Decorating Disasters, and Reasonable Recovery

Because we set off for Christmas so early - we left London for Shropshire then Scotland then Yorkshire on the 19th - we also got back early, on the 27th.  Which has given both Andrew and me quite a lot of time to sit around the house looking for faults.  Or rather, it has given me quite a lot of time to look for faults, and then point them out to Andrew.

Some are obvious.  Our bathroom, which we started redoing before Christmas 2012, is still not finished.    Our sofa was covered in sticky Marmite fingers, and the Marmite didn't seem to want to budge, even when challenged by Johnson's babywipes, which can usually clean anything.  The ceilings need painting.  The bathroom needs finishing.  The bathroom and ceiling painting are Andrew's jobs, which makes me extra-specially irritable as I can't control when he does them, and the more I mention it, the longer they'll be put off.

Whatever the case with the bathroom and the ceilings, I did not expect Andrew to use decorating as major procrastination to the extent that I tend to.  I went out for nearly all of Saturday, with the children, to allow Andrew 'to work', though he did say that he might 'have a bit of a tidy up' (I thought he meant to do the washing up, and put the lego away.)  I got back to discover that not only had he rearranged all the furniture in the sitting room, he had utterly disastrously dyed the sofa covers.  The sofa now looks like this:

I mean, seriously.  It's sort of tie-dye spectacular meets the press kit for the Comme des Garcons Amazing Green eau de parfum.  (I went to the launch.  It was amazing, and everything was green.)  The cushion covers are a completely different cover to the rest of the sofa cover.  Now, admittedly, the dying was originally my idea.  It all came about because the new cover that I ordered had in fact been discontinued, and this was another option.  I carefully researched the process, ordered the Dylon from John Lewis - four packs of dark green, two packs of brown, the intention was to mix them together to create an olivey sort of colour - and bought the industrial quantities of salt needed from the Coop.  And admittedly, I did tell Andrew that he could start the process, if he wanted to do.  I did not expect him actually to start it, or to forget to add the brown to the first batch (main cover), and so add all of it to the second (cushion covers).  (Although don't my Chelsea Textiles cushions look exquisitely worth every penny?  They're soon going to be available on English Abode, incidentally.)

I think there's nothing for it but to start saving up for this:

The Yanna three-seater sofa in olive green pure cotton matt velvet from sofa.com, £1,345 - I really hope that the cat comes with it.  (I so want a cat.  To scratch the sofa.)

It's heaven, right?  I keep looking at the picture over and over again, and it was, to be honest, part of the inspiration behind the colour I chose for the disastrous dye job.  And speaking of decorating disasters, did I mention the furniture rearranging?  

We differ somewhat, Andrew and I, in our approach to space.  I like symmetry:  pairs of lamps, pairs of cushions, pairs of tables.  Andrew likes to see a lot of floor.  To that end, he had put all the furniture around the walls, and, when he ran out of walls, he simply stacked it.  Think oversized giraffe on top of Esmeralda's doll's cradle on top of a pile of books on top of a bookshelf.  All our paintings looked wrongly hung, and the overall effect was student house - lived in by student parents - that had just got ready to host a party.  i.e. Awful. And he couldn't see it.  Suffice to say, it's all back as it was . . . 

However, there was some positive to his endeavour:  he agreed that we need a better system for storing the toys.  A toy box is something I've been lusting after for a while; specifically, I'd like the Indian Dowry Box that is on the loaf.com website:

Beautiful, no?  It also comes in black and white and grey and white, and is currently on sale for £245.

However foolishly, instead of just ordering it, I showed it to Andrew, who looked at the price.  "No way," he said - and he said it forcefully, so that I knew that he meant it.  He's going to buy a plain wooden box, and I am going to paint it.  Hurray!  I've been looking for something on which to practice my new found furniture painting techniques, learnt on the Annie Sloan course at Phoenix on the Golborne Road.  I have grand designs for our bookcases, but I used cataloguing the books as a major procrastination tool of my own, sometime back in 2009 when faced with some article or other - they're organised by category and indeed subcategory (fiction, biography, history, poetry, art, fashion - fashion biography, fashion history -  etc.) and then arranged by alphabetical order of either author or subject, as appropriate - so it's quite a monumental task.  The toy box will be the perfect starting point.  I'm picturing achieving something like this, which is a late 19th Century Central European painted chest, and which sold at Christie's South Ken for £1,063 in 2010:

Andrew suggested that my enthusiasm might outweigh my abilities.  He has no faith.

The thing is,  it's occurred to me that the exquisite chest sold for less than the sofa.com sofa costs.  Seriously.  And, if I had a spare grand and a half, I know which I'd prefer.  I've got a feeling that we might be living with our Amazing Green decorating disaster sofa for a while.  Fortunately, I know where to go for throws.

The theoretical holy grail (perhaps slightly dull?):  The Hermes giant Avalon blanket.  At £950 it's still (just) cheaper than a new sofa. 

The Missoni Jocker throw, available at Selfridges for £355.  I love Missoni.

However, I think the best solution of all is going to be a length of fabric from Susan Deliss, whose cushions, lampshades and kilims are soon going to be available on English Abode.  Quite frankly, I don't quite know how I'm going to stop myself buying her entire collection.  

Susan Deliss

Susan Deliss

This disaster might well have turn out to be rather a good thing, after all.  (Though not necessarily for either the bathroom or the ceilings, both of which still need attention . . . .)

Incidentally, if anyone was thinking of dying their sofa cover, it totally works.  You just have to make sure that you remember to put the appropriate amount of dye in with each load.  Which, obviously, we failed to do.


www.englishabode.com
www.chelseatextiles.com
www.sofa.com
www.loaf.com
www.christies.com
www.hermes.com
www.selfridges.com
And, just in case you missed my plug, www.englishabode.com

All Wrapped Up

You know those magazine articles that are full of lovely ideas for beautifully wrapped presents?  They suggest brown paper and string with homemade dried orange peel and cinnamon sticks attached, or using pages cut (never haphazardly torn) from magazines, or arranging layers of different coloured tissue paper finished with generous servings of a wide satin ribbon, doubtlessly bought at great expense from VV Rouleaux.  Seriously, google 'creative gift wrapping', and just see what comes up.

I've saved you the hassle of googling.  This is one of the images that comes up.  Amazing, right?

Anyway, I don't have time to do any of that.  Not since I got married and had children and my sister got married and had a child and my sister-in-law had a child etc. etc. - not to forget Father Christmas's duties - the point is that I now have to wrap what seems like five hundred presents every Christmas.   So, these days, I go in for rolls of the least gopping wrapping paper Paperchase has on offer, and copious quantities of Sellotape.  I occasionally manage to accessorise with some silkiness, but it invariably has chocolate smeared on it (Esmeralda loves the ribbon drawer.)  On balance, however, I find myself at peace with my somewhat slummier wrapping method, and it has definite advantages:  the receivers of my gifts tend to have very low expectations of what is going to be inside.

What a present wrapped by me actually looks like.  Especially since I ran out of Sellotape and have been having to improvise with electrical tape.

Despite my lack of wrapping skills, I thought that I was pretty organised as far as Christmas goes this year.  I got the bulk of the presents wrapped, and delivered, to my parents' house in Yorkshire about a month ago.  So I switched off.  Today, in horror, I realised that I had nothing for my father, and virtually nothing for my husband.  Oh, and one of my orders, containing Esmeralda's presents, has not arrived.  And we're leaving London first thing on Friday morning!  I tried to do some emergency shopping this afternoon at the Olympia Horse Show (it's not too late to get tickets incidentally, and it was fab, Esmeralda loved it, especially the Shetland Grand National) but it wasn't great for much besides sparkly browbands and multicoloured numnahs, both things I think my father's horses can probably do without.

Olympia Horse Show, Shetland Grand National.  I always wanted to ride in this when I was little, back when my sole ambition was to be the first female jockey to win the actual Grand National.  Times changed.

I've potentially got a chance tomorrow afternoon at Winter Wonderland, and for a moment it really was looking like all those I forgot about were getting things from the genuine replica German Christmas Market (or however it is that they phrase it.)  But then I remembered Amazon!  Who now sell everything! (Including serious art.  Weird, but, whatever.)  I can get it all delivered, ready wrapped, to Yorkshire!  And the only reason I remembered this is because my friend Georgia has been doing Gift Lists on her blog, Before the Baby, and published Esmeralda's wishlist today.  Georgia's site is seriously worth checking out if you've got children to buy for.  And if you're buying for a woman, well, my friend Willow has done an amazing list on her blog, Willow Rose Boutique.  (I want everything.)

As far as husbands and fathers go, I have one thing to say:  Fine Food Specialist, who, if you order on Thursday by 11am, are still able to deliver in time for Christmas (just like Amazon!)  They've got it all:  truffle oil and goose fat, Gentlemen's Relish, endless cheeses, caviar, foie gras, whole hams - some of which are the most perfect stocking fillers imaginable (perhaps not the ham.  Unless your stocking is giant.)  And because I get to share what Father Christmas gives my husband, I'm definitely adding the Artisan du Chocolat Salted Caramel Drinking Chocolate.

However badly wrapped, what's inside is not going to disappoint.

www.olympiahorseshow.com

www.hydeparkwinterwonderland.com
www.amazon.com
www.beforethebaby.com
www.willowroseboutique.blogspot.com
www.finefoodspecialist.co.uk

Happy Christmas!

Wise Women Bearing (Beauty) Gifts

There was an article in last week's Sunday Times Style, by Esther Walker, about the moment one realises, post-children, that it's time to up one's game.  I've known I've been needing to do it for a while now, and the feeling is reaffirmed every time I go into Mayfair and have lunch with my friend Deep, who is Fashion Director of Tatler and has the sort of innate style that I dream of, or go and eat cake with my very chic friend Christina who until recently worked at Vanity Fair, and who has insane will power (she'll order the cake, but only eat a a single forkful.)  Christina is pregnant, and I bet she won't let herself be the kind of mother who, when her child throws up on her in the night, wipes the worst of the sick out of her hair with a baby wipe and then sprays it with Mitsouko.   And I don't for a moment suppose that either of them are the kind of people who haven't got around to changing their skincare routine since their twenties.

Well, nor am I, technically.  For in my early twenties, I used whatever I was given in goody bags or was handed from the Vogue and Tatler beauty cupboards.  I paid virtually nothing for any of it, covered my face in Creme de la Mer one week, Clarins and Lancome the next, and some new and unheard of brand from Iceland (the country, not the shop) the next. My skin didn't mind one jot.  My skin was amazing.

And then I got married, got pregnant, had Sholto, got thin again, got pregnant again - all the time using the same Clarins products that I discovered in the second half of my twenties - had Esmeralda, looked in the mirror, and realised that I look about four hundred years old.  I can't actually blame Clarins - in fact, I owe Clarins for the fact that I don't look six hundred - rather, the age increase is down to the lack of facials, the broken nights, the occasional severe sugar binge (see 'broken nights'), the fact that I blatantly should have moved on to the product range developed for women in their thirties, and that side-affect of mothering that they call guilt.  (I feel guilty about everything:  guilty that I work, guilty that I don't play football with Sholto every afternoon, guilty that I have yet to cook a single thing from the Annabel Karmel 'perfect baby nutrition' book, guilty that I'm still co-sleeping with Esmeralda, guilty that I'm not also still co-sleeping with Sholto, guilty that I can't quite stretch to the the fees at Notting Hill Prep, etc. etc. etc.)  And all of this means that I don't look like Sienna Miller.

Why, why don't I look like Sienna Miller?

However, I'll feel even worse, and probably guiltier still, if I don't get to grips with my looks soonish.  My friend Talia, who had her second baby a whole lot more recently than me and looks incredible, told me about the Tracy Anderson Post-Pregnancy Workout DVD.  I've ordered it, I just need to unwrap it from it's cellophane, and get it into the one remaining DVD player in the house that Sholto hasn't filled with raisins.  My friend Samantha, who has three children and is about to be forty (not that anybody could tell) swears by body brushing, which I totally mean to make time for.  And Calgary Avansino, the former Executive Fashion Director of Vogue and general wellbeing guru, dictates good food (i.e. not M&S ready meals) and daily exercise ("Sweat is your fat crying").  I follow her vogue.com blog assiduously, and am determined that the entire family will be eating more healthily come the New Year.  (And you can forget Annabel Karmel.)

Calgary Avansino.  Look at her, just look at her! I think I need a juicer.

But it seems that the Gods were listening to my plea for a somewhat easier quick fix, for I found myself at one of those Christmas fair things at the Cavalry Club, and who should be there but a girl called Georgie Cleeve (with a tiny baby called Ophelia strapped to her tummy) who I knew when she used to work at House & Garden.   She has developed a whole skincare range called Oskia, which I imagine everybody in the world knows about except me, as they've won pretty much every beauty award going.  (I now feel guilty that I didn't do something as clever as Georgie with my maternity leave.  And I've realised that it's time to start reading the beauty pages.  They're doubtlessly packed with helpful information.)

Well, after less than a week of using Oskia, I only look about a hundred.  It's amazing!  I think my favourite product has to be the Renaissance Mask, which was voted Best Mask by the Anti-Aging Beauty Bible, and Best Prestige Skincare Product in the UK Beauty Awards, and which means I don't have to worry about the fact that I haven't had a facial in about a year (who has time?  Seriously?)  I'm also a big fan of the Nutri-Active Day Cream and the Bedtime Beauty Boost.  Oh, and the Get Up & Glow, which won Best Skin Perfector at the Natural Health Beauty Awards, and which one can put on either under or over one's moisturiser. I am literally glowing (in a good way, rather than a 'Oh my God I realised I was going to be late to pick up Sholto from school, so ran here, pushing a buggy, and now I'm bright red and quite literally melting' kind of way.)  And Georgie told me that she's going to send me the Renaissance Cleansing Gel - she was utterly horrified to hear that my concept of 'cleansing my face', these days, is splashing it with water.  (It dries out the skin.  I know this, I know this - my mother's facialist, the great Janet Filderman, told me when I was fourteen, and still I persist.)  It's time to stop.  It's also time to stop walking around with chipped nails (unacceptable past the age of twenty-five, I reckon), unbrushed hair (ditto), and in jerseys from Zara that have seen better days.  (That last I have potentially remedied.  The Erdem sample sale took place last week.  Whoops.)

Get Up & Glow.  This, combined with one of Calgary's juices would surely be a total game changer.

So, it's more time at the gym, healthier eating, improved grooming . . . . . I'm probably not going to manage all these things immediately (even as I type, I realise that the Chanel Rouge Moire that looked so fabulous on my nails on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday is now chipped, and therefore sadly must come off.)  Oskia, however, I'm sticking to. I am a total convert.  Especially since one of my parents' friends just mistook me for my sister Rosanna, who is eight years younger than me (and much more beautiful.)


www.tracyandersonmethod.com
Calgary Avansino's Vogue.com blog; her own website is coming soon - www.calgaryavansino.com
www.oskiaskincare.com

The Timeless Home

Books, in my house, are forever multiplying;  there are piles everywhere.  And still they keep coming! (I bear no responsibility.  Though I'm not convinced that Andrew believes me when I tell him that Amazon sends me stuff for free . . .  )  One of the recent additions to the stacks is Alidad: The Timeless Home, which I've found myself scrutinising on a very regular basis over the past couple of months - I keep going back to look at the stunning photographs and wonder why I don't have a striped marble hall (literally the chicest entrance to a house I have ever seen) and a holiday house in the hills above Beirut.

Alidad - just in case his name is not immediately familiar to you -  is an award-winning interior designer, whose wealth of references, decorative approach, use of antique textiles and ability to blend Baroque and Neo-Classicism with chinoiserie and Regency is something that I aspire to within my own home.  Tragically, I don't yet manage to achieve (or afford) his look quite as well as he does, but there's time, and the book is both an explanation of how to make one's house 'timeless' (which is something we all aim for, no?) and full of handy design tips that I'm already mentally applying to the next house.

For instance, "On a very simple level, if you don't have precisely positioned sockets, the room will fail you as a working space," he declares.  And he's right, obviously! The sockets were already in place when we moved into this house, and we haven't moved a single one.  Resultingly, we have extension cords threaded under chairs and wedged behind bookcases, and it's very inconvenient.  Electrics aside,  there are passages devoted to Alidad's preference for creating double or triple height spaces that allow for mezzanine levels and majestic architectural details like partly glazed cupolas, an explanation of how he arrives at each decorative layer he applies - "too much colour or pattern can kill a room, and, conversely, too much texture on texture can feel wrong" -  his technique of 'layering light' using mirrors and candles, and how he succeeds in ensuring that a room will look consistently good at different times of the day.

The photographs are by the brilliant James McDonald, whose work regularly appears in my favourite interiors magazines (World of Interiors and House & Garden) and the text is written by Sarah Stewart-Smith.  It's a perfect Christmas present for anyone with any interest in design, and one I'd definitely be asking for if I didn't already have it.  (The only hitch is that, having read the book, I definitely can not afford what I'm  now looking for in my next house:  I've discovered I'd rather like partly glazed cupolas in a triple height grand hall.  It's been a bit of a revelation, rather like when I started reading AD Spain and realised just how exquisitely beautiful - and therefore necessary -  a well designed pool can be . . . . Also, recently, I've started collecting images of box gardens.  As well as the triple height grand hall and the swimming pool, the next house also needs a large outside area given over to topiary.  Oh, and an orangery, and an ice-house.  And a lake.)

Alidad's own flat.

A London breakfast room, complete with William Yeoward glassware and chair covers from Chelsea Textiles.  (There are other, silk damask ones, for more formal occasions.)

The saloon at Buscot Park, with it's incredible series of paintings by Edward Burne-Jones.  (I definitely need a pre-Raphaelite frieze somewhere in the next house, too.  Or perhaps stained glass windows in the chapel?  I don't want to be too exacting.  It can be an either-or.)

The dining room in a Queen Anne London house.  Each of the mirrored sections within the room's wood panelling depicts a hand-painted portrait of a fictitious Ottoman Sultan.  

For more, you'll have to buy the book.  Here.

Fashion Galore! La Bella Isabella

The Isabella Blow show at Somerset House opened today.  It is brilliant - so much more interesting than your average fashion exhibition.  And it is very Isabella: having worked at Conde Nast at the same time that she was Fashion Director of Tatler, I recognised many of the pieces on display, remembering seeing her in them.  And hearing her voice on videos, smelling her scent (the exhibition rooms all seemed to have been liberally sprayed with Fracas) I was transported back to spotting glimpses of her in the Vogue House loading bay (invariably sitting in the middle of chaos, amazing Philip Treacy confection on her head and dark glasses protecting her eyes from the stygian gloom of what was essentially a garage, reading the International Herald Tribune, smoking a cigarette, and basically looking fabulous) or of being with her in the unbelievably slow Vogue House lift, in which she'd tell everyone in there intimate details of her immediate life story in the time it took to get from the third to the ground floor.  And Isabella could pack a lot in.

But I don't have any particularly amazing Isabella stories, not first hand stories, not stories that aren't just gossip.  (And, towards the end, the gossip got mean, and sad.)   But one of the people who does have worthwhile - and often magical - tales is Daphne Guinness, who loved Isabella, and who owns all the clothes in the exhibition. I interviewed her about this time last year, and she told me about how she 'had' to buy Isabella's wardrobe, because she couldn't stand to see it 'being picked over.'  She then sold off much of her own couture collection, and with the proceeds set up the Isabella Blow Foundation, which, among other things, funds a scholarship at Central St. Martin's, "because Isabella was all about new talent, and bringing on young designers."

And that is what I love so much about the exhibition.  All the early McQueen, the endless, endless hats (will anybody ever celebrate millinery like she - or Anna Piaggi - did, ever again?) the Jeremy Scott, the Junya Watanabe, the long-before-Strictly Julien MacDonald - I could go on, of course, but it would just be a roll call of designers' names.

And anyway, it's a fashion exhibition, and when it comes to fashion, well, we all know that a picture speaks a thousand words:

That's not me, obviously, staring at the McQueen.

Isabella was spotted by Andy Warhol on account of her odd shoes . . . 

Photographed by Mario Testino

There's more, so much more.  I haven't even mentioned the endless catwalk videos from various shows - I could watch catwalk shows forever.  Seriously. They're mesmeric, the good ones.

And I'm now rather hoping that my husband gives me a bottle of Fracas for Christmas.  Because, smelling it again, I was transported back to my twenties, when life seemed full of promise (I don't mean to sound melodramatic, obviously life still has plenty of promise, but it has a direction now that it lacked then, when I probably still thought I could possibly be a popstar, you know, if I just gave it a whirl) and when Isabella was still alive, and filling the pages of Tatler with the bare bottoms of her willing interns. (Maybe I do have some stories.)


Isabella Blow: Fashion Galore!  is at Somerset House until the 2nd March, 2014.  The ice-rink is open, now, too - can you imagine a happier afternoon than a combination of the two?

Pre-Christmas Cleanse

While the title might suggest I'm going to share a way to drop several kilos in the next month without having to resort to either the cayenne pepper and tree syrup diet, or the infinitely worse cabbage soup diet, this is actually about housework.  (Is it just me, or do other people too get press releases about hoovers?)  Anyway, we do actually have a new hoover (Dyson, in case you're interested) and it is quite revolutionary.  It actually sucks, and it isn't held together with masking tape.  I know that most people go in for spring cleaning, but personally, I like to do it twice year, right now being the other time.  After weeks of looking at the children's bedroom in despair, and of not quite being able to face the sitting room, I'm suddenly filled with a renewed vigour.  I've got a feeling that it's not entirely due to the new hoover - rather, it's down to the Chelsea Textiles sample sale which took place last week.  Because there's nothing like a couple of new cushions for giving a room a fresh look.

Of course, many would argue that the last thing I need is any more cushions, but I had a couple of errors to rectify.....  You know Achica, that genius discount interiors site?   Well, sometimes the deals just seem so good, and such good value, that I can't help but avail myself of seriously cheap soft furnishings.  But I've learnt my lesson.  Let's just say that that the seemingly beautiful peacock cushion I scored for a grand total of £7 is in fact so gopping that even Sholto has expelled it from his tent.  "Maybe mine friend Orson would like it," he suggested, thus demonstrating that he's about as good as I am as definitively getting rid of anything.  (And no, his friend Orson would not like it - or at least, Orson's mother wouldn't.  They have an incredibly stylish apartment in Trellick Tower.  I don't actually think they'd stay friends with me if I showed up with it.)

But happily, the peacock has been replaced by a pair of these beauties, which are now languishing on my sofa:

And the truly genius thing is that, due to their featuring either ornamental pineapples or artichokes - the jury is still out - I managed to get away with giving them to my husband, as a present, for our fourth wedding anniversary!  (Which is 'fruit and flowers', and otherwise impossible to to buy for.  Though I was very nearly swayed by a pair of orange trees, before I remembered that I'd probably kill them.)

You might, however, wonder what on earth that thing is that they appear to be sitting on.  Ah yes.  I believe that I mentioned my issue with our sitting room earlier.  A lot of the issue was to do with the sofa, which is Ikea, and which I've been trying and trying to convince myself is absolutely fine, especially since I discovered that Solange Azagury-Partridge has the exact same one in her country house (via World of Interiors - how else?):

The Ektorp three-seater sofa in Byvik multicolour (just in case you should wish to rush out and buy the same one.  You know, because of SA-P)

There's nothing actually wrong with the sofa.  I even used to convince myself that there was a touch of Robert Kime to the chintz.  The problem is my children, who have drawn all over it, among other more unspeakable things. Which is why it is currently covered with a throw that my sister Rosanna brought back from India and which my other sister Alexandra claims is technically hers.  And the throw, while beautiful for what it is, isn't exactly the look that I was going for with our sitting room.  (Alexandra:  I will return it.  You have my word.)

And this is where Ikea triumphs.  In approximately three weeks (which is when our delivery is due) our sofa will be the same colour as this armchair:

Simply by having bought new (machine washable, obvs.) covers.  And oh my are they going to look good with the Chelsea Textiles cushions.

My cleanse has not stopped there.  I have spent the weekend hoovering, dusting, sorting out cupboards and finally putting the new Rug Company down in the children's bedroom (along with their fill of Chelsea Textiles cushions) so that I can happily deal with that room again, too:

The Rug Company dhurrie in blue.  It's almost the exact same colour as Farrow & Ball's Parma Grey, and the same colour as the blue in The Nursery Window's Blackfoot Star fabric, which is what Sholto's tent is made out of, which I tidied up and mended on Saturday:

Blackfoot Star in Blue by The Nursery Window. The colouring is somehow off in these images. Believe me, in real life, the fabric and the dhurrie are a practically perfect match.

Chelsea Textiles 'dog' cushion.  The best ever accompaniment to Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy, which most of the time is Sholto's favourite book.

If anyone has got small children to buy for this Christmas, and doesn't know what to get, this - or the dog cushion above -  is potentially the answer.

Incidentally what I'm most hankering after for Christmas, now, is this - which having even washed out the kitchen cupboards I realise I (just) have space for:

The Staub pumpkin cocotte.  Did you ever see anything more delicious?  (This is entirely gratuitous incidentally.  I'm just a bit besotted.)

And I think that's the other reason my major clean happens at this time of year.  It's all because of Christmas.  For which I want my house to look perfect.   With nary a cheap cushion in sight.  

And for those who missed Chelsea Textiles (fools. Though it will happen again next year, and of course you could always simply go to the shop on Walton Street - and indeed you should - alternatively if you wait a month you can buy them from my new venture English Abode which is going to be the most amazing new interiors website ever - you can sign up for news right now) I am delighted to be able to inform you that it is the de la Cuona Christmas Bazaar on Tuesday (5-8pm) and Wednesday (10am-6pm) of this week.  That's right, de la Cuona - also on Walton Street - of the stunningly amazing linens and velvets.  We're talking cushions and throws galore . . . .  Just in time for the pre-Christmas cleanse.

www.chelseatextiles.com

www.ikea.com (and this is probably the last time I'll recommend them for anything . . . .)

www.therugcompany.com

www.nurserywindow.co.uk

www.staub.fr

www.englishabode.com - sign up!  sign up!

www.delacuona.co.uk

Reading v. Shopping

I've previously written about my friend Simon taking his interior inspiration from Edith Wharton, here.  Watching L'Amour Fou, the documentary that was made about Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berge - their relationship, their houses and their collection - I've discovered that Simon is in excellent company:  Saint Laurent and Berge decided to make their house in Normandy a 'Proustian' house, and decorated the rooms after different characters.  Saint Laurent's own rooms were decorated after Swann, a character he was apparently obsessed with, always taking his name when travelling.

For the longest time, I imagined that I'd read all of Proust over one hot summer in Paris, lying in the Jardin du Luxembourg, alternately eating madeleines and smoking cigarettes.  I'm not sure what I thought I'd be doing job wise - well, obviously, not much, as reading Proust would be my main occupation - I guess I thought I'd be a part-time nanny, or something.  I was probably reading too much Henry James at the time.  Regardless, it never happened, and it's now beginning to occur to me that it's a bit late.  There's no way I could lie in a park and read anything with Sholto and Esmeralda as companions. For a start, Sholto's a bolter, and I can't take my eyes of him for so much a split second.

But now that Sholto is three and Esmeralda is one, and I've nearly finished the new Donna Tartt and read the glut of great new releases that were published over the summer, I'm wondering if it's time to start finding out more about that Mr. Swann.  Either way, I've got to find something to steer me away from overdoing the Christmas preparation (i.e. scouring Ebay for Royal Copenhagen Christmas china.)

Just in case you're interested, this is what else is on my Advent list:

The Blodwen Mistletoe Candle.  It's sounds like heaven, right?  And it's (comparative to Diptique) good value, at £19.  Top of my wish list.

It'll get me in the mood for writing these:

Totally adorable Christmas cards from the V&A. I love sending Christmas cards so much that I actually have to refrain from writing them before the start of December.  And then I love stringing up the ones I receive on red satin ribbon that I thread through the banisters.

And maybe even for making one of these:

A hand-made advent calendar.  I mean to make one of these every year, obviously haven't, and so have yet again resorted to the V&A shop. Those of you with children, woe betide getting to the first of December and not having something ready . . . . 

I spied these Russian-esque decorations in the Graham & Green catalogue this weekend, and am definitely adding them to my wishlist.  My absolute favourite Christmas ornaments are traditional Soviet tin dolls that my Russian friend Ksenia gave me.  This is the closest I've seen to them in the UK.

This Mario Testino cover is my other inspiration for Christmas this year:  specifically the pom-poms.  I'm going to make masses, between now and the beginning of December, in red, orange, pink and turquoise, and string them up in clusters all over the place.  (I figure this is slightly more likely than my making an advent calendar.)

Incidentally, I found the chicest idea ever for an alternative to the traditional Christmas tree in the December issue of House & Garden:  a flat board, which can be propped against anything, through which a series of LEDs are pushed, depicting the shape of a tree, but nothing more.  Were I doing a minimalist Christmas, I would definitely go down that route.  

Regarding food: I went to a dinner party on Friday night at my friends Laura's (she of Little Miss Homes) and Patrick's (her husband) and was fed spectacularly well.  We had soup with stilton croutons, really good bread and the best salted Cornish butter (Patrick had been to a particular shop to find it), followed by venison with kale and potatoes dauphinoise, followed by rhubarb crumble with clotted cream.   Aside from the fact that it was a night that typified the Buzzfeed 20s v. 30s party (we had a conversation about the benefits of liquorice tea) I learnt that all my friends - literally all of them, those same friends that, at school, were the masters of opening a bottle of wine with only a French dictionary and a four-colour biro - get weekly delivery boxes from Abel & Cole.  Like, what?  I thought we all still lived on M&S ready meals.  But no!  And, what's more, it turns out it's like some secret club.  They text each other, with things like "We got squash - yay!" or "Pomegranates - how good can this get?!"  (Oh my God we've all become cliches.)

Regardless, I'm thinking of starting a regular Abel & Cole subscription.  Discovering that they deliver clotted cream is what totally sold me on it.  It also means that we're going to eat way better over Christmas than we would normally.

Of course, getting fatter (on the afore mentioned clotted cream) also means keeping warmer.  Mostly.  Nothing on earth can make my parents' house warmer, which is where we're going for Christmas itself: the thermostat is set to 16 degrees, which is kind of irrelevant, because the heating is so seldom turned on.  So I'm really hoping that Andrew gives me one of these:

A vintage Welsh blanket.  I've pointed him in the relevant direction.

I definitely need a good book to read before I find my fingers accidentally clicking 'buy' on any of those websites . . . .

www.blodwen.com (they also do vintage Welsh blankets)
www.vandashop.com
www.grahamandgreen.co.uk
www.abelandcole.co.uk