Animals at Christmas

It's Christmas in the garden!

The hens are thriving in their new hen run (fence designed by Ben out of old pallet wood, and constructed en famille by all four of us (but mostly by Ben...) Raja is certain that there is a hole in the fence somewhere. Her new life-project is to seek out the gap - she doesn't want to eat the hens, by the way, she wants the kitchen scraps we feed them!

Son 1 and Ben were out in the garden with the Christmas lights last weekend, and decided to include the hens in the festivities. I'll try to get a photo at night time, too.

Just as Raja tries to eat the hen's food, a goat ate my wreath! This was before it got to me - a friend who's a trained florist made it for me and left it near her back door to keep fresh. Whereupon one of her goats ate it... so I have made a reasonable job with ivy from the garden, but I do miss Amy's creation!

Shiny front door

I think I told you, back in September, that not only was I busy at work, but that I also had a front door to paint!

Our door was completely sound, but it had a couple of problems - Raja the cocker spaniel had scratched away at the 20+ year old varnish:

(Lovely Christmas wreath by a member of our local MOPS group, but weathered varnish quite visible...)

And the varnish was orange - no two ways about it. Cute summer wreaths can only hide so much varnish.

And orange varnish on the inside of the door (never photographed, because it was so horrible) made the whole of our entrance area dark and miserable. The light dawned when I stuck a white poster (Kings and Queens of England, from The Times) on the inside of the door and the whole living room lit up! I knew I had to paint the inside of the door shiny white (no photos yet - I have a few last things to arrange in the area) and Ben and I decided on Basque red, the same as our gate, for the outside:

This is the only photo where the colour really comes out, but here are a few other angles:

Did you spot the hen door mat?

I bought it for myself as a treat, for when the door was finished... it went down on Friday afternoon!

At the moment, I'm enjoying the pristine finish too much to add anything to decorate the door, but it was fun looking back over photos of what I've done in the past!

For Christmas, though, I'll certainly be contacting Amy to see if she's making her wonderful Christmas wreaths again! I'm happy enough creating my own seasonal efforts, but nothing beats Amy's proper wreaths for Christmas...

Well, Liz, I don't really like orange either..!

Lululiz said yesterday: "I am not really an orange person at all, I would love to have white pumpkins in the house though." Well, I don't feel too different, except, it seems, in October! The orange is indoors and out:So I'm rather enjoying going with the flow...You've got to admit, it's pretty cosy.

Viva the 1970s, when it comes to finding orange accessories from around the house!

I also found some orange candles in a charity shop a few years ago, which are fun in October.

Here's the first glimpse of our mirror collection, which is helping to bounce the light around our house exactly as planned (please allow a self-satisfied smirk):

And below it, on the piano, a link to another commenter yesterday. Magsmcc wrote, in reply to my own comment on her book post: "And I do love the Terry Pratchett that I have read! His satire on our world is so effective, but you're right- it comes with a heart-warming feel! I saw a suitably orange covered Autumnal one in Tesco just last night- must go back and check it out!"

Well, was it one of these, my strawberry friend? I plonked them on the piano for a touch of orange, just a few hours before you left your comment! Personally, I'd say that if you want to buy any more, don't bother with any of the earliest ones - anything after 'Mort' finds him really in his stride...

And again you can see my new cheat's method of adding colour when you don't have many coloured accessories - piles of books!

j

Obviously, Penguins are coming in beautifully handy this month:

That's Son 1 up there, ages ago, for a school performance... Such a little sweety. And the wonderfully tactile thumb pot to the left of the Penguins is a Navajo one. My aunt worked in a Navajo health clinic years ago and gave me the pot. I have always adored it. So you can see why having a splurge on orange every few years is worthwhile for me! When else will I show these great things?
j

Finally, here's something I learned from Dottie Angel. I have a great candelabrum (Vide Grenier find) behind the TV, and was short of colour-themed candles as I decorated yesterday. Previously, colourful candles were a bit of an indulgence - I wouldn't have thought much of jumping on my bike and going to see what was available in the supermarket. But this time I had a go with these alternating black and red ones, and even though I hated the result, I decided to live with it and see...

I noticed, after a few hours, that they matched the oil-cloth-covered DVD boxes quite nicely. So that was something in their favour. I realised that what made them so hideous was the blue rug below the TV shelves. So I decided to retire the summer rug, bring out the winter one, and see if that made the candles acceptable. And I think it did! What do you think?

j

My point is that the must-go-out-and-buy-the-'right'-thing attitude has become fairly alien to me. I would have gone and bought new candles (they're hardly expensive) if it turned out to be necessary, but I have learned to live with things, to think about my need for them, and to have fun with what I have instead of buying more. You'll still have to Watch This Space to find out what my first 'new' purchase is going to be, following the end of the Challenge...

And back to the first photo - here is a sweet little vintage cushion which I used as a cushion pad in the 1980s for one of my first hand-made cushions. When I pulled the ikat-fabric off a few years ago, I found this underneath. I think it must have been my grandma's!

I've got a Utility Room with Bunting!

Our Utility Room used to be so nasty (we had no garage and no garden shed, so it was trying to be three rooms at once) that I have no 'before' photo for you, but here's an ordinary, everyday shot of it now:

There were two pressing issues that got it up to scratch - firstly, Ben finished his mega-shed, and most of the stuff stored in this room could be finaly re-homed. The second was a spate of bike-thefts, which persuaded us to make space for our bikes indoors. When I told my dad about the bikes being inside he was quite worried about the storage issues we'd face, so these photos are partially to reassure him that it is all working very well indeed!

So, we put the bikes in via the garden door, and in front of them, instantly accessible from the in-house door, is my washing machine! (Bought second-hand this spring from a colleague of Ben's who was emigrating to Canada). Boy, is this an improvement on the set-up before we sorted the room...Very handy!

On the other side of the door I store my trusty all-terrain shopping trolley:

And here is a shelf for something very important in our home:

Wine, indeed, but also all the preserves, jams and jellies I posted about yesterday!

The bunting is made from rice sacks, and you can buy it online. I got mine in Edinburgh, though. A functioning utility room is a real treat.

I'm bored, Jerry, B-O-R-D bored...

And if you recognise THAT quote, then you and I have an awful lot in common!..
j
Yesterday afternoon it wasn't just the boys who were complaining of boredom, but me too. They'd invited some friends round, and all the plans we had for the afternoon were due to begin when the friends arrived, not before... and the friends were late... I couldn't undercoat my shelves, as I'd remembered Ben had offered to fix a handly little plate-holding strip of wood onto them before I painted them. I couldn't go to the shop to buy the wood treatment I'd promised to get him because we were waiting for friends...

So I got out the rusty, cobwebby patio lights we'd taken down from the outside of the house. Not terribly tasteful, but a bird in the hand...

Good old Leroy Merlin, French DIY chain extraordinaire, had sold us this 'aged metal' paint - a good compromise for Ben and me - he had wanted glossy black and I had quite fancied leaving them rusty!

So now I think they looked appropriately aged but not actually rusty/falling apart! Shame about the yellow glass in two of them, but a cliché in the hand etc...
j
I also took photos of this incredibly pristine gamelle (lunch box), and popped it into my blog shop. It was hard to put such a good one up for sale, but I am resolved to collect only the blue.

And the quotation? It's from Jimmy Gourd (of course!). If you don't know VeggieTales but are looking for a stylish way to give young children a basic Christian education along with lots of giggles, I cannot recommend them too highly.I would never have thought that the Bible and general moral education could be presented so funnily. They get it right every time...

Bricolage

We have loads and loads of woodwork both inside and outside our French home (I've concluded it was kind of built as a barn-conversion), and whilst this is a wonderful feature, it really creates a lot of work. You may remember the week of work we put into it last summer - well, last week was our major 'bricolage' week for 2010. My happy little picture-heavy posts about the previous week's gite were a nice distraction from the dust, the noise and the exhaustion!Last autumn we actually had the most seriously rotting part - the front A-frame of the patio roof - replaced by local builders. That was well worth it, but the new, artisan-made A-frame left all the other woodwork looking both shabby and worryingly rotten...

So we got sanding!

The plants that surround our patio became refugees.

The ladders went up!

j

Now, I have limited ladder-abilities. I can go up them if I have assured myself that they are firmly attatched to the ground or the wall at all points, but I get a bit panicky if they make any sudden movements...

But I got better as the week went on, and also learned when to stop (there came a point each late afternoon where my sense of balance just deserted me, and even a pot of Himalayan tea in the garden with Ben couldn't restore things). Ben and I sanded, we washed and wiped, Ben sprayed wood preservative...

And then we applied the carefully chosen 'lasure', or wood varnish. A number of years spent working with this house have shown me that people do not actually go out and say, 'Orangey pine, yup, that's the look for me!' Instead, they spend hours scanning colour charts and DIY store wood pannels for a non-orange varnish, and then they apply it to their actual pine, and the actual pine turns a varnish described as: 'Mid Oak' into classic 1980s 'Orange Pine'. You've just got to live with it, I think.

It looks miles better, it's not going to rot, we've worked hard on it, and the orange will fade a bit, I think.

Whilst there's still a bit left to do, it's mainly evening work now. I am therefore turning my attention to various little bits of wooden furniture that I've bought and then done nothing with, because I hate sanding, paint stripping and painting, I'm afraid.

Having everything set up already makes it easy to attack these two sets of shelves, which I will paint and we will hang in our dining area, to hold glasses and decorative china.

I'll show some photos when they're up - I need the incentive to get them finished!

j

I've really enjoyed spending a few stolen moments looking at your blogs over this last week - I didn't have the energy to comment, but it's lovely to see what you've all been doing.

The Story of a Sofa

Ben and I have had our sofa pretty much as long as we've been married, which means it's coming up for 20 years old... It's also not so much a sofa as a settle, with a wooden, bench-style back and, originally, nothing but a thin futon mattress to sit on, which has made it pretty uncomfortable seating for lots of surprised visitors!It's become more comfortable over the years, as we've added a second futon matress, and now a huge piece of furnishing foam which Son 1 cleverly found by the side of the road (bring 'em up thrifty, that's our motto!)It's seen some wonderful cushions, including those made by Sarah of Red Gingham and Serenata the Balancing Kiwi (thanks, ladies), and been christened The Worldly Sofa by Sarah. (Why, Sarah? Is it because of its global connections, or that it seems to hold all my worldly goods?)
j
But somehow, it's been very lack-lustre recently. One dog and two boys are part of the problem, of course... mud, hair and constant shuffling about take their toll, however vigilant the home-maker (yep, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it...)

And then I found this crochet throw (known as an afghan, I think?) at the Vide Greniers in our local school this Sunday. Made by the vendor's grandma...

It's not perfect yet, but I think finally things are coming together for our sofa again...