Customise and Embellish.

Every now and then a girl has to re-arrange things a bit.

A certain amount of re-shabbying goes on, this time inspired by a day in bed reading lovely books.

It's almost worth feeling poorly to have the excuse to just indulge, sleep and indulge again.

Rachel Ashwell's new book is just a pure confection.

The Granny has vowed to strew lilacs across her feet in the manner of Rachel on the front cover.

Never mind that we don't actually have any lilacs.

We have climbing hydrangeas that are equally frothy.

All the text across my photos is from a gorgeous book I got from the library

called Boudoir, by Hilary Robertson.

She categorises the many styles of romantic and vintage glamorising of the boudoir in the most resounding way.

I find I am strongly inclined toward the "material girl", with a strong influence of "vintage girl" and a dash of "boho".

She says, "the danger of vintage is that the whole thing can become madly busy and "Grannyish", but the vintage girl avoids this by balancing pattern with plenty of white paint on the walls."

"...a collection of mismatched rosy china cups is infinitely more charming than a conventional tea set."

Material girl has "magpie instincts" which draw her toward anything decorative or glittery.

"...Material girl is more likely to hang a particularly delicious frock on the wall than tuck it away in a wardrobe..."

"She likes nothing better than to scour flea markets and thrift shops for crepe de chine slips or floral tea dresses."

"...fondant shades of pistachio, lilac, duck-egg blue and sugared almond pink are mixed and matched with abandon".

...no -one can tell you how to be eccentric, but if you follow your heart you will inevitably get the "boho" look..."

...Material girl has never graduated from childhood's dressing up phase..."

I just love the text in this book. It's spontaneous and insightful and not in any way cliched.

Rachel tends to be a little bit NOT these things sometimes.

Have a lovely weekend Blog Chics.

Washday.

I was doing the ironing the other day, when I was rather taken with the vignette on the laundry window sill.




So I stopped in the middle of it all and wandered round the house with my camera, looking for vignettes to capture.

In the bathroom, cos you rarely see vignettes of people's bathrooms on the blogs.

These bags hang on a shaker rail along one wall in my bathroom.

My favourite Matt photo.

Camelias and Crinoline Ladies on my apple green cupboard. That's all I have in the agrden at the moment. Except there are a few things starting to poke through the mud. I can't wait for my garden to burst back into life again. I'm so sick of dead sticks and mush. Roll on spring time blog chics.

A shabby chic weekend.

Hello blog chics. I trust you are all having a nice weekend in the sunshine, or not, if you live where I do. It's been raining cats and dogs here! I'll how you some of the cats further on!
Hubby and 'she who is proficient at separating eggs' have gone to Taupo to race their 1973 purple toyota corolla, and it will be almost freezing there with a wind chill factor of about minus 97, so I didn't go!!!

"She who is proficient at separating eggs' is also fairly proficient on a wet race track, so hopefully the car is still in one piece when they get back. Some times it's not, and Hubby emigrates to the bloke's shed for the next three weeks to fix it, and I don't see him except to feed him.

This is the view outside my kitchen window. There's a small tsunami in the bird bath created by the huge amounts of rain and wind.

So back to the Shabby Chic weekend. I stayed at home by the fire with the magpie cats.

But I have a confession to make. I was in Poppies book store on Friday, to take my mother in law shopping for books for the great Grandies first birthdays. She bought Richard Scary's The Great Pie Robbery for Cooper, and a beautiful little book called Rabbit's Blueberries (I think) for Lucy. I just LOVE Poppies book shop. They have such unusual books there. But I am supposed to be being extremely thrifty on account of being temporarily retired at the moment and a kept woman. But I have been covetting that latest Rachel Ashwell book SO much. I look at it every time I go to Poppies, and it's on my Amazon wish list, and ... you guessed it. I bought it!

It's beautiful. I just gazed at it all weekend, and read it from cover to cover. The text is a bit same old same old if you've read her other books, but the photos and the styling, and the lovely Shabby Chicness are just the stuff of dreams. Magpie Chic is really shabby chic without the celebrities I think, and on a much smaller budget.

This is my favourite page, but I couldn't get the blogger to pick up that I've rotated the picture, so you'll all just have to turn sideways to look at it. It's the gorgeous shabby chic prom dresses.

The Magpie Cats know when I am home alone, and both get on my bed in the morning to read Rachel Ashwell. Normally they wouldn't have a bar of each other. But they do both get up there when I'm on my own. Funny how they know.The ginger cat also tries to eat my toast!

This is my one and only shabby chic prom dress. But I have my eye on a fantastic blue tulle one in my favourite vintage shop, but alas it costs more than that jolly Rachel Ashwell book!!!

'She who is proficient at separating eggs' chose this one for her first "prom". It looked wonderful on. I had the matching coloured gloves too, but she drew the line at that!

This part of my post should really be called a hundred ways with table cloths! But really it's just two ways, so can't exaggerate. I use all the scraps in my raggy ballerina quilt, which is still under construction.

These tablecloths were in my "box of serendipity" from the auction mart a few weeks ago.

I blogged about it here.

I'm totally into fabric roses at present. I embellish everything that can stand embellishing with them. I stay up way too late at night sewing this stuff because I'm very pre-occupied during the day just being me, and going from one thing to another. Then I think, well I really should actually sew that instead of just looking at back issues of Victoria and being totally inspired, but producing nothing....

I have a guest blog thingy to write for a Uk website called shopaholic too, which I'm intensively planning in my head, but also that's where it's stayed, all week now. It'll be about up-cycling vintage fabric and op-shop finds into kid's clothes. So I'll put a link up when that goes on, because I'm so excited that they asked me. They gave me their editors new blog pic of the month award too, which was so exciting, 'cos now I know not just my Mum reads it LOL!

This is what I'm planning to make for Lucy's birthday, and I have exactly about 24 hrs to finish it and get it in the post!!! So better get that one out of my head and onto the sewing machine too, but first I just have to watch Ruth save a Country House!!! I love how mean she is to the people, and how they are so eccentric they don't even notice!

See ya.

Pink Makes the Boys Wink.

I've had a very pink Mother's Day.

Mostly because I sauntered round with my camera capturing tea cups, as you do.

Well I do. Saves having to go start the washing, or even get dressed.

Hope you all got breakfast in bed blog chics, and kisses and hugs from your children and spouses.

Then got to spend the rest of your day in your pyjamas if that was your heart's desire.

I got toast, apricot jam (YUM!) and coffee. My heart's desire :).

Thanks for dropping in.

magpiechic re-design

What do you think of my new magpiechic look? I just love it.
I had it all designed for me by Hayley Harris of happylovesrosie who is an absolute geneous with html and stuff and java script and graphic design...... you know, all that stuff that I just WANT to be able to do but am such a Nana with the computer that I can't understand it all, let alone do it.
I discovered blogging only recently, and it has transforned my creative life. Happy Harris is largely responsible for that. Thanks Happy!http://happylovesrosie.blogspot.com/

Magpiechic loves shiny things.

Well hello again. If you've read my blog before, you could be forgiven for thinking that all I do is travel around New Zealand shopping! Well, you might very well think that, but I couldn't possibly comment!! The other day I was in a beautiful linen and homewares shop in Taupo, where I spotted a beautiful and simple piece of jewelry. It was just a heart shaped glass crystal, with a piece of lace for a chain, and small silk flower as the only embellishment. It was so lovely, but very expensive. Seeing that I am practicing at being thrifty at the moment, I thought I could have a go at making it myself.

I've seen the little glass crystals for sale individually very cheaply (advantages of having a vast amount of available ROM re shopping experiences!). So I bought one for $3.50 and begun the job of sorting through my basket of laces and habby. Well! It resembled a rat's nest to begin with, but I soon became very engaged in the sorting process, and now it's all in little individual rolled up bundles, just like hubby would have done if I'd presented him with aforementioned rat's nest!! He would be so proud of me. I might show him, but he'll be very busy in his shed sorting wing nuts and bolting on turbos or something!

This is kind of half way through the rat's nest sorting.

Isn't it gorgeous. I just love it, and it cost me $3.50 and an hour's sorting!