Three Things Thursday

Howdy, Guvnors*! 

How's tricks?

Today's contributions to the ever-growing list of weirdness (aka this blog) are all, happily, free. I'd like to think it's a sign of me becoming less materialistic, but yesterday's response to finding the two Gilmore Girls box-sets missing from my collection would insist otherwise. I might have yelled "YAAAY!" and punched the air a bit. Sorry again for making you jump, Game Shop Geeks...

1. Chalk it up

I know lots of people find sitting on a beach incredibly relaxing, but my fidgety fingers just never stop itching for something to do. On my last visit, Mother Nature was kind enough to provide gratis entertainment in the form of a smattering of chalk chunks mixed in amongst the stones. 

I was secretly hoping that someone might find them before the tide washed my scribbles away...

2. Suspended Sofas

I've decided that all Wednesday afternoons should be spent with friends eating Mexican food, baking cakes, and watching trashy Netflix movies (Burlesque, anyone?). Unfortunately, I don't think my annual leave quota would cover it- but it did make yesterday feel all the more special. It also had just a hint of the surreal, thanks to the décor in my friend's local Paperchase (a shop I find rather enchanting anyway...). 

Apparently, the floor was rotting away in the first floor of the building; so they came up with a rather ingenious way of decorating the empty space. 

I filmed a speedy video too, to show you all how it's suspended within the space. Pretty cool, huh?

3. Fat Flap

My favourite part of yesterday's adventures surpassed even the magical floating furniture, after my friend's pug (who apparently loves food even more than I do) realised he could no longer fit through the cat-flap...

That face!!

I'll admit, I used his pu(d)giness as an excuse not to give him any of my banana loaf. Cruel wench, I am.

What have you been up to this week? 

Katie xxx

* I thought I'd try a new greeting, but I think I pulled it off about as well as a rapping grandmother. And not a cool, Betty White-style grandma either. "Hello lovelies!" service will resume as normal from my next post.

Six Things Sunday

Hello my lovelies!

How have your weekends been? Mine's involved cocktails, fancy dress, fresh-from-the-oven French pastries, and five hours(!) of gardening (to counteract the pastries). It's been the icing on the cake of a really good week, which also included these six fantastic things:

1. New followers
*Waves and proffers packet of biscuits* Heartfelt greetings to those of you who've recently started following my ramblings! I feel honoured that you've decided to stick around, but I must warn you to prepare your eyes for lots of photographs like this:

All images from Kimberly Hamner's Pinterest board. I feel like Kimberly and I would get on rather well... Unless we actually met Jo Manganiello. Then we'd probably fight to the death.

2. Unexpected presents
I would like to think that I always treated my polkadot satchel with the utmost dignity and respect, but apparently that wasn't enough; the strap broke last week and managed to whip me across the face in the process. Needless to say, I was very relieved that the buckle wasn't still attached to the end of it! 

Being able to use my gorgeous new weekend bag as a replacement handbag has prevented me from becoming inconsolable about the breakage, but it's still a rather sad day when your accessories start assaulting you! After I shared my woes with Anna, as a fellow polkadot satchel owner, she very sweetly decided to send me a present to cheer me up! I was so excited to find out what she'd sent me, which turned out to be this gorgeous clasp purse:

The best thing about this purse (besides being absolutely beautiful) is that it has two compartments; so I can separate the ID for my second, secret identity my cards and cash. Genius! Thank you so much Anna xxx

3. Mini Godzilla
My personal highlight of the Lego Movie was discovering the existence of LEGO GODZILLA!!! Technically, he's Lego Lizard Man; but it's basically the same thing. I might have tracked down and bought a figure online before the movie had even finished... 

Lego Godzilla now lives inside the glass dome with my metal tealight house - I like the juxtaposition of tiny Godzilla and giant building. 

4. Fancy chairs
Whilst visiting Eastbourne for work on Thursday, I spotted this rather unusual chair in the window of Barley Sugar: 

It's rather pricey, at three thousand English pounds(!), and I'm not sure how comfortable it would be with those tassels, but I reckon sitting in it equates with starring in the final scene of An Officer and a Gentleman. And it would probably cost a lot more than £3,000 to hire Richard Gere to carry you around your living room....

5. Marzipan moggies
Friday night was my bestie's birthday party, and I decided to sculpt miniature models of her cats out of marzipan to go on her birthday cake. This is the second time I've made Fran marzipan sweets, but I'll admit I was unsure how she'd feel about devouring her cats - even if they were almondy and delicious.

6. Treasure hunts
Rather than just handing over Fran's birthday presents, I decided to create a treasure hunt, complete with rhyming clues (I do love a bit of rhyme). I've included one below in case you fancy leaving a comment with a guess of what the gift was/where I hid it:

I'm squirrelled away with my brothers and sisters

We take you on journeys, without fear of blisters

Some of us wear jackets, but we don't have faces

I'll inspire you to travel to faraway places.

I'm linking up again with the fabulous Hannah's The Week That Was: Captured, and would heartily recommend it; Hannah is a very gracious hostess!

What fun things have you discovered recently?

Katie xxx

Commode on over

And pull up a chair (once you've recovered from that really awful pun). 

Not just any chair, oh no; an upcycled chair. Yup. I've been getting my craft on once again, and this is the reason I spent several days in March covered in spray paint.

Commode: Before

I spotted this fellow feeling a wee bit sorry for himself, literally, in our local flea market late last year (the one that made me famous). Despite the fact his seat was bleached with the splatterings of bleary-eyed, full-bladdered emergencies past (lovely, eh?), I fell in love with his rather sexy turned legs and arms. 

Eeeew.

But check out those sexy legs!

And those arms! Swit-swoo!

Thankfully, I had a good excuse to buy him there and then, because we'd recently decided our bathroom needed a chair to perch on whilst we brushed our teeth. And what better for a bathroom than an antique commode?! Tom might have been slightly less enthused that we had to carry it home between us, because we'd walked into town...

Rather than reverting to my trusty DIY chalk paint, which I've previously used on a dresser, a lamp, a dining room chair and our dining table, I decided to opt for something even easier (and with no brushes to wash out afterwards) and bought a can of Rustoleum primer and another one of grey spraypaint. 

Making progress; after the first coat of primer.

I was particularly drawn to the wicker elements, because they reminded me of the aida fabric for cross-stitching. So I decided to embroider it. Are you ready for the "after"? Here goes:

So much better with the stains cleaned and covered!

I opted to use wool, because it's nice and chunky, but
I'm uncertain about the colour.

I haven't embroidered the seat yet, because the wicker is so complicated I struggled to get a standard pattern, and I was worried it would make the seat uncomfortable. Look at me- choosing practicality over aesthetics!! Perhaps I'm growing up...

Katie xxx

Console table DIY

.... for lazy people. It doesn't even involve tools*!

I've been debating for months on whether to put a console table in our hall. We've got the space, but I was still worried it would make the hallway feel cramped if I chose the wrong table. I also didn't want to something which would end up covered in Tom's unopened post; but I probably shouldn't ask for miracles...

We needed something reasonably shallow, so it wouldn't get in the way of the front door, and initially considered buying a table with nice legs (I am SUCH a leg girl when it comes to furniture) and cutting it in half like this:

Look at those legs! Swit-swoo
source

However, I was unsure whether screwing a table to the wall was the best choice, because it meant that in six months' time when I was bored of it (I'm very fickle like that) and wanted to take it down there would be a load of holes to fill in. Booooring.

Then I spotted this awesome tray in Ideal Home magazine and all previous plans were abandoned. 

I bought the tray, then hopped straight over to ebay to track down two more of the vintage apple crates we've used in the living room. After stacking them up like building blocks, we now have a hall table with bonus shoe storage:

It may sound daft but moving the fruit bowl from the kitchen and freeing up more counter space is one of the biggest benefits to come from doing this. I've replaced our old fruit basket with one of my fancy-pants jars (without the lid) until I can find a proper fruit bowl.

The tray means Tom now has somewhere to chuck all the stuff boys carry around in their pockets when he gets home from work. It's also free-standing, so the wall remains hole-free, and all of the components can be used for storage elsewhere when I get bored of it. The best part of all? To date, it's remained clear of unopened-post!

Katie xxx

*Ok, ok. "DIY" might be a bit of an exaggeration, seeing as all you'd need to do to replicate this is buy some crates....

Table Talk

Hello lovelies!

Can you believe it that my cold is STILL going on?! Me neither. I've spent the last three days Googling "countries where snot is a currency" so we can move house and become millionaires. So far, no dice.

I decided to make the most of the sunshine on Sunday and have a (medicinal) half pint of perry before our Sunday lunch. Have I mentioned Tom's awesome Sunday roast dinners on here before? I'm not saying he's the love of my life solely because of his roast dinners; but they do cancel out an awful lot of smelly Man Socks being left on the floor... Anyway, because I have a lower alcohol tolerance than your average newborn baby, half a pint of perry = me being totally sloshed.

Which is how I came to be sitting in my brand new chair at 3pm, under my gorgeous new blanket, cackling drunkenly and staring intently at the legs of our dining room table. "You know, what our table needs?!" I thought to myself yelled to Tom in the kitchen, "YELLOW LEGS!"

Table legs before. YAWN.

I didn't get painting there and then, because there was a roast dinner to be consumed and napping on the sofa to be undertaken like the trooper I am. I planned to go to Homebase and buy a tester pot of yellow emulsion to turn into some more homemade chalk paint, but instead I decided to try using some paint that I already had. 

Ok, so it was acrylic paint, which probably isn't recommended for painting on wooden furniture. But it was right there, and Homebase wasn't. In fact, Homebase is a good seven minute walk for my house- a distance that practically qualifies me to set up a Justgiving page for charity sponsorship should I try to walk it! There are few things I am if not chronically lazy about my crafting. The same reason why I used sellotape for taping the edges for this project instead of masking tape; the sellotape was in the dining room, and the masking tape was all the way up in the loft- up a whole flight of stairs and a ladder.

So the next day I pulled out my stash of acrylic paint and my bag of plaster of Paris, and stirred up the perfect consistency of homemade chalk paint- which I have decided is the viscosity of hummus. I was going to go for just yellow, but then this gorgeous bright blue tube just wouldn't stop staring at me. 

So, two coats later, I ended up with this:

The blue and yellow legs are on alternate corners, and as you can see the blue leg "socks" are also higher than the yellow ones.

I love it. What do you think? 

Katie xxx

Sittin' Pretty

Hello lovelies!

Did you have a nice New Year's Eve? Mine was full of fancy frocks, fancier food, and seriously dangerous cocktails; followed by Balderdash, a lot of giggling, and swigging champagne straight from the bottle like the class acts we are. 

I'm feeling very driven to try and make 2013 even better than 2012; craftier, tastier, happier, cosier, more social and more educational. I'm hoping to finish some of my long-outstanding DIY projects, spend more time doing wholesome outdoorsy things, and sketch out some plans for the future. I'm really looking forward to some new and inspiring challenges (she says, sitting on the sofa watching Bank Holiday TV with a belly full of leftover Yule Log...).

My first project was testing out home-made chalk paint on our dining chairs. We bought six handmade wooden chairs from Gumtree for a bargainous £30-the-lot over two years ago, and whilst I love their gorgeous shape I've always wanted to brighten them up with a lick of paint. 

Tom managed to fit 6 of these (plus us!) in our Ford Focus. He's clearly some sort of a chair-Tetris Wizard

I attempted my first chalk paint mix last weekend, using leftover teal paint from Tom's Man Cave (which I also used to paint the stripes on our dresser) and a bit of plaster of Paris.

I decided my newly-turquoised chair deserved a fancy new cushion too, so I made one today from some gorgeous bird-print cotton, a piece of Cath Kidston-esque fabric from Ikea, and half the stuffing from a very old pillow (Tom bought me new ones for Christmas :) ) 

The next chair is going to be in the same blue paint I used for my table lamp makeover, and I'm working on a zesty yellow cushion to go with it. Just in case you hadn't noticed, I much prefer it when things don't match; and I'm looking forward to continuously rearranging the different patterned cushions on our multi-coloured chairs. Simple things, eh?

Wishing you all a 2013 that's filled to the brim with the things and people you love best. 

Katie xxx

Current loves

Hello lovelies!

I hope you're all having wonderful weekends! 

Today, I thought I'd share a few of my current loves; because nothing beats the Sunday blues like a list of beautiful things :)

1. Illustrated dinner plates

Beautiful, witty, tableware involving sharks - what's not to love?! The only problem with these plates is I'd have constant indigestion due to eating my dinner as quickly as possible to look at the pretty pictures!

2. Pinterest

Since installing the "Pin It" button on my bookmarks bar, I've been pinning craft tutorials and pictures of kitchens like there's no tomorrow. 

3. Double Caramel Magnums

Until today, I didn't know these existed. I can understand why no-one wanted to tell me before- as I have now made it my life's mission to eat them all. Hardly my fault- they are so damn delicious!

4. Car Boot Bargains

Today, Fran and I spent three very enjoyable hours hunting down bargains and eating Mr Whippy ice-creams at our local car boot sale. I was very successful at haggling and picked up a dress, three tops, two books, two metal aeroplanes (part of a current craft project) and a light-up globe for £4.75! Score!

5. Solving our record storage problem

Tom and I eventually settled on the storage solution for our (very much individual) record collections; vintage-style fruit crates. The globe in the photo is my £1 car boot bargain from this morning :)

6. Being an Independant Woman aka building flatpack furniture

I spent yesterday morning putting together a flat-packed vanity unit for our bathroom. I was tempted to ring Beyonce (or 'Bey' as I call her cos we're, like, totes besties) and tell her how much of a Strong, Independant Woman I was being; then realised I was putting the furniture together using tools I had stolen from Tom's toolbox, because I don't have any tools.... Oh well, one step at a time. 

7. Photographing pretty things

Butterflies, buildings and boyfriends :)

Titchfield Abbey

"Look! A thing!"

8. Lusting after circus-themed goodies

9. Big, fancy glass jars

I have a romantic idea of my kitchen counter being covered with huge jars filled with homemade cookies. In reality, the jars would be full of cookie crumbs, and my belly would be full of cookies...

10. Devouring free e-zines
If you haven't discovered these two yet, I can't recommend them enough. They contain links to beautiful, well chosen pieces from the U.K and the U.S respectively, photographs of stunning interiors and gorgeous fashion shoots. 

An example of the beautiful layouts of Number 91 magazine

What are you really into at the moment? Have you got any favourite e-zines you would recommend? Or do you know of any ice-creams EVEN BETTER than double caramel magnums?!

My 50p chest of drawers

Hello lovelies

Sorry it's been so quiet around here recently. I've been busy working on several home-décor projects that are taking longer than anticipated, and I don't like showing you anything that's half-finished. Except for half-finished pieces of cake, because - let's be honest - I can never restrain myself long enough to take a photo when cake is put in front of me; taking a bite definitely comes first!

However, last Saturday morning I started and completed a project that's been on my to-do list for nearly two years. I'm really, really happy with the result, and the people I've shown it to already have all been very impressed- mostly with the fact that it cost me less than £1! 

When we moved into our house we found this chest of drawers squirrelled away in the loft:

Apologies for shoddy photography here- my camera was having a tantrum

For a free chest of drawers, it's certainly not to be sniffed at, but it couldn't have been further from my personal taste if it tried (sorry, 'drawers!). I love old, knocked about, quirky things- a few scuffs here and there makes furniture all the more loved-looking in my opinion- and I thought the plasticky-mdf-ness of these drawers was just... eurgh. But, that said, they're a very handy storage option for our spare room- we keep the bedding for our guest bed in them, plus all our spare blankets (I am a bit of a blanket-buying fiend, and just can't resist a knitted/crocheted charity shop bargain!)

I recently found some vintage maps of Italy from our local flea market for my favourite price of all - FREE! :) Which made me a very happy girl indeed, but even more so when I realised what I could use them for... Introducing, my 50p chest of drawers(!)* 

I particularly like how it looks with the poster I picked up in an antique shop last week - The A-Z of Carnivorous Dinosaurs; our guest room is nothing if not educational :)

*50p was for the PVA glue I used to stick it all together...

P.S. I've entered my post in Faith, Hope and Charity Shopping's cartography-tastic "Ta Da Tuesday"