New Stuff

This has been a good weekend. Still in Dunlop I had some company over the weekend, my partner Stuart came down to spend the weekend with me, but also my two dear friends Gerry and Andrew.

We had fun, eating and drinking on Saturday. We had a barbeque in the rain but it didn't matter. The food tasted great and we had fun.

I thought this was a good picture until I noticed that Stuart had photobombed it! He's put his fingers up behind my head. Oh naughty Stuart!

Having some company over the weekend, I got to use some of my nice new china that I thrifted on Friday. I got quite a few cups and saucers in really pretty patterns.

I also came across this super cute litle teapot.

And this lovely piece of linen, a square tablecloth from an Antique shop for £2!

Buying all of these things is essentially for the future tearoom. It might be hard for me to part with lovely stuff like this though...

Live From the Country!

I'm writing to you today direct from Dunlop in Ayrshire. It is sunny, although I did have to rush out to the garden to rescue the guinea pigs from a heavy, but short downpour. All's well now. Sun's out and they have resumed their grassy spot for munching.

I'm house sitting this week. My aunt and uncle are on holiday and have left their 5 chickens in my capable hands. My daily chores involve, feeding them, cleaning their coop a little bit and letting them out to explore the garden. My favourite chore however is collecting the eggs every day. One egg laid each, so five a day! 

There are so many eggs I could bake a number of cakes and still have load left over for a frittata!

They work so hard laying eggs that they have to spend the rest of the day relaxing. This picture reminds me a bit of the ducks on the wall ornaments that you get. Ha ha, I like this image.

Even though I am away from home, with a garden to enjoy and lots of lovely fresh veg and eggs from the garden, I'm still working. My sister saw me before I left this morning and was surprised to see how full my boot was as I was only going away for a week. Well, I brought my sewing machine and a pretty big pile of fabric and assortment of cushions. Ive jut had a thought though... I've forgotten to bring zips! Oh well, I'll just have to make stuff that doesn't have a zip.

I also made enquries yeaterday into another property for the tea room. It is in the Briggait in Glasgow. It is an old fishmarket which has been completley re-done and now houses arts organisations, graphic designers, interior designers and the like. They have some retail units for lease which I'm interested in having a look at. I dropped them an email last night with my enquiry.

You can see more images on their Flickr

Or visit their website here.

I had a call from them this morning and I hope to have some information from them today. I hope a little tearoom and craft gallery would fit in nicely...

I'll no doubt let you know if there is any more news on the property and of course post more pictures of nice things from the garden, stuff I make, cakes I bake and of course hens and guinea pigs!

I'll leave you with this shot of one of the pea plants in the garden. Very pretty.

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Painting Project- A Week On...

A week later I am please to say that I have finished the furniture painting project! And I'm please with the result. The light pink and antique grey colours are just perfect. I can't wait to get them moved into my flat. They're still drying off a bit in my dad's garage.

I'll be sure to show more images when they're in situ in my wee flat.

So after my painting last week I came back to baking this week, which I think I do prefer. I was having a little play with som regal icing and trying to make it into little shapes to put onto cakes. I managed to colour the icing well with pink food colouring but making it into little objects is quite fiddly... 

OK, so these ones look a bit funny, they allude to a rose ;-)

I'll persevere though. I need to do a bit of reading to find out how to achieve nice results with the icing, as I have to say, I'm never awfully good at discovering things by mistake, or rather, I hate making mistakes when learning new things. Hmmm... need to chill out perhaps? Yes I think so. I so envious of people who are quite happy to potter away on things and if they make a mess of it, so what, they re do it and learn from the experience. I'd like to be like that...

Shabby Chic Paint Job?

OK, so you may remember me telling you a number of weeks ago about a project I was starting work on, a furniture painting project. I'd won a table, six chairs and a side table on ebay for 99p. Can't argue with that, and my task was to repaint them for my flat. I have to say, in theory, this sounds like a lovely project but it took me WEEKS to get myself together to do it. I can feel a bit overwhelmed by things at times and this was definitely one where I thought I'd bitten off more than I can chew.

However, I'm pleased to say that I made a cracking start earlier this week.

It was the sanding bit which was stressing me out a bit. I had an electric sander, but it is so noisy which makes me a bit jittery so I ended up sanding by hand. Very tedious and my hands are a bit rough now but better than the sander getting out of control and me running for shelter as it chases after me, whirring away ( as I fantasise may happen)

So they've been sanded, primed and some have had their 1st coat of paint. I'm painting the whole lot antique grey and a pastel pink. They're already looking good and I'll hopefully have some more images to show you later today...

Iwas thiking about painted furniture for the eventual tea room, but I think I'd have to get some help with the task... I so prefer the baking and making to sanding and painting I'm afraid...

Thrifty Finds

Regardless of the wind and rain which ravaged Scotland on the fist weekend of July, I had a pretty good weekend.

I had a successful day at the Granny Would Be Proud craft and vintage fair, had an overnight in a caravan on the West Coast of Scotland and got my mits on some bargain china at a thrift shop.

The wee craft fair was great. I did this one on my own this time which was okay... getting set up was a bit stressful as I had to unload and set up stall then put the car somewhere that it was free to park. That aside, I had fun. I took a nice selection of cupcakes which people always like and a mix of cushions.

Yummy chocolate cupcakes with marshmallow were really popular

There was plenty of interest in the cushions. The vintage fabric one at the front sold and the person who bought it wants a matching one.

After the craft fair, I quickly packed up and went to my place to collect my overnight bag and food goodies I'd prepared in advance and, of course, the guinea pigs. I take them everywhere if I can.

The weather wasn't great but I was delighted to find that the trift shop in Ballantrae was open so I got some nice bargains. I started to get a bit shakey in this shop with all the lovley things they had and they were super bargains. I even got a lovely side table for £2! I'm going to paint this along with the new table and chairs that I won on ebay a few weeks back.

I hope that I can start to collect china and the like for the tearoom now when I see it. I think this little set is the first set I've bought for the tearoom.

I had to have this coffee pot too. I don't drink coffee but I don't care. It is gorgeous. Maybe I'll start making coffee for Stuart when he stays over and serve it in my lovely pot. I perhaps won't fill it right up though... he's be rattling with all that caffeine!

I Love Stripes!

The weekend is approaching again and I'm looking forward to another craft fair. This is the monthly Granny Would Be Proud Vintage and Craft Fair. I said I wasn't going to make any more cushions, but in fact, I worked from around 9-5pm today making cushions... oh dear... I hope I sell them at the weekend because I'm struggling for space here at cushion and cake headquarters. Sadly I don't have a proper room or even a corner to work in so my making pretty much takes over the whole place!

I've just finished tidying this lot, but I'll probably drag most of it out again tomorrow to make some seat cushion pads to sell at the fair.

I'm quite pleased with my work today but a fear I'm getting a bit too stripey... it is all stripes round here, which is strange because I am a real fan of anything floral... I've just not found and floral stuff that I like I guess.

This one was a real fiddle. I think I ended up spending about two hours on it. I can't really say why it took me so long... I can be a bit of a perfectionist sometimes and get a bit too caught up in tiny little details that no one notices except me. Nonetheless I'm happy with the result. It is made of fine taupe cord with a lovely mint green and taupe floral fabric. I had some lovely silk ribbon in green and cream velvet to finish it off.

This one was made usng up a bit of leftover fabric from a Norwegian designer. The fabric is called Esther which I liked. I had some co-ordinating ribbon which I have sewn onto the cushion. You can't really see it from the picture but I used brown and cream velvet ribbon and lovely thick blue cross-grain ribbon.



 

This final one is made of black heavy cotton with a vareity of pinkish velvet and satin ribbons. So you'll see there's a bit of a theme going on.

My partner's mum had looked out some linen that she's had for years and is giving it to me so that I can make some real vintage style goodies!