Thursday 30 December 2010

Books and stuff

I love books, all sorts of books, especially old ones. I have loads here that i've picked up from auctions and sales, some are to go in the shop for sale and some i just can't bear to part with so i keep them for myself. I found these gorgeous images of book artwork whilst browsing on Etsy and fell in love with them. The "EarthArt" prints were about $350 - I'd better start saving!
InspireSomebodyLLC EarthArt

This is what i've been so busy with leading up to Christmas! Gavin found this vintage (1960's) cocktail cabinet at the end of the summer and brought it home thinking Nicci would like it for Christmas. It hung around for a few weeks whilst i played around with ideas on how to make it look better, it was a horrible brown varnished piece and i originally planned to decoupage vintage cocktail adverts all over it, but when i started, it didn't seem to work very well, and i felt it was crying out for a massive change from it's drab, boring life!! So this is what i did, she loved it:
Starting from the bottom of the cupboard. The inside was painted in a lovely duck egg blue, as was the entire outside of the cabinet before the design went on.
Gavin fixed the light, and as you pull down the front of the cabinet the top automatically lifts up and a mirrored counter is displayed to prepare cocktails. Notice the original vintage cocktail skewers (quite lethal in my opinion), stirrers and fruit juicer attached to the lid so they stay in place when it's all closed up.
Doors shut
Top closed (notice the background vintage vodka image!)
Right side
Left side
Front
Now...who's this naughty little girl? More to the point, what's she done on the rug???
Lizzie's had a great Christmas, she loves the shop, takes every possible opportunity to escape in there and run around like a mad thing! She's had a fab christmas, including a christmas dinner complete with sprouts!... much to Gavin and Nicci's disgust...(and mine actually when they started taking effect.....never again!!!) and a pretty new red collar with matching lead and a plastic squeaky apple core. She's been great fun, is growing like mad and is a pooing and weeing machine!!! This is our new victorian housekeepers cupboard we got from the Montgomery auction before Christmas £35, how amazing is that? it's in the shop for a while, but we bought it for our own kitchen when we get around to doing it, we have two now (both are currently in the shop), they're going to look stunning when we eventually get them in the house though.
St Nicholas in the snow from Arthur Street
Arthur Street in the snow. The Old Bell Museum on the left with Bunners in the distance
Four days off for Christmas (more to come) and i managed some more painting. I prepared about thirty of these smaller blocks of wood, to replenish the shop, and made a start on painting them. this is what i've done so far. None are finished yet.





I've learned over the years to de-stress and enjoy Christmas. It's so precious having Nicci spend so much time here with us, i'm so aware that she's growing and changing fast and will probably want to be elsewhere with friends, boyfriends perhaps on future Christmases. I treasure the time she chooses to be here, Gav and i both do. We play games, go for walks, enjoy lovely meals and have long, precious mother/daughter chats over cups of tea/coffee and wine.
Christmas should be a time for family, precious time spent together with people you love and care about, or even apart, but at least in contact and wishing each other love and happiness. It hasn't been like that for me this year unfortunately with most of my family.
I think even more now about how precious my time is spent with Nicole, how important it is to talk with her, listen to and encourage her, be there for her no matter what i hear from other people, to constantly learn from her, to understand how good the differences between us are, to understand how she reacts to upsets, and know what makes her happy, and never forgetting how much she's a better part of me.
"A Mother is a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people promptly announces that she never did care for pie"
- Teneva Jordan