Followers of old will remember we've spent the best part of three years renovating our house, but somehow we've never been able to spare the time to clean out and spruce up the cellar. Not until now that is. In my last post you saw this corner in its 'before' state, this is the same corner after lots of deep filler, sweepings and lashings of a rather lush paint called, aptly, Victorian White.

I hope you like my pantry cupboard, I'm thrilled with it. It is a 1930s wardrobe that was gifted to us via Freecycle. When the Mister went to pick it up, the rather nice gentlemen who was in his 70s, said he'd had it since he was a boy. And now after a lick of Annie Sloane paint it will be good for another 70 years. Inside are small compartments with such labels as, Sundries and Underwear. These now house my excess tins of food and jars, perfect for Christmas and making a good deal of space in our kitchen.

I'm afraid I neglected to take a bigger picture of the 'after' door, but you can just see it in the right of the picture, now a gorgeous shade of Farrow & Ball calamine pink. And who is this lady you might ask? Well she is the keeper of the cellar, Lady Daphne Agincourt, you will see she has her beady eyes on the stairs to the cellar, making sure nobody but me gets their little mitts on the Champagne.

All the paint used for the revamp apart from the white paint I already had, the mouse and cheese shelf trim was in my stash, purchased God knows where and when. So the whole job has cost peanuts, which dear reader is just how I like it. Improvising and using up bits and bobs around the house.

Another small 'improvement' yesterday was implemented after the Mister hit his head yet again on one of the four low door frames in the Victorian part of the house.

Again a nice piece of haberdashery from my stash. Pom pom trim which can be seen from both sides of the door. If this doesn't work I'll have to get some, 'Duck or Grouse' signs made.

Happy weekend all.

I mentioned a wee while back that I was going to tackle the two small ugly orange pine side tables, bought from my local chazza for a fiver. Perfect size for little drinks tables but oh so offensive to the eye. Well, I'm pleased to say they are finished.

Not a lot of outlay either. As you know dear reader, I don't normally buy expensive materials for my upcycling projects, I just rootle around in the (wo)man shed and find some suitable bits and bobs. The paint I used for this project was a half price bargain purchased many moons ago. Luckily, about a quarter of the paint was left in the tin. It had thick skin covering it, but after a good stir, it was good to go.



Do you like my free plant pot? My big Agave had some babies and I thought they would look cool in these Pizza Express giant tomato tins. I just asked for them after a meal one night, and they were more than happy to let me have a few. They're also good for storing garden accoutrement in the greenhouse.


The top view of the tables show my free downloaded images, covered with several layers of decoupage glue. And lastly here are my bird feeders made from vintage cups and saucers. What's on your 'must get done before the Summer goes' project list?

Right oh, the mister is watching the footie, chance for me to talk about my projects. I have a couple of the knitty kind on the go, of course, they're perfect for when I have a spare few minutes, great to dip in and out of. One is more urgent than the other and I fear may not be finished on time as I have another project that has moved up the to do list. This needs to be completed by Friday week when our son is coming to stay, as we are short on storage space in our guest room.

Lady Luck was on my side last weekend when my name was pulled from the hat for a Freegled cupboard. The lovely lady who was giving it away only lives a half a mile from my house so it didn't have to travel too far. (Which is one of the criteria for re-cycling the Freegle way).

I plan to give this little beauty a mini make over. Overall it is in good condition but needs a thorough clean inside, a coat of primer and a couple of coats of fresh paint. All of which I already have in the garden shed. The top will be a different shade to the rest of the unit, and then I'm going to decoupage the top with a really nice design I downloaded for free. You'll get to see the image when I have finished the job, such a tease aren't I?

I've only had to buy a couple of things to complete the work, a new handle for the cupboard and some glue for the decoupage work. Both items together cost less than £8.00.


The new door handle for the unit is mother of pearl and chrome and I hope will work well with the colours and image I have in mind.


To the garden now.


We found a delightful herb stall at the Smallholders Show at the weekend. We bought some wonderfully fragrant Roman Chamomile which I have planted up in a wide pot to give it room to spread. I'm hoping it will thrive so I can use it to make some delicious soothing tea. If it does very well I will harvest and dry some for over Winter.

The stall had lots of nuggets of herbal wisdom attached to the plants for sale. I learnt that the Eau de Cologne mint we have cuttings of is perfect for naturally perfuming bath water. Obvious now I know.

The right hand side picture of my trio shows some tiny seedlings I'm especially excited about. When the mister and I went up to London last year to the Buckingham Palace Jubilee celebrations we were given some free Birch tree seeds in a little pack. This is my third attempt at getting the seeds to germinate and I have used them all up now. Happily I have 5 tiny little seedlings springing up. I'm hoping to take them as little trees to our next house. We shall see won't we.

And just because there is so much talk of insects and bees at the moment, here's a bumble for you.


Welcome to my two latest international Google Connect Friends, Dani who blogs here and Amanda who blogs here.

So you know how it is. You have some things forever, you love them, you'd never be parted from them and other things you have for a while and well, you just want to change them. Aha I hear you say, but are you not a super scrimpy type of person who does not waste money willy nilly replacing things that are not worn down to the bone? Yes I emphatically reply, I am indeed a super scrimper, but I do get bored with some of the things I own. Time for action then.


I loved this cushion when I bought it in 2012, it was the Queen's Jubilee year you see. I loved it so much I bought two. Now it has fallen out of favour. It's sister cushion has already been sold at a boot fair a few weeks back, so this one has been 'living' on borrowed time.

I thought I had found a solution last week when I chanced upon a gorgeous silk cushion in one of the local chazzas. It was perfect, if a little grubby. So I soaked it for a few hours to get rid of the dirty marks, disastrously the two main colours of the cushion leached into one another and the cover was ruined. That really pissed me off. But I did still have the feather cushion pad so all was not totally lost. This prompted me to give the Queenie cushion a make over, rather than buy another cover.


I carefully unpicked the cover and used the front piece as a template for my 'new' cushion. I had intended to recycle the piping and the zip but to be honest I only managed to salvage the zip as I couldn't sew a straight and tight enough line to make the piping look right. Never mind. The back part of the cover was in good condition so I re-used that.

I had a delve in my fabric stash and decided to liberate some Frida Kahlo fabric that I ordered from America a few years ago. It has been waiting for the right project and this was it.


So I have a fresh and 'new' cushion for my sofa with minimum expenditure. Job done.

This weekend I also managed to convince the Mister to sort out all of the old clothes he no longer wears, or are too worn out to keep. He took all of his old gardening rags clothes to the tip with a completely naff rug and other undesirables, then pensioned off some old t shirts and trousers, they have become his new gardening togs. Any clothing with some life but not really needed or wanted was dropped off at the Chazza today. I also have a couple of items to list on ebay.

I do love a good sort out.

Picked up this rather sweet metal sign from one of my local chazzas. It was painted in a garish red and black and was a bit worse for wear rather than looking 'time worn' and vintage chic. I didn't want to buy any special paints to give it a make over as we have pots and pots of paint in our garden shed. I had a quick delve and found some nice Farrow and Ball tester pots. They worked perfectly well with a little bit of primer underneath. I have hung it up in my garden studio where I will be holding my workshops, just in case we forget to have some tea and cake, as if!


Spoke to lots of lovely folk at the South of England Show on Friday. I managed to have a quick squiz around too. I was given some lovely free range eggs from the chap on the Mantel Farm stand and have been invited to visit a farm where my favourite sheep live. I'm hoping I may secure some fleeces from the breeder as I will be starting to learn to spin wool next week. VERY excited about that.


My hanging baskets are now back up as our painter has finished the back of the house. These gorgeous baskets were an incredible super scrimpy price of £10.00 each, from Morrisons. And as they can't seem to stop giving me vouchers at the mo, they really were free. The middle pic is of our raspberry canes that are fruiting for the first time since we were given them a couple of years ago. If the birds don't get them first we should have some delicious fruit soon.

The tree went up today. I really enjoy putting the decorations on it, as most of them have special memories. I'm not the kinda gal that buys new decs every year to introduce a theme and ring the changes. I want the comfort of familiarity and tradition. The first ones that go on are the ones my boy made at nursery and primary school.

Then a couple my Mum gave me years ago. She died over 20 years ago now so her decorations are like a Christmas message from her every year.

I don't go over the top at Christmas with decs or anything else for that matter. We have a few extra treats and because we don't buy mountains of food and drink we don't stuff ourselves or waste anything. More is definitely less at this time of year.

I have been doing a bit of sprucing up on the house front but still haven't spent loads. Finally got round to painting the two front doors of the house. I bought the paint ages ago whilst Homebase had a special offer on. Here is a before, during and after.



It took over 5 hours to rub the doors down properly, but elbow grease is free and I'm really pleased with the finished result. The little cream 'trowel' door knocker on the small side door was purchased over 5 years ago, it's finally been put to good use.

We were also very lucky this weekend to bag a lovely pure wool rug from Freecycle. Initially I was beaten to it but the person couldn't be bothered to collect it, her loss I say. I left a very polite request with the owner and he got back in touch. It has a small bit of damage and smelt a bit musty, but the mister has given it a good shampoo and it looks brilliant. Now it has the whiff of Highclere about it. And it's very cosy underfoot.

My mouldy old garden furniture pictured  last week, now looks like new. I had some paint left over from last years titivations so that was a bonus, money saved, money earned as they say. Then I covered some very dodgy looking chair cushions with some eye popping 60s fabric that someone had given to me many moons ago.



Hey presto, garden furniture makeover on a shoe string complete. Time for some tea and leftover raspberry pavlova.

Jasmine green tea in my favourite Anthropologie cup

Have a great bank holiday weekend everybody.

Mr.S&P happily cleaning the base of the GH.
These are some panes that didn't make it, but we will replace them with some plastic sheeting which I'm sure will work almost as well and will be cheaper.