Tales From Pixie Wood

Mis-Matched Fun On Mothering Sunday

Yesterday was Mothering Sunday in the U.K. and so LBH and I invited everybody over to ours for a spot of lunch. We were going to be having ten of us around the table at two pm and when there are that many of us the table comes into its own mis-matched glory.

I have been collecting odd bits of crockery for years now. I often see one lonesome plate or a group of saucers which when put together with the rest of my collection seem to sit rather well. It would be nice to think that someday we'll be setting the table with Villeroy & Boch, but if that never happens I'm more than happy with my odd bits of Royal Doulton and Spode.

There is a plate in my mis-matched collection which is important to me and sits there so beautifully that if anything ever happened to it I'd be devastated. You can see it in the picture above. The creamy, pale blue trim of the plate, edged by the daintiest gold pattern you ever did see. It almost seems a shame to place anything resembling food onto the pretty flowers in the middle but I think Ms.Plate would prefer to be used than sitting on the top shelf and watching the proceedings from afar. This particular piece was sent to me by the lovely Susan of the NotQuiteJuneCleaver blog. It's taken me ages to post about it but I was excited about how the gift she sent me looked on this special day, although I can't quite remember which mother ate from the plate yesterday.

I was thrifting on Friday in my local town (I love it when you haven't been for a while and the stores are full to the brim of thrifty treats once again) and I came across this little fruit bike. Its wheels spin with ease and the fruit compartments can be lifted out and filled with miniatures. I left this on the table yesterday as I liked how it looked. There are NO RULES when it comes to entertaining if it looks good and makes nobody feel uncomfortable. My little bike was a reminder that Spring is well and truly on its way and before we know it the table will be filled with glorious sun fruits. Cherry pie, tropical fruit salad and blueberries for breakfast will be back. You can also see a small piece of green glass in the background of this picture. My mother passed that on to me just the other week and earlier in the day I had a tea light sitting in it. Until LBH said he needed a receptacle for the garnish he had made for lunch and the tea light was duly blown out and the green glass became a holder for lemon rind, rosemary and garlic.

I even managed to sneak in a Christmas plate yesterday, which is something I may not do every day but we had so many bodies in the house that every plate was needed. It was a lovely afternoon and I am struggling to believe that we are already in the third day of March. We have less than five months before we get married and there is still a fair amount to do .......Eeeeeekk! But its all OK, I think that the excitement of actually being married is far outweighing any stress that some little thing going wrong could bring, at least thats the way I'm feeling right now. Its also busy over here at Pixie Wood which is a great way to alleviate any stressful wedding thoughts.

I'm signing off now as I have a list to crack on with but I should take this time to mention two glaring points that I failed to explain before the start of the weekend.

The first is that in this post  I described the container for my Easter tree as a bed pan, when it is clearly a chamber pot. My cousin was good enough to point this out, which I'm glad she did as I had a feeling that I had got something a little wrong on that particular post and this was exactly it.

The other is that on Friday, just gone, I was meant to be telling you about a project/blog event which Yvonne and I are hosting. Having spoken on the phone last week we decided to put it back until this Wednesday as there were some bits and pieces we wanted to iron out and with both of us being a touch hectic we needed more time. I really hope you'll stop by on Wednesday and see what we're getting up to as it would be great to have you all join in.

Have a wonderful start to the week and if you have any mis-matched china collections yourself then let me know and perhaps it would be a good idea to start a Flickr group??

Cherry xoxoxo

Stockpiling

Anybody who has been reading this blog for any amount of time will know that I like to be surrounded by books and that I more often than not find myself using them as accessories in my home. So, I was mightily heartened to see the thrift shops in my town putting their collections of Christmas books in the windows for me to easily spot, drop in and promptly purchase. I'm a broody girl at the moment, especially with my sister's twins on the way, so I have found myself buying books that I will enjoy reading to either my children or to my sister's. Whoever wants to pull their feet up onto the sofa first and sit by the fire with me. I'm not fussy!

I love the illustrations in the Peggy Burton book. My mother and I were talking the other day about looking into worlds such as this and others like Rupert the Bear and of course Beatrix Potter's. We both said how we would often want to dive on in and live in the hollowed out tree with the characters depicted. I have a box of tea that I sometimes drink to help me get to sleep and on the front of the box are some lovely pictures of a family of bears. Father bear sleeps by the fire while Mother bear puts all the baby bears to bed in beds that look so comfy I want to nuzzle down myself.

It's a gift to invoke feelings in people and I'm so glad that we have illustrators and story tellers all around us to do this for us. I'm inspired by them to make my home more cosy as we go into colder weather. I want rid of piles of paper and dusty floors. I want the fire ready to be lit at a moments notice and I want the smell greeting guests to be gingerbread. I think this is a long-winded way of saying I want it to be safe.

What a week.

Truly extraordinary on a very personal level. A week that makes you glad to be here and feeling well.  A week that makes you consider once and for all what you put into your body and how keeping it in good working order is more vital than so many other things that we put before it. A week when I stopped and looked and decided what was important.

What is important? Very little actually. Just the basics. Oh, and an unfailing determination not to be dragged from the path, whatever that path may be.

Cx

How We Got There!

Now we have finished most of the hard work on the house I am able to rest a while, sort of, coffee in hand and show you all of my thrifty finds and subsequent make-overs. This darling I picked up in my local town for £10. I saw it in a thrift shop window being fondled by a man wearing a rather short pair of shorts. Surely not, I thought to myself, that mirror wouldn't suit him at all. He needs a mirror with army camouflage adorning every corner, not fake gilt. His fingers lingered for a moment longer before he took himself and his hot-pants off to the book department. It was at that moment that I wisped into the shop, lurched into the window and was making my way out the door with this mirror, having paid for it of course, before man in short shorts could flick through his first Andy McNab novel.

Now, I knew that once LBH saw a gilt mirror sitting in our house I would get the inevitable "Will that be going after the shoot?"
My name is LBH, I live with Cherry Menlove, I precursor everything I say to Cherry nowadays with "Will that be going after the shoot?"

Well, to be honest it seems that everything I bought into the house in a rush in order to get ready for the photographer arriving was bought with my instinct firmly in place. I had to think super quickly about whether or not this item would look good in that corner or whether that piece of thrifty goodness really should be shizzled up a tad in order for it to make a positive difference.

This mirror was one of the items that needed shizzling up. At times of needed shizzle I reach for my trusty sample pots of Farrow & Ball. This time in the colour Bone.

And this is what happened to my faux gilt friend. He now looks rather nice sitting in the corner above the tallboy in our bedroom.

You can't tell from these pictures but I assure you that I didn't blot out the whole of the mirror's former look with the new coats of paint. I took an old brush and stabbed the new paint into the gilt, very small amounts at first. I didn't want the mirror's edge to have a flat, matt look to it. I wanted to retain the texture that the gold and the blackness gave it while at the same time lightening the whole object up so it hung like a contemporary antique .....er.....thing!

Mmmmmmm, antique indeed. Ms. Menlove it cost you £10 and is as light as a feather. In fact it could very well be made from papier mache or plaster of paris!!!

Do I care? Not a jot!

I keep going on about the new website but I'm so very much in love with the whole idea of having everything in one place. I have been working on the look and the feel of it all week and I know that I want it to be clean, fresh, simple to navigate and for the only real colour to come from the pictures that I add to it. There will be how - to's, projects, ideas, articles, stories, pictures, recipes and another rather secret function that will give us all the chance to discuss again!

We also have the round up of Mrs Dalloway coming soon. I have had a few emails through that have told me they either adored it or didn't quite get it. Let me make it clear that WHATEVER you thought of this book it is entirely valid. There is to be no judgement here. Do not say that you liked it when you didn't or that you throughly understood the sub-text and the use of imagery when all you really saw was a lady talking to herself. Ms. Woolf was a very particular type of person and this is wholly reflected in her work. I am thinking about adding a book club to the new site depending on how well this one goes. We could cover classics, modern classics, biography's. Anything we wanted really and discuss in an environment that we all feel safe in.

Have a wonderful weekend. Whether you live in the town or country, have a family or live alone do one thing this weekend that makes your house a place that you want to come home to just that little bit more. It could be buying a humble packet of crumpets and some real English butter for your supper on Sunday evening or it could be poking your head up into the loft and measuring up for some insulation to see you into those chilly winter months. LBH and I are going to our local farm shop. We are going to walk SLOWLY around it and I am going to pick up and fondle, in wide eyed wonder, every single muffin, pie, organic chicken breast, turnip and truffle that I can get my hands on. Then we are going to come SLOWLY home and watch a movie. That, my friends, is all we shall be doing. Shall I tell you why we are doing nothing more extravagant? Because we've finished the house!! .............................................................................................(almost)!!!!!!!

Cx

Please feel free to contact me at cherry@cherrymenlove.com with any questions or thoughts.

As Our Heads Are Down, So Time Speeds Up

LBH has been on holiday from work for just over a week now. It's been mighty nice for me to have him around and already I'm counting the days until he has to step back on the commuter train with dread.

"Start you own business" I whine in his ear, all day long.

"Work from home. It's better for everybody if more people work from home" I continue to whine. I should say that I have perfected a rather nice whiny voice that I pull out more often than not.

"Ah hon, it's nice that you want me here but it's not quite as simple as that. Now get back to work......."

Hee hee!

And so, I head off back to the part of the house that I am working on at any given moment and leave him to finish what he is doing. Which today happens to be the kitchen. I have been unable to get stuck into any form of hardcore recipe experimenting due to the kitchen not quite doing what it should, but all that should change today as there is a new beech worktop being installed and a hand-blasted sink.

If you are looking at the kitchen while standing on the stairs this is the work that will be done on the left hand side of the room. I have been hard at work on the right hand side.

I took this picture just after we had moved in. The green paint on the wall made the kitchen very dark and needed to go. So we bashed on some white paint, simply to cover it up, and then set about finding the final shade that we would use throughout. We realised early on that we would have to use the same shade of paint in the front hall, the entire kitchen, the walls going up the stairs and the landing as they all bleed into one.

Eventually we settled on Craig & Rose - Regency White. 

 

For a few weeks the right hand side of the kitchen looked like this. But you know that as I have posted this picture before. However I found that after my many thrifting trips I needed somewhere to put some of the mis-matched dishes that were starting to pile up. So we decided on a single shelf. A single, rather long, shelf.

 

You can see that there is work going on in the kitchen as a rather lengthy spirit level is protruding from the bottom of the picture but this is how the shelf is looking right now. I have been able to put some of my serving bowls on it as well as some darling espresso cups that my lovely future mother - in - law bought me for my birthday. I have a feeling that this space will alter from time to time and certainly as the seasons change.

Can you see the garland that is hanging along the bottom of the shelf?

 

This garland was sent to me by Lesley of Small Meadow Press. Lesley also writes a blog called The Bower. I found The Bower when I first happened upon the world of blogging and was totally inspired by both Lesley and her business. When I received an email from her recently I was totally overwhelmed as I had been a long time fan of hers. Her gentle spirit comes through in her work and I am aware of the fact that my picture of her garland does not do it justice, so please check out her website for more of her collection.

It's folk like Lesley that inspire me. People that are prepared to put their heart and soul on the line and in their work, cynicism be dammed. I have no time for cynicism quite frankly and try hard to keep all areas of my thoughts free from it. That's not to say that I don't question, I do, I question each and every day. But sliding into cynicism and then ultimately criticism seems so easy to me. I prefer a challenge!

Lesley thank you so very much for your gift. It meant more to me than the garland itself because it arrived with your sense of design and warmth all over it. It also arrived on a day when I needed it to arrive.

Have a lovely week. I'm finding it hard to post at the moment as we are rushing around on the house and have just found out that we need to go on a trip abroad to see an elderly relative of LBH's.

Schwester Violett, we'll see you shortly my darling..........

Lots of love

Cherry x

An Old Fashioned Girl

 

And so, the renovation moves on apace and another weekend was spent scurrying around doing nothing but house stuff. LBH and my Dad spent most of Saturday installing a new front door to the house, which lets so much more light in that I'm afraid Seasonal Affective Disorder is now a thing of the past. I took lots and lots of before and afters and shall post on this event anon. It was fun and I never thought that one could love a front door with as much fervour as I love this one. It is an inanimate object after all but this does not seem to stop me from squealing and doing a little dance whenever I stand in the hall.

I am of the opinion that if you honour your house it will honour you back. By this I mean that you have to work with the style, period and construction of the house and it will, in turn, offer you a haven. A place to go and be peaceful. My sister has a new (relatively speaking) cottage in an old village which is about 20 miles away from us. She has manged to work with her house in order to maintain a light, airy, contemporary look while giving it a decidedly cottage, rustic feel. It works very well and the whole house sits in harmony. I'm sure that the twins will have a marvellous time running around their abode when they do eventually pop out and say hello.

Our house however is older and this is something that LBH and I have to work with also. When we first viewed the house it was obvious to both of us that the folk we bought from prefer a contemporary/modern style of which the house did not particularly lend itself. Therefore we have been given the task of taking the house back to a stage whereby the decor and furniture chosen are in keeping with the period without being stuffy. If I was to chose between Victorian and Georgian decor I would go for Georgian every time. The Victorians had the most amazing ability to darken everything and decorate each space, nook and cranny to within an inch of its life. That would be the most appalling environment to have to spend our time in so we have to do a great deal of research to get the balance between period and contemporary living just right.

I am, at this present moment reading, among about four other books, The Shell Seekers by Rosamund Pilcher. I have memories of my Nana on my mum's side reading it in the garden the summer before she passed away. It seemed to me at the time that she read it in one sitting and it was imprinted on  my mind that I must read it one day as it had so engrossed her. So here I am, 16 years later, reading the popular classic. It is dated, there is no question about it. It is somewhat far fetched and the sums of money spoken about would now be in the millions and not in the thousands. But the thread that has connected me with this story is the 'englishness' of the family saga. The descriptions of England on a cold winters morning and the gardens which the main characters tend to. The meals served at the big kitchen table and the fire which is stoked to create warmth. I went thrifting last week, surprise surprise, with images such as these floating around my head and came home with the curtains you see at the top of the post. As soon as I saw them hanging on the rail in the store I knew that I recognised them. Not because I had seen them in any house before but because they fitted perfectly with the tale that was, at that time, informing my choices. And so I came home and strung them up, somewhat haphazardly, on to the curtain rail that was in the room.

And therein lies the problem.

These curtains are pretty, there is no doubt about that. They are also floral, very, very floral. But they are, I'm afraid to say, rather dated. And if I was to use these curtains in the living room of the new house I would be going against my better judgement, LBH's certainly and even my mum's, who has a very similar taste to me.

I can't even use them in a slightly ironic  "I know they are old fashioned but look at how brave and cool I am to be able to hang them so shamelessly!!"  way. The room needs a lighter version of these curtains, of that I am certain.

I shall not be disposing of them though. LBH and I shall find a use for them as they undoubtedly conjure up a wonderfully cosy feeling in any room in which they are put.

So the search goes on. I have heard that there is an end of season sale on at Laura Ashley. Mmmmm, I wonder..................

 

Note to all readers.
Having read over a previous post, A Cornish Home, I can only apologise for the way in which the awful construction of the post led some of you to believe that we had purchased a house in Cornwall. It was bad writing on my part and with the title of the post being what it was I am not surprised that this conclusion was reached. I meant to describe to you all that I had bought so many nick knacks down in Cornwall on a recent camping trip that it had made the house we moved into, in May of this year, seem very Cornish indeed. My apologies. I have only one house and I think that if I had any more than that at this time I would also have a nervous breakdown. Which, to be perfectly honest, would be no fun at all and really rather rotten.

Have a wonderful week.

All my love

Cherry xx

What A Beauty!

So, LBH and I knew we had to go to the tip (dump, place where you take you garbage/rubbish/things you no longer want) on Saturday. We were heading there and then on to the nearest big town to take a look at some tiles we are interested in for the bathroom. It was a wonderful day on Saturday, warm and sunny, and I have to say that it is the prettiest car ride I have taken in a long time, even if we did end up in what was effectively the last stop before the landfill site.

I took heart as we drove in and parked up as I spotted that most of the huge containers were for items that could all be re-cycled and since we were simply disposing of copious amounts of packaging and some wood I knew it would all be put to good use. It was then that I spotted it.

Whenever I read one of the housey magazines and admire the home of somebody within the pages my eyes are invariably drawn to the odd bits of furniture that they have used in the place. You know the ones, pieces that were one thing in a former life but serve equally as well as something else? Well, when I drive up and park in the local tip and see a PRISTINE Singer sewing machine stand simply standing there with no mummy or daddy appearing to be looking after it, my first thought is PHONE TABLE FOR THE ENTRANCE HALL!!!

I leapt out of the car and sidled up to it. Looking for all intents and purposes to anybody who was observing that this was in fact MY piece of furniture and I was simply bringing it out for the day to get a little sun and some air. By no means was this anybody else's new phone table but mine. I laid my hands on it and was not going to let anybody get in the way of my vice like grip.

LBH, who was dutifully unloading all of the rubbish from the back of the car and dragging it in to the containers suddenly realised that the person who was meant to be helping him in this was nowhere to be seen and began to scour the horizon for what I am sure he must of thought was a total slacker. He found me gripping the table and immediately knew that something was rotten in Denmark.

At this point a man who obviously worked at the tip spotted me acting mightily suspiciously and began to walk my way. I pre-empted his questions with regards to what it was I was doing with a question of my own ......

Cherry : Is it OK if I take this?

Man: Er.....no. It's against the rules of the tip. Nobody is allowed to take anything that has been left by somebody else. I can't allow it.

At this point the world seemed to go into slow motion for a while until I finally found the ability to speak once again.

Cherry : WHAAAAATTTTTT?!?!?!?!?! Well I shouldn't have asked you then should I? I should have simply taken it?

Man : Yes, you should have really.

Cherry: Well you just need to walk away and ignore me then. You simply have to forget that I ever asked you.

Man: Where is your car parked?

Cherry: There (pointing to the car that was parked about three feet away from where I was now sweating over my new phone table)

Man: Well I suppose I had better help you lose this in the back of your car then hadn't I?

HALLELUJAH!!!!!!!!!!

Oh how I thanked him. Not too loudly of course lest one of his superiors were to hear and get involved. Once we had it safely in the back of the car and the man had gone his merry way, pleased with his good deed I am sure, LBH returned.

LBH: Are we going to talk about this?

Cherry: ButyoudontunderstandIloveitsomuchanditwilllookwonderfulinthehallpleeeeaaasssseeee!!!

LBH: Cherry hon, people come to the tip to get rid of things not to pick stuff up!

Cherry: Butjustlookatitit'sbeautifuliloveitsomuchandit'sinmintcondition!!!!

LBH: *sigh*

Hello there readers! Let me show you my new phone table today. Isn't she a beauty? And so reasonably priced!!!

;-)

Love Cherry xx

Oops, She's Gone A' Thrifting!

Ahhhhhh, we needed to get away and so we went to West Dorset. And what does one do when one is in West Dorset and in the process of buying a house? One goes a' thrifting. That, my friends, is what one does.

Here are my delicious finds from only one day spent in what can only be described as God's country!

This white and powder blue plate was FIFTY PENCE! I felt so bad that I handed the woman selling it SIXTY! LBH and I got up early on Sunday and headed straight into West Bay. We pulled into a car park and lo and behold there was a boot sale in full swing. LBH stayed in the the car, with the heater blowing hot air straight into his face. "You go, let me know how you get on" was all I needed to hear and I was off. This plate will probably not actually spend much time indoors to be honest. I have a number of pieces this shape and I really like to sit small plant pots on them. There is nothing more luxurious than having china in your garden, sitting there like it was born to be outside. At fifty pence I can afford for it to be outside with some pansies or miniature roses sitting on it.

You can probably tell by the way I'm talking about a garden in this post that we are still behaving like the purchase of the house is all going to go through just fine. Well, sometimes you just have to keep on keeping on. The fat lady hasn't begun warming up her vocal chords just let, let me tell you!

This enamelware jug is another thing that wont see indoors a whole lot. The new garden is small and needs to be treated like a secret hideaway. It needs to be given nooks, crannies and lots of flowers. It also needs decorating. This will hold cornflowers just wonderfully and will probably reside in the middle of the garden table. This cost £2, I think. An absolute steal.

After leaving West Bay we headed into Lyme Regis. We took a walk along the beach and headed on to Cobb Harbour. I did my best Meryl Streep ' French Lieutenants Woman' impression with the help of my pashmina and a very strong wind coming in off the sea. HAHAHAHA! LBH was standing there with the camera saying " you'd better hurry up, there are people coming and if they see you they will know what you are doing and you'll feel silly". HAHAHAHAHAHA!

The worrying thing is that I don't think I would have felt silly. You can take the girl out the theatre....etc...........

Having exorcised my dramatic demons we headed off to a wonderful antiques hall that sits right on the beach front in Lyme Regis. It was here that I picked up some more enamelware in the shape of these candle sticks as well as this little treasure......

 

I picked up this Gigi sheet music from a box containing many other pieces. It was from a house clearance that had recently taken place. I love Gigi and of course the beautiful Leslie Caron but what I saw when I looked at this were the colours. They are beautiful and bright and shall be finding a way into a frame and onto a wall in the new guest bedroom.

   

It wasn't until we left Lyme Regis and started to head out into the country that my 'purchase of the day' was made. LBH and I stopped off in Abbotsbury for lunch. We drove into the village at one end and past this little antiques shop. After lunch at The Swan Inn we decided to walk off our Ploughman's with a trip back to this converted thatched cottage.

Just after Christmas I had seen a picture of a bedroom in one of my mums house magazines. They had a shaker style oak bed and had coupled it with walnut bedside cabinets, dark wooden floors and dusty rose rugs. Well, we have the oak bed on order, the dark floors are residing under the current carpet at the new place and after our trip into this delightful little nook we also have one of our bedside cabinets......

 

LBH and I furtively discussed the options both inside and outside the little shop before deciding on buying it.

LBH: We should buy it if you want it hon, but it will have to go on your side..

Me: Well, what sort of cabinet do you want for your side?...

LBH: Not one like that..

Me: There really is no point in getting it if you are going to have one that doesn't match. You don't need one exactly the same but they have to look right angel!!!!!!!!!!!

LBH: Mmmmmmm........I don't mind having one that colour, just not that style.....

Me: WE'LL TAKE IT!!!!!!!

I had a moment when I think I actually squealed while putting it in the back of our silly car. This is one of the most satisfying and creative processes that I can possibly imagine. Making house. It is not akin to being an interior designer and doing it full time for somebody else. I really wouldn't like that as much. But I love the fact that I have these pockets of joy and I get to tell all these folk about it through the medium of blogging. You'll see these pieces in situ soon, I'm sure and positive and hopeful and AGGGGHHHHHHH..........never wanting to buy another house!!!

Have a wonderful day wherever you are. Thank you so much for reading. I really hope that you are able to glean some inspiration from your visits here. Or at least go away from Pixie Wood having had a nice visit.

I shall see you soon and continue to regale you with tales.......if you don't mind of course!

Cherry xx