Alison May's Blog, page 11
June 14, 2016
American Housewife
Oooh people I want to watch this! Mostly because I relate a little too closely to the plight of a not so perfect housewife in a sea of small town perfection…
“Katie Otto, a confident, unapologetic wife and mother of three, raises her flawed family in the wealthy town of Westport, Connecticut, filled with “perfect” mommies and their “perfect” offspring…”
Apparently an “insanely accurate reflection” of life in Westport, Connecticut, and I suspect, an insanely accurate reflection of what it is to have a bottom the size of a mini-bus in a land peopled by bodies honed by yoga, money and plastic surgery, looks set to be the perfect replacement to Modern Family now we have reached the end of the series available on Box Sets…
Coming very soon in America and sure to follow twenty-five years later in the UK, I am rather looking forward to this one, aren’t you?
June 13, 2016
A Gutenberg Goodnight
It’s been a funny day. My plans for living in this here bungalow have suddenly become precarious and that old familiar blanket, fear, has wrapped it self around me all over again. And so tonight I have sought comfort. In Butter Pie and a slice of Cappucino Traybake. In Coronation Street and in Ste’s arms. And in books. Always in books.
The kind of books I need when life is standing on it’s head are the old-fashioned kind. Vintage snuggles. Reminders from yesterday that all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all shall be well…
And so before I climb in to my floatiest nightie and rub Frankincense into my ever deepening wrinkles, I thought I would share a list of some of the lovely (FREE) vintage books I have recently been downloading to my darling Kindle…
A Girl of the Limberlost
By Gene Stratton Porter
Download it on Project Gutenberg Here
Patricia Brent, Spinster
By Herbert Jenkins
Download it on Project Gutenberg Here
The Celebrity At Home
By Violet Hunt
Download it on Project Gutenberg Here
The Narrow House
By Evelyn Scott
Download it on Project Gutenberg Here
Those Brewster Children
By Florence Morse Kingsley
Download it on Project Gutenberg Here
Ten Dollars Enough
By Catherine Owen
Download it on Project Gutenberg Here
Night night all.x
June 12, 2016
On Method and Madness
You know that the enemy of good housekeeping is willy-nilly whimsy don’t you?
That she who grabs a pile of washing as she stumbles down the stairs carrying last night’s glass of water first thing in the morning, then dumps it in the hall when she is distracted by the morning post is destined never really to feel at one with her house? That those of us who never complete one job before being delighted or terrified by the next will always suffer from domestic irritation: never quite feeling that we are entitled to the joy that is ticking off one box and sitting down with a well-deserved cup of tea…
Well today I want to advocate something radical instead. I know. You are going to think I’ve been on the crazy juice again: but how about this, how about we all gather together and as one and make a vow, that from today we will finish what we start…
Does this way madness lie? I think not, my little Buttercup.
I suspect you see, that if we are already blessed with with well documented routine, and eagerly anticipated ritual, then it is merely a spoonful of thought and a liberal sprinkling of self-discipline that are standing between us and the path to domestic bliss.
Think, if you will back to your school days, to cookery lessons and chemistry lessons. To well thought out, well executed recipes and experiments. To ingredients and methods. Think about the day you turned water into steam: at no point did the man in the white coat at the front of the class suggest you might like to nip into the gym while you were waiting, to have a quick scramble across the monkey bars now did he? The lady in the apron in your cookery class never, not even on her craziest days, suggested that you might like to dabble in a bit of stain removal before you got round to tipping the syrup over the pineapple upside down cake you were in the midst of baking. No Siree. They didn’t, because they believed that any given procedure follows the same path: the gathering of ingredients and resources, the following of a METHOD, and the observation of the outcome or satisfaction of the result.
And that’s it. One task. No dilly-dallying. No wandering into the garden or getting distracted by The Housewives of Beverley Hills. One task, in which we were encouraged to take pride in accomplishing.
Now I am not for one minute, suggesting that for every given task in our domestic lives we should have well documented procedures: I’m not that bonkers… but what I am saying is this- satisfaction can be bought with self-discipline. With a focused mind-set. With the determination to finish what we start before we grant ourselves permission to move on to the next task. And in this way we buy ourselves not just satisfaction but creative freedom to play…
We couldn’t for example, hand-wash our latest vintage textile find in the kitchen sink, if last nights crusty, stinky fish dish was still soaking in the bowl. The pretty is immediately hampered by the need to do what should already have been done. The dull stuff gets in the way of that which is lovely, because last night we found ourselves distracted by the lamp in the garden that didn’t seem to be working, an over-long conversation with our sister, or the self-gratifying belief that we DESERVED to sit down. Things get left, creative freedom is lost and harmony is compromised by the need to get busy with a scrubbing brush. Oh woe is us.
It won’t do. And all it takes is commitment to FINISHING WHAT WE START by always having the correct resources in stock (dish-soap, scrubbies, bicarb and rubber gloves for the nightmare that is a fishy bowl!), and following the prescribed method (scrubbing until the stink is gone, then drying and putting away immediately) so that we can afford to reward ourselves in celebration of the outcome (Gin and Lemo please), and move on to more pleasurable pursuits.
Because that M’dear is what all of this is about: the pleasurable pursuits. And they can be ours if we are only willing to FINISH WHAT WE START. If we are absolutely willing to exist only in the moment: not in what else needs doing, or what we would prefer to be enjoying, but in the moment, for as Cedric Wright once said…
The days of our lives must become precious.
In all heaven and earth, there is this one thing to do:
take your time. Enjoy the perfection of what you are doing.
Enjoy accomplishing it exquisitely…
Enjoy accomplishing it exquisitely. Let’s make it our mantra, Housekeepers…
June 11, 2016
The Salon Library Is Open!
Yesarooney! The Salon Library is now open and if you are a member you can pop over there right now and find that your account has already been enabled and you can access all the downloads and PDF’s I have ever created right there in one very easy to navigate library.
Divided in to sections, (The Seasonal Series, Stories, Workbooks, Writing, Scrubs, Puttery Treats, Christmas, Housekeeping, Blogging, Partworks and Planners!) you will be able to find exactly what you are looking in terms of inspiration and instruction in a heartbeat and I am so thrilled to be able to offer you this lovely resource…
So what’s included in the library? EVERYTHING in my download store (More than $300 dollars worth of downloads alone!) and much, much more besides!
Want the Full List?
Trash It or Treasure It (25 PDFs!)
The Art of Homemaking (5 PDFs)
A Year of Puttery Treats (12 PDFs)
The Puttery Year Companion (6 PDF’s)
The Shine Workshop and Workbook
The Life Audit
The Better Me Program
50 Apps for Happy Housekeepers
Creating Mornings Less Ordinary
The Housekeepers Planner
599 Treats for Vintage Housekeepers
299 More Treats for Vintage Housekeepers
When Queens Ride By
The Flowered Tea-Set
The Housekeepers Planner
Recipes and Remedies
Blogging Planner
The Little House Pick Me-Up
Season One of the Vintage Housekeepers Circle
Season Two of the Vintage Housekeepers Circle
Phew right?!
And all for just $20.00 a month, along with every download I go on to create during the course of your membership, FREE entry into the Living Room (and everything that offers!), monthly Webinars and Podcasts (starting July), a one hour Pep- Talk between you and me so that we can get to the root of what’s holding you back from creating a life less ordinary of your own, and a welcome card, birthday card and Christmas card straight to your door!
And this is only the beginning!
There really isn’t a more magical way to start re-inventing every aspect of your life, nor a more dedicated lovely community to hold your hand as you set about creating a life less ordinary…
You see I want you to feel better about your house, yourself and your creative purpose in this world, and I have created a membership program that is truly EXCELLENT value for money. There really isn’t anything else like it on the net and I KNOW you will love it!
The Salon is the culmination of twelve years of lovely work: it is EVERYTHING I know about living well and I am so eager to share it all with you…
There Are Two Ways to Join the Salon...
Either…
The Salon
Pay just $169.00 for every twelve months of your membership…
Or…
The Salon Monthly
Pay $20.00 each month (for twelve months – 12 x $20.00 payments)
To join simply follow this link and choose the subscription of your choice and you will be immediately welcomed in to our lovely inner sanctum.
I am so very much looking forward to getting to know you better and to helping you create an authentic life at home.
June 8, 2016
A Housekeeper’s Holiday
Home-making is the kind of job that comes without benefits. No holidays, no sick-pay, no let up. Don’t take this as a complaint, I’m just saying.
Truth is, I’ve said it before and I will say it again: we are probably the worst bosses we are ever likely to encounter in or out of the workplace and there is just no escaping our inner slave-driver. She who tuts her head in disappointment at the blackcurrant stain spoiling our kitchen counter, refuses to indulge our well deserved penchant for scrumptious elevenses and issues demands for seasonal performance reviews that only ever leaves us feeling as though we might as well go boil our heads in fabric conditioner, so appalling have our efforts at keeping house been lately…
Ah yes my friends, the performance review. That all too often inflicted sense that all is not well, and that if we don’t get round to pulling up our fishnet stockings, the house and it’s darling precious in-mates might just be in danger of falling into rack and ruin.
But let me tell you a secret: it won’t happen in June or July, because real life is suspended for six weeks from here on in and we are absolutely entitled to take a housekeepers holiday until the day after we stitch the kids back into their neatly starched uniforms and pop them back on the bus to school.
No really. We can take a holiday. We can grab our bossy inner housekeeper by the apron strings and inform her that we will not be partaking in anything resembling a performance review while our toes are full of sand and our freezers are full of ice-pops: we are simply too busy playing ball.
So what exactly does a holiday from housekeeping entail? Can we down tools and declare the house a bicarb free zone? No such luck. No. But what we can do is go easy on ourselves. We can tell ourselves that new regimes, and wiping the slate clean and starting again and renewing our home-making mid-year resolutions can wait and we can get by with doing the absolute bare minimum.
Truly. I’ve tried it. And the roof didn’t fall in. I did nothing but the laundry, hung clothes up un-ironed, ate nothing but scrumptious salad and shop bought (squeal!) cake, cleaned the bathroom and washed the dishes and that was all. And everything ticked along just fine. Nobody noticed the difference. I kill myself daily, and the week I decide to go back to basics, no-one notices the difference!
So here’s the idea: instead of bothering our heads daily with the effort to create a perfect home during the long Summer holiday, how about we give ourselves a break instead, and decide to plan a whole new domestic life in September and not my Darlings until?
You see the minute we choose to stop beating ourselves up about the damage inflicted on our living rooms by herds of children or too many weekends spent living in the garden we can instead choose to keep the house ticking over with the kind of daily housekeeping most people find acceptable all year around and instead indulge our vintage housekeepers souls with a Kindle full of old-fashioned housekeeping tomes, a pile of interiors mags a mile high and a secret stash of teeny tiny domestic treats to only be distributed after an Autumnal seasonal scrub.
We housekeepers are sometimes like hamsters on the wheel: intent on keeping it spinning and twizzing our tired old legs into a frenzy without ever stopping to take in the scenery. But the time is now Housekeepers. The time is now to fill our housekeepers planner with new ideas and puttery treats. To lie in the sun and drink afternoon cocktails. To leave the beds un-made and go for a walk in the sun while it’s still shining.
Permission granted. Go holiday…
Tips For Survival?
* Keep all holiday souvenirs under wraps until September, so you can bring a little bit of Summer to the house once it is once again immaculate… don’t dilute their influence by abandoning them to the current mayhem…
* Don’t bother starting any major DIY or re-modelling jobs until the Summer has passed: life will simply get in the way until routine has been restored and all the trappings of the on-going work will only add to the sense that you are living in chaos!
* Live in a uniform of shorts and t-shirts and encourage the kids to do the same. Insist that personal towels are used for at least two showers each and air-dry them thoroughly on the line in-between. Use wipeable table mats and cloths and in short, do everything in your power to reduce the laundry until you have the majority of your day back in the Autumn.
*Make putting holiday packing away a priority above all else: coping with the house when you are only doing the minimum of housekeeping is quite enough to have to deal with without tripping over abandoned suitcases and tenty paraphenalia all Summer long…
* Keep the kitchen sink sparkly clean and free of the great unwashed and the rest of the house will feel clean…
* Cook as rarely as you can get away with and when you have to use the bbq and microwave as often as you can. Think quick and easy and you will half the work involved…
* And finally: don’t sweat the small stuff as the old adage goes. Life is short and Summer days might be long, but the seasons pass in the blink of a child’s eye…
Living Room + Salon Round-Up
Good morning Gorgeous Ones. It is eleven o’clock in the morning and I have already eaten my lunch because I seem to have been up for hours tapping away at my keyboard, abundant with ideas and finally (oh finally!) the drive to achieve all that needs to be achieved.
I haven’t actually had a shower. But hey ho, I have eaten and I am achieving! What more do you want?
Today I just wanted to bring you up to speed with everything that has been happening in my lovely Living room and the soon to be launched Salon…
In the Living Room
* Firstly the conversation is flowing in the Living Room Facebook group and it is such a joy. Though many of you have signed up to the group, most of my Living Room members haven’t and I just wanted to let you know that it is in the group where most of my announcements are made about what is new in the Homework section, the book-clubs and the downloads and it is a quick and easy way to stay in the know…
* Speaking of which: if you have applied to join the Facebook group and I have not yet responded, it will be because your Facebook name doesn’t ring a bell with me. This is now happening frequently: so many of you have different email addresses, Facebook aliases, paypal addresses, Brocante usernames and real names that it is becoming very difficult to work out who is who and who should have access to what. So please, please, please, if I do not respond to your Facebook request or your Brocante subscription is not updated it will simply be a matter of me needing to match up names with email addresses, so just drop me an email and I will attend to your issue pronto!
* Next up, following requests from the Living Roomers in the Facebook group, conversation about the month’s bookclub choice will now begin in the third week in each month, giving everybody time to both acquire the book and form an opinion they want to share. As happened this month, the workbook for the chosen book will be available in the first week of the month so you can work along as you read…
* To clear up any confusion about the Living Room Discount, all members of the Living Room are entitled to an automatic 25% discount off everything in the BrocanteHome Download Store and the code is available in the Facebook group or by email request.
* And finally the last part of the first folio of “homework” based on creating a morning less ordinary will end tomorrow with the final worksheet and next week we will start working on creating weekly rituals to help you live with both authenticity AND purpose…
Not Yet a Member of My Living Room? Click Here to Sign Up Today!
In the Salon
* This morning The Summer House has been delivered to all Salon members email in-boxes (absolutely FREE) so do look out for that won’t you?
* This week will see all existing Salon members accounts enabled so that they can read the Salon Only blog posts, Better Me posts and the Shine program as well as being able to view their account renewal dates.
* Then next week will see the opening of the library, access to all existing downloads, and the announcement of the very first BrocanteHome webinar on what it means to Create A Life Less Ordinary. (Eeeeeeeeeeeeeek!).
* And finally if you aren’t sure what your status as a former Circle member/Housekeeping Superstar is with regards to the Salon simply drop me a line and I will be happy to let you know.
I’m so enjoying the new era of BrocanteHome and I truly hope you are too…
Click Here to Join the Salon!
Have a lovely day won’t you Housekeepers?
June 3, 2016
Bella Grace
So you know how I am always spectacularly late to the loveliest of parties because I live in a bubble and very rarely pop my head out? Well yes: I am still that way. Still oblivious to the wonderful until it comes along and joy slaps me around the chops.
So it was with Bella Grace. Oh my goodness Bella Grace: a magazine that I do believe only my very own soul could have devised. Only it seems there is a world full of sister souls out there I have been very terrible at instructing the universe to introduce me too…
Bella Grace is a special, 160-page publication devoted to discovering magic in the ordinary. It’s not just a magazine, it’s a movement. For anyone who is tired of trying to fit ill-considered standards of what beauty is supposed to look like or reaching for unattainable ideals – Bella Grace gives you permission to just go ahead and toss them. Embrace imperfection. Celebrate your messy life. Shine a spotlight on small, everyday moments – they are special, and they are yours. If you are looking for the most creative, inspirational women’s magazine available today, we hope you will join us in celebrating life’s beautiful journey.
Bella Grace comes from Stampington & Company and like all magazines from their gorgeous stable, it is not only a feast for the eyes but is also filled with authentic, creative words that really do speak to those of us with messy hearts.
I want to write for them. Heck I want to move in with them. To live inside the pages of a magazine that says it just mighty fine and doodle dandy to be yourself. To seek joy in teeny tiny graces. To live a Brocante life: a life less ordinary. A raw, true life that acknowledges the little stuff that honestly matters.
And so this weekend I am going to download the first issue to my Kindle and as I set off to Oxford for the weekend so that we can as a family set about creating our new business and enjoy each others much missed company, I will accompany these pleasures with words that remind me who I am and more… why I am.
I will be back on Monday and I wish you the loveliest of weekends in the meantime.x
June 2, 2016
The Childrens’s Room Spritz
Using aromatherapy oils in the home doesn’t have to be a complicated, airy-fairy matter. It can (and dare I say, should!) be a daily part of your housekeeping, the fragrances familiar to young and old alike.
Though not all essences are safe for use in children’s rooms, many are both safe and extremely beneficial in fighting both pathogens and obnoxious odors, while providing mood-changing properties and creating scent memories for our children in their own bedrooms.
However we don’t need to buy many of these tiny vials of wonder to be be able to bring all the benefits of aromatherapy to our children’s rooms and we can quite easily get away with just three: Lavender, Eucalyptus and Tea Tree oil – the three mainstays of any housekeepers aromatherapy haul and perhaps the three most endlessly useful of all the essences in aromatherapy.
Keeping the three oils in your child’s own dedicated first aid cabinet should be the first step in your children’s room (They do have one don’t they? If not add it to your Mission Lists!). Lavender for it’s calming and soothing properties, eucalyptus to clear stuffy noses (by sprinkling a drop onto a cuddly or pyjamas), and tea tree for nits and wiping down surfaces at time of infection.
Next up, you should add a bottle of sweet almond oil – the very gentlest of the carrier oils and perfect for using with a drop or two of lavender oil for a sleep inducing foot massage for babies, toddlers and children. And finally a small bottle of surgical spirit which I use for mixing the Children’s Room Spritz I am about to describe.
You see harnessing the properties of all three of the aforementioned essences, is terribly easy if once a week you mix up a bottle of my Children’s Room Spritz: three parts distilled water to one part surgical spirit, and ten drops each of lavender, tea tree and eucalyptus in a pump-action bottle, and then use it in the air liberally in each child’s room daily. The oils will then get to work fighting airbourne pathogens and odours and the coughs and colds will be reduced or at least their symptoms diminished…
Ah the sweet smell of Mummyhood…
The Life Audit
And so it is another one of those days when life feels so deliciously chaotic, I have no choice but to try to gather my thoughts at the beginning of a new month, so I can get a grip on where I’m at and you can share a little more of life here at BrocanteHome. As always please feel free to steal the graphic and do a life audit of your own, or indeed download the Life Audit PDF (it’s free) and get your pencil out…
Today I am…
Creating cane tripods for my beans to carry on growing so magnificently. Missing the dog because he has had to be sent to the kennels because the garden is being sprayed with a nasty weedkiller in an on-going bid to keep the very persistent weeds from taking over and one day uprooting the entire bungalow. Packing for a weekend vintage-shopping at Helen’s house. Giving myself a pedicure because my feet are turning in to the pigs trotters they always become in Summer.
Feeling…
Proud after a lovely day around the Liverpool art galleries with my best little buddy Finn proved him to be the intelligent, thoughtful, philosophical young man I always knew he would be. Stressed! Estate agents should issue Valium to each and every person mad enough to want to sell their house. Slightly chaotic because I have been working so hard here at BrocanteHome that my actual house is falling in to rack and ruin. Demented by the mess two boys can create in the form of sweet wrappers, x-box game cases and wet towels (he might be philsophical but he isn’t blooming tidy!). Hungry for something I cannot explain: an evasive emotion my mind keeps trying to grasp but cannot quite net.
Reading…
The first few chapters of the novels I began many years ago when life didn’t seem so very complicated and my head was full of romantic notions…
“I want to tell you what I know. But first you must promise me this: If I tell you stories of ghosts and fairies and goblins, suspend your dis-belief and seek only the truth in my tale. If however, I speak of the more mundane, if I whisper words as old as the hills: of pain and passion, un-requited love and adultery, look not for truth, but for lies. Do not let me patronise you with my silly little fibs. Instead drag me up in front of a court of women who will demand the truth. Women who know what I am and will no longer abide the awful lies with which I will try to line their floral coffins.”
And Facebook. Oh yes, she who long resented the intrusion of Facebook into her life and everyone elses now cannot tear herself away. The Living Room Facebook Group (our wonderful members only space) is absolutely thriving and there has been an immediacy to the friendships formed that I could not have predicted as domestic discoveries are made and daily inspiration provided. It’s so lovely and the very essence of what I always wanted BrocanteHome to be.
Eating…
Hello Fresh meals because they really have changed the way we shop and eat during the week (Get £25 off when you use my code VQ88UU). Fry’s chocolate creams. Because this is a passion that might just never die. Copius amounts of gluten free cupcakes as Finley bakes them one batch after another in an effort to perfect his recipe.
Planning…
What this house could like when the sale finally goes through on my little cottage and I can have my own furniture here. The Salon: it is taking longer than I expected to manifest and I know I am behind with various other obligations but I am firming up my vision of what it will be and how I can provide the best of value for those who care about BrocanteHome enough to sign up. Becoming more committed to my own self-care journey as soon as the damn house sale is completed and I can think straight again. Getting all my paperwork sorted Konmari style because I am pretty certain that one day I will be found buried under unopened envelopes.
Dreaming of…
Writing a proper book. My imagination is once again running wild and the Muse firmly at my side. I’m so glad she is back: I missed her in the wilderness years. It is at once lovely and bewildering to be truly coming back to myself again without being fooled by the false starts of the kind of soothing self-deception I indulged in when I so very much needed everything to be alright again.
Coveting…
Peace and quiet. I come undone during the school holidays. All of a fluster and occasionally the kind of shouty Mum I never imagined I would be. So flustered do I feel right now, my whole being is longing for time alone in a pretty hotel room somewhere. Just me. And a journal. And a bag of pistachio nuts please.
Wishing…
Time away. But that is both naughty and futile. We cannot spirit ourselves in to the future and so each and every time I find myself wishing myself in to a time when life feels secure again I stop and remind myself that right here in this moment, I am quite safe and there is nothing at all to be scared of. This relentless anxiety though is a new friend of mine and I have to tell you I don’t particularly like her.
Working On…
Coping with an irrational fear of the moths that flood in to this hot house of ours when we open the windows on warm evenings and I appall Ste by jumping around in utter panic that these papery little blighters will set up home in my frizzy hair. I’m not scared of them as such: I just cannot help thinking they would like my hair.
Celebrating…
Securing a much coveted space to sell our vintage-ware in Chipping Norton’s prestigious Station Mill. We simply couldn’t be more excited. Champagne all round methinks!
Grateful For…
Ste. So very, very grateful for Ste. He is both stoic and reassuring. My silliest, most wonderful best friend. And a man who despite everything that has changed in the time we have been together, the worries we have endured in combining our respective families and the drama, Little Miss Rent-A-Worry here brings to the table, has never failed to make me laugh. Even when I’m knee deep in tears. Actually he is more than wonderful. He’s a proper pain in the bum too – given to dragging our boys up great big hills and roaming around with the dog at his heels for hours on end. I love him so very much.
And finally tomorrow I will be…
Heading to Oxford with Ste to spend a couple days right there in the bosom of the family I miss so very much. I just cannot wait.
On my to-do list this month?
* Getting the Salon completed and the Better ME program in progress again.
* Weeding the front garden. And adoring the conversations I have with my new lovely old lady neighbour Win, as I weed.
* Getting the sideboard in the dining room painted cream and bringing it back to life.
* Holding another car boot sale to get rid of the last few remnants of nonsense we seem to be hoarding.
* And please, oh please, oh please exchanging contracts on the house so we can truly step in to our new life together…
Happy June Housekeepers!
May 31, 2016
The ALL-NEW Shine Workshop!
I am always excited to get a new program off to a lovely start here at BrocanteHome, but I am particularly proud of my all new SHINE workshop because it addresses a series of problems all too many of us experience when trying to stitch together a meaningful life at home…
For isn’t it true that domesticity (Shhhhhh!) occasionally gets to being just a tiny bit dull? Ouch. I said it out loud. I said that being a Housekeeper, and a Mummy and a Wife sometimes bores the socks off us! And I said it because it is true and I would be doing us all an injustice if I went about giddily saying that HOUSEWORK is wonderful and CHILDREN are infinitely fascinating and MEN don’t occasionally make you feel like stabbing yourself in the eye with a fork…
I would hate to tell you lies you see? I would hate you to think that I am thoroughly delighted by domesticity all day everyday when I’m not – I have simply learned to polish off the tarnish of boredom on a daily basis and taught myself to see life at home as a place where I have the opportunity to SHINE!
Are You Leading Lady In Your Own Life?
Oh yes. Here in this little house of mine, I am Mistress of all I survey and I make it my business to excel at all the roles I am obligated to play here. I do it because if I hadn’t chosen, right back at the beginning of my career as Mistress of the House, to challenge myself to SHINE at all the teeny tiny jobs being she in charge of the loo rolls and the skirting boards and the dirty nappies and the Mother-In-Laws birthday presents, demands, I might just have lost my marbles and found myself drowning in a sea of boredom, dulled by exhaustion and rusty with resentment!
Rust makes you creak you see. Dull does not reflect all the joy we have the opportunity to bring to family life. Tarnish makes others look at us and whisper “neglect” to themselves. Nasty word, neglect, because it implies all kinds of horrible things, like laziness and self-importance. Two things we have to keep in check if we are to thrive both personally and as she who is responsible for the happiness of our very own set of little people and big people…
And so my Darlings, I bring you SHINE, a self-guided email based workshop, designed to help you SPARKLE at home. Not with the dazzle of a diamond but with the gentle gleam of vintage, much-loved gold. A gleam that says I do all of this because I care: for that is what getting SHINY equates to – learning to care, and more than that learning to see all the opportunities we have to SHINE, for our own sense of purpose and well-being in the domestic sphere…
Formally available only to my Salon members, Shine is pre-written and will commence the moment you sign up (so there is no waiting around while I complete each segment: I have already written it and so each and every week for twelve weeks you will receive an email with all the instructions, inspiration and guidance you need to add a sparkle to your world…)
Ready to shine?
* The program will begin with the IMMEDIATE DELIVERY of a 30 day notebook full of probing questions about your innermost thoughts about your house, your home, yourself and your family. For your eyes only, it requires both honesty and truth, and will help you see just why you feel tarnished by domestic life, and where you can commit your efforts to polishing life back to a state capable of reflecting all the joy possible…
* Then each week for twelve weeks there will be a new post in your in-box focusing on becoming the leading lady on your own domestic stage, further workshop questions and a little list of puttery, shiny treats to help you bring a sparkle to your own life…
* Including both physical and emotional tasks on the road to a shinier way of life, the SHINE program will focus on:
– Creating the glow of personal well-being during the domestic day.
– Helping your children to sparkle with sheer joie de vivre
– Putting together a plan to make your home shine again
– And rubbing the rust off your relationship.
* And at the end of the program you will have a complete written plan for a whole new SHINY life, well equipped with all the tools, resources and motivation you need to be the leading lady in your own life…
It’s Your Time To Shine Darling…
There are three ways to get The Shine Program…
Order it today for $20.00 here and get the first workbook delivered to your in-box IMMEDIATELY .
Or Join the Living Room today for just $15.00 and get a voucher to buy The Shine Workshop for just $15.00 when you sign in to the Living Room Facebook Group (so all the benefits of The Living Room AND The Shine Workshop for just $30.00!)
Or join The Salon (it opens next week), get all the benefits of Living Room Membership, all existing downloads (that’s absolutely everything in my download store!) and everything I create for the life of your membership absolutely FREE, Salon Only posts and starting in June monthly podcasts and webinars, and one on one Pep-Talks with yours truly for just $20.00 a month OR the lowly price of just $169.00 for an entire year of BrocanteHome wonderfulness!
Like I said yesterday when I introduced The Summer House download… I know which one I would go for. The Salon really is the very best deal…
Ready to Sparkle? Now’s the time Housekeepers!
