Spicing It Up

Hello my lovelies!

We’ve had some colder than I would like spells of late, and the wind has been quite strong.  It’s not been beach weather for sure, and gardening isn’t as pleasant when plants are bending and blowing all over the place. 

But no matter. I keep finding little indoor projects to keep me busy.  Like this very simple tweak that took no more than maybe 15 minutes but has made a big impact on my day to day visuals. 

I had an area next to the hob where I kept salt and pepper.  And that area got pretty cluttered when I found some beautiful seasoned salts lurking in the back of a cupboard during a rainy day clear out.

So I set myself up with a little salt rack.  Taadaah!

 It started out like this. 

A very 80s pine spice rack.  I think we all had one of these that decade. 

It had housed my miniatures collection in my booze cabinet.  Yup, the booze cabinet was another clear out mini project on yet another cold and rainy day. 

I was clearing the shelves above the booze as a new home for overspill party glasses moved from  the display dresser.  Yup, yet another rainy day clear out.

And in one of my rare Marie Kondo moments I decided that if very old  miniatures of  Tis Maria and Green Chatreuse has sat in the rack for years they were unlikely to ever get drunk.  So in a trice the collection went down the sinkand the rack stood in a queue to go in the rubbish bin.  (I doubted that this would sell in a charity shop, it looked so uninspiring)

Then I looked over at the forlorn looking dated rack and suddenly in a flash of inspo I thought that it might just fit in a space below the overhead kitchen cabinet next to the hob. 

And it did!

”It’s called spacial awareness”, I smugly told hubs.  

”That’s why I’m so good at side-parking the car 😉🤣.”

So I slapped some white paint on it.  As you do. 

And now all that clutters up the little space to the side of the range hob is this local pottery salt pig (it was my mum’s).

Such a quick tweak but one that has created a huge impact.  IMHO 

Do you find that one declutter leads seamlessly on to the next?

Have you had any of those quick tweak moments on rainy days?

Maybe you have an old spice rack lurking that could entertain you on a rainy day too!

A la perchoine,

Mary x. 

Hi my lovelies!

Well, yesterday was productive.  I spent all of ten minutes on two whole niggly jobs!

But first, let’s recap. 

Recently I finally got round to painting the back lounge window frame SEE HERE.  I also got round to applying some grey Liberon to the frame on the left of the pic, bringing it in line with the others in the room.  

I then FINALLY got round to replacing a tatty old ivory table lamp shade with a black one, as there are elements of black in the room. 

It smartened up this little area a tad but the old brass base didn’t blend with the silver coloured fittings in the room and the lamp table was tired, but hey ho, thought I. 

Of course I then had to replace the ivory shade on the larger pottery lamp in the same room. And I immediately found that the shape worked better and the black blended easily with the base and the area.  Black is a neutral, after all.  

And they say leoprint is too, but I don't think my home can handle that degree of pattern mixing!

So, niggly lamp shades task, a big fat✅. 

 I was pretty pleased with my quick tweaks.  That brass lamp base was  still niggling me, of course, and the little 80s repro table it sat on wasn’t doing the room any favours either.  But I’d used my last scrapings of the old Liberon jar to paint the frame ...

 Then, eureka!  I followed my own Amazon link and bought a magic pot in the St Germaine colour, a shade which has been a trusty friend over the last twenty or so years.  It arrived in a couple of days!  Good old Amazon. 

And  yesterday I managed to find my ten minutes of Dynamic Me - I slipped on a disposable rubber glove and grabbed the kitchen roll (2 sheets is all that’s needed). 

I rubbed the  cream on the lamp base, allowing some  brass to come through to create a softer distressed look.

A few minutes later and the table was covered a 

light silver grey shade.  Honestly, it’s really that quick - lamp base and table done in under ten minutes.   I ❤️ this Liberon metallic cream stuff.  

I may just paint the red leather insert too but no hurry eh?

So now I have lamp and table that complement the room.  In no more time than it would take to drink a cup of coffee.  

And that’s one of Liberon’s appeals.  No job is too arduous and if you have a spare ten minutes in your busy life, who knows what you can achieve.

It’s the perfect stuff for lazy old me!

Before

And after ... just ten minutes after!

A la perchoine,

Mary. 

s

Sometimes little niggly jobs hang around undone in Chez Pout for weeks, months , years.  Yet they often take relatively little time to complete and the satisfaction is immense when they're done.

As was the case with the little niggly jobs I've completed this week.

The Picture Frame

Firstly, a brief history of this picture. 

It starts back in the seventies.   Salon was the Daily Mirror cartoonist, and the newspaper and the publishing company TP worked for BITD were ultimately owned by the same company.  Caricatures by Salon of the company directors were hung in the boardroom and when TP left, he was given his picture. 

And it ends in the teensies with me FINALLY getting round to painting the picture frame to blend in with the other pictures around it in the Chez Pout boardroom!

Here's TP rocking his 70s flares and sideburns!

The frame was dark brown.  The other frames in the vicinity are shades of grey, but just a few, less than ten, and definitely not fifty.

But during this past week something clicked -  I'd stared long enough at this mismatch of framage.   Carpe diem.  Action this day!

So on this day I seized a little pot of *Liberon cream paint (*see below for details).  I opened this pewtery magic and with a piece of kitchen roll I got rubbing!

I left elements of the original brown frame to show through.

This way, the grey picks out the colour in TP's trousers flares and the brown tinges blend with the rest of the picture. And of course the frame fits in with its neighbours.

And the whole process took about ten minutes.  So why did I wait so long?!!!

The Window Frame

The other small tweak of the week was this bare wood window frame.

This is the only "before" pic of it I could find after a quick trawl.  It's over my shoulder, just in case I need to point it out!

The bare frame dates back to 2010, so it's been staring at me for nine years. 

Yes, you read right,  nine years!

TP painted the nearby door and window frames last year, but ran out of puff or enthusiasm for white paint and this window frame remained bare and sore-thumbish.

So, and not before time, this week I decided I could no longer live with the mismatch of framage in this room and this window frame got the Pout Paint Pot  treatment too!

This job took a little longer than ten minutes, but a few hours applying three coats of paint over two days and the job was done.

And here's the "after" shot.  Nothing sore-thumbish or mismatched with these frames eh?

The feel in this back room seating area is now harmonious.   After nine years and a few hours of my time I can now cross two jobs off my mental list of the many niggly jobs around the house.

And my paint pot spilleth over with immense satisfaction and love!

Does any of this sound vaguely familiar?

Do YOU have undone jobs that irritate and niggle, that you know will take but a few hours of your time ... WHEN you get round to it?!!!

A la perchoine,

Mary x. 

*STOP PRESS!!

And have I got good news for you and ME!

*Liberon gilt creams come in various shades of gold and silver and they are the BOMB!

  I've been using them for 20+ years for all sorts of exciting decorating jobs.

My last pot was sadly empty after this job 😢 and sourcing it from our small island has always been challenging and nigh on impossible.  

But through writing this post I've discovered it's available on Amazon and I am super excited to share this news with you!

I really recommend you give this little pot of magic a go - it transforms in a trice and you use little per job so it lasts for years.

*Liberon gilt cream - the Duracell of paint pots!!!

Bedroom Makeover - Almost Done ✔

Well, things have gone a little awry at Chez Pout.

My bag was packed and I was ready to go, but I didn't leave on a jet plane.  Bertie had other plans for me this morning.  You don't need to know the details but suffice to say, I spent my time at the vet, then mopping up and mothering him.

I spent some of my sofa time with him thinking about my bedroom project and how I hadn't shared with you one of my new loves.  So let's do it ...

Taadaahhhh !!!

Meet my new love, my nightstand.

Cute huh?  If you like traditional, that is, which I do.  So it's cute.

I searched high and low to find cabinets which fitted the mood of the space, and fitted the space itself.

This narrow unit is wood, the finish is a soft grey chalk paint and the unit top and drawer inners are left unpainted.

The narrow unit on the left was what I was working with previously.

Now I have ample surface space for water carafe, tissues etc and drawer space to neatly stash medication, hand cream etc etc.

The pair of units gives a more cohesive look to the room.  Do you agree?

My next task is to sort out a nice window dressing.  The blackout blind doesn't quite work and it looks clumsy.

Any suggestions for dressing a dormer window, ladies?

So bedroom project - almost done, ✔.

And back to today.  It's been quite a rollercoaster.

But Bertie seems to be responding well to his medication, so I'm hoping to be able to join holidaying TP soon, claws crossed.

For I really do need to be Leaving on A Jet Plane.

A la perchoine, 

Mary x 

The Lost Garden of Poutland

BTW, pop back in the week for more posts, but they'll be briefer!!



She Sheds.
Sheds aren't just for men.

If you know me well or use the search tool in the sidebar and see just how many times I've written about sheds on what is essentially a girlie blog, it will be no surprise that I'm super excited about my new shed!


Everything in the garden is rosy.

The ceonothus.

The blossoming cherry tree.

A sneaky self-described fatsia japonica.

The rhubarb.

The whatever -this -is-called!

But not everything in the garden is rosy.  Today I want to bare all and show you the seedier side of my garden.  The bit in the back corner that I turned a blind eye to and ignored its existence for many, many years.

This.

You think this is bad? But it was much worse than this before TP and I set to and called it a project.

Brace yourself, 

for it looked like this. Embarrassing, right?

In effect, it was an unused part of the garden that didn't exist in my mind, yet it gets the afternoon and evening sun in bucketloads.

I was able to ignore it as it's tucked in behind a high solid wall so it was very much out of sight, out of mind.

But soon -

Instead of looking at a mismatch of old fencing and knee high weed,

I'll be sitting in here looking out on a tidy patio
 (and maybe with a G&T for company!).

Instead of The Leaning Sheds of Poutland

there will sit this very upright She Shed.

 The left Leaning Shed holds old furniture that I can't bear to throw away.

I'll clean it all up and do a paint job on that furniture

and use it to furnish my She Shed!

Clever eh?  Still a furniture dumping ground but all looking pretty and in use.

I wish I could say that was my ingenious idea, but it was TP's!

And talking of TP - I told  sweetly asked him to stand here as a yardstick so you can see it's size.  

The Man Shed bit is through that rather plain little door on the right.  Much detritus will be ruthlessly dumped to fit the essential paraphernalia of a garden into the new Man Shed, a space half it's former size.  

I'm guessing I won't be holding each dried up paint pot and asking if it brings me joy ...

I've been using an old table next to the shed to pot up.  Heaven's knows where I'll do that now, for there will be no out of sight area for my messiness!

 Do you find that you get mess-creep in your garden?   I do!

   And as I turned a blind eye to the shed area in the back corner of the garden, so I began ignoring the neighbouring bed in the foreground of this pic.

The bed needs to be reduced to accommodate the new patio so I'm going to keep it simple going forward -  just the existing magnolia tree surrounded by a circle of fragrant lavender.   Simple planting and swathes of colour make more impact, IMHO.  And it will be a doddle to maintain.

So out of one project comes another.   Projects morph.

Do you find that?  Projects breed more projects?

And now I'm not just replacing ugly sheds, I'm reclaiming a HUGE chunk of the garden.

An area that couldn't be seen from the rest of the garden or the house - but going forward I'm going to make sure every darned guest sees it in all its spruced-up glory!

I hope that you don't mind me showing you the warts and all part of my garden today?  Was it a shock to the system?!

But I've pretended it hasn't existed for years and this feels like "coming out".

And now it's going to feel like I've liberated a chunk of garden,  magically increasing the garden's size (or like stealing 10% of garden from my neighbour!).

For this truly is The Lost Garden of Poutland.

A la perchoine,

Mary x.  

I'd love to hear from you.  

Do you have a bit of garden you turn a blind eye to?  

Do you have a She Shed?  

Do you have any garden projects going on or just finished?

And if you are so kind as to leave a comment, please pop back in a day or two because I do put thought and time into replying.

Shedding Dreams

Well, that was an Easter to remember!

It is highly unlikely that we Brits are blessed with good (i.e. dry) weather on a bank holiday, let alone one in April.  Thems the rules.  
Yet, blessed we were, and not just with a dry four days over Easter, but four days with temperatures and sun hours to match most of those of our summer.

How lucky were we?!

We were the proverbial Happy Bunnies.

We more mature Happy Bunnies start thinking about our gardens at  Easter.  And on Easter Monday we head to the garden centres.  It's sort of the law.

Is it like that where you live? 

Ever the traditionalist, I thought about the garden over the weekend.  Just thought.  No nails were broken, no knees muddied.

  I concluded that I really need to face up to the elephant in the, er, garden - my two Leaning Sheds of Chez Pout.

So I needed to get on a serious hunt, not for Easter eggs but for a shed.

I also needed a few container plants.

And some lawn feed.

Oh I just kept on adding to the list over the weekend.

And by Monday I was ready, bright eyed and bushy tailed scutted and hitting the garden centres at ridiculous (for a pensioner) o'clock.

I love projects, probably because I love change and that's what usually results from projects. And I love sheds!

So put project and shed together in the same sentence and I’m one heckuva super excited bunny today because I have sooo much to share with you peeps, and it's not all about sheds!

Let me count the ways I'm a Happy Bunny, aside from a weekend of glorious weather ...

1. Yesterday was Super sunny so I got my feet out, first time this year.

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Yes I shed the boots and socks!

(Excuse the blisters, this was preceded by my first day in sockless ballerinas too!)

2. Emboldened by Instagram reacting positively to my Double Denim at the weekend, 

I again wore Double Denim for my Easter Monday shopping day spree.  

This time I shoulder-draped my jean jacket, following M&S's TryTuesday "serving suggestion" .

Edgy, huh?

3.  I took this little outfit plant shopping ...

short video

... then shed shopping.

short video

Yes I went shedding, and I think I’ve found The One  💗 !! 

OK it’s a summerhouse/shed combo but this baby has given my new shed plan such LEGS that it’s practically walking out of my PicCollage.

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4. The shed inspired me to spawn an amazing plan that gives me sooo many pluses that it’s blown my little mind and quite taken my thoughts off my dental appointment this morning, which just HAS to add one more big fat plus to the mix.

And now I'm itching to get shedding!  It's going to be a exciting project  and yes, of course I'll share it with you lovely people.

I hope your Easter weekend was mega lovely and filled you with happy bunniness too.  And maybe sheds? 

Have a happy week!I

A la perchoine,

Mary x.