A room of one's own...

...part two.  The furniture.

Unfortunately my room isn't as big as my the study that inspired me so in terms of furniture I had to be a little more restrained.  I knew I wanted a desk, some shelves and a comfortable chair.

I wavered between a dark wood desk, like the one in the photo below, or a white desk similar to the one on Emily's blog.  I am on a budget though so either way it wasn't going to be an expensive piece.

One Saturday Mr E and I drove past a furniture sale in our local church yard and I found a rather ugly table that just happened to be the right size and upon closer inspection was actually a rather nice shape. It was the princely sum of £15 so I snapped it up along with a little wall mounted shelf which was the grand total of £3.

I decided to keep an open mind about the table and its eventual colour until I'd had the chance to strip off some of the dark varnish and see what the wood was like underneath.  It wasn't up to much so the paint came out and it was transformed into the lovelier piece that you see before you.  A full before and after post will follow.

The shelves also had a lick of paint and now look rather super against the pink walls.

I'm still working on my other shelves so they will follow in due course and I am searching for the right fabric to recover the chair.  But that aside I am super pleased with things so far.

A Parisian mystery...

Mr E is an avid reader and consumes a wide range of different subjects.  Occasionally he finds something that he thinks that I will enjoy and sends it my way.  The latest offering was a link to this article.

The real subject of the article is the discovery of a masterpiece painting by the 19th century Italian artist Giovanni Boldini. However the part of the story that really enthralled me was how the painting came to be discovered.  

The apartment had remained locked for over seventy years after the lady who owned the flat left for the south of France before the Second World War and never returned.  The flat remained closed until she died and an inventory of her possessions was drawn up. 

Nothing had been touched in the apartment and one expert said it was "like stumbling into the castle of Sleeping Beauty, where time had stood still since 1900".

The owner of the apartment's grandmother was Marthe de Florian, an actress with a long list of admirers.  The love letters she received were kept, wrapped neatly in ribbon, and were still on the premises. Among her admirers was the 72nd prime minister of France, George Clemenceau, but also Boldini.


In amongst the ribbon-bound love letters was the calling card of Boldini, one of Paris’ most important painters of the Belle Époque.  The woman pictured in the painting was Mme. de Florian’s grandmother, Marthe de Florian, a beautiful French actress and socialite.  She was Boldini’s muse his lover. 

The painting eventually sold for over £1.8 million at auction.

All pictures from The Telegraph

A room of one's own...

...part one.

This room was actually the first one that we tackled, I have waited until now to show you everything as it was mine for all of 5 minutes before Mr E moved his studio in.  This was a necessary evil as he needed somewhere to work and that room needed rather a lot doing to it to make it usable.

I had quite a clear idea of how I wanted the room to look from the beginning.  I'd seen Emily Schuman's office on her blog Cupcakes and Cashmere and had fallen in love with it immediately.

Luckily the room was in a reasonably good state and all we had to do was re-plaster the ceiling (every room in our house has horrendous Aretx) and strip the walls. I say all we had to do, there were layers of paper and paint, and paper and more paint.  Then came the filling and sanding and finally the repainting.

I tried out about four different pink paints until I found one that I liked.  It is a shame about the name as it is truly dreadful but the winner was Crown's Fairy Dust.

We finished it off with a lovely curtain panel from Ikea and a giant paper lamp shade.  I love having a room that is all mine where I can sit and read, sew, make my cards - generally anything that I want! Despite being very pink the room is calm and quiet and I can while away many an hour here.

Details on my furniture in the next post.

Item of lust...

This post is a little bit of a cheat really as I only really lusted after this watch for about 10 minutes before I bought it!

I love the classic shape and colour combined with the slightly more unusual proportions.

A birthday bag...

I love nothing better than making things by hand whether it is cards or cakes, or in this case a tote bag.  Imagine that coupled with the thrifty side of me and you'll start to get the picture of how much pleasure this project gave me.

I had a couple of birthdays last month and decided to try my hand at sewing the gift.  I used fabric samples that I picked up in a charity shop for the front and some left over curtain fabric for the back.  I didn't use a pattern as such - you barely need one for this.

I was really pleased with the results and they were very well received.

A month in photos...

This last month has flown by in a whirlwind of visits, visiting, DIY and work.  The combination of all of this makes for a lazy blogger.  My solution is an update in photos.

Learning to bake bread.

Enjoying evening walks.

Taking in the carpet of bluebells in our local wood.

Celebrating my sister's birthday with a cocktail.

Marvelling at the porcelain flowers at the Chelsea Flower Show.

Wild flower envy at the Chelsea Flower Show.

Flower garlands decorate a stand at Chelsea.

A Mexican feast courtesy of Mr E.

Basking in the glorious glow of the gorse on the beach at my parents.

Pick & Mix antiques...

On the same street as our flat in Teddington is an antique shop that I used to frequent on a fairly regular basis.  I say antique shop in the loosest terms as in the main it seems to be a halfway house for items on their way to auction.  That said I have picked up some lovely bits and pieces there over the years.

I still drive past on my way to and from work and called in yesterday to have a quick peek and see if anything took my fancy.  The lady that owns the shop knows me pretty well by now and offered me a £5 bag of odds and ends.  I came away with a soap stone lamp, a silver berry spoon, a cut glass salt cellar and a christening cup.

The lamp needs rewiring but will be perfect for out sitting room, the spoon is sweet and just right for spooning jam onto scones, the salt cellar is a gift for my mother and the cup...well, I'm sure that it will find a home somewhere!