meet one of the new girls...

well, yesterday i hinted at our new arrivals and here's one of them! we now have 4 hens, woody, buzz, hamm & lightning (i had no hand in the naming of these chickens, can you tell?) i have no idea which one this is a photo of. to be honest i'm rather scared of them. i mean, look at that expression, she looks like she's going to peck out my eyes *shudder*! i have said many times that i'm a rubbish farmer's wife and this is just another damning reason. i'm much happier in the studio......which is where i had a slightly frustrating day making this little bag. it has an embellished felt front, with screen printed lining in teal weave, which i must say looks lovely! i made lots of bags a few years ago, you can see them here, but i couldn't remember how i did them. it led to lots of unpicking and swearing but i got there in the end, and now i keep looking at it and getting a nice warm feeling of accomplishment and happiness!

a bit o' spray paint...

does wonders doesn't it? i've had this horrid cane footstool for years and years, it was another item 'stolen' from my poor mum (although to be fair the fabric is so foul, she was probably pleased to see it go) i've always meant to do something with it but never got round to it. i went to our local builders merchants the other day to choose some spray paint, frank chose this bright red, a lovely london bus red ;) i didn't have any fabric in mind for the cushion, but just as we leaving the shop via the kitchenware department, a chunky pack of stripy teatowels caught my eye - £4.70 for 5. i totally fell in love with them, so bought two packs. so yesterday i sprayed the stool, and this morning i made the cover (complete with a zip -amazing!) i have to admit, it's not perfect, but the imperfections can be tucked out of sight! and let's face it, it's bloody better than it was and it was dead cheap to do. what more could one ask of a project?

tea caddy love

the lovely alison from eco eco saw an image of my tea caddies i posted on flickr and told me she'd got some more of them, would i like them? god yes, i said, foaming at the mouth...so a few days later these turned up. lightly battered tea caddies, how i love thee. and talking of alison, she and i have got plans afoot! can't say to much right now, but lets just say it involves lots of drooling over a pantone book, (and me changing my mind a hundred times) and that's all you'll get out of me for now. happy weekend, y'all.

sunny window ledge

my husband sam has been obsessively building a deck outside our french doors in the kitchen lately. it's looking fantastic, and i've been just as obsessive looking outside at different times of the day to check where the sun is. i'm telling you, if we get a warm summer, i know exactly where i'll be stationed for three months! while he was digging holes to put in the supporting beams, he found this beautiful little faceted bottle (a perfume bottle i think, or possible an ink well, but it seems to fancy for that) and it's in perfect condition. it goes nicely with an old camps bottle the builders found, and an old glass vase that was my grandmas. don't you just love buried treasure?!

mini...

makeover! i've been a busy little bee, making an entire collection of covered notebooks...(a sneak peak of them later as the dreary weather is not conducive to good pics at the moment) so i thought i'd nip in to post my mini makeover, inspired by ercol original furniture in black. my (fake) ercol dining table and chairs are right next to the dresser i painted (pale blue with black knobs) and i thought it would look seriously cool if they were painted black (much to sam's horror! hehe) to make a real statement in the kitchen. and i'm pretty pleased with the result :) one down, 3 chairs and a refectory table to go!

i heart you...

i spent sunday making these hearts for valentines day...they are 3 in one - a card, a decoration and a removable badge with a tiny leather heart for wearing on your sleeve, or any other suitable area. they're available here, of course.

i won't bore you with details of the house (as i suspected, the builders haven't left yet, but things are looking super...) but i did have an epiphany about a wall in the kitchen the other day...as i speak it's being painted with blackboard paint, but not just any old blackboard paint. it's only bloomin' magnetic too! you can find it at this shop for the very reasonable price of £9.99 for 750ml. i'll post pics when finished.

sprinkles!

ohhhh, hello! i was just perusing my daily dose of blog reading and thought i'd pop in to say that i'm still alive :) lots has happened in the 3 weeks i've not blogged...we took the boys to eurodisney last weekend which was ace - such alot of fun, although very cold and very expensive! we are not yet in the farmhouse - the original moving day was tomorrow, but due to 75 square metres of badly laid ceramic flooring in the kitchen/downstairs loo/utility room and my studio, it's all had to come up this morning. strangely, i'm not stressed by this, and the builders have agreed it was a terrible job and are swallowing the cost of the new tiles - it was their contractor who did the tiling (someone they hadn't used before) and i'm just happy a decision has been made, i'm not good with things up in the air. apart from that, it's really coming together and we should be in next week. the downside to all this moving and stress is that christmas is just not featuring in my life at the moment, frank is the only kid in his class without a tree up! i have to say that i usually really enjoy the couple of weeks run-up to the festive season, maybe i need to bake some cinnamon cookies or something! anyway, for those of you who are feeling more festive, i've includng a pic of the disney castle all lit up - even i was pretty excited by the sight!

treasures

ok, so i went to the farm this morning to check out the last of the walls coming down ready for plastering - running beside the master bedroom was a horrible dingy corridor that led to what was sam's childhood bedroom and a large family bathroom (which will now be my our dressing room and a ginormous ensuite bathroom) and as i walked into the bedroom, there was a sliver 6 inches wide of the most amazing wallpaper i've ever seen. i didn't check out how the bedroom looked at all (it looks fantastic as i discovered after my wallpaper excitement)- i went straight to the wallpaper to try to peel off as much as i could. it was fascinating - it told a history of the house, layer by layer. underneath the top boring wallpaper (most recently done about 20 years ago by my in-laws) was a fairly mad design from the 60's in pink and gold, then the delicious red and green pictured above. (i'm so in love with that type 'english made'!) next came a very tasteful faded floral in pinks and finally a pretty pale blue. i'm guessing the bedroom got decorated once every 10 years or so which means that the bottom layer was probably done in the 30's. so amazing and such a great insight into others who lived there!

stack o' stars

busy week this week, but my poor shop has been neglected and nothing new has managed to make it there. stuff at the farm is beginning to fly - the kitchen has been completely opened up and is being plastered as i type. next week the underfloor heating then the floor screed goes down (or is it the other way round? eek!) then the kitchen units go together (really looking forward to that!) and the templaters come in to sort out the wood worktops. then the tiles will be laid, weeeeee! it's getting to the stage where everything is exciting now...gotta think about paint colours, but in my heart of hearts i know i'll go white everywhere - i want to add the colour drama with the accessories - white rooms may bore some people but to me they're relaxing and inspiring at the same time!
anyway, i have found little slices of time here and there to make some christmas stars in lots of colours, traditional and contemporary, for a little stall a friend is having in a couple of weeks.

to do lists...

god, i feel sort of i dunno, overwhelmed i suppose - what with all the farmhouse excitement, trying to be there for an hour or so a day to speak to the builders, answer queries, watch progress, make sure things like electrical switches are the ones i ordered (they weren't) trying to make sure the electricians and the builders don't kill each other (yes, really) feeling guilty because none of this is getting any new work done, i'm desperate to get some printing done, i'm so low on stock (my work to-do list is HUGE) - all this is competing with trying to look after my lovely boys...gah! i'm tearing my hair out and the house (the one we live in) is a complete and utter pigsty. so. anyway. i found a little window of time to do something i've been meaning to do for ages - and that is to make some christmas stars. they are similar to the ones i made last year for the 'holiday ornament swap' but using my fabric. you can buy them right here if you like ;)

more stuff and nonsense

ha! you naughty lot! that's the most comments i think a post has ever got, and all i've got to do is mention bollocks and wanking! it sounds like quite a few of you actually clicked through to the brilliant fry and laurie sketch - i'd also forgotten the great chap in dictionary corner - obviously mimicking giles brandrith - with his knitted 'twat' jumper - i probably watched that sketch 6 times yesterday, giggling like a school child!

right, to sensible matters...today i spent much of the day painting the ceiling in a newly plastered room at the farm. i ache. but...and this is the best bit - while i was slaving away, the builders were also busy, demolishing the wall between our living and kitchen areas, woohoo! i haven't done many 'before' pics of the farm, simply cos it's rather boring to anyone but me, (and of course i can't wait to do the big 'reveal' of before and after pics) but today i can't resist, months of work at the farmhouse have gone on and to me, this represents a key moment in the renovation. look at the thickness of the wall (18 inches!) and, excitingly, on one large piece of flat stone, was a child's drawing of a horse. god knows when this was done. my father in law has lived in this house all his life and he can't remember drawing it, but there's a scribbled initial 'a' on another brick, so it was either him or his sister. i had the builders carefully take it out intact and will keep it in my workroom. sam thinks i'm a madwoman. i think he has no romance in his soul.

tiny weeny-ness

good grief, i can't believe it's been so long since i posted - things have been very hectic of late, of course it happened just after i posted about how quiet it's been 'round here - isn't that always the way? things are beginning to hot up at the farmhouse - plasterers, electricians, heating engineers - it's all go. i've just chosen my floor tiles for the kitchen/cloakroom/utility/studio which was sadly quite exciting (for me, anyway. sam just said 'yeah, yeah, whatever' - as long as they came in around budget he couldn't care less. men.) the windows are coming on a treat too -as soon as they're fitted (at the end of the month) the kitchen can go in, yay! i've taken a ton of before pics - lots of swirly carpet galore (my father in law cannot understand why we're not keeping it. erm, no thanks mate... bless him)

anyhow, i'm glad to say the 'avenue' print has been going pretty well so far, particularly in red - and i've just listed some really sweet coin purses. and i've got a few other things i'm dying to get started on, but i need a solid length of uninterrupted time to work (which has been in short supply lately) isn't that the story of my life?!

well, i didn't see this coming...

oh, that sounded dramatic didn't it? but it's not, it's referring to the direction in which i have gone with bedroom curtains for the farmhouse. i suddenly got freaked out by the fact that although the build has a looooong way to go, i didn't want to be moving in a hurry in a few months time with no thought of colour schemes and fabrics and the like. and unbelievably, i have given NO thought really to those things, mainly because building sites are actually really uninspiring places (at least to me) but then i went to have a look a progress the other day, and walls were going up in the interior, and all of a sudden i thought 'colour schemes! i must think about colour schemes!'

sooooo i went to a couple of curtain fabric shops, and came away not only really inspired, but with curtain fabric for the main bedroom, the upstairs landing and the spare room. i'm slightly in shock by the fact i just ended up buying the curtain fabric for the master bedroom without any messing around, but i know what i like when i see it, and this is just dreamy. it's got a lovely linen-like cream background with very, very subtle clusters of blue/grey/lilac flowers - divine. it's very me, but all grown up, if you know what i mean. and even more amazingly, sam likes it. he admits it's not what he'd have chosen, but that's good enough for me. i have also got samples of two of the most delicious faded-y stripes ever for the living/kitchen area, i can't decide which one i prefer, as i'm on a budget i guess i ought to go for the cheaper one. but the more expensive one is available in a wider width which means i can get a blind made that will cover the most expensive bi-fold sliding doors in the world ever, without a seam. ho-hum. decisions, decisions.

me, maps, and more work

sam and i have been on a trip to norwich this afternoon to order a sliding bi-fold door for the kitchen at the farm...you know the type - flush to the ground, so when you open the doors the outside comes inside and the like...anyway, i printed out how to get there and i also had an a-z of norwich, i was well prepared and reasonably confident that i knew where i was going, after all, i'd lived there for two years. how wrong could i be? it turns out that the roundabout that for the last 10 years i've called the cringleford roundabout is not what everybody else in the world calls the cringleford roundabout. which was rather a large spanner in the works from the beginning. fairly standard crapness as far as me and maps are concerned. i just turn into a wobbly wreck...anyway, enough of all that. doors have been ordered...they're lovely, just deciding on colour...

this morning i worked a little more on a piece for nahcotta...slightly different to the pink piece i made earlier - a bit too guitar-y like (thankyou sam and anna for pointing that out to me!) so i cut the threads down the middle and i'm rather liking!

blimey o'reilly...

how the hell is it staying up? this is the part of the renovation that is really quite exciting - seeing the 'bare bones' of a building that has stood for around 100 years. this gable wall has had to come down because it's basically crumbling away, it's made of clunch* and needed to come down before it fell down. the roof is basically shot to shit too. you can see the cross sections of the floor in the upstairs bedroom and underneath the floorboards, the floor is held up by bits of tree. yes, tree. i wonder if there are any hidden treasures under the floor - when my mum and i had our fabric shop, the colour room, it was a really old building and we found little bottles wedged underneath the floor and bit and pieces in the walls. fascinating.

*clunch is, according to wikipedia:

"it is a term which encompasses a wide variety of materials, often locally variable.
it often comes as irregular lumps of rock either picked up from the fields, or it may be quarried and hewn from the ground in more regular-shaped building blocks. it is predominantly chalk/clay based and is bedded in mortar to form walls."
retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clunch"

it has begun...

after what seems like forever; at least a year planning and attending meetings with architects, builders, joiners, electricians and heating engineers. at last the renovation of the farmhouse has begun. day one ended with a fair amount done. the top pic (taken this morning) is of an old outbuilding attached to the garage (second pic) which is going to be the new kitchen. where the outbuilding was will be a newly built utility and farm office.

i'm feeling kind of weird...excited but with a fair old sprinkling of 'oh shit, there's no going back now' mixed in.

i feel a need...

to shake the dust off my gocco printer and get on with some serious gocco love this week. i've had one ill little cherub with some weird fever-y lurgy this week, the older cherub succumbed last night to its evil clutches, so he's off school today, but if i get a chance i want to unearth my pieces of linen and make some zippered pouches, i also have an urge to sew at the moment too.

on farm-front news, we visited a really lovely old fashioned factory and looked at the replacement sash windows yesterday, and i'm really excited! i've got to decide at some point whether to have them painted white or go for a colour. i'm thinking of a greeny grey tone. i've been looking at the farrow and ball website and i'm rather taken with ball green or the delightfully named (although i've never seen one that particular colour) cooking apple green. hmmm...

back from the city...

...of norwich! had lots of fun at the clutter city diy market yesterday, but my smile muscles are really worn out...being nice all day to strangers is bloody exhausting ;) but the best bit was finally meeting liv who is absolutely lovely! luckily we were placed right opposite each other and spent lots of time laughing and chatting. thankyou to those who left lovely comments, i really appreciated your support.

another lovely thing happened the other day...some snail mail love from sarah, what a complete treat to have this delightful package delivered to me...the most gorgeous prints ever, i can't wait to frame them...and i'm really excited because it's the official start of my art collection for the farmhouse :) which incidentally has taken a rather exciting upturn: the quotes are all in and although it looks like we'll be broke for the next million years, work starts in the second week of june for around 5 months. i'm sweating slightly because a gable wall has to come down to remove a useless and crumbling chimney stack...apparently the ceilings have to come down too...alarming, yet thrilling at the same time! actually, in all honesty not thrilling at all, just alarming.

kitchen love

ohhh...i'm rather fired up now...we ordered our kitchen a couple of weeks ago but i *sort of* forgot about it until i saw these pics in may's elle deco. the units aren't exactly the same (although they're a little indistinct in this pic anyway) but the worktops are exactly what we've ordered. i'm now officially excited!

one more

another aceo, this one's called 'if i had spoken', the last in the mini series of blue pieces. on another note, but still talking blue, i've been painting frank's bedroom today, the plan is to go through the whole house one room at a time ready to either sell or rent the house in the summer/early autumn. it looks really gorgeous, i painted a colour called 'sea storm' on one wall and the rest in a chalky cream. bit of a nightmare cutting in, but i kept my cool and it was worth it in the end. it's too sophisticated for a 5 year old boy really, he just wants scooby-doo...er...no way. (for his room at the farmhouse i'm going to persuade him towards this wallpaper from absolute zero degrees ...if he doesn't like it i'll put it somewhere else in the house, and i must find a home for this one too which is also very cool.) anyway, happy weekend people, hope it's a good'un