Lavenderhouse

One room finished - only ... to go!

Have I bored you enough yet?  Well, I have finally finished my little sun room.  It sounds very pretentious to call it a studio so I wont.  It is a tiny space - just a bit bigger than a garden shed.  Its roof is completely made of glass so lets in bags of light.  All the furniture is from charity shops - yes, looks like it - I hear you say!  I have cheered the place up with recycled rice bag bunting and a gorgeous paper garland from Blackout in Brighton.  The pine table has been painted white and covered with star oil cloth from Cath Kidston. 

I am sure things will evolve more as I get to use the space.  I previously had tried to pack too much in to this little room.  I have now put all my material in a pretty cupboard, apart from the boring stuff which is under the table in boxes.  All my buttons, beads and ribbons are on a large shelf in the house where they will not get damaged by sunlight.

There are little things in my work room that make me happy :: my yellow and white striped vase from St Ives, my popping pink Designer's Guild bowl ...

birds, of course, my lilac polka dot jug ......

Cath Kidston tin, turquoise hearts from Brighton ...

and the sun shining through the paper garland.

Happy days!

Notices!

Hello everyone.  I hope you are all busy bees at the moment.  The very on/offable weather somehow provides uplifting glimpses of sunshine followed by greyness that enables one to stay in and not feel guilty about doing stuff at home.  

I realised that I had a bit of catching up to do blog wise.  So here are my midweek (yes, I know it is Thursday but I am always late for everything!) notices - ha ha!

1.          Sal at doolallysally  left a lovely comment recently when I was rambling on about good conversation and the bo**ocks that I talk.  She generously said 'It's precisely these little details that make the fabric of our lives'.  This was great to hear as I include tiny little details in my blog often, which I fear has you reaching for the Esc button pretty quickly, but it might just be that little tiny something was extremely touching to me and I wanted to record it.  Comments like Sals somehow give you the nod that it is OK to do that.  So thank you Sal.


The fabric of life

We were also discussing black board paint.  We wondered if you painted a wall how easy it was to paint over again in the future.  Blackboard paint is so tempting, especially when it comes in this gorgeous pink colour.


Pink blackboard paint

This is the back of my china cupboard.  It is painted with chalk paint and we have scrawled little sayings on it that mean a lot to my family.

2.        For Hen

My love of turquoise and pink matches her desire for it too!

I could go on and on and on ......... but won't!

(Pasha)

3.        Gigibird kindly featured me as her blog of the week.  She makes lovely things with one of her friends   under the name of Florence Hope (how cute is that).  She has been featured in Country Living.  Please pop over there if you have chance.

Hope you have a lovely Thursday.  We are off to get Pasha's plaster removed from her arm!  Yipppeeee!

On my bedside table

Blogging this picture without an explanation would seem a little weird.  I have been tagged by a couple of people to reveal what is beside my bed.  (I am in a bit of a tizz about who has tagged me about what so I shall definitely credit everyone in another post when I get my act together).

Old age is a bad, bad thing but for very close sewing I need my lovely funky glasses.  Sometimes my bedside area is very neat and tidy and at other times it is swamped with sewing, crochet, style books, note books for ideas and story books.

This little box is an old favourite of mine.  The box was designed by Catriona Stewart and it is just printed on the box.  Matthew Rice does similar things for Emma Bridgewater.

I am a confused person!  I love Cath Kidston style (shabby chic) and adore Designers Guild (contemporary).  To some people this combination would be disgusting but I love vibrant colour.  To be honest anything goes for me.

I own lots of style books.  It is one of my indulgences.  They are well used.  I love looking over them again and again.  I never read/buy a newspaper (too depressing) instead I love absorbing all the images, colours, textures and ideas from a wide range of books.

Simply Country by Liz Bauwens and Alexandra Campbell - This book is fantastic.  The book cover is a picture of my friend's kitchen.  More of her house is featured in this book, which I adore. 

In complete contrast this is Kim Parker's book, Home - she is an amazing painter and textile artist.  The colours are vibrant and pure.   The book features some of her paintings and her home wares.  Do not buy this book if you like white!  However, if you would like inspiration about painting or colour combinations then this is the book for you.

This is from Tricia Guild's book, Private View.  I have cushions in both the materials on the sofa.  They are bright, gawdy and soooo cheerful.  They were expensive when I bought them but they are so practical with children and still look the same as the day I bought them.  I intend to have them in my sitting room when I am an old lady - they will be dusty and faded but they will hold great memories. 

The view from my kitchen window

This is very annoying as there are Gremlins working at typepad as well as their software engineers.  This is the second time I have done this post!  I have been tagged by Emma at sewrecycled to show you the view from my kitchen window.  As she rightly spotted I have a great view from my front garden but not such a beautiful one from the back garden.  To the side of the kitchen I have two lots of french doors which lead out on to a tiny strip of tiled garden which is decorated with olives trees and mosaic mirrors. 


We have a small roof terrace up on the second floor of the house - no nice view - all fenced off for safety and over looks the rear of the shops at the back of our house.  We have a small balcony that does over look the sea but since having children my husband and I hardly ever get chance to sit down unless we are driving somewhere so rarely get to sit out there any more!  I will blog about these another time.  We have a small front garden which we use to play in, plant some flowers and vegetables (lots of herbs for thyme and mint tea, lettuce, toms and some seed potatoes this year). 
I bought the metal fish whilst on the Arundel Gallery Trail (open houses and gardens containing lots of art and sculptures - good and bad!).  The man selling them had a whole shoal.  I would like to buy some more.  The fish moves gently in the breeze, which makes it look like it is swimming along.

I love my beautiful tiles.  I can't clean them up though as it makes them too slippery!

My bench is so rickety that I only use it as a bench for plant pots!  The trunk next to the bench is full of african daises and an agapantha (spelt wrong and not growing too much either).  The trunk was thrifted for £1.  It was covered in lovely 1950s sticky back plastic roses paper but it was filthy so I had to rip the paper off and paint it.  This year I have used Laura Ashely Pale Teal emulsion.  Emulsion is brilliant for outside if you want it to weather and wear.  You can also see why my blog is called Lavenderhouse.

This is what we class as our real garden - THE BEACH!  We live right opposite it.  The sun finally came out this evening so we popped down there - Andrew, me and the three children plus Jo from down the road and her four children!  I photographed everyone whilst there were shrieks (literally) of joy when they found crabs, prawn like fish and beautiful sea anenomes.  We didn't have wine tonight but it is great fun to go rock pooling with a glass of wine in one hand and a bucket in the other!  There are hundreds of children that live locally and we were the only ones on the beach for at least 10 breakwaters.  I expect they are all inside watching the television and playing on their computers - GET DOWN ON THE BEACH WITH US!

I hope this blog works out this time - sorry for any spelling mistakes, layout problems etc - a bit knackered!

I am going to tag the wonderful

So tready softly

soulemama

posy

Everyone needs good neighbours!

Ha ha!  Everyone needs good neighbours and a little understanding!  I had expressed to my green fingered neighbour that I was on the look out for a certain buddliea that has orange sphere flowers.  I have looked in most of the local garden centres and haven't found one.  Anyway, yesterday there was a knock at the door and there stood my neighbour with a piece of the buddliea.  'Yeah' I whooped.  'Where did you get that?'  I asked hopefully.  'Well, it was hanging over someone's front garden wall so I gave it a quick yank and got you a piece!'.  So I have a good neighbour just hope that the other person is understanding - it has gone to a good home!

This was the dress I wore the other day to the hen weekend.  For a change, it did look better on than as it does here!

Skyla is not up to doing the cooking yet - pants stew anyone?

Bazaar & Tudor Style

I love pottering about in my home rearranging things.   This shelf is a particular favourite of mine for shuffling things around.  It is second hand and so are most of the beautiful glasses on it.  The knitted cakes at the top are one of my daughter's from her cafe trolley.  I will do a photo of that another day.  The cakes also make good Madonna boobs! 




I like to order myself new books once in a while.  This one really caught my eye, as it has lots of bright pink on it - one of my favourite colours!



I am trying not to read it at the moment as I want to save it up to read on my birthday, whilst hopefully having a bit of a lie in! 



Today at school, Pasha, performed with her school a Tudor Banquet.  It was very informative, everyone read something aloud about Tudor times.  Then there was some lovely tudor dancing culminating in a great song which started off very traditional and then ended up very up beat and contemporary!  Well done everyone!

Daffodils - and their great influence

I once met Jane Brockett from Yarnstorm and 'The gentle art of domesticity' book fame.  I read her blog today and saw that she is being influenced by 'glaucous' green too.  I think spring does that.  Each time I go to choose the colour of the typeface at the moment I head straight for bright green. 

I wanted to take a photograph of these lovely daffodils.  My husband and I bought our first house because of a jug of daffodils.  It was a little two up, two down in Tooting, London.  It was extremely dingy and everything seemed to be covered in polystyrene tiles.  Those are easy to remove but not the cement glue that is used to put them up.  Anyway, amongst all the yuk there on the kitchen table was a jug of daffodils and I knew I had to have the house.  We lived there for 10 very happy years!

My little daughter (age 5) is learning about Van Gogh at school.  I dropped off her 'show and tell'  this afternoon and found her in her classroom painting a gorgeous sunflower picture - another yellow flower to look forward to in the summer. 

Plankton Beach

When I started this blog, I had been inspired by everyone else's beautiful photos of their home and wanted to document mine too.  Unfortunately following last night's storm the external pictures are not that pretty!  The wind was howling so much in our bedroom that it sounded like a referee was blowing his whistle all night.  Me, my eldest daughter and young son (he first checked out sleeping in our room but gave up due to noise) all moved to his room where the three of us lay squashed in a single bed.  My eldest daughter's room was shaking with the aerial on the roof moving around so much.   A roofer happened to be just passing by (!) at 8.30 am and hopefully he will come by soon to take down all the loose tiles including the ones in the gutter that are ready to fly down any minute.  We had to telephone our neighbour who was away and move his car for him so that the tiles didn't fall on his car. Although I have noticed since that his bonnet is damaged.   This only shows some of the damage to our roof. 

and this

This doesn't show very much debris - there is much more now! Pants!

The wood on the beach washed up from the Ice Prince has been stacked in a big pile ready to be taken away today - obviously not happening now due to the weather.  To put in to perspective the size of the pile of wood look at how tiny the very large grab digger looks.

Anyway, the high tide moved some of the wood along the beach. 

Looks like we are back to square one with the wood mountain on plankton beach.   No hope of the roof being repaired yet.  We have to use the back door to get in and out as the front is not safe.  We have posted a note on the gate not to enter! Oh pantaloons!