'Trollied' in ASDA

Yes I was involved in a pretty nasty accident in ASDA on Saturday afternoon. Now I don't usually do the weekly shop as I have a troublesome disc and the trolley pushing and loading the car just makes it (my back) and me as miserable as hell. Why don't you and Mr. P going shopping together, you may ask? Well I would rather slit my wrists with a rusty knife then go shopping with Mr. P as he absolutely hates it and does not waste one second explaining, in the tiniest detail, why this is so. I can count on one hand the amount of times we have been shopping together in the last 20 years - yes he really is that bad!

Anyway, I digress. I was standing admiring the tulips and daffs trying to decide what to treat myself to, when I was almost knocked off my feet by a speeding trolley driven by a young girl (about 9 years old I would guess) hitting me square in the back with the handle end of the trolley (she was pushing the trolley from the other end). She did not apologise or say a word, just went speeding off again. I knew my disc had gone again and I suppose, given the pain and the shock, I just wanted to get out of there and go home.

So now I suppose its back to the doctors, who will refer me back to the hospital for months of physio and all because I stopped to smell the flowers!

But hey, I'm not dead and it has been gloriously sunny here today, so on to the yummy things that have happened this week.

Firstly, ahem, I am rather pink with embarrassment, as I won another blog giveaway. Now I don't sit all day scanning blogland to see what lovelies I could win, no, no, no, I just seem to have been incredibly lucky lately.

I won Vicky's giveaway on Anglesey Allsorts. Now Vicky must be the queen of the boot fair/charity shop bargain hunting genre, please pop over and have a look-see at all her wonderful finds.





So thank you very much Vicky. I'm thinking that I might use the tweedy fabric to make some inside pockets on my winter coats (like men have - when they are not stashing all their stuff in our handbags). Not being blessed with any bosom of note, I don't think these will cause 'bulk' problems, but an inside pocket might be useful for stashing my tissues, killing 2 birds with one stone, so to speak, lol!

Now speaking of tissues, I spent quite a while designing and making this and photographed it today to put in my Folksy shop





again out of my lovely Anna Griffin vintage style papers, only to find that tissue box cover is too small by about 3/4" (in height) for a standard square box of tissues. It never occurred to me to check the measurements, but the worse thing of all is I've got about 50 of these boxes which I bought off eBay as a job lot about 2 years ago. So if anyone has any suggestions what I can do with them (please be clean), please let me know, bearing in mind that the thickness of the wood is only 1/4".

Please pop back later in the week as I have a ta-dah, my pink 'we are friends again' blanket is just about done.

Jak x

Can a Woman Have Too Many Drawers?

As any stash collector will understand, storage is always a problem and solving that problem is even more difficult.

I picked up this very charming chest at our local British Heart Foundation furniture shop. But I always have a ethical dilemma whilst shopping there - I think that they are too expensive! This particular chest was about £25 more than I really wanted to pay for it, as it was obvious it would need quite a bit of work. But buy it, I did.



The chest was obviously handmade, a typical piece of country furniture, somewhat crude, but very useful nevertheless.

Firstly, I had to chop a bit off the drawers so they fitted better, I then rubbed it down, primed it and painted it with 2 coats of eggshell. I decided this year that I would 'make do and mend' with the stuff that I (or Mr. P) already have. As mentioned in a previous post, Mr. P used to have his own painting and decorating business, so we have a garage full of paint, but not the cream eggshell that I wanted. I mixed some Farrow & Ball - Mouse's Ear (how lovely is that name?) - to some white eggshell until I got the right(ish) colour.


Then the fun bit, to decorate the drawer fronts. Unfortunately procrastination set in and I spent a week trying to decide how to go about this.

Should I cover the drawers with these lovely vintage style scrapbook papers by one of my favourite designers, Anna Griffin

The problem with these being that they are 12" square, and the drawers, rather annoyingly, were 12 1/4" wide.

I then sought inspiration from these


but as there are 10 drawers, I thought this might look over-fussy and perhaps a more uniform approach would be more pleasing.

Returning to my beloved Anna Griffin and one of my favourite stamps, I decided to stamp and emboss the design on some gorgeous mulberry tissue paper and just applied it with good old PVA (which I just love and buy it by the gallons).





A ta-dah moment



Sorry about the image quality (taking a photo of a tall, slim object proved impossible, probably why I don't take any photos of myself - who am I trying to kid, lol!).



In case you wondered what the 'E' stood for (as did Kim) - well I haven't completed the H, O or M yet, but have used another Anna Griffin stamp to do this also).


Really liking the red/pink scheme going on here. Half the pinky 'we are friends again' throw is all sewn up, but I probably need a few more squares.

Well all I need now is Mr. P's assistance in moving the drawers to my new craft area upstairs and to fill them with stashy delights. Although, I've got quite accustomed to the drawers sitting in the middle of my still uncompleted living-room.

Well, if you are still here, all I can do is wish you are wonderful, sunny weekend.

Jak x