Alison May's Blog, page 25

The Christmas Countdown – The Book!

So here I am again Housekeepers, continuing on my mission to get some of my existing downloads converted for the Kindle, so I can both reach a wider audience and concentrate on creating as much fresh and inspirational new content as possible in 2016…

This time it’s The Christmas Countdown that is now available on the Kindle. A thirty day, rather whimsical, puttery take on counting the days down to Christmas and quite the most perfect literary accessory to my current 100 Day Countdown to the festivities…

You can buy The Christmas Countdown on Amazon.Com for $2.99 here and on Amazon.Co.Uk for £1.99 here…

( P.S: Dear lovely Vintage Housekeeper’s Circle members will find a new 100 day Christmas Countdown section on the Circle site today, just in case you would rather not root around your in-box!)

Selina Lake Winter Living

I do believe Selina Lake is one of the most talented interior stylists working today: her style is always evolving while remaining so very true to her authentic aesthetic, which is why a new book from her is always such a treat…

This time she is bringing us a deliciously seasonal take on decorating with Winter Living: the kind of fairy-tale interior book you want to climb inside and live in for always.

While I love Summer, it is in the Winter that my own home really comes alive:  I adore twinkly candle light, piles of blankets and the scents of the season. In fact if I could, I would happily hibernate in my cosy little nest between October and March: happy under my patchwork quilt, reading under twinkly fairy-lights and treasuring every single blissful moment of it…

But in Selina’s world, Winter is about more than snuggling under cosy blankets, and while we find ourselves discovering magic and whimsy in all the rooms she creates, in Winter Living we are treated to truly heart-stopping rooms in which to sip egg nog and float about in a tiara and the fair aisle socks hiked up to our thighs…

It is so very lovely. And so if you are planning on treating yourself to only one interior book this season, then make it this one: no-one has ever managed to capture frosty frivolity in quite the same way before…

Get it on Amazon.com here and on Amazon.Co.Uk here…

Puttery Treats For September

All New Scrumptious Things To Do

Life is lovelier when you concentrate on the little things and so with that in mind I hereby present another darling little collection of curated to-dos – or puttery treats as I like to call them. Work through the list or just pick one or two. None are necessary to good housekeeping but all elevate your way of keeping house and bring both order, seasonal celebration and a touch of whimsy to your day…

~Start a collection of Tasha Tudor books…

~Fill a tin with “home from school”  treats and offer it with milk or tea to tired kids.

~ Buy a ceramic pen and write your favourite quote on to a vintage plate.

~Fill a large apothecary jar with dried nature. Think fir cones and crunchy leaves in stunning colours.

~Add a chair to the bathroom (a folding one if necessary) so you can have company during those long cosy evening baths. Or else use it to prop up your ipad so you can watch a film as you bathe. Bliss…

~ Transform your bathroom linen closet by stacking your towels and face-cloths the hotel way.

~Take a plain, or past it’s best table-cloth and patch it all over with tiny embroidered vintage place mats, doillies and coasters. The perfect project for Autumn evenings methinks.

~ Diffuse three drops of neroli, three drops of patchouli and one drop of clove to add a little cosy comfort to your living room.

~Lay an extra blanket or quilt at the end of each bed in the house for chilly snuggles.

~Create a gallery wall with Mrs Fancee’s rather fabulous PDF links to FREE art…

~Tie a huge bunch of fresh eucalyptus to your shower head and steam those September sniffles away.

~ Add Hannah and Her Sisters to your movie list and transport yourself to Autumn in New York…

~ Make home-made headache rub by melting a few spoonfuls of virgin coconut oil in a bain-marie and then adding 5 drops each of lavender and peppermint. Scoop in to a tiny tin and allow to solidify, then rub on to temples or under your nose when you are feeling a little fuzzy

~Choose the cosiest cardigan you can find and declare it your “fireside” cardigan, keeping it at hand for an instant warm up as the nights start drawing in.

~ Eat Autumnal lunches of celery and cheese, after A.A.Milne, in September and October, making a game of tasting as many different cheeses as possible throughout the season. Get adventurous!

~Make a wind chime from an embroidery hoop and a collection of string and vintage ephemera. Now is just right for listening to the tinkle of chimes in the late afternoon as Autumn sweeps in.

~Hang a huge gilt framed blackboard above your bed and use it to write love notes to your partner, each night before you both go to sleep.

~Make a huge jug 0f chilled honey and cinnamon lemonade. A little bit of summer and a little bit of Autumn in a glass.

~Hunt out a box of extra-long matches and keep them on the mantelpiece – just right for the elegant lighting of a roomful of candles

~Take yourself out on a creative excursion in search of one giant mug in a cozy colour for extra special, grown up only hot chocolate on Saturday movie afternoons.

~Buy a garlic plait … not only because it looks so deliciously cosy hanging in the kitchen but also because it will remind you to stuff Autumnal meals with as much garlic as possible to fight off colds.

Sunday Evening…

Why I do believe that this week’s edition of The Lady is right up our street Housekeepers! Here’s to an hour luxuriating in front of one of the first fires of the Autumn, with a lovely magazine, a bowl of cinnamon toffee popcorn and (oh bliss) complete and utter silence. Heaven…

Happy Sunday Housekeepers.x

Joyful Gaps

A Vintage Housekeeper's Circle Post - Members Only

So yesterday Housekeepers, we talked about all the time we wash down the drain like so much soapy water and today I want to talk about the very opposite of that: all the scrumptious little things you probably aren’t doing because in-between wasting time and filling it to the brim with a long list of to-do’s you have probably convinced yourself that only the worst kind of lush has moments to fritter away on the truly frivolous…

But you are wrong. When your day is organised by routine, reassured by ritual and delighted by celebration there is ALWAYS room for the kind of teeny tiny pleasures that truly make you believe that life is worth living.

Click here to carry on reading…

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Barking Rad

This is Alfie. In his usual position: sitting in the front window barking at passers-by and making it clear to all and sundry that if they dare to approach the house he will lick them to death.

Alfie looks cute, but he isn’t. Left to his own devices he causes such a kerfuffle that my silly neighbour recently saw fit to serve me with a noise abatement order. Which I have duly ignored because the council told me to, and we all agree that despite Alfie sobbing like a baby when I dare to leave the house for no more than an hour or so a day (I take him to my Dad’s if I will foreseeably be any longer), I have to leave the house regardless and dogs are dogs and neighbours who inform you that sad dogs and next door’s sex life give her a migraine, probably just need to get a life.

But I digress. Because I am bonkers crazy cross about my neighbour and bonkers crazy in love with my silly dog regardless and though I draw the line at calling him my fur-baby, I simply cannot express how very much I appreciate his silly doggy ways and indeed want to spoil him absolutely rotten.

Which is where Barking Rad comes in. Barking Rad is a monthly subscription service for dogs: delivering hand-made British toys and treats to little woofers across the land, and this month Alfie and I  were lucky enough to take receipt of one of these happy little boxes and I am not quite sure who was the most delighted!

The very notion of monthly subscription boxes is so very BrocanteHome, because it combines routine delivery with the kind of gloriously giddy celebration only receiving a parcel in the post can bring. While I routinely throw in a little something into my basket for Alfie when I am perusing the aisles of TK Maxx, there is no sense of occasion to my purchases and I do believe that a sense of occasion is a blessing in all manner of things!

Opening the box was such fun: Alfie can smell food from about three miles away and was already demented with excitement when I sat down with him to see what kind of doggy delights were inside..

Namely: a doggy donut from Arton and Co.

A bottle of chicken flavour Barkers Brew… which I had to talk my Dad out of tasting.

A tiny tub of Skin and paw salve – which was invaluable when my silly mutt bashed a bee and was promptly stung for his troubles – and a really rather fabulous moustache shaped corduroy toy he immediately stuffed under the sofa for safe keeping…

Oooh and finally… a bag of Sunday Roast treats I would have showed you but unfortunately Alfie snaffled the lot in one go when I nipped off to open the door. So they must have been good and here is said dog trying and rather dramatically failing to hide the evidence!

The whole experience was fun for both me and for Alfie. It felt good to be supporting doggy artisans and British independant industry and I love it that Barking Rad are committed to helping re-home dogs not quite as fortunate as Alfie as part of their business model.

Subscription boxes are such excellent fun because they deliver all that we probably couldn’t source locally ourselves and in the process introduce us to new favourites. I know for sure Alfie could oh so quickly develop a rather happy addiction to Barkers Brew and I could very definitely develop an addiction to monthly boxes full of  safe, doggy-friendly goodness.

Now if only I could do something about my nutty neighbour too!

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The 100 Day Countdown to Christmas

Christmas is either heaven or hell. Heaven if you are organised, hell if you are not. and this year Housekeepers we are going to be oh so very, very organised -arent we?

Bring on then my 100 Day Christmas  Countdown – a daily email  program designed to have you sprinkling a teeny bit of festive glitter over your life everyday between Monday 14th September and Christmas Eve, so that bauble by bauble you can create the kind of Christmas I am sure you have been pinning to your festive Pinterest board for many a moon now.

This is the year we are going to make it happen. It won’t be overwhelming and it will be realistic: but it will also help you add a little touch of whimsy to what can so very often seem like one more giant task us housekeepers have to undertake and hopefully in the process encourage you to seek a little magic probably long stashed away in the darker reaches of the loft…

Each day I am going to be sending you one tiny little task: it might be puttery or practical, whimsical or even a teeny little bit wild: but each and every task will edge you a little closer to festive nirvana and by the end of the 100 days you should be able to pop your stockinged feet up in front of the fire and sip egg-nog to your hearts delight…

Ready?

OK here’s the deal… The 100 Christmas Day Countdown is completely FREE to Floral and Rose members of the Vintage Housekeepers Circle (the sign up box is available on the Floral blog right now!) and just $5.00 to everyone else…

So if you want to get organised this year, either sign up to the Vintage Housekeepers Circle (and organise your ENTIRE life in the process!) or click the button below to buy it now and look for the first email in your inbox on Monday, September 14th…

(Please note that when you have completed the paypal order you will be taken to a sign up page where you should add your preferred email address)

Let’s make this the most frivolously organised Christmas we have ever, ever had!

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Domestic Debauchery

A Vintage Housekeeper's Circle Post - Members Only

Welcome Ladies, to a gorgeous new era in The Vintage Housekeeper’s Circle! Today strikes me as good a day as any to turn over a new page in our domestic lives and start afresh: to consider ourselves absolutely willing and thoroughly able to day by day edge our way closer to living a life less ordinary. To dedicate ourselves heart and soul to making routine, ritual and glorious, teeny tiny celebration the focus of our days so that our dreams will no longer be hampered by stacks of laundry or dishes left soaking in murky water…

Today m’dears is that day. Today is the day to press your pinny, throw open every single window in the entire house, and then sit down right there in the chaos and make your peace with your home.

Click here to carry on reading…

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Psst!

Tomorrow darlings, The Vintage Housekeeper’s Circle officially re-opens!  With the first CIRCLE ONLY article, a 100 day countdown to Christmas and yours truly back on the forum, it looks set to be a truly scrumptious way to bring a little domesticity in to your day…

Don’t miss out: get all the benefits of Vintage Housekeeper’s Circle Membership by signing up here today!

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Lovely Rooms For Little People

Ten Tips for Creating the Room of Your Child's Dreams

Ugh. Does every Mummy in the land enter their children’s bedrooms and feel their hearts plummet to their slippers? Good. It helps to know I am not alone. Because it is that time again. Time to re-organise my son’s bedroom for a new stage in his not so little life, and while I have been spending many an hour browsing Pinterest and trawling through the Ikea catalogue, I also thought it might just be time to review my very own set of rules for creating the kind of rooms big and little kids alike are desperate to show off…

Let them be… The most important thing to remember when you are decorating a child’s bedroom is that most of the time they do not have the same taste in interior design as you! From an early age, children have very strong opinions about what they do and do not like, and unless you are willing to put up with the screaming ab-dabs it is best to involve them in the planning stages and allow them to help you create a room that is a reflection of their teeny personalities.
But don’t let them carried away… Children are drawn to the kind of interior decor you probably see in your nightmares: lurid colours, wacky wallpaper and the horror of the cartoon themed room. Draw the line at anything you consider to be alien to the rest of the house. While it is entirely encouraging to allow your child to express their creative side within their confines of their own four walls, it is YOUR house and you don’t have to put up with anything that makes your stomach turnover,
Forget themed rooms… Pokemon wallpaper might seem their idea of heaven when they are seven but will be hideously embarrassing to them within a very short space of time. Fashions change and children are notoriously fickle, so the design of a room should never be so strictly themed that only complete re-decoration will get them back in there.
Give them a blank canvas… Neutral walls and varnished floorboards are the cost-effective solution to decorating kids bedrooms. Provide them with an eclectic collection of furniture (nothing too precious – kids aren’t kind to good furnishings) and allow them to get creative with their own choice of bedlinen, pictures and accessories.
But remember what it is like to be a child… Try to anticipate all that children require from their bedrooms, beyond the obvious. A child’s bedroom is his or her sanctuary from an adult orientated world, and it is essential to make them feel at home in their own space. Respect their privacy: give them hidey holes and secret storage spaces. Give them places to stash all the paraphernalia associated with being a child, from dedicated toy cupboards, to special boxes for tiny treasures, clip files for posters (ban them from being blu-tacked to the walls!) and pin-boards for all the other paper junk they are guaranteed to accumulate. Above all else give them space in their own room in which to daydream, to escape from grown-ups, or to simply be.
Make it easy for them to tidy up… Try not to think too formally when you approach the decoration of your child’s bedroom. Children are not mini-adults, and they have little concept of tidiness. Prevent on-going drama by providing your tiny tearaways with manageable solutions to storage and try not to become too paranoid about the state of their bedrooms. Within reason, mess is creative and it is important not to make it too much of an issue.
Create a place in which to work, rest and play… Children demand much more from their bedrooms than adults do. From homework to sleepovers, beauty parlour to playground, a lot is asked of a very small space. Therefore it is essential to create a multi-purpose space with all of childs needs and indeed moods, anticipated. Adequate lighting is essential: from “studying hard” task lighting to “time to dream” bedside lamps, and dimmer lights are an excellent choice for a child’s bedroom.
Give them something fun… It is sad but true that children love trash! A child’s bedroom shouldn’t be a serious place, and it is important to have a sense of humour when decorating the room in question.
And make a feature of their treasures… Whether it is a cherished collection or a play school painting, what is precious to a child should always take pride of place in his or her bedroom, so hang that picture in a serious frame, display their collection, and instil in them a strong sense of family by surrounding them with family photos and snapshots of themselves.
Finally… Give them room to grow. All too soon your tots are teenagers and their taste and the demands they make on their bedrooms have changed. Reflect those changes by recognizing all those things they have outgrown, and providing new decorative solutions to their changing needs.

Want more? Read my other kids bedroom post here and find a tiny little collection of bonus puttery treats there too. Enjoy!

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