A tale of two sofas.

The hohouse contains very little new furniture, in fact...none at all, apart from a small shelf called 'GIT' from Ikea which has never been put up.
The brown sofa story:
It came from an ebay ad. We had long thought that sitting on a small futon was no longer good for increasingly old bones in long winters. It was clean, comfy and rather wonderful until both dogs decided to really make it their own by vomiting on it after eating something...not sure what...Sorry Chris and Emma, who have taken it in the great chain of recycling. Anyway all the cushions came off, and it was too dreadful to put them back on, so we put lots of 'scatter' cushions on instead and it continued to be almost wonderful.
Red sofa story:
When we finally admitted that the layout of our front room meant that the sofa without proper cushions was not working, I looked in 'Le bon coin' for another, this time of an angle type. This one is brilliant, you can push all the elements together and create a sort of fuggy red velour evening human/dog nest. Its only been pooped on by the parrot so far, and the cat will become pet food if he scratches it.
As before mentioned Chris and Emma have pre-longed the life of our once very good quality sofa and its sort of matching chair which came from parchemin, as they have just purchased a very large rambling abode, may they serve you well.
Check out 'le bon coin' for super bargains, recycle, recycle, recycle....

Last remnants of Christmas

I always feel sad about 'the tree'. We are beguiled every year into buying the 'real thing' by the smell, the rustling crispness of the branches, the enthusiasm of boy person. The plastic version just wouldn't quite have the same effect. We like the wrestling with the thing, being spiked, and then sweeping up drifts of needles everyday.
I don't know as a P.Mat if we should be buying a vrai or not...apparently Paris scoops up its 24,000, or something, trees and makes lovely mulch for the green spaces, sounds pretty good...
Our 2010 tree is now in small firelighting pieces, and the needles are in newspaper parcels for the same reason. Perhaps I should enlarge on this next year and make it a ceremony of P.Matism, including a purge of all festive flab food, gorge ourselves on cabbage soup, ryvita etc, could catch on....

Plank, 2 manky chairs and 4 nails

and you have a magnificent rainproof, to a certain extent, recycling area.
Created during shed clear out and pre-winter wood pile sorting session...more of these excitements soon.

SIN

O.K I admit it. I do have a bath most days. Showers just don't soak ones aging feet, or sooth the pains of the day as well as a good hot bath. BUT I do save it all for the garden. This is an illustration of the amount of water from a fairly restrained bath. Makes one think.... Next year I'm going to construct a sort of Heath Robinson grey water recuperation system, but for the time being its me and aerobic workout with watering cans.

Goodbye....

Sob...sad day in the hothouse and for post-materialism. My old faux croc shoes have to go. They are becoming a public health hazard, and to quote someone Mark knows 'they don't owe me anything'.
Bought in the heady days of being a stylist, I saw them in one of those scary shops with black clad stick insect assistants and beech veneer everything. They were in a sale but quand meme, very expensive...Patched, repaired, more hole than sole, time to go.....
I did save a pan today however, that had cremated rice pudding in it. Mark was about to bin it. Scraped and wire wooled it lives again Ha!

A thing of beauty....

Our beautiful, tank like kettle, purchased from Loupia vide grenier a few summers ago, finally had a break down. Knob fatigue so to speak. Now fitted with a smart new, heat resistant cork, courtesy of Guinot, it will live to see thousands more cups of tea.
The other item pictured herewith is our elderly spanish tea-strainer, Mark, fool-hardy waster, was about to throw this jewel out. It has been re-conditioned, clumsily but with an artistic flair, with a length of super wire, and is now serving as 'bottom of the washing up bowl bits collector' to prevent drain blockages.

Saved from trip to IKEA by 1970's tray

I was struck by some weird urge this morning, to go to IKEA. this has not happened to me for about five years. The reason, apart from the thought it might be warm in there, was that I had suddenly had enough of picking up bits of straw in the bathroom from the perpetually molting washing basket lid. The thing itself must be twenty years old, no problem with that, but I was beginning to wonder if a new one would be..nice...no more bits, the gentle whiff of a couple of decades of socks gone...

Also the rug in front of the fireplace is VILE, hey we could get a new one, a better lampshade in the sitting room, fresh duvet cover, kitchen table is very wobbly, those old mugs are very unpleasant ...STOP.

I could have spent all day driving to and from Ikea, eating dodgy round meat products, buying not only the afore mentioned washing basket, but about fifteen other not actually really needed items, and spending money with the help of a small rectangle of plastic. These are dangerous places.

In the end I went out into the shed and found a 1970's vide grenier tray, banged a nail through it

attached some wire in a handle shape...new lid, which will do until the rest of the basket gives way, and we find another during the V.Grenier season next year.

Thanks Penny for the article about 'cashless man' in the guardian, which was probably another reason I didn't take the drive...