The Brocante Home Chronicles.

Time Out For Trouble.

A worrying little public  information film from 1961 equating  household  accidents with the  apparently dubious mental health of the housewives of the era ...

Scary stuff!

Green Sleeves.

The greenest way to gift  that  divine bottle of treacly red this Christmas?  In a gift bag fashioned from the  recycled sleeve of an old sweater of course ...

Snugglesville. This  and other clever olive coloured ideas at the  Northwood Blanket Company.

Hospitality Under The Influence.

She's funny is Amy Sedaris.

And after waiting what seems like fifty years, her book "I Like You: Hospitality Under The Influence", finally landed on my doorstep this morning, just in time for a chuckle with my morning cocktail...

And Housekeepers it really is as madly daft and quirky and wonderful as Amy is...

"Even though the word "entertainment" is commonly used today, to me it sounds charmingly old-fashioned, like courtship or back-alley abortion. I like the traditional idea of entertaining, which for me means lively guests, good food, cocktails, and bubbly conversation. I'd like to bring entertaining back to these essentials. I'm not concerned with proper table settings, seating arrangements, or formal etiquette. Who can have a good time with all those rules? How can you enjoy yourself if you're worried whether you're using the right fork, or wondering whether the pumpkin is the bowl or part of the meal? I'm not trying to discourage you from being creative or encouraging you to neglect the details, but know that the nuts of any good party  are the simple basics provided in a warm environment.<

I tend to live my life like a deaf person. I communicate with my actions:  the way I dress, the way my home is decorated, and the gifts I give all speak for me. I take this to heart when I entertain. My food, my party decorations, the games I create, and the music I play are  all personal expressions. This is what will make your party special,  sharing a piece of you, a feeling. It's not a competition. You don't have to be the perfect host, just the prettiest.

This is not a joke cookbook. I don't like joke cookbooks because I can't take them seriously. This book is full of real information. Most of the little I know, I learned from my mom, as well as Girl Scouts and Junior Achievements, my second first grade teacher, my family, Aunt Joyce, the backs of boxes, the lady who works at the post office, encyclopedias, the beach, bartending school, grocery stores, airports, waiting on tables, Mrs. Enchandi, nurses, sitcoms, Hugh, listening to the radio, babysitting, rock concerts, summer school, and the  House Rabbit Society. I was also fascinated by two local hospitality shows: At Home with Peggy Mann and The Betty Elliot Show. I wanted to be both those women and now here's my chance, and hopefully, with the help of my book, it will be your chance as well."

Sounds utterly nuts right? Well it is, and like a breath of fresh air in a world where Martha Stewart exists it is an absolute joy. Lets be honest here; most of us  are more Amy than we are Martha, no matter what secret ambitions as a hostess we might harbour... 

Visit the website and buy the book.

Scrapping My Dreams.

Five years ago I started a scrapbook. Not a deliciously designed affair in the manner  of all you  wonderful artists out there, but a  true, scrappy book,  full of this and that, stuck in at random with little attention to layout , and scrawled  all over in pencil- poems,  snippets from books,  recipes,  bits from the novel  I haven't got around  to writing yet and quotes that spoke to my heart at the time.

It is, I think one of my most precious belongings, because in it's own demented way it tells my story:- dreams for the wedding I never had (A palazzo in Venezia, in an Italian vintage veil), my cluckiness for a babba in the year before Finn was born, passing fantasies (I want a dog.), self inflicted lines, apparently as punishment  (I do things I shouldn't, I do things I shouldn't over and over again, and on another page,  It isn't enough, it isn't enough, it isn't enough...),  lines staight out of  Sex and The City  (I fancied myself as the  Englismans answer to Carrie Bradshaw at the time!!), poems I hardly understood at the time ( "At 3.am, the room contains no sound, except the ticking of a clock which has begun to panic  like an insect trapped in an enormous box, Books lie open  on the carpet. Somewhere  else , you're sleeping  and beside you there is a  woman who is crying quietly, so you won't wake." by  Wendy Cope), images of domestic bliss contradicted  by  unspoken longing for goodness knows what,   housekeeping advice, lists of books I wanted to read, and words of wisdom from women better than I.

Little Me Chic.

The cutest little matching aprons for you and little you to wear to stir in a sixpence or carve the turkey, by Sugar Chic Baby on Etsy.

French Paper.

Is there anything lovelier than a scrumptiously wrapped present? Who said your Christmas gifts have to be wrapped in the usual glitzy tat? Choose something gloriously inappropriate from Mr French, a copy of the Financial Times, or some vintage floral wallpaper, add a length of ribbon to die for, et voila! gifts that glow under the aluminium tree...

Don't Like Christmas? Get A Life...

There is a wonderfully lyrical article over on Salon by  Garrison Keillor today, forcing all us Christmas sceptics to re-evaluate Christmas in all its techicolour, tinselly, absurdly over-commercialised glory, and remember what it is about today, why we put ourselves through the sheer nightmare of it year after year, cursing what it has become and blinking back tears as all our yesterdays unwrap themselves like so many badly chosen gifts...

"..So it is with Christmas. You can go straight from pure bliss to desperate remorse in less than a minute. There are dead friends that one does not ever quite forget, and there is the great wound of divorce which, even though 30 years in the past, can come open and bleed and almost break your heart. You walk to church and she's waiting for you in the shadows, asking, "Why did you do that?"

Christmas is an artistic performance, and art, by and large, is not made by contented people. It is made by wounded recluses, freaks, the absurdly self-conscious, the haunted and guilty, the humiliated, the outcasts, and we create this, first and foremost, for our children. To rise up out of confusion and dismay, with ghosts whispering to us, and bake cookies and light a candle and sing "Silent Night" -- I can do that for my child, and if your children want to join us, they are most welcome."

Go read it and remember why.

The Frakes Family Christmas.

Because The Frakes Family Christmas is all our Christmases. Then, now and hopefully tomorrow...

The Prettiest Notebooks In The World.

From Dauphine Press. Elegance defined by lifes extra-ordinary events...

The Worry Dolls.

Actually I'm not. I just love that grumpy girls face. Any excuse to use a good picture!

I'm not fed up. I'm kind of twitchy. Anxious. Worried about worrying. And worried about worrying about worrying if you get my drift? Actually scrap that. I am fed up. Fed up with worrying.  Cos lets face it, it's  a female disease.

When I was little I used to whisper my worries to a little set of Guatemalan Worry Dolls. My teeny little peasanty best friends they were. Tell one a secret, stash her under my pillow and the very next day, my worries would have been whisked off to Guatemala, or the Land of Lost Worries or wherever the little people choose to take the kind of problems that harass otherwise blissfully happy chidren.

But little peasants, I do apologise, somewhere along the line I lost you. And I started stuffing my worries way down deep in my tummy and wondering why I always felt so bloated.  But no more Housekeepers. I hereby introduce you to my new gang of mates: little ladies with magical powers to make my world, and yours, right again....

Lily, Mistress of The Little Worries.

Will  I remember to buy  electricity for the meter so  we  don't run out in the middle of the night? What are those spots on Finley's thighs? What is wrong with me- why do I keep forgetting peoples birhdays? Will the window cleaner remember to hang the wreath back on my front door? Have I remembered to renew my library books? (No). Will the milkman try to cheat me again this week? Or worse tell me I'm beautiful and touch my hair again? Will the church lady who called in this morning shout at me in the street if I don't go to her Christingle service? Will I remember to put the recycling box out on Tuesday? Will I cry when I have to put the Christmas tree up all by myself this year? And on and on and on...