SainteTherese et des fleurs

I found this absolutely gorgeous, very old gothic arch with a medal of Sainte Therese at a recent brocante here in France, and wanted to share it with you on this White Wednesday. It is such a sweet, delicate little piece, and although it is silver rather than white, it kinda fits in, doesn't it? Well, at least it is standing on a piece of white knitted lace ;-)

And because you are all such lovely people, here is a bunch of beautiful wild growing marguerites for you! I do love picking wildflowers -

Tomorrow, I promise, I will post lots of pics of brocante finds! Toodlepip xxx


For more wonderful whiteness, visit the wonderful FADED CHARM blog for the 152nd WHITE WEDNESDAY linky party!

What did I achieve today?

Well, not an awful lot in the way of crafting. I have been fardledardling about with scanning little images of fish from a 100 year encyclopaedia, spent ages sorting images on the computer, got hopelessly bogged down trying to tidy my shelves, and the things which I should have been doing are still waiting to be done.

So really, I don't have anything to show for my day, lol. But, I do have some more images for you, which you may be able to use in your art projects. I had planned to post them during our France visit, with scheduled posts, but that failed miserably, lol, as you may remember.

First, a couple of school prize book labels -


Just look at the tiny waist on this lady -



Aaah, a smiley face, thats better


Hopefully, I'll be somewhat more productive tomorrow. I'll leave you with some pics of some more wildflowers, France of course -


Toodlepip, xxx

Flower Power

This is my third post for the 14 Days of Love Valentine's party. As I mentioned yesterday, I missed the 1st week, but I am thoroughly enjoying myself posting for this second week.

Today's theme is Flower Power, and one of the suggestions for a post were flower arrangements. Well, I don't host formal dinner parties anymore, and therefore haven't done a formal flower arrangements for the dinner table in years. I occasionally buy a bunch of flowers, but they are usually just fairly carelessly arranged in a vase.

But, I do love wildflowers and bunches of them in informal containers. So I thought I post some photos of little wildflower arrangements from last autumn in France.

This little window is at the front of the house, next to the entrance door.

A tiny bunch of wildflowers picked from the bottom field is displayed in a little amber glass milk jug with teeny flowers edged into the glass

I like changing the little display regularly, here I had picked daisies from the lane and one rose from the garden. I only have three (struggling ) rose bushes there, so I tend to leave the roses alone. I also added a couple of other flowers from a little bunch I had bought at the market.

I always have a bunch of wildflowers on the table in the garden. It usually starts like this - I have a womble down the lanes with the doggies and pick a basketful -

and then sit down at the table with a smile on my face and a cup of tea next to me, and arrange them

I have a sweet little jug indoors which I often use to fill with flowers, again, mostly wildflowers from the lanes and our fields

And of course we have to have some flowers on the kitchen window sill as well -

And just because I love the colour so much, here is a photo of one of the little roses in our garden, well, its more of a field than a garden, lol -

Tomorrow's subject is going to be The Perfect Gift. Ooooooooh, can I get my list out? My long list? Only one gift? Perhaps ONE basket with a few gifts? Hmm, this will require careful thinking in case DH is going to have a look at the blog.

xx

Are you getting excited yet?

What about? WHAT ABOUT??? The swap, of course, look, loooooooooook ------->, there, in the sidebar! I know, there isn't any info yet, but I am working on it, honestly, and I just want to make sure that lots of you readers know about it in good time, so that you don't have an excuse for not joining in. I'll be giving you all the info in a proper post within the next few days.

Now back to France again ( I wish, lol ). In my last post I said I would post a few more pics of our stay in the cottage. So here goes. I have been asked so often what I do with all the stuff I buy at bootfairs, so I thought I'd show you a few pics of where some of my recent bootfair finds have ended up. You'll probably recognise them from previous posts.

Here is the little yellow and white flower jug, which I thought I might use in the yellow bedroom, but which ended up on the table downstairs, filled with wildflowers -

Then there was that lovely old enamelled milk jug thingy, which now lives on the window sill in the kitchen part of the cottage. The first week it was filled with wildflowers as well, then I came across this gorgeous bunch of flowers in the market -

Oh yes, that tiny little glass milk jug, remember that one? It ended up on the window sill of the littlest window, outside, and it looked so sweet there. You know, wombling down the country lane with the doggies by my side, the cows mooing, the birds twittering away, picking a few flowers is just heavenly. I dont have many plants growing in the garden, because we are not there all the time to look after them, just a couple of roses, and I nipped off one bloom because it was just so perfect -

And then there are the copper bits and pieces, which I adore. I love the warm rich glow of polished copper, it makes me feel all snuggly, especially when firelight or candlelight reflects of the surfaces. Recognise any of them? I did spend quite a while cleaning decades worth of grime off them, so you might not, lol.

I love this big old copper jug, its battered and bashed, but it is a lovely shape-

That gorgeous big copper hanging bowl, remember it?, is now, well... hanging-

And I used this little burner many a time with some lovely fragrances-

Dang, I just noticed that I didn't take any photos of those pretty pretty old copper kettles, how silly of me. Ah well, I'll have to remember do that when we next go.

And I almost forgot about my rosy teapots, the teeny weeny little dinky one, and my proper big one, here they are rubbing shoulders with some other bits of rosy china-

Tomorrow I might post some pics of some more vide greniers finds. Anyone wants to see them?

Before I toddle off, I had better remind you all to enter Sarah's fabulous giveaway. Click on the button in the sidebar to find out all about it. She has put together some very pretty New Zealand goodies, and I would so love to win

Until tomorrow then, cheerio xx

First few days of the hols

We finally finally got to go on hols three weeks ago, weeks later than I had planned, because of that stupid passport business. We do like to get an early start in order to catch the crossing just before 6am, which gets us to our cottage by lunchtime-ish, so we were up and away by 3.30am.

It just so happened that on that particular Saturday, our nearest little town had its annual braderie/brocante/vide greniers, so I asked my DH to drop me off in town, while he and DS Nick went on to the cottage to unload the car etc. I asked him to come and get me after two hours, which I thought would be enough to have a quick rummage through a few stalls. It was blisteringly hot, 37C, which was hard to cope with after the long car journey, sooooo, would you believe I actually gave up after an hour and phoned him to come and get me early? ME, cutting a vide greniers short?? I know, quite unbelievable, but sadly true, I couldn't handle the heat. And my brain really wasn't working because I realised later on that I had screwed up royally, not buying certain items which I really should have bought, and I actually had nightmares about them for a week or so. You'll hate me when I tell ya what it was I missed out on - tins full of buttons, sorted by colour, a tin of red buttons, a tin of blue buttons etc etc, I spent ages looking at them, and then left the stall. What the heck was I thinking? I am still kicking myself. I spent the next three weeks trying to guess which vide greniers those people might be at next, but alas, it wasn't meant to be, I never saw them again at any of the vide greniers we did go to. I suppose I ought to post pics of the few little things which I did manage to buy, eh? I'll do that at the end of this post.

The grass at the cottage was, errmm, a tad long, lol, as you can see from the pics, but boy, did the dogs love it! They took an instant liking to the cottage, the garden and the surrounding area, no hesitation, no awkwardness, they loved it straight away just as we did the first time we saw it. Don't they look so happy and excited, with actual smiles on their faces -

Poppy -

Hector-

Both of them-
They went absolutely loopy, running through the grounds, playing with each other, and by the end of the day, they were totally pooped. Mind you, they were not the only ones, lol, DS promptly went to sleep on the sofa with Hector snuggled up, Poppy made herself comfy on the other settee, and all I had managed to do was pick a few flowers from our top field to fill a little jug for the table. Oooh, do you remember when I bought this little jug not long ago? I blogged about it here



I was so happy about being back at the cottage, I was up the next morning literally at the crack of dawn, well before the sun put in an appearance over the distant hills. If you look very closely, you can still see stars in the sky -


DH got the mower out and gave the grass a first cut, I got stuck into cutting back the very overgrown shrubs etc at the front of the cottage, we got out the garden tables, chairs, bits and pieces, and generally just made the whole place look lived in again. It was bliss, sheer bliss.

So, from Monday onwards, we were able to enjoy our lunch under the trees again, Nick could take a rest in the hammock, and I could mess around with flowers. I had gone off for a womble down the lane and picked a whole basket full of the prettiest wild flowers -



My goodness, whats happened to the time? How can it possibly be 10.30pm already? Yikes, I suppose I had better quickly post the pics of my finds from the very first day in France, pretty poor really, but I really wasn't in the right frame of mind -

I bought a few bits of jewellery at one stall. A glass pearl necklace, the pearls were very worn, but the clasp was gorgeous, so I was quite happy to spend 50cents on it. Another necklace, peachy glass pearls in very nice condition and with a pretty clasp as well, also 50cents. A vintage hat pin, yep, you guessed it, 50c and the sweetest little jewellery box with an old brooch. The brooch is nothing much to write home about, the green glass centre is quite scratched, but the box is soooo sweet!


Bags, you asked? Waxy paper bags? What on earth for? Well, I bought them for my soaps and skincare products, I thought that when selling those products at fairs, it would be great to give them to the customers in these gorgeous vintage French bags instead of the usual white bags -


I adore these tiny little colourful biscuit/cake moulds (?), they are so dinky, and they look so charming amongst other vintage baking items or general kitchenalia-


Oh, and I found a few buttons as well, huuuuuuuuuuge buttons, just look at the size of the one on my hand. It seems they are quite popular at the mo, I have taken some to fairs in the past and they sold every so quickly.


Oh, and I bought some tatty old embroidery patterns, I mean REALLY, falling-to-pieces tatty, but I wanted to them for decoupaging some storage boxes, so they were ideal. I would never be able to cut up anything in good condition, just coudln't do it, nope. I started with one box while we were in France, but I haven't finished it yet, so more about that later.

Ok, thats enough for today, I am blogged out. I have been trying to catch up on other blogs, but only managed half of the ones I follow, and I think my eyes have gone wonky now, lol, its time for bed. I'll probably be posting about our three weeks in France for the next week or so at least, so be warned! Night night now xx

Oh, forgot to mention that I am definitely thinking about the swap I have mentioned. I'll try and get that one under way soon, but more of that later.