Oh what a night!

This is my third post in three days as I'm totally over excitable at the moment. Last night was fantastic!

The concert I was harping on about here (risking losing followers with my squirrelly musical taste) was last night. So here's my outfit...

The pimped vintage rock tee! And the rarely seen legs! Vix's blog has led me astray...

(I'm not going to make a habit of outfit shots because I don't ever wear nice clothes. I'm all about warmth and comfort. Jeans, jumpers and kind of hiking boots are my daily uniform. I LOVE reading you girls fashion blogs and my favourite clothes are vintage but really. I can't be arsed.)

And purely in the name of journalism you understand, just for you people I did this...

                                                         I have stars in my eyes!

                                                                            Eek!

The atmosphere was incredible and they were clearly overjoyed with the response they got.

Today my ears are deliciously damaged and the world is muffled. But what a great way to go deaf.
And the flooring guys came! Yay!

The floors...

I know I keep banging on about the flooring but let me show you why it's so exciting!
We moved here 4 years ago and inherited this:

 This is a good bit which lived under a heavy cabinet so I cut round it when I removed the rest. 

It's vintage! But not my thing.

Okay, you get the idea. I'll stop it now...

It had a huge bald spot in front of the sofa.We lived with this carpet for a few years! It smelt. We had it hygienically cleansed! The smell came back.

So one day when my husband was away I cut it into pieces and binned it. My motto is 'it's sometimes better to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission.'

He didn't mind. We are still baffled over how I managed to move the sofa on my own when it's the heaviest model known to man and takes three burly guys to shift it. It was one of those moments you read about like when a child is pinned under a car and a woman can lift it up and free the child. That's how much I wanted the carpet out!

But things sadly were not much better. Over the concrete floors we had the original brittle linoleum (?) tiles and they were not pretty...

Apart from all around the edges of course where they had shattered with the carpet grippers going through them.

And they smelt too! I steamed them. I bleached them. I cillit banged them! They still smelt.

So I figured I'd pull them all up. Again, waiting for my husband to be away...

Mmm, pockmarked concrete with bitumen stains. Nice. Everyone was getting on my case about how I should keep them as they were level and possibly damp proof so I gave up.

There was a huge pothole in the doorway where a pipe under the floor had caused some issues...

I had to fill it with the grey deep gap filler as people kept falling in. And it was slightly embarrassing. ''Come on into the living room, mind the pot hole''

And here's another one forming in the hall...

                                                                     Just lovely.

The picture above shows the broken edges.

So we saved up and did some wiring that needed to be tackled first and we are finally doing the floors. FOUR YEARS! Do you now understand what this means to me?
We shall be like normal people in a normal home!

The man is coming in the morning to do a latex screed which will level all the nasty bits and seal all the smells in.
The day after that we'll have stunning pale oak engineered wood. And nice tall skirting boards! And maybe even a Christmas tree!

Bring it on! X

Rockin around the Christmas tree...

We are in a state of utter chaos in preparation for the flooring. The living room is bare save for a single chair and a telly for the babysitter. I don't do minimalism. Luckily the rest of the downstairs is piled with crap right up to the ceiling which is much more me.

Tomorrow night a little bit of California comes to the UK. I'm going to revert to my twenties and go and see my all time favourite band Redd Kross play in London! They haven't played here for the best part of a decade and that was after a huge break so this is going to be a great night. I'm going to be donning late eighties rock chick attire with a modern twist. (I don't get out much so it's been fun planning my outfit.) Frighteningly similar to an outfit I wore on my 19th birthday at the Marquee TWENTY THREE and a half years ago! I'm not sure the legs have been on display much since then! But inspired by Vix and her naughty rule breaking I'm going for it! Oh yeah, underneath this bespectecled annoracked exterior there lurks a rock chick!

My pimped vintage rock t shirt is ready. My fashion adviser told me you may wear band tees to gigs only for obscure bands, especially if they are vintage and pimped. (Thanks SB).

 Not all our party are taking so much care with their outfits. My husband is threatening to wear his brown cords and a jumper! And I shall be packing earplugs in my handbag in case he turns into a grumpy old man and moans about the defeaning din. Quite likely!

So where's the Christmas tree in the title of the post?
I have two! Found in a bag of tat at a boot sale, this is as good as it gets around here for the time being. They are 8'' tall.

And here's a little look at the beautiful and talented Redd Kross at their finest! 'Lady in the front row', obviously written about me!

and I just can't resist another share of a younger Steve McDonald doing his thang...

Those here for the painting/vintage junk normal service will resume next time. x

Linking with Magpie Monday at Me and my Shadow

Dreaming of a pink Christmas...

Well not me! My poor six year old who isn't allowed a pink bedroom. (What a cruel mum I am!)
I spied this little tree at Sundays boot sale and thought it would make madam happy.

This is the only decoration in the house so far. Everything else is on torturous hold until the flooring goes down.
I thought the pink tree would be the perfect place to display our collection of 1950's plastic decorations.

 

 Some have little dangly bells that hook on...

And of course we had to top the tree with a vintage fairy.

 At least one corner of the house is looking festive. And I'm happy with the knowledge that there will be no more pink anywhere in the rest of the house! This is so wrecking the French country vibe I was aiming for. Well the tree and the damn princesses.

The World's End...

Allrighty, I've been bogged down with school fair fudge making (epic fail TWICE) and visiting the relatives and I'm still emptying the downstairs for the flooring. No creating here to report...

But something exciting has been going on. Last night my very own road where I live was closed to traffic for FILM MAKING!
In fact since the end of summer  there have been people filming all over Letchworth Garden City my next door town, changing the names of all the pubs and leaving lighting rigs everywhere!

'The World's End' is the movie, due out next summer and starring Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Martin Freeman.
I know! In my very own road! Three film stars!
Unfortunately all the action is happening at a pub much further down the road which would be a long walk in the cold night air and apparently they don't let anyone up there.

But you can't have everything.

So what's it about? A group of friends go on a pub crawl with an apocalyptic twist. I mean, what more can you ask of a movie?  Simon Pegg can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned.

You can read more about it here...

And I had a tip off today from a friend that some very special guests were coming out to turn on the Letchworth Christmas lights. We had to endure the local Pantomime people telling jokes I first heard in the seventies for 20 whole minutes before there they were, our very own film stars, turning on the lights and thanking the good folk of Letchworth for their hospitality.

Father Christmas trying to muscle in. No chance.

They had fake snow and fireworks. No expense spared when movie stars come to town!
Happy weekend everyone!

What would you do?

The hardest part for me, when it comes to painting a piece of furniture, is deciding how to do it. This can take years and with some of our furniture it often does. Colours, techniques, styles all have to be seriously mulled over before I can take the plunge. I only want to do it once. I have to get it right.

Now, a few years ago I picked up this baby on ebay.

I thought it looked like a bedside table in the photo so I snapped it up for £30 as I thought it would match my french bed. When it arrived, it was HUGE! The measurements had been on the listing but I hadn't checked. This is a metre tall! Oops! ( Could be worse! I nearly bought dolls house furniture accidentally once!)
This is the ONLY thing I have ever had that I am frightened to paint.

It's old. It has a patina that can't be faked.

It's carved. These are not stuck on!

It's oak. And it has cute feet. ( My photo was too blurry).

But, (and this is probably why it was £30) some plonker has SCREWED the top onto the base!

Mmm, 4 whacking great screws in the top!

So what do I do? Does the fact that someone has already ruined this mean I should paint it? Or should I countersink the screws and fill the holes? (Will that look okay or like 4 brown blobs?) At the moment this is in the corner of the living room with a strategically placed lamp and coasters hiding the screws! The light was too poor to capture the detail so I dragged it into the garden as you do. (The neighbours must think I'm mad, frequently dragging furniture outside for photos!)

I like painted furniture with a wooden top but I don't fancy wooden furniture with a painted top.

I could mosaic it?

What would you do with it?

The ugly truth...

You've probably all seen this shot by now...

 

What I haven't shared is the other side of the hallway...

Not quite so pretty!

I decorated as far as I could without taking the radiator off. And it's been like that for almost a year!
With the new floor being laid very soon we finally got the plumber in to take off the radiator so I could finish the job.

Wahey! I took off the skirting too as that's being replaced along with the floor. It looks so much better. I was under the impression that having a radiator off meant we'd have to do without heat but the plumber just capped off the one radiator so I could work on the wall all weekend and not freeze. Genius!

I still need to paint the pipes...

Bit by bit the house is getting there. Slowly!

Despite not being able to put up a single Christmas decoration due to emptying half the downstairs for the flooring, Christmas spirit is well and truly here!
At the Friday Flea market I picked up this sweet vintage box with it's paper labels.

I'm not sure how I will utilise it yet but I love it.

And we went up the road to the garden centre to see Father Christmas arrive in style!

And Freddy is getting very excited!

This is the 'good' cat! He's only looking fed up as my husband wanted him to look at the camera when he wanted to sleep! He didn't mind the outfit at all. I think he has a future in modelling!
The 'bad' one would not tolerate such silliness.

Linking with Magpie Monday at Me and my shadow

Flea market finds...

I started a new job in a charity shop in Hitchin which was really good! I have never worked so hard in my life and my background is childcare so I think that is saying something! A kids party is a walk in the park in comparison. But it was so rewarding. I put away all the summer clothes as I thought it was a little chilly, and I went through ALL the kids clothes and put out some nice warm items and surprise, surprise, people were snapping them up!
I was up and down stairs, tagging, steaming and sorting and I really enjoyed it.
Then I spied a new donation of Christmas decorations containing some vintage glass lovelies so I boxed them up and stuck a £20 label on them. They sold the same day they were put out, to the surprise of the staff who would have sold them for £1. So I felt great about that.

I even managed to get up early and do the Friday Flea market before going into the shop and scored some goodies!

This little fella I haven't even paid for! I owe the lady the money and will give it to her next week as she didn't have any change. We are a trusting bunch in Hitchin! I think he's from the 60's and will add to my vintage Christmas decoration collection.

[I am dying to show you my Christmas decs and give you a guided tour of my favourite bits as I know I'm not the only bauble maniac out there, BUT... instead of getting it all up on Dec 1st and getting our moneys worth before 12th night it's going to be sooo late this year. The flooring guy comes on the 11th so all the furniture has to be removed from the living room and hallway as we are being screeded, then floored over 2 days (maybe three?) and THEN I have to put the rooms back together, put back all the books and games and THEN get the decs out. It will be a frustrating wait but it's taken us 4 years to be in a position where we can proceed with the flooring (wiring etc) so that takes priority.]

My favourite find was this pristine carpet bag!

I'm not really into shoes and bags like 'normal' girls but this just screamed 'have me!' and cost next to nothing. I am one lucky lady.

I found very little at Sundays boot sale apart from a lovely new friend, the beautiful Rebecca from Crivens Cottage who had never been to boot sale before. Unimaginable I know! Well, she took to it like a duck to water and scored more cool stuff than I did! Not to mention charming the regular stallholders!

I did find one very sweet thing:

A faded Christmassy box containing...

...teeny tiny Christmas crackers! 3'' tall, they are the size of boiled sweets...

...yet still contain snaps mottoes and charms! We were tempted to pull one to see what was inside but didn't want to ruin the unused set. Cost? 25p!

Result!


Linking with: Me and my shadow   A living space   Fath, hope and Charity shopping 

What to do with Sheila the mannequin...

Remember Sheila my most recent boot sale mannequin?

Well, that blue fabric had to go. It was a foam backed synthetic fabric and the foam had degraded so Sheila was leaving piles of sand-like substance wherever she was put.
I removed the old covering and gave her a good scrub in the shower to get all the 'sand' off.

I mentioned that I wanted to try some decoupage on her. Let me show you my inspiration!

First up:

 This is by Ellinee from Ellinee journal where she gives a helpful tutorial too! Vintage sheet music! So beautiful!

Next up:

 

Vintage dress patterns used to give a corset effect! Isn't that great? This one is by Louise at

 Dearest Jackdaw

She also gives a tutorial on how to achieve this.

But I think the one I shall try to emulate, given the shape and style of my dress form is this one.

Now these don't look decoupaged at all, I think they are moulded card or something similar...but I figured I could try and achieve this look with brown paper. This picture is from Timeworn Interiors 
which is a lovely blog, so much eye candy...

Thank you ladies for giving me permission to show your images!

Back to Sheila:

She's stripped  and waiting! But I'm very overwhelmed as the wooden flooring has arrived, I have to empty the living room and rip off the skirting boards, I have to decorate behind a radiator that's off, and Christmas is coming. So don't hold your breath....

The finished painted Mule chest

The house stinks of furniture wax. My husband wants to leave me for another woman. Any woman will do, so long as she doesn't keep altering EVERY piece of furniture that comes into the house.
But apart from that, I'm quite pleased with how it's worked out.

Here's the before:

Very useful but very orange.
Here's the after:

I think it's finished. I wanted to add a bit of folk art inspired pattern on the front but keep it very neutral and subtle...

Luckily I have every painted furniture book known to man, so I was able to trace this design onto the chest. And luckily, folk art can be a bit rubbish! Then I clear waxed and dark waxed. I use Liberon Beeswax with turpentine (clear and antique pine on a pale piece like this)

 

The pic above is after the dark wax. It just adds some age and dirtiness which I like the look of.

with clear wax (a bit too clean and new looking)

With dark wax, the difference is subtle but it adds more character

And here's the flooring sample that's my favourite so far:

Hopefully it will add Scandinavian chic. Vanilla oak. I've got paint on it! (start as you mean to go on)

I've been on the lookout for a large piece of fabric or curtain to use for a door curtain to make the house warmer and struck gold at this mornings boot sale with these:

Huge unopened cream cotton lined curtains! Five quid! Wahey! I can always embellish them if it's looking a bit too cream and white in the hallway. I'm really pleased. Don't you love it when a room starts coming together?

Linking up with

 Magpie Monday  PJH DESIGNS  Funky Junk Interiors

Knick of Time
 Elizabeth & Co

 Faith Hope and Charity Shopping 
 White wednesdays at Timewashed  
 From my front porch to yours  
 Miss Mustard Seed 
 Jennifer Rizzo