REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL

The sun's out and we have a new prince.How good is that !
I am working on some new designs and came up with this for fun. Sort of for the little prince or for your own little prince! :-)

I seem to be best when I don't mean to be too serious and don't try too hard but just goof around.
It took some time to get back into my whole creative stride .The couple of months of hard work doing the house make-over drained me a bit I guess.

So I am only just starting getting back into making, designing and photographing ( and blogging ! ).

I don't have a fancy phone so I can't really take Instamatic pictures, but I've been playing around a bit on pixlr-o-matic

Here are some pictures  I played around with on this free photoeditor :-) It's very enjoyable to play around with vintage effects, you must try it ! You can intensify the colours and add an old looking border and stuff like that.
As you can see from these piccies, I have been playing  around with my dogs, my garden and my designs and embroidery.And it's been really enjoyable.

So here's to more celebrating and a little bit more summer.See you later, people!

XO

Bea

DOES THE PERFECT BATHROOM EXIST?

 

 If you would ask me straight I would say : " No."
But then I am picky .

And most people are probably , just like me, stuck with a bathroom the size of the inside of your shoe.


This was the bathroom I had for the last ten years- getting that little bit grubbier every year- with bits falling apart and the taps leaking.

So here are some things I did.
I kept the tiles but painted the rest of the wall and panelling white.
 Then my plan was to go for this on the walls.Which I stencilled and turned out like this.

"It doesn't do much for me" said my mother in law, when we both leaned back and stared at the wall.
And I had to give it to her, she was right.
Don't you just hate it when that happens.
I chucked some paint together that I had to get a pink , repainted the darn thing, , then plonked the meadow stencil from the bedroom on top.


It was a fluke but I found it much more bearable.
I then got a ladder to use as a towel rail after painting it white.

And then got a freestanding bath on Ebay for not too much money.
Is this my perfect bathroom?
Probably not.But it is a hell of a lot better than it was.
And very pleasant .So it turns out I am just a simple person with simple tastes after all.
Some bubbly and some bubbles and I am happy.
The End.

Have a great week people!

XOXO

Bea

IS LIFE TOO SHORT FOR HOUSE-MAKE OVERS?

 

I don't know about you, but my house is usually a mess . Books , pets and work everywhere .I usually slap a paint on , hope it will last, then get on with more interesting creative stuff like craft projects and goodness knows what else.

Cooking. Eating. Walking my dogs. Designing .

I am just too busy to paint and clean the outside and to worry about if the bedroom has the right kind of look right now. 

These blue walls which you can see, I had for at least the last 10 years.

But, of course, in the meantime those walls got more and more ropey ( and mouldy) and the curtains weren't that great anymore either.

So when I got a call that my house was so pretty and could people come to take photographs, I really had

to get something going. Like cleaning . Painting.And making curtains and all those other things to make a

room pretty.

Here's some pictures to show you the stuff I did.

 I painted all the walls a sort of beigey ( self mixed ) colour , upholstered a footstool in a matching fabric, and made some  curtains which I designed and handprinted myself

The beige was dull as ditchwater so I decided to stencil something on top of it, inspired by Rockett St George's " Wild Meadow " wallpaper

It helps you to not to slash your wrists out of sheer beigey boredom .

I had some built-in cupboards with some plain white doors which had defeated me for the last then years so did a sort of Orangery style stencil on it.Not sure if this is the perfect solution but it will have to do for now.

I stapled some green-and white ticking around a hideous headboard I found,.. and painted a blanket box and side table pale green ( also a mix of paints I still had so don't aks me the name of the paint as it's just a fluke ).

Is life too short for house -makeovers ??

It practically always is.But if you hurry and speed up with the painting and don't spend too much time on the whole thing and what -have you, you are pleasantly surprised every morning you wake up.

"Heck" , you think" where the devil am I ? O, crikey it's my own house!" And then you think of the whole day you spend cleaning the walls before you could paint them , turn around in bed once more and try forget  all about that bit .Because that is the part you really don't want to remember .

Anyhow, enjoy  the pictures.I may show some more.

O. and the dogs are certainly relieved it's all over.

Have a great rest of the week, people!

XOXO

Bea

PROCRASTINATION IS GOOD FOR THE SOUL

 

 At least that is what I hope. Because today I have done b*gger all and I now feel refreshed as a daisy.
I have some dull cupboards in my  bedroom that I was planning to be doing a make-over on, and as I am on a minimal budget I decided on some decorative painting with scrolls and flower baskets and such stuff.  

 But I became rather stuck.
So today I let it go and played different bedding and things like that , and procrastinated like crazy....

while my dogs made sure the whole shebang here remains messy to keep me suitably relaxed .

They like the old tussle on the bed, and it keeps me distracted and stops me from worrying about what the heck I am supposed to hang over the bed now that the decorative wooden carving I painted looks rubbish where I want to put it.

Why is interior decorating so difficult ?Thank goodness for animal distractions!


You know cats  love cardboard boxes and things that are specifially not for them, like shopping baskets.
So I reckoned placing an old cat bed in a big toy bag would probably work a treat.And I wasn't far wrong.

 You can always count on Thomasina being there when you need her!

 Of course having 2 cats, this inevitably happened..

One-nil I think :-)

Have a great rest of the week ,people!

XOXO

Bea

MODERN COUNTRY LADY'S BEDROOM MAKE-OVER

I made the best of the good weather this week and did a lot of outside painting of furniture for the main bedroom.Here are some pieces being transformed- an old blanket box, a side table and a decorative piece of wood carving which I figured I could make into the headboard .

Some quick shots of the make-over in progress..

Here are my handpainted curtains ( I still need to make the curtains to the right of the window)- this is when the wall was still painted blue.

 ..footstool make-over..

and an " after" up to now.. - I need the headboard above the bed - still haven't hung it up- and I may do a design or stencil on the wall which I find  a bit dull..- o-well,

 .

Have a great weekend, people!!

XOXO

Bea

 

8 week house AND garden challenge

I don't know about you but I have really enjoyed Naomi's 6 weeks make-over challenge of her master bedroom on on her blog Design Manifest.
So there I was reading away and enjoying seeing the progress .Poor Naomi was looking more and more exhausted and the room was getting better and better.
Poor fool me, little did I know worse was on the cards for me!
Naomi only had one room to do!
 I will be facing a 8 weeks house AND garden challenge  as a lovely lady journalist wants to do a feature on the house and my business, My Aunt Agatha, at the end of May ---.Eeek!!

Aww..my house..looks lovely -right? Hahaha- nooo!
On these cleverly photographed pictures you can't see the pile of newspapers starting from ermm probably 1995 to the present day on the floor next to the bookcase....plus the pile of ..emm *old maps, some cables to start the car and an old dog blanket and some more accoutrements from God knows where* next to the front door- amongst other things..and the garden- ouch! Don't even go there  as they say ..

 A major tidy-up of the whole kaboodle here plus some frantic decent curtain making is required.
Plus some mighty inventive ideas for some of the rooms that have had a Cinderella treatment. As Naomi
says : " With a limited budget and unlimited ideas and desires, it truly was a challenge to come up with a distinctive, vibrant yet relaxing bedroom for myself" .
You can say that again !
I am cutting fabric and re-doing curtains as we speak as practically all my curtains are- too short-and - as they are mainly from charityshops , the fabric is either vintage or discontinued so I need to put my thinking cap on..
Then there is the nightmare wingchair in the living room which has a side ripped to fabric spaghetti by the cats
in spite of stern warnings.

O, well..onwards and upwards.
Wish me luck!! The clock is ticking.. gotta go people.

I will keep you on the loop!!
Have a great week!

XO

Bea

Sunny splendidness

It's a good to have a sunny day sometimes - it makes you feel energised and positive..and today was one of those days.Even if it was still pretty chilly, it was great to be able to walk in the sun again.


It was probably the sun that brought out big masses of snowdrops.

 I never really looked very closely at snowdrops before , did you ?

Love the green detail on the bells! These are the wild ones that sow themselves (I suppose ) and spread in big clumps, right in the countryside, outside my house.I see them when hop in the field next to me to take my dogs for a walk.

 

What a treat and a feast for the eye !!

Wish I could send you all some of these cute and sweet pick-me-ups.

They certainly  made my day today.

Have a great rest of the week, people !!

XO Bea

Cat rascals

I don't know about you, but for my cats it's crazy time right now. It must surely have something to do with being cooped up too much indoors beacause of the cold weather.

They just make it more exciting by catapulting themselves out of new hiding places or running around like loonies... This is definitely a face just before a crazy run-around !

          O, yes, there's certainly trouble brewing there...I would say 3 seconds before take-off!

 

         But however much silliness..and chasing each other through the house with big bushy tails..

 

my cats certainly have their

"hanging all out together " moments too.

 

 Have a great rest of the week people and stay warm!! It was -4 yesterday evening here !!

XOXO

Bea

 

Easter and Mother's day display at our stockist

Well, what do you know! Nestled today between an Emma Bridgewater Hearts apron  and an Sophie Allport rose mug, you can see the My Aunt Agatha Mother's Day cushion  at my stockist's shop..- cute as a button.. and slightly creepy too, hehehe.
At least that's what my stockist said : " I like it.. but it's also a bit.. creepy ".
I guess it's the Victorian hand that creeps her out... but I have a real liking for it..

Anyway we're back on track and in a better place than after Christmas when they gave me a whole bag of stock back...in fact we're even in the shop window with the Easter cushion - Yay!

                                                             Such a lovely display..

                    

                                                    Here's a detail of the Easter cushion..

                                                
 It may be coming up to Easter but it's pretty chilly down here with snowflakes drifting by the window this afternoon.
So whatever you are doing , keep warm and cosy , people!

Have a great week!

XOXO

Bea
 

Nostalgia for Amsterdam

picture credit Vondelparkpicture here

Parks are fantastic places in big cities.Everyone scooped up in appartments , either in old or new parts of the city, makes their way to the park as soon as the weather is OK. I mostly grew up in the Vondel park in Amsterdam when I was a little girl .

Don't you just love the print on my mum's dress to the left ! I can see that being super trendy right now !!

She was very handy so I bet her dress and mine, and even the bonnet, was made by herself.

   

She always dragged me in the park, missing the countryside she came from so much.

 I suppose all the gardening and doing craft and making things stems from way back and seeing  my mum doing this herself when I was little.

I was born right in the middle of Amsterdam, in a side street of the Weteringschans.You can't get more central than that.

Here is the street I was born in.Not right on the canal, but a nice little homely street, perfect for young couples.The whole neighbourhood was aware of my mum's pregnancy and did what they could to help after I was born, with a rota of neighbours even bathing me as my mum was ill for a while after my birth.

" I have come to bathe my little Brechtje" one of them would always say when she came round.I supose she preferred that name to Beertje, which was what I was really called.

                                                 picture credit here          

My mum tells me sweet stories of her being pregnant and having a coffee every day at Hotel Americain at the Leidseplein.The waiter would give her her coffee and an extra cube of sugar " for the little one" .

                                                  picture credit here

Then we moved from the centre of Amsterdam to a new appartment in the South West of the city.
The apartment blocks look pretty grim to us right now.

                                                         picture credit here

But for me it was an exciting time as all around us a whole new part of Amsterdam was being built, so around the appartment blocks there was lots of empty wild land that was destined to be built on but full of sand, plants and ditches..perfect for playing cowboys and indians.. and learning about wild flowers too..

                                                          picture credit   here

We even had a small garden - on our balcony- where I grew my first radishes.I did a lot of watering of the passersby with my small wateringcan, as that was much more fun than tending the radishes- especially as we lived on the 3rd floor and no-one knew where the water was coming from , hahaha.

 Here I am with my friend Frans, who always came on holidays with us.Even then he was more sensible than me- he is watering the right plants, and not the heads of people.

I hope you have enjoyed your small tour of Amsterdam in the past.. .. have a great day!!
XOXO

Bea