Alison May's Blog, page 13

On the Well Appointed Household

I am all about the pretty… and the beautiful, the whimsical and all things frothy and frippy. Which is all well and good until you find that tin opener you scrimped on to buy that set of monogrammed tea-towels has died a death and there won’t be a bite to eat in the house until you can beg, borrow or steal another one from your well-appointed neighbours.

Ah the well-appointed people on this planet! Those who own things you didn’t know you needed until the day arrives that you desperately do. Those who wouldn’t dream of buying another darling cushion when they do not yet own a top notch vacuum, a set of olive forks or a dedicated cheese board. Those never phased by even the most awkward of sartorial challenges because they own wardrobes stuffed with Hunter Wellies, cocktail dresses and funeral hats. Those who can soothe the most dramatic of domestic dramas with spare tap washers, a set of ever fresh guest towels and extra fuses for every plug in the house. And those my Darling who put function over form at every turn.

In short, those who aren’t us. The sensible sorts.

However it is never too late to turn over a new domestic leaf, to become the kind of person with an answer to every household nightmare, safe in the knowledge that one’s cupboards are lined with well maintained tools, possessions prized for the purpose they serve and first aid for every emergency from laddered tights to a crying baby. There is always time to say no to lacy, lavender scented loveliness and instead save up to buy a garden trowel so well made it is worthy of making it into your last will and testament. Hell yeah. Some things in this life are worth buying once and loving ever after, instead of battling with rust every Spring and trudging your way back to the pound store to replace them.

This is how one sets about creating a well-appointed home: by choosing quality and learning how to appreciate it. By identifying gaps in your household inventory and seeking to fill them before you decide to re-paint the banister for the second time this year. And by making wise purchasing decisions about those things you have established as necessary.

You see life above all else, should be about ease. A sense of domestic ease blesses our minds with creative thought because we do not have to squander precious time or energy on trying to open a tin of tuna with our teeth, or rushing out to the shops in the middle of the night because we are having yet another loo roll crisis! Owning a well-appointed house is about stocking up on the very basics of life and wherever possible up-grading those essentials so that we make it part of our lifestyle to fulfil our household needs with well-crafted, luxurious basics long before we go wasting money on another decorative plate for our collection of the hundreds that do little to ease our day to day existence.

By it’s very definition, having a well-appointed house is about ” having good and complete equipment” and this means owning a decent set of saucepans before we waste our wealth on floral arrangements, changing light bulbs before we hand-wash our lingerie in lemon juice and educating ourselves in the brand names that spell quality and guarantee the kind of workmanship that will either last a lifetime or enhance our daily lives.

This does not of course mean abandoning the pretty altogether: it is simply a matter of re-defining our definition of luxury and understanding that when it comes to housekeeping, our priorities lie not in creating coffee-table worthy interiors but in providing the most basic of our families needs to the very best of our abilities. In anticipating our daily needs, and all variety of more specific domestic situations and choosing to own one excellent set of high thread cotton sheets we launder properly instead of owning an airing cupboard full of polyester we neither appreciate nor revere.

You see quality basics have an aesthetic all of their own. They are the reason why we find “below stairs” in National Trust properties so appealing: because despite their bare bones appearance, age has weathered those copper saucepans and hundred year old wooden spoons beautifully- that there is a certain glamour to utility when care has been taken to select the kind of quality only money can buy and a caring housekeeper can choose to own.

We are those housekeepers. We may not have a staff of many but we can from this day forward choose to make it our mission to own a well appointed house long before we go adding to all that pretty fussy we already own.

Cluny Brown

 

Now tell me, do you know Cluny Brown? You don’t? Then allow me to introduce her, for she is quite the most fabulously, feisty domestic heroine I have encountered in a long time and the book in which she features is an absolute hoot!

“Cluny Brown has committed an unforgivable sin: She refuses to know her place. Last week, she took herself to tea at the Ritz. Then she spent almost an entire day in bed eating oranges. To teach her discipline, her uncle, a plumber who has raised the orphaned Cluny since she was a baby, sends her into service to be a parlor maid at one of England’s stately manor houses.

 

At Friars Carmel in Devonshire, Cluny meets her employers: Sir Henry, the quintessential country squire, and Lady Carmel, who oversees the management of her home with unruffled calm. Their son, Andrew, newly returned from abroad with a Polish émigré writer friend, is certain that the world is once again on the brink of war. Then there’s Andrew’s beautiful fiancée and the priggish pharmacist. While everyone around her struggles to keep pace with a rapidly changing world, Cluny continues to be Cluny, transforming the lives of those around her with her infectious zest for life…”

Cluny is the niece of a plumber and after she gets herself in a fix when she attends one of her Uncle’s plumbing jobs, she is sent away with her tail between her legs to learn how to control her deliciously wild side, as a housemaid in a manor house. And there among a cast of memorable characters Cluny brings her very own brand of joy and wit in the kind of prose that is so quintessentially English it almost hurts.

Written by Marjorie Sharp in the 1930’s, the book was reborn as a film, directed by the oh so clever Ernst Lubitsch in 1946 and it is just right for the kind of weekend watching we Brocanteers adore… so finding it, in it’s entirety on Youtube is quite the loveliest treat.

Preferably enjoyed in bed with a plate of oranges ala Cluny herself…

Click here to watch Cluny Brown on Youtube here, or enjoy Marjorie Sharp’s wonderful wit in the book . Find it on Amazon.Com here and Amazon.Co.Uk here.

A Vintage Venture…

Did you ever experience what you know to be a turning point in your life? A pivotal moment when the future felt different and hope burst in your veins and did a little happy dance in your chest?

So it is in my world. As you know so very much has changed here in the past twelve months with Mum’s sudden death the catalyst for the kind of change none of us could have predicted, or perhaps even dreamed of before it. I have moved house. Re-invented Brocantehome (with a heap of hard work and many, many tears of sheer frustration!). Met Ste. Created a lovely business with him. Taken Finn out of the school I thought would shape him. Become a Step-Mum to Stevie.

 

Dad has closed down his business and upped sticks to move in with my sister in Oxford and that lovely sister is currently re-assessing her high-flying, exhausting career. Needing change. Starting a hat business. (Follow her fledgling Twitter account here). Everything, absolutely everything is different. And for a while it felt disparate. I felt isolated. Up here in the North, while they are down there in the sunny south.

 

And then this weekend they arrived with AN IDEA. We could they said, bring Brocantehome alive. Give it physical form. Gather our own collections of vintage loveliness and sell it in one of the gorgeous vintage shops to be found in and around Oxford like The Old Pill Factory or The Old Flight House. There is talk of a Vintage Fair on the grounds of the breathtaking cricket club Helen’s husband runs. Dad would, in a throwback to the ten years we spent running a furniture business together, restore furniture he would gather on trips over to France to see friends. Helen would seek suppliers for a range of the velvet cushions we have both long dreamed of making in navy, ochre, cranberry and olive green velvet with pale gold fringing and greying lace trim.  Then I would put the name of my company to theirs and a business would be born.

 

And so we went shopping. Beautiful things were bought. Sample cushions created. Enquiries made. For in this family when we decide to do a thing, we do it, bringing to the party a range of disparate skills and experience that together represent beautiful possibility. It is of course early days. There is much muchiness to be discussed, designed, arranged. But suddenly this Brocante bird of mine has wings. And I do believe we can make her fly.

Stay tuned won’t you? As we piece together our first collection I will of course share it here first with those of you who knew BrocanteHome when it was but the merest flutter of my own frippery and fancy…

Home Touches

The Duties of the Mistress are not finished when the routine of the household work is set agoing and cleanliness and order have been established.

The little finishing touches, the small elegances, the tasteful arrangement, the special provision made for individual comfort must come from her or be wanting altogether. She must endeavour to make the rooms as pretty as possible and give them an air of repose and restfulness.

Who does not know the difference between a room that is merely kept in order by a servant and one in which the lady of the house takes an interest as well. It is perhaps attention to the small things of the house that has the most to do with the comfort of it, and it is just these minor details that require the most thought as they are outside the ordinary routine. If they are neglected or forgotten all the cosiness, all the home feeling and soothing influence will be gone and bare utility alone will remain.

The true homemaker is also one who has the intuitive power of divining the tastes and feelings of others and who is ever ready to minister to their needs. With a ready tact she will put herself in the place of those around her, will be able to perceive their unspoken worries and disappointments and sympathise with them without remark. She will even be able when occasion arises, to shield them from unkindly notice or ungenerous remark. Tact of this kind is perhaps innate, and yet much of it may be acquired by observation and kindly feeling.

Women are the real homemakers, and it rests with them to make the four walls in which they live something more than a mere dwelling.

Happy is the woman who can so surround her own fireside with the true spirit of home, as to make it the spot where the brightest and most desirable of everything is to be found, a harbour from all outside cares and worries; she will find that not alone to herself, but to those around her as well, it has become the best place in the world.

Florence Jack, 1911   

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The Perfect Nightie

I fell in love with a nightdress last night. You see I am the kind of woman that likes to waft about in a floaty something around the house, in strict contrast to the black trousers/black vest and pretty ballet slipper combo I wear everyday outside of it.

I like my nighties long and floaty and fresh and I accessorize them in preposterous style with silly bed-socks and holey cardigans and must often be seen pottering around the garden looking ludicrously attired.

But oh how lovely I feel. Isn’t it funny how so very often there is a huge dis-connect between how we actually look and how we feel?

So yes. Last night I fell in love with a nightie because really floaty nighties are getting harder and harder to come by and this one is so fresh and crisp and tent-like with both a really flattering neckline and deliciously useless sleeves so I’m really not sure I can live without it.

I have said it before and I will say it again: the heart wants what it wants and will not be persuaded that the neighbours would probably appreciate me more in a nice pair of pyjamas instead of the ghostly vision I must seem to be at six o’clock in the morning.

The heart wants what it wants. And feeling lovely is half the battle don’t you know?

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On the Bedtime Tidy Up

Tomorrow arrives fresh and full of joy if we are just that little bit willing to go the extra mile to put today to bed in a tidy fashion. Easier said than done? You are right: it is!

Following an evening spent slobbing on the sofa, it is nigh on impossible to work up the energy to get busy doing anything even remotely housewifely before climbing the apple and pears to bed, but just one more teeny tiny squeeze of domesticity can make all the difference to a smooth morning thereafter and we all know that smooth mornings make for a smoother ride through the rest of the day right?

Right. So here is what we do. Here, my Darling is your one stop, ten point guide to making your mornings the scrumptious cannon into a gorgeous, creative day that the universe always intended they should be. Do it as routine and it should take no more than ten minutes. There is no need to run around like a headless chicken at this stage: if possible wait until everybody else has gone upstairs, then keeping the lights low, turn off all entertainment and quietly wipe the day away from your house and blow it a kiss goodnight…

1. Never go to bed on a full bin…

Want a stinky kitchen? Last nights dinner festering and moulding in a bin-bag overnight? No I didn’t think so. So make it somebody’s business to take all the trash right out of the house, then lightly spray the inside of the empty bin with a quick blast of white vinegar, pop in a new bin-bag and you are ready to wake up a freshly scented kitchen and move on to step number two…

2. Open the Washing Machine…

If you are lucky enough to be able to retire to bed with an empty washing machine, always, always, always leave the laundry powder drawer open and the front door of the machine open too. This allows the air to circulate around the machine and prevents that truly ugly black mould from crusting up the remnants of powder in the drawer. Job done, let’s move on to step number three…

3. Boil the kettle…

Pour the remainder of the boiling water you have used for your bedtime drink down the sink, add a splash of white vinegar and a few drops of tea tree oil and then while you are at the sink re-fill the kettle so you just have to switch it on first thing in the morning…

4. Switch the dishwasher on…

While switching the dishwasher on immediately after the evening meal might make sense in theory, in reality it does leave the very possibility open that supper dishes, glasses and mugs might just accumulate in the aftermath, so waiting to switch the dishwasher on until the very end of the day guarantees you will wake up to a kitchen with empty surfaces and clean dishes. So much better for the soul methinks. On to step number five…

5. Tackle tomorrow’s meal times…

If you are on the ball you will have re-set the table for breakfast after the evening meal, so with that already done you can get on with putting any non-perishable breakfast ingredients out on the table or kitchen counter, pop fruit and snacks into lunchboxes, fill water bottles and put them in the fridge and take out anything required for the evening meal from the freezer to defrost in the fridge overnight…

6. Open Your Heart and Home Planner…

And check your list of to-do’s for tomorrow so they are fresh in your mind.

7. Hang out a clean dishtowel.

I know. It seems terribly fussy to require a brand new tea towel or two every day. But dish towels are teeny little scraps of faric that barely add to your laundry load, and there is nothing worse or more downright miserable than a crusty musty tea-towel, so make it a ritual to pop a new towel out every evening before you leave the kitchen. Do it as a teeny little gift to yourself, or as an act of faith in the teeny pleasures of homemaking…

8. Grab your take it upstairs basket….

And whizz around every room downstairs grabbing anything that should rightfully be upstairs, then pop the basket at the bottom of the stairs ready to take it upstairs in a moment or two…

7. Put tonight away….

Fold up newspapers and pop them in the recycling basket. Put magazines away. Pop cd’s and dvd’s back in their cases and pop remote controls back where they can easily be found.

8.Suck it up…

Grab your little hand held vacuum and quickly swoosh up any crumbs or fluff. Don’t fuss. Just suck up the obvious from floor, coffee table and upholstery and you should be good to go in seconds.

8. And then puff it up!

Nothing makes a room look untidier than sad, squashed cushions so grab each one in turn and working up as much energy as you can muster at this late hour smack each one in turn and pop it back on the chair, then fold up all your blankets and snugglys and you are good to go…

9. Set your timers…

No, not your alarm clock, but the radiator timers and lamp timers to come on just before the household gets up, so that you can wake up to a house that feels snuggly warm and well lit. Particularly important in the depths of Winter-  this eases your transition into the morning after being huddled cosy in your bed and prevents the kind of body jolt we all too often feel when we try to get the day going in a cold, dark house.

10. And use a wick dipper…

When a room has been gently fragranced by the sweetest of scented candles, the last thing you want to do is waft the stench of smoke into the room by blowing out your votives and tealights in the traditional way as this both shortens the life of your candles and depletes the fragrance pervading your room. So the answer is a wick dipper. Either buy a proper one or use a slim pencil or chopstick to gently push the burning wick into the molten wax to put the flame and then pop it under the wick to stand it straight up again. Et voila, your candle is out, the room smells beautiful and the wick stands to burn evenly for another day.

Finally waft a little anti-bacterial aromatherapy based air freshener into the air, switch out the lights and grab your upstairs basket before you take yourself up to settle your mind, body and soul before sleep-time…

Night Night Sweeties.x

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The Living Room Is Open…

Happy Monday m’darlings! This is a very short post to announce the opening of The BrocanteHome Living Room.

This morning the all new singing and dancing calendar was launched and over the course of this afternoon I have been inviting all my current Living Room and Circle/Salon members in to the cosy sanctuary of our private Facebook group which has quite frankly been a blast as old faces and new introduce themselves and chat up a storm about the problems they personally face in the scrumptious battle to keep house when life is upside down with children, jobs and house moves…

While the old forum was wonderful I was always aware that it was one more place to check for my readers and so integrating our own conversation in to a place so many of us already check seemed like the best plan…

Tomorrow the Living Room Library will open, on Thursday I will invite you to hop all over the internet via the absolutely gorgeous home-keeping links I have gathered in the Dircetory and by Friday all aspects of the Living Room will be in full swing! 

If you are a new member of The Living Room or the Salon, your log in details will currently allow you access to the inner sanctum of the Calendar and you do not need to do anything at all: each day you will simply find yourself able to wander a little deeper in to the Living Room until m’dears you have permission to access all areas! 

If you are an existing, paying member of the Vintage Housekeeper’s Circle your invitation to the Facebook group should already be in your in-box and over the next twenty-four hours your FREE invitation to the Living Room will also arrive via personal email via yours truly…

As always, please feel free to contact me with any questions about your membership, existing or expired subscription and I will be glad to help.

Have a lovely, Brocante inspired evening and I will be back tomorrow.x

P.S: Not a member of my Living Room yet? Click here to grab your annual subscription at the reduced price of just $7.00…

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On The Tools Of Our Trade

Once upon a time there was a housekeeper, lets call her Alison, who lived in a happy little gingerbread cottage and spent her days wafting around her treasure filled rooms, filling drawers with comfort, lighting candles on every surface and opening tin cans with her teeth.

Oh yes. For dear Alison was too mean to spend money on a decent tin-opener. Or a pair of garden gloves that actually prevented rosy prickles from stabbing her delicate skin. Or a broom that didn’t scatter it’s bristles as she swept. Yes, she, the silly, vain little sweetheart, was of a fur coat, no knickers temperament and justified all the gaps in her domestic life by reassuring herself that one more pretty little tchoicke could more than make up for the hours spent in Casualty having her tin-opened fingers stitched back together.

Tin openers. Good microfiber cloths. Decent blenders. Whisks that don’t bend when you use them. A vacuum that actually sucks things up. Steam cleaners that shift grub. A broom that doesn’t moult. Wooden spoons that last forever. A bottle opener that doesn’t require the strength of ten men to pull out corks. Saucepans without plastic handles. A hand held vacuum that does more than blow the dust away. And on and on and on.

All of these things and more are the tools of our trade and we do ourselves a dis-service when we do not give them the credence they deserve…

You see no amount of tchoickes or treasure can more than make up for how owning decent household tools can transform your domestic life. and though it is enormously tempting to fritter away pennies on froth and frippery, (the saga of the tin opener has been going on for YEARS in my house!), the pleasure that comes from tools that actually WORK is not to be under-estimated.

Think about it: how often have you seethed as you drag the vacuum over the carpet only to leave all those threads and nonsense behind? How wonderful would it be to own a set of artisan garden tools so beautiful you will actually WANT to look after them for the rest of your days and pass them on the youngest green fingered member of the family in the future, instead of buying a new little spade once a year in the DIY shed just because needs must before letting it go to rack and rust year in, year out. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to open a can without risking life and limb or grate garlic without shaving your fingers?

It would. It really, really would. because life is better when it isn’t hampered by teeny tiny irritations all day long. Life is sweeter when things simply work and in order to guarantee that our household tools are both reliable and long-lasting, we have to (oh darn it!) spend money on them.

Isn’t it the most awful bore? No-one wants to spend money on a posh dust-pan and brush now do they? But oh the joy of owning a cherry red metal dust pan, with a brush that hangs from a gorgeous leather loop! A dust pan and brush that will last forever, and will not need replacing every six months, as it starts to look shabby.

So yes: for a while at least it is worth spending money on the dull-stuff and making a resolution here and now to buy the best tools we can afford instead of siphoning off what could be spent on something that will do the job properly, to spend instead on another cushion for the sofa, or yet another Cath Kidston tea-pot…

We don’t need all this stuff. We need tools that look attractive because care has been taken in their manufacture, and more than that: tools that actually do what they are supposed to do, so we can get on with the job in hand without wandering around our lives cursing bad design and poor manufacture.

We need, my darlings, to get our domestic priorities straight!

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Housekeeper’s Diary

In the deep dark night I wake myself up by bashing myself full in the face and stare at the angry red letters of the alarm clock startled to see that it is apparently £2.99 in the morning. The world has gone mad again. Too many blankets tangled around my legs and the sighs of a dog sleeping at the end of my bed, punctuation to my worries.

What on earth are we going to do? (sigh). How in the name of all that is rosy am I going to carry on paying for the bills and council tax on not one, but two houses if the sale on my little cottage does not hurry up and complete? (sigh). Why is there never any escape from money worries? (sigh).

Ste has lost his job. And in the limbo period between two houses we are churning up the creek without a proverbial paddle. Though reason tells me I should be frightened out of my wits, I am not. Money isn’t real. I understand that and I have been self-sufficient long enough to know that I have survived worse. Much worse. But oh what a plain old bummer life is at times. At each and every turn it feels like two steps forward and three steps back and the timing could not be worse. 

Luckily in the face of crisis I am nothing if not stoic. And so I am doing what I do best. Filling the fridge with meals fashioned frugally from what we have. Mopping the kitchen floor in lavender and lime to lift my spirits. Planting copious pots full of salad. The garden already brimming with rocket, and lettuce. Making Finley howl with the kind of dubious laughter inspired by both mirth and tweenage embarrasment. Reminding him that we are quite safe even when I don’t feel it myself. Selling our old life on Ebay. Working late in to the night on BrocanteHome. Running in and out of the house to see whether the noise in the chimney means the wood pigeons that live on top of it have actually fallen in. Scrawling plans for our survival on a whiteboard and jigging the budget around YNAB over and over again until it makes sense.

This then is an opportunity to cut away the froth decorating our lives. All the nonsense we have carted from that house to this. It is a chance to concentrate our combined efforts on cutting corners. Establishing what really matters. Doing car boot sales (oh how I HATE doing car boot sales). Cajoling solicitors and estate agents to get a move on. Teaching Ste to mediate so his brain doesn’t burst with worry. 

Onwards and upwards. It is already £10.99 in the morning and I have got a to-list as long as my arm. Time them to show the universe, yet again, exactly what I’m made of.

And that m’dears is steel. 

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What the Heck Is Happening?

If you have visited BrocanteHome over the past few days you may have noticed some changes. I haven’t been making a song and dance about them, nor have I closed the site down while I made them because for the first time in my life, this here drama queen didn’t want to make a fuss… #leopardssometimeschangetheirspots.

But I have reached a point where many of you have noticed the changes and have started to ask questions and I wanted to write this (ludicrously long!) post to introduce and explain all the changes so you don’t have to get in a muddle worrying about what is happening to the site, and the Circle and many of the long standing features of BrocanteHome.

To summarise: some things are going, namely The Vintage Housekeeper’s Circle (don’t panic, there is a replacement you will be automatically enrolled in if you are an existing paying member) and our association with Doterra Essential Oils (more on that in a post next week); some things are brand spanking new – namely my new Living Room membership program, (Currently just £5.00/$7.00 for an entire year!!), my premium offering – the Salon, a commitment to #liveclean with Modere, and  the return (and re-invention) of the Pep-Talks.

I know you have got a lot of questions, so in the next few paragraphs I am going to attempt to answer them with as much clarity as possible.

 

1. Why Are You Making So Many Changes?

Recently I read that one of my favorite bloggers was giving up on her site and I both felt her pain and wish I had her guts. But then I went shopping with Finley, and as I forced him to consider the merits of everything from doormats to dish-drainers, he forced me, in his infinite wisdom to look at what BrocanteHome is becoming and to consider taking a step back from it so rather than ploughing barren fields, or threatening to abandon my virtual land or indeed set fire to it in a fit of pique, I should instead remember how it feels when the site feels abundantly blessed by my own creativity. How it feels when you, my readers seem to be enjoying it. And to act accordingly. This then is my response to his wisdom: a road-map to a new future for BrocanteHome.

As many of you know the past few years have been both traumatic and frightening for me. Throughout it all I have tried to keep BrocanteHome going as best I can. But in the midst of both depression and grief it has been incredibly difficult and I have both made a lot of mistakes and summarily failed to grow Brocantehome in to the site it really should be after twelve years online. 

Now, a year on, I have both peace and clarity and I understand where I need to take BrocanteHome to both re-awaken the spirit of the site for you and to make it financially viable for me. Thus changes have to be made, the structure of the site has to be both clarified and strengthened and I need to commit to a way of doing business that doesn’t leave you feeling muddled and me permanently demented.

 

2. Why Are You Closing the Vintage Housekeeper’s Circle Down?

When I set up the Vintage Housekeeper’s Circle a few years ago, I did so with the intention of creating an inclusive community with accessible price-points set accordingly. To my mind that meant the option for my readers to split the cost of the annual membership in to twelve monthly payments. But sadly there has been wide spread abuse of this kindness and so many, apparently unscrupulous women have taken advantage of the monthly option, downloading absolutely everything I have created and then cancelling, usually within 24 hours. 

As you can imagine this is hugely demoralising and it has been difficult to make the Circle profitable because of it. Unfortunately it has been my most loyal readers who have suffered most: in my efforts to keep BrocanteHome out of the red it hasn’t been possible to create as much content as I would have liked for the Circle and I simply don’t feel I can create or provide value in the future with the same business model without constantly having to compromise my work with the need to monetise it by other means.

I want to work with women who value what I write and use it to create a life less ordinary. Moving forward I want to work more closely with the women who are truly committed to embracing the BrocanteHome lifestyle. Who will talk to me if they can’t afford to pay at any given time so I can work with them to find a solution. I want to meet them face to face via the wonders of modern technology, have proper conversations and discover what is at the heart of their domestic problems so that I can help them find a way forward…

Hence I have come up with two alternatives to the Circle. A low priced annual membership called The Living Room,  offering access to a lovely calendar (you can currently view a sneak peek of the calendar at it’s most basic here), directory, Facebook group and library of printables for the opening price of just £5.00/$7.00 per year and a premium offering called The Salon for those women who want to get to know me better via podcasts, webinars and an individual coaching session alongside the free gifts that will be access to ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING else I have created on the site.

 

3. What Will Happen to My Existing  Circle Membership?

All those of you who are currently paying a monthly Circle fee, or have an existing annual membership of $99.00 will be allowed to continue to pay at the price you are currently doing so at, and that price will not change even after I have moved everybody from the Circle to the Salon: you will simply be getting better value for money at the same price you were paying. 

If you have cancelled your membership or indeed let it lapse, you will need to sign up again for either the Living Room or The Salon if you want remain a member of my community. 

 

4. What About Outstanding Downloads and Email Programs?

Recently I have had to put the creation of all new work on hold while I concentrated on re-organising the business but please rest assured that these programs will commence shortly and if you were due receipt of anything from House Rules to the Better ME program you will be receiving it as predicted very shortly. This hiatus has been temporary and normal delivery and blogging schedule will resume in the next two weeks.

 

5. Why Are Some of the Pages On the Site Not Working?

As I have been working hard re-structuring the site I have been popping up “placeholders” in the form of links and images that may not be working yet, simply so that I can understand the flow of the site and understand what needs to be done next as I work through it.

As we recently had the catastrophe that was significant hacking by a Japanese site I was loathe to take the site down again in case it seemed as if BrocanteHome was never online! And so I chose to present you with a work in progress safe in the knowledge that each time you visit my vision for the site will become a little clearer.

 

6. Ugh. I Feel Overwhelmed.

Me too! Which is why I spent last Friday putting together a new “Start Here” page which summarises all aspects of the new BrocanteHome and sets out my vision for the site and who I think it will benefit in the future. 

Brocante has been online for twelve years and there is a lot of content for the new visitor to take  in and indeed for long-term readers to fathom, so I hope this new page will act as a road-map of sorts for all of us.

 

7. So What Else Is New?

Oooh muchly! But one of the most important changes means I have listened to something you have been requesting for twelve years and I have finally made it possible for both American and British readers to shop in their own currencies. Though Paypal automagically converts your currency for you, I know many of you weren’t comfortable shopping in another currency and so now I have two mirrored shops: One with my products sold in the British pound and another (currently in the midst of completion) with my products sold in dollars. I hope, moving forward, you will consider this a useful development.

 

8.   When Will the Site Be Completed?

The Living Room Launches on May 9th and The Salon on May 20th and I will be helping existing members to move over in the next two weeks. As both are new, I am offering great deals on the launch annual price for both, with early-bird annual pricing of just $7.00 for the Living Room (half-price!) and a huuge $30.00 discount off the annual price for The Salon if you sign up before their respective launch dates.

Finally I want to thank those of you  who have always supported me. You are the reason BrocanteHome still exists and you are the reason why now that life is a calmer place to be for me and my family, I am absolutely determined to create the site you have long deserved.

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