Get 27 on the rocks, image courtesy of moi!

Not only is it a glorious sunny day in Amsterdam, but I am being treated like a princess on this special day. So far it has started with a cup of tea in bed (oh, Alfred), and there is the softest warm breeze coming through the windows. Pre-celebrations last night were a hit, my guests loved my all-Australian playlist and I even had requests for a copy of the compilation! It was an international mix of cultures with French, Australian and Dutchies all mingling, and champagne a-flowing. Thank you everyone for your birthday wishes leading up to this wonderful day. I have had a fabulous birthday week here in the (blog)house and I hope you’ve enjoyed it too! I will leave you for a day or so, just to catch my breath. No doubt I will miss you all for the next 48 hours though. If you haven’t had a chance to catch all this week’s posts, please scroll down to view them, they are full of the good stuff of life!

Before I sign off on this post, HAPPY AUSTRALIA DAY to all you fellow-aussies! Hope you have a fabulous weekend, I’ll be thinking of all of you celebrating while I indulge in my own birthday celebrations here on the other side of the world. Lots o’ love, pxx

Like a paper boat on this windy sea.
Battered and bruised from the to-ing and fro-ing.
Drenched in the drops that be tears and not rain.
I’ve lost sight of the shore, unwillingly.

All this, yes.
But having lost the shore I am now awake.
And with wide clear eyes I find myself,
Warm and nurtured,
In this world of wonder I only ever dreamed about.
It’s this world where wandering hearts come lost to become found.

poem and sketch by Pia Jane Bijkerk. Inspired by an emotional moment, and perhaps a little influenced by Robinson Crusoe.

Based on Mark and Sally Bailey’s farm property in the Herefordshire countryside of the UK, Recycled Home, pour moi, is love at first sight with a staircase and an old giant’s scissors hanging on a worn out wall on the front cover. Their intro exposes perfectly their decorating philosophy: “Use what you’ve got, be true to the structure of your house and the materials it is made from… think of your home as a delicious experiment.”

The book is filled with the most delectable photographs by South African Debi Treloar: One of my favourites being a tiny copper-sailed boat resting serenely on top of an old-fashioned door knob. And if you love wood, warm whites and textures you will love this book. Be warned though – you will end up wanting to buy everything at your next antique & flea market visit as this book guides you to seeing the beauty in things you would never have looked twice at.

I love the textile section where you will find an old otherwise boring chest of drawers with wrapped handles in different wild vintage fabrics, stairs covered with a patchwork of mini persian rugs, and the fabric of an old bathing tent made into stunning curtains. But as I flick through the pages, my added tip as a stylist to make this style work in your own home is organisation. Without organisation, this look can quickly design itself into a display of useless scraps.

WHAT I LOVE:

WHAT I’M ‘OVER’:

Mark and Sally have included a fabulous resource section from across Europe at the back of their book. And what more could you want? What about a website where you can buy their awesome finds and creations? Wouldn’t that be great? Yes it would and here it is!

Enhance The Everyday rating for Recycled Home by Mark and Sally Bailey: 4 outta 5

What a week! Okay it’s been longer than a week since my first post, but let me tell you what was really going on behind the scenes!

First up I have been so overwhelmed by the support from fellow bloggers, old friends and new friends for my first week of posting. Tears have been shed! I am an artist, what can I say, and artists are a sensitive bunch who need to hear their work is touching someone, therefore I am more than thankful for those of you who like my work to have commented. It has kept me going…

…and going while I lay half conscious in bed for the entire lead up to Christmas, and the eve, and the day until yesterday – ridden with the horrible epidemic that has hit France. I won’t go into the gory details of the sickness (but you can read about this latest plague here), however I was determined to push through and deliver what I set out to for the first week albeit a little inconsistently.

I did not lose my sense of humour though, and during the heaving and head-in-a-steel-vice I would lay half asleep thinking about how I had stated in my very first handy hints post that ‘While everyone else around me is coughing and sneezing I am not.’. The stuff was bloody useless this week.

Another inner titter came in one of my comatoses when I realised I had just lectured a friend who had said she got back from a holiday with her husband to Paris and was horribly ill for the whole trip. I replied very seriously and told her that it is all too common to get sick when you have been working yourself so hard and not keeping a balance, and that the moment you go away your body relaxes and the toxins come out. I left her with something along the lines of ‘make sure you look after yourself’. Meanwhile I was juggling well more than my two hands worth and the balance of nature took hold of me.

So while I lay barely alive realising my ridiculousness, the mind image of my friend Jboo was circling around the mess like a ghost, her arms half cocked in the air with her now quoted line for when things get chaotic on set: “everybody, just caaaaaalm the #%*! down”. (wish i had an image of her for you)

I was over-ambitious for my first week I concur. There were posts I said I would write that I didn’t. But I never back out when I say I will produce something, so it is all coming in good time, and I am thankful for your patience with my little blog learning curves.

In case you missed some of the good stuff, what did we all get up to in the (blog)house this first week?

Plus I have just figured out bullet points.

And the spilt milk? On my travels I decided to take a jar of soymilk, as I love my black tea with soy. And even though I tried to keep it upright it slowly but surely spilt all through my handbag and by Christmas Eve the jar was empty and my handbag had hardened to a crusty milky piece of cardboard fabric. Over-ambitious indeed.

I know it’s a little early, but I have something special for you this Christmas. Get your woollens on and wrap your mittens around a bowl of chocolat chaud. Then close your eyes and open them with the understanding you are about to be whisked away to a magical land. Enter…

(Click here to read more…)