Autumn Wreath

As you may have gathered from my website I love gardenalia and thought this old garden sieve/riddle might look good decorated and hung on the wall. I was in the middle of doing this when a friend called, saw it and bought it! I quickly photographed it before she took it away as I have another for sale. I think I possibly would have tweaked it a bit more but this only took about 5 minutes as it was easy to attach the greenery with florist's wire.

For Sale

How I wish this sign would be changed for 'SOLD'. This week we have had an offer which we have accepted as our buyers have also sold their house. Below them in the chain someone has to sell two houses so weren't not counting our chickens just yet though this is the nearest we have been so far. Luckily the house we wanted is still for sale (houses just aren't selling in this area) and we went to view it again on Monday. The last time we saw it was on a lovely warm June day and it looked a totally different house altogether now on an autumn evening with the lamps and heating on and the smell of a casserole in the oven. I love it even more and am trying very hard not to get excited and plan how I want to change this and that but it's hard when looking at all the magazines that I like to read not to imagine something in my new house!

We are off to Cornwall for the weekend again as my mum has been buying lots of things for the website. It's also my birthday on Sunday (how can another one have come round so quickly) and we plan to go to Boscastle for the day. Must remember my camera!

No birthday cake for me, though. Having lost 19 lbs at Slimming World and reached my target I hadn't been since our French holiday. I went yesterday and SHOCK, HORROR I have gained 5.5 lbs!

Laundry

I bought this piece of fabric on ebay this week. It appealed to me because I seem to do so much washing and ironing. I don't like hanging out or bringing in the washing but I do enjoy ironing. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean hubby's shirts but I love ironing all the beautiful linens I buy, wash, starch and iron for the website. I enjoy seeing a lump of creased, grey material bought at a car boot sale transformed into beautiful white linen on the ironing board! I haven't decided what to do with it yet, I suppose the most obvious thing is to make a peg bag.

Style

I bought these stylish dusters and dishcloths today at Asda, I couldn't resist them. I think I may just have to change the whole decor of my kitchen to match them,though, as they don't quite go with my colour scheme!

Talking of stylish things do you like my shoes I bought in France? The French women are so elegant and their shoes are just so different. I couldn't decide between the two so had them both!

We have yet more people coming to view the house tomorrow (I do wish someone would buy it) so I shall be using these cloths but I hope your weekend is more of a shoe-shopping than dusting sort of weekend.

France

The recent holiday in France was wonderful. Initially we stayed with friends who moved to the Tarn region last year and are renovating a cottage. How I envy their lifestyle! Absolutely stress-free. The renovation is a mammoth task but I can see it will be absolutely stunning when it is finished. We then stayed in the Dordogne area for a week. The area was just beautiful but, alas, not the accommodation - I have never seen so much bad taste in one place. Plenty of the French shabby but not a chic in sight! This chateau/castle was just down the road from us and the views over the river were amazing.

We did plenty of shopping,

eating and drinking,

and sightseeing.

I took so many photos of all the wonderful buildings, it's hard to choose which to publish here.

The houses built into the cliffs are so unusual.

Of course I was hoping to buy lots of French antiques for my website but didn't find as many as I had hoped. Brocantes seemed to be thin on the ground in this area.

I did manage to find some lovely linen, though, and it has definitely whetted my appetite to go back and search for more.

A Wedding

Today my lovely friend and the other half of OhSoVintage got married in Gretna Green. I so wish I could have been there with her to share her joy but it was to be a very low key affair with just her two children, their partners and her grandaughter. She and her husband originally thought it would be fun to elope and not tell anyone till after the wedding but their secret got leaked! All her friends and the rest of her family will be celebrating with a BIG party when they return. We have a lot of fun running the business together and I wish her and her new husband many, many years of happiness together. This is a photo I took of her last year at a Michaelmas fayre at which we had a stall. We were going to do it again this year but she'll be on her honeymoon - how inconsiderate is that?!

I have just taken a photo of my 'den' which used to be my daughter's bedroom. I love to come here and sew, listen to the radio or just potter looking at my stash of linens, lace and materials. Here it is (looking tidier than usual!).

Our next book we have to read for my reading group is 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie' and I cannot find it in any shops, would you believe? How can it be that two huge Waterstones and two W H Smith's don't have it in stock? I know I could go to the library but I am funny about books, I like to have a brand new copy that no-one else has read, I just love the smell of the new paper - one of my foibles I guess.

Oh dear, yet again I have been neglecting my and other people's blogs and I have no excuse. Please forgive me for not visiting you as regularly as I should but I do enjoy reading all your lovely posts.

I spent Bank Holiday weekend staying down in Cornwall again and visited four car boots and an antiques fair in three days. Needless to say I came home with the car packed up with lots of treasures, some for me and some for the website. I loved these storage jars and they now sit proudly in my kitchen.

I think they are for coffee, semolina, sugar and rice but if anyone knows I am wrong please correct me. You could say I am a 'zucker' for anything a bit different! I also treated myself to two handbags both very different from each other.

The black one on the right is tiny and just large enough for a mobile phone and lipstick. I don't know when I will use it but I just had to have it. The snakeskin one only cost a £1 (ok, I know I shouldn't buy snakeskin but it has been dead a long time).

I also found this item which was sold to me as an East European cheese bucket - wrong! It is, in fact, an early 19th century flour barrel. Much as I would like to keep this too I have decided to put it for sale instead.

Between all the antique hunting we did have time for visiting some tourist attractions. I can't go to north Cornwall without visiting Padstow but, as you can imagine, it was very busy.

We also went to Pencarrow House.

I have lovely memories of visiting here when my daughter was very little and she adored playing in this wendy house.

I am off to France next week on a holiday/buying trip so if anyone knows of any good brocantes in the Dordogne area please do let me know.