Friday 25 November 2011

Pants!

Stuck on what to get your bestfriend’s daughter for Christmas?
How about these Juicy Couture days of the week knickers from Selfridges. A pop at £70 the set!




Monday 24 October 2011

Tracey Emin Soap Star

Liberty of London have put together a limited edition collection of items designed by Britain’s best loved national treasures ranging from our Queen Viv through to Tracey Emin. All proceeds will go to the designers chosen charity.

Tracey Emin’s is a bar of lavender soap wrapped in an original poem penned in Emin’s signature scrawl, all proceeds going to Art Against Knives. At just £10 that is what I call affordable art!


Tracey Emin Lavender Soap with Handwritten Poem Wrapper.
£10.00 from Liberty London.



Images © Liberty.co.uk




Saturday 22 October 2011

Funky Letters for Kidsrooms

It’s the weekend. Thank goodness. Here are some quite nice wooden letters from the Victoria & Albert for just £2.50 each.




Images © V&A

Thursday 20 October 2011


I've had a couple of days work, which means the pockets will be potentially lined, so have been doing a bit of online browsing, during which I found this adorable kids top by Stella McCartney.
Anyone who knows us proper will get it - I could have drawn this, what with bunnies AND fly agaric plus it’s called Billy. Quirky but not too sweet - love it!

Monday 10 October 2011

Cushion the blow.

Autumn is here, the leaves are coming off the trees, the temperature has dropped and the forecast across the UK is for another long hard Winter. What better way to comfort against the cold than with some new sofa ornamentation (cushions to you or I) to buoy all that extra indoor snuggling time.

These two glorious ones are by Michelle Mason, they’d make lovely Christmas presents too, or is it really too early to be thinking about that?
Cushions £45 from Michelle Mason
Hard-wearing cotton satin with pom-pom trims.
Size: 48cm x 28cm
Images: © Michelle Mason 2011

Sunday 9 October 2011

Doormats and School Admissions

I have just been composing a letter to attach to the end of our choice of schools for Erbie next September.

Where we live all schools are so oversubscribed it is uncertain whether one will even get into a school within spitting distance. I was told to go with gut instinct when choosing, gut instinct didn’t like the first school we saw but very much liked the two over the road, so fingers crossed and a letter saying I will poo my pants if I have to walk Erbie too far to school in the morning.


Keep Calm and Come In from Graham & Green

I've also been looking at doormats from the plain to the sublime why not make a statement before even stepping over the threshold. Wiping ones wellies need never be tedious again.

Ikea heart doormat £9.99

Union Jack doormat Debenhams £22.50

I Love London Doormat £17.99 from Filoro


Friday 23 September 2011

My London cake tins

Caught sight of these and thought they were rather good....

My London set of cake tins, Angel Cake and Victoria sponge - £26.99 the pair.
Available online here: amazon


Just had a strange encounter with The Belle Mere, as I was trying to get in the front door with an over-tired and tetchy Erbie and laden with shopping she crept up behind us and started singing. Erbie started to cry and said: ‘Make granpa go away’, and she walked off...

Thursday 15 September 2011

First school hell.

The GR is fuming – again and has sent me to bed with Erbie – it’s 8.30pm.

He is nearly always cross with me these days. We no longer sleep in the same bed or make any attempt to. He makes a bed from the sofa cushions upstairs, I sleep in bed with Erbie downstairs. Erbie is 3. He’s must be feeling unloved and I’m just plain lonely. We can’t talk to one another nowadays without rubbing the wrong way. He goes off and phones his dad and they discuss stuff, I wonder if he is quietly sabotaging me. I’m probably paranoid.

I printed out a voucher for the cinema today along with the entrance tables for the local schools. I’m worried because even though we live on the doorstep of 3 very good primary schools all of them are oversubscribed, the one we would like Erbie to go to had 550 applicants for 60 places last year. The other 2 are equally oversubscribed. The last child to be accepted lived less than 0.2 miles from the school.

Apparently this is the first year the schools will be allocated from the local council’s central office and it all hangs on ones proximity to the school, befriending the head teacher won’t help but with all our local schools so oversubscribed I fear for Erbie’s future education. The GR is from this area and his experience of school from primary through to finish was appalling. Let Erbie be lucky.

I mentioned it to The GR and managed to send him into a spiral of self-loathing, which got directed at me. “I deliberately tell him bad stuff without any solution. I always pick the wrong time to tell him things, I never say thank-you, I always make him lose his temper in front of Erbie, what more do I want from him…” culmunating with him telling me to start looking for somewhere else to live.

Friday 26 August 2011

Things to do - London Motor Museum


Is it or isn’t it?

When I heard about the London Motor Museum, I had to go check it out as Erbie is car mad and well, cars are cool (coming from a non-driving, car free family). It’s situated in North London, just off the North circular past the NescafĂ© factory, smell the coffee and you are almost there. It is a bit tricky to get to, at the end of what appears to be a dead end road but you’ll know when you’ve found it as there is a monster truck driving over a police car on the lawn out front and a van covered in mirror tiles. [I’ll show the pictures!]


Lets go mummy...




Could this be Herbie?

Could this really be Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,
next to Harry Potter’s Ford Anglia?

Could this be Lady Penelope’s?

Thunderbird...

Starsky and Hutch’s Gran Torino?

007’s Lotus Esprit?

The Dukes of Hazzard,
1969 Dodge Charger – The General Lee?

Koo, koo!
Well, no one is saying they ARE the originals –
but who cares.

So, to the real cars:

Ahhh, an E-Type Jaguar.

Some nice ones with stripes...

I’m a girl, I can’t say I know what make they are.

But they are very pretty.

Some badge close-ups:
Challenger, Chevrolet, Dodge, Camaro.



This one matched my outfit.


A Rolls Royce Corniche.

And this one had to be my favourite, a vintage 50’s Porsche.


There were lots of cars to look at, but it wasn’t so vast as to be overwhelming. Erbie loved it, I loved it and we managed to get 2 for 1 adult, on the ticket price with a little internet voucher searching beforehand.

I thoroughly recommend it!

Sunday 17 July 2011

One Year

We have been here for a year. One year. Lately I have been thinking about what I want to do with my life, what I really enjoy. A couple of friends have made major career changes, one through choice, the other necessity and I’m wondering about following suit. What do I love? I love fashion. I love design. I love gardens – although I’ve never had one.


Saturday 11 June 2011

Playdoh Recipe

I’m putting this here for me really as I keep losing the recipe and this one REALLY works plus keeps for ages. I usually add some vanilla essence too to make it smell authentic!

Ingredients:
1/2 cup table salt
1 cup plain flour
1 tbsp cream of tartar (don’t ask me why)
1 tbsp of oil
splash of food colouring
3 drops of vanilla essence
1 cup of boiling water.

Put all the dry ingredients together in a bowl and add boiling water. Mix together well, add colouring and essence and when cool enough knead with hands until it reaches a good consistency not to sticky, not too dry. Sometimes I add more salt if it’s too wet or more oil if too dry. It does keep for ages in an airtight container. I have been know to add glitter too.

Addatum:
As myself and teawithonesugar found out DO NOT try to replace the cream of tartar with ordinary baking soda - you will indeed end up with a gloopy mess rather than a maleable dough

Wednesday 8 June 2011

Thomas the Tank Engine First Day Covers

If any of you have Thomas mad little boys, here is a nice little gift idea to arrive through the letterbox one morning. Royal Mail are issuing a series of Thomas the Tank Engine stamps celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of Rev. W. Awdry. Reverend Wilfred Awdry came up with the first Thomas train stories to entertain his 2 year old son Christopher whilst ill with measles. The first book ‘The Three Railway Engines’ was subsequently published in 1945.

There are two sets, one of the familiar TV engines for £6.07 and a minature set of original illustrations from the books for £3.96. They also ship overseas. (There is a lovely presentation pack too, the images online don’t really do them justice.

First day covers are only available until the 14th June, so get your buffers busting.


© Royal Mail

Tuesday 7 June 2011

A boost...

Erbie needs a booster seat, although I’d love a Tripp Trapp, we already have more chairs than our little flat really needs. This one from Fred and Friends is rather fun although I’m not sure there is a supplier in the UK perhaps I could improvise with the real thing and a cushion?

Thanks for your comments, they too were a boost.

BOOST

need a lift?

When Junior needs a little boost at the table, just reach for the Yellow Pages.
Our version is made from light-weight, soft, durable, washable, form-fitting foam.
Kids from age 3 will happily rise to the occasion.

©2006 FRED


Friday 27 May 2011

I am lost.


I'll be back when I’m found.
xx

Monday 21 March 2011

Miss out of fashion

I tumbled across and ridiculously desired this frock which hammers home and clocks round the head my desire for Spring to be fully sprung. For me a hankering after full-length virginal white numbers, which appear to be nothing more than 2 pieces of strategically elasticated material (you could make that yourself as my mother would have said) demonstrate a serious neglect of fashion over the winter months on my part. Time to get back out there girl.

© Anthropologie March 2011

Only £158 quid m’lord available here.

Dear fashion police: My last two clothing purchases have been a vintage waxed Barbour jacket and black shiny rubber riding boots - [eh gads girl, you only moved a couple of postcodes].

Saturday 12 March 2011

Window boxes





It is nice to have a little bit of Spring in the window boxes. The Grandad gave me a large box of pot luck bulbs, mainly crocus and they all came up - I could harvest my own saffron!

Other nonsense

Quote of the day

‘They tuck you up your mum and dad...’
Anon - after Larkin

“Philately will get you everywhere”
WEM

“It’s not the despair, I can handle the despair. 
It’s the hope I can’t deal with”
Clockwise

“Each new friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”
Anais Nin

‘Come on Dover move your bloomin’ arse’.
Eliza Doolittle