Out with the old in with the ... old

No not me, although I am 100 today!!! More about that later ... Look at my lovely new/old chair. Born from one of my newest addictions, freecycling . I joined our local freecycling group last summer and have given a camera and photography equipment to an art student and have acquired a very old and very pretty sewing machine, a pair of wonderful old wooden sledges that would have been perfect for the snow that didn't happen last week and this beautiful old Victorian Prie Dieu or prayer chair.



The freecycler wanted it to go to a good home and the rest, they say, is history! It had been used as an upholstery project by the previous owner and needed some TLC and was small enough for me to able to afford to buy some of my favourite Cath Kidston fabric without feeling extravagant. I was going to set about it with my old trusted staple gun when a friend mentioned that they were retraining as an upholsterer and would love to have a go at the chair for us, purely for experience. Purely in the name of friendship I agreed, much to the relief of the rest of the family who find my attempts at upholstering to be good on the eye but sore on the bottom! So in return for supplying an old chair as work experience we gained this beautiful creature, with waxed legs, its porcelain castors polished and it's bottom repadded. All dressed up in a new Spring coat too!


The cats also love it! In fact I'm not sure if I've yet had a chance to sit on it! Placed next to the Christmas tree in our bay window, the cats were able to laze luxuriously whilst batting the tree baubles. sit on top and peer at the squirrels digging up our window boxes and, best of all, given the chair's very long back, it provided them with the perfect scratching post!!! Yes holes, already, amongst the roses.
The chair has now been on a mercy dash up to our bedroom where, finally, I might get a chance to enjoy it. It won't be long before they sniff it out (sometime around midnight tonight I expect to hear the sound of claws being finely chiselled on my gorgeous throne!)



Just before Christmas, and that does seem a very long time ago now, the lovely Michele gave me an award! It will be placed somewhere high out of the reach of my marauding moggies! Thanks Michele I have really enjoyed visiting your blog and am so happy I found it. I think I have to list 7 random facts about me. Well I have listed quite a few already so these are 7 festive facts that you might not know about me.
1. Our oven died two days before Christmas Day so it was takeaways for us in the runup to the big day. No baking no nothing. Fortunately a very nice engineer was able to fix it for us late on Christmas Eve! We thought it might have been stilton on toast for the next day!



2. One of our cats lost her voice just before Christmas. She opened her mouth to ask for her dinner and nothing came out - she just stood there mouth open, blinking at me. The vet thought she might have swallowed something (a severe case of pink baublitis I feared, having seen the amount of baubles they had stolen from the tree). But it transpired to be laryngitis and by the end of the week she was walking round the kitchen screaming as usual (the cat, not me!).
3. I really don't like mince pies, Christmas cake or pudding. I LOVE Stollen and had eaten a whole one before the holidays had even begun. A cup of tea and a slice of stollen ...
4. I love watching everyone open their presents. We all take it in turns to open the pressies and it's a very long drawn out affair!
5. M always accompanies the pressie opening with either Bing or Nat King Cole singing White Christmas, which always makes me think of my mum and cry! Everyone has got use to it by now and I do feel daft for doing it but always feel better for having done it (if only she'd seen her beautiful granddaughters, she would have been so proud).
6.I love Christmas nibbles. Could eat and pick at the nibbles for weeks on end.
7. Christmas has to be accompanied by a mound of chocolate. Even if it's not all eaten I'm only happy when I know it's there and it's been stockpiled for any disaster!
I'd like to pass this award on to Thimbleanna , Anna I'm looking forward to reading what you come up with, but please, for old time's sake, no mention of mash potato!

And finally, I'm a century old today. 100 posts ago I very nervously pressed the "publish post" button and the fun began! Thank you all for your comments on my last post, they really meant a lot to me, and thanks to all of you who have found the time to leave a comment at any time. Please leave a comment on this post and I will put all names into a prize draw, yes it's giveaway time! As usual I have no idea what I'll be giving away, but leave a comment you'll find out and it'll give me a reason to get busy again!!