woman is good. She's subliminal....

I've been fretting a little about the upcoming visitors. (What, really? you gasp in astonishment, bracing yourselves for another onslaught of the wibbles) And now I've realised that yes, it's ok that I want to have a nicely dressed bed and a well-appointed room for them. And a bed, but I digress. But it's not vanity, it's just that I want them to feel welcome, and at home. Of course it's not the case that I have to do this - god knows, they are easy going and won't expect that there is a red carpet and a butler to hand. I'm also mindful of the fact that they took such good care of me when I arrived on their doorstep years ago, when they would pay no heed to my protestations that I'd find other lodgings and I want them to have a wonderful, restful, interesting, relaxing holiday here (on that note, if there are any Londoners reading, where would you suggest they visit? Bearing in mind they have two boys, eleven and six years old).

One of the highest compliments I've ever been paid was by a dear friend of my mother's. Joan is a fabulous hostess, the sort of person who has guest bathrobes and keeps a supply of spare toothbrushes, who makes her own scones - do you know what I mean? Most people our age seem to be doing well if they have a rolled up futon at the back of the 'office/spare room' and two extra bowls for cereal in the morning. After our wedding, I sent Joan a card to say thank you for their lovely gift, and she told my mother that she showed it to her own daughters as an example of how to write a thank you card. I was quite embarrassed. I was also deeply touched, and flattered. High praise indeed, as my grandmother would say.

So I've decided it's ok to:

- make biscotti and oat cookies for Saturday morning, to welcome the visitors
- put fresh flowers from the garden in their room
- put a lined basket with toiletries out for them
- possibly even tie up the guest towels with ribbon, to make them look pretty

Well, to be fair, I know I'll definitely do the first one.
The second - here's hoping there's something blossoming. The gerberas above look pretty, don't they - shame they are only four centimetres high, and the last ones.
It will depend on how I do with finding a basket.
I might need to graduate up to the ribbon.

Wish me luck.

*And are you someone who abhors 'txt-spk'? I'm not always trying to be a DG, but I think I'm always an SO - Spelling Obsessive.

Into the wild blue commercial yonder

I spent most of today being a lady who lunches, at the Connaught for a wonderful - and reasonable - lunch. A friend of mine is expecting her second baby, and has just gone on maternity leave but she has a few weeks to go and her son is in nursery a couple of days a week. She wanted us to go somewhere nice: "the kind of place that won't let me in when I have two children'. I presume she meant 'with her'.

The food, the service, it was all just sublime. I have to confess, the atmosphere felt a little too buttoned-down when I was waiting for my lunch date, but I happily gazed at the intricacies of the cornicing and the ceiling, and let the waiting staff flutter by me. When my friend arrived and we got talking, the sommelier could have caught fire and we wouldn't have noticed, so engrossed were we. Also the dining room filled considerably and it was as if the party was given leave to begin.

The menu consisted of:
* Atkins-antithesis breads - grissini, focaccia, carta musica, sourdough with xv olive oil and tapenade.

* Amuse-bouche of melon and parma (I polished all of this off while I was waiting - but if it was for two of us, why was there only one fork?)

* with the compliments of the chef, a teensy-weensy bowl of langoustine jelly (the only slightly off-key note in the entire meal, for me. Fishy jelly. Just say no, kids.)

*Spaghetti with broadbeans, pancetta and courgettes [her]; tuna nicoise - delicate slivers of melt in the mouth sush-quality tuna, on a parmesan crisp with a jewel like poached quail's egg on top, accompanied by fine beans and olives, decorated with courgette flowers [me]

*lamb with aubergine, red wine jus [her]; risotto with asparagus, courgette and garden peas [me]

*chocolate sabayon on a white chocolate disc, berry sorbet [her, me and most of the rest of the restaurant, from what we could see]

* Coffee came with five divinely perfect miniature macaroons, like the ones that Paul make, but roughly the diameter of a pound coin - in vanilla, pistachio, strawberry, orange and chocolate. There was also a complimentary basket of cherries. I started to wonder if in fact a member of my family was in the kitchen saying 'Go on, give them some of this stuff too! Feed them up a little' - despite the fact that an outsider would be hard pressed to decide from a distance which one of us was the pregnant one.

All in all, very elegant, very luxurious, almost a little decadent. Sometimes it's really nice to play at being a grown-up.

I've decided to listen to my husband (he should take note, it's not that frequent an occurence...) and I'm now offering my iPod covers as the first item in my little blog shop. This is the precursor to doing some of the London markets, the next big step!

I killed Kermit!

Or I thought I did.

Kermit is my iPod (seen above, modelling my iPod covers), but he doesn't get used so much now that I'm not commuting any more. He mostly comes to the gym with me (so really doesn't get used that much - I'd hang my head in shame but it makes it hard to type).

I kind of nudged him with a (rubber-edged!) barbell when I was doing bicep curls and he gave up the ghost. Happily, he seems to be charging now, but it was a scary moment there... Actually, he seems to have been charging for a really long time... eek... I hope he's ok because he was one of the last available iPod minis, and even though he's still in guarantee, I don't think there'd be any possibility of getting another mini in his place...

My god, I'm turning into the most material person on the planet.

"Anniyah amamaterial girrrrrl"

Since I went freelance and don't have a constant, recognisable income (well there's some cash coming in, but as I'm mostly wearing my Project Manager's Hat during our house redecoration, I don't have a lot of time for freelancing, plus there's lots of banging and clattering going on - which is odd, because how noisy should painting really be? Minimally so, I'd like to think - and I like it to be pretty quiet when I work, nothing but the sounds of me scratching correction marks on to the page, and Classic FM on my fantabulous girlie radio, which was my leaving present from my last job. Hell, getting out was enough of a gift, and then I got this too! Then after I finish working it gets tuned to XFM - it's my aural equivalent of leaving the office.)

[Flib shuffles back on track]
Since I went freelance I've been trying to limit my spending severely - no credit card usage at all, and Wardrobe Refashion 06 has helped with this - and luckily all the nice people there and on Sew Retro have helped me with my sewing misadventures - I keep the WR06 support board in business, let me tell you.

But today, after spending a lovely afternoon in the park with a friend and her two most gorgeous little girlies, I dashed into town, armed with various gift vouchers that have been burning a hole in my wallet. Actually, one of them was a wedding present, and though it had already furnished Flib Towers with two very lovely pressies (a frying pan and an ice bucket!), it had £15 left on it which just needed to be spent, plus a £20 vouchers for Selfridges. Niiiiiiiiice shop. It's great because it stocks a huge range of stuff, and the housewares are normal prices, basically.

For my £20 in Selfridges (oh, did I mention that it's Sale Season?), I scored:

- A cutting mat so I can try some patchwork with some of my stash fabrics, fat quarters that won't make anything else really, but I didn't actually know what fat quarters were when I bought them from eBay, many moons ago
- a metal edged cutting ruler (for the patchwork)
- a set of Denyse Schmidt stationey, 50% off! Stationery and patchwork in one - swooooon....
- a funky spotty box with o-o-f dots*
Okay, I confess. I overspent there by £1.70.

With the remainder of the wedding voucher, I came out with
- these cute pegs (to be used in gift-wrapping, and organising the office)
- 70% off candles, to fit the mini candle holders my mum put in my Christmas stocking a few years ago, never thought I'd find replacements
- and miscellaneous cards

As I was walking past Earthworks I realised they had gorgeous Sarah Bernhardt paeonies outside. I like this florist anyway, because they have a resident cat there, called Bonnie (who, incidentally, is poorly at the moment, as it turns out that she is allergic to protein - how rubbish is that for a cat? Please send good kat karma to Bonnie) and paeonies were the main component of my wedding bouquet. And at £4.55, they were a steal, let me tell you. No, of course I paid, I did...

Then on to John Lewis for a 22in zip, in the hope that buying the notions will lend me the mental strength to rip the disaster dress and resew it, thus necessitating the zip in the first place - the zip of encouragment. I was legging it through the place as it was almost closing time, but not so fast that I didn't see the 'Reduced' tag on some dusky rose taffeta! So that is the aspirational fabric now - I aspire to get the disaster dress sorted out, because when it works, I'll be remaking it in the taffeta for the August wedding. Hah, now I've said it on here, and it's bound to come back to haunt me!

Further to yesterday's post, I got up at 6.30am and tidied up, having mopped the floors etc yesterday. Yes, I do know that the guys will be back traipsing dust and muck through here again on Monday, but it had to be tidied for the weekend. Can't wait to get the hall stand back out there, the carpet fitted (I won't make the obvious joke about excitement at getting laid) and hang some of our gorgeous pictures, which have been languishing for almost two and a half years! Ah, nesting...

* The eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed that I missed the spotty box out of the picture above. That neatly encapsulates the Selfridges sale slogan that's on all their advertising:

You want it
You buy it
You forget it

Onwards, with enthusiasm!

I've sort of screwed up the dress I'm working on. But received lots of good advice from the good people at Sew Retro and Wardrobe Refashion. I think the solution is to undo all the work to date (the too-big bodice) and start over - oh well, at least I cut the it too big rather than too small.

I was a bit scared of trying to fit together a pattern size 14 top and 18 bottom - so stuck my head in the sand and cut out everything in a size 18. I must have been mad.

Thankfully our little house is starting to look brighter. Although it's wierd - I guess it's just because it looks so different, plus I've been on my own for a few days and DH isn't back for another three days. Maybe just a little lonely. Anyway, what's wierd is that it doesn't feel quite so friendly at the moment. Too bright and shiny, I guess. And empty, echoey, as the hallstand is in the sitting room and the carpet has long ago been ripped out. But probably I probably just need to give everything a good clean, to get rid of all the dust for a while - even though it will return when all the doors get changed, should I ever manage to source Victorian style 4 panel doors in appropriate sizes and quantities....breathe in, breathe out, Flib...

I guess I just want things sorted out. We've got guests coming for a week on the 1st - at the moment I've nowhere to put them and no bed for them to sleep in. Ok, they can have ours, of course. But where do I put their two children? Hammocks in the garden, at this rate. God, why do I do everything at the last minute.

Here's some before and after pics.

The original cornice blocks were completely overpainted, to the point that we didn't realise there was actually a pattern lurking, hidden under many layers of emulsion. One of the blocks was knocked off, soaked in water to loosen the paint, and recast. The the restorer made 25 replicas.

Below is what the hall looked like before (why oh why would you get rid of forest green woodwork and red stencils at 1 inch intervals throughout the house... hmmm, why indeed) and as a WIP now.

Ironically I think we've gone for the same colour below the dado rail as was previously on the top of the wall.

I should of course point out that when I say WIP, I don't mean that I'm actually doing it - I'm having too much fun making a hash of repainting this.

I think I'm just wanting to nest. Wanting a tidy, cosy house. And perhaps a housekeeper, maid and a laundry service. Right, I'm off to try to channel Nigella.

Secondly - or the second day

Ok, so life got in the way slightly but today I finished my apron for the June Tie One On, the theme is musicals. I had planned to do a Dorothy gingham apron, with a 'There's No Place Like Home' panel cross-stitched on the front, but put the wrong fabric in my cart when ordering online. So ended up with these big squares instead. So it became the 'My Pretty' Apron - as in "I'll get you my pretty, and your little dog too'...

Firstly...

My June Pincushion Challenge effort.

Clock is ticking...

Today is a Create-As-Much-As-Possible Day! Starting at 10.50am... update later!

Spot the new creation

I needed a new bathrobe before our visitors arrive, rather than wearing my scraggy fleece M&S fleece one. It's worked out fine, though it was made without a pattern.

Can't wait for the decorators to finish so we have a pretty house (i.e. one without stencilling) and so that all this damn dust is gone. Felt like we were in a sandstorm today.