One Step at a time...

Way back at the beginning of the holidays, I promised Big Sister that we would spruce up her bedroom. Similarly, she promised to finish the three very large art projects she had been set for the summer... Well the enthusiasm and earnestness of those first few weeks soon dwindled and the sketchbooks lay untouched in a corner of her room alongside the pot of paint and wallpaper.



Halfway through the holidays after some mutual nagging, Big Sister found her paintbrushes and I found mine. She had a very definite idea of what she wanted in her room and would have happily completed the whole thing herself had it not been for Mr Roses constant reminder "Make sure the lines are straight" ringing in our ears.



It took no time for her to slap on another coat of fresh white paint to three walls of her room, unfortunately it took us a little longer to arrange the patches of wallpaper that she had collected on the wall... In retrospect this was a good thing as sticking them all up temporarily might not have looked that aesthetically pleasing, but allowed time for her to think about the way they looked - not to mention the daily activity of picking up the bits of paper that had been blown down from the wall when the window was open (we girls like our exercise you know!)..
Finally, just before the end of the holidays, after a day or so of me perched precariously on the bedroom stool, wallpaper paste in one hand, a look of utter concentration on my face and the ipod blaring, the job was done.



Big Sister is very pleased with it as am I. Even Mr Roses likes it, only not so much when he gets too close and starts muttering about us not using a spirit level...
Set against the three white walls, the patchwork chimney breast really works. It needs the calmness of the rest of the room (what calmness, there's a daily whirlwind of clothes and make up going on here) to balance it. I'm glad she chose some of the darker papers too, particularly the black ones as they tend to "ground" the others as it did look a bit "floaty" before they were added.



Yes. I'm falling in love with the darker papers imagining a room full of them. Perhaps it's because they resemble the colour of my broken toe at the moment. All sorts of gloriously vivid colours going on at the end of my foot at the moment (why am I such a walking disaster area at the moment, surely I can be trusted to put some washing away without fracturing a part of my body!).
Living on a hill has made hobbling around a tad more difficult than I anticipated and I have spent this morning contemplating driving my car without touching the brake pedal to spare the pain. Have reached the conclusion that this might entail more than just a broken toe...



Enforced incarceration has resulted in much reading of some vintage magazines I obtained a few weeks ago... I purloined a couple of these for my own use and framed this gorgeous advert to put in Big Sisters room as it suits her patchwork wall so beautifully. i have put some of the others in the Emporium (in the Boudoir of course) and the rest I shall spend today perusing on the sofa. They are fascinating, little gems of social history, the advertising is fantastic and for a moment or two I shall imagine myself wafting around in a tightly waisted dress, preparing the odd casserole or two. applying my rouge... until I glance in the mirror and see the dodgy pair of red towelling socks on the end of my feet and remember I won't be wafting anywhere...



Oh, and the art projects did get done - an hour or so before they needed to be handed in, why waste three months when it can all be crammed in on a school night?!