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The 80′s!!!

But firstly an apology for the supreme lack of posts of late. Big J installed new Internetty explorer 9*(sorry, I find technical things easier to cope with if I put “y” on the end, artist brain I think) .  And then my computer seemed to no longer want to “explore” at all!  Twitter didn’t work, word press wouldn’t write…it was a bit of a nightmare, all fixed up now, mostly.

But then I had a kind of writers block. I had so many posts stored up in my head, I didn’t know where to start. Do I delight you with my tale from Monday where both me and milly got slight smudged in dog poo ?(true story) I decided no on that one, some things should remain a mystery perhaps…

Or maybe I should start with the two fabulous prompts I got last week from blog pals Lovely  Laura (Are We Nearly There Yet Mummy *the Don* of all blogs in my humblest)  and Gorgeous Katy at Modern Mummy who’s new site looks fab, thanks to a recent Violet Posy makeover (I am beyond jealous! )

Both are fab, although one of them is the dreaded ..” what’s in your handbag? ” prompt, which fills me with slight fear as everybody who posts has  really nice designer arm candy and the closest my handbag has come to *designer* is the very old  receipt for YSL touche eclat in the left pocket! ho hum!

Anyhow, I am looking forward to both, but for now I settle on this, my ode to the eighties…. the time of my childhood!

It all came about when Eleven Boy jack asked for an 80′s retro toy for his birthday, its called Big Trak and you can program it to do all kinds of things, like find your dads slippers. At least that what it did on the 80′s advert. Big j doesn’t actually *have * slippers though, but he does wear my very bashed old Uggs (Yes I do have horrendously large feet, sad face) so that’ll have to do.

Anyway, the birthday gift reminded me of the 80′s and that in turn reminded me of all its marvellousness! And I found such allot to love and so many wonderful pictures! So lets go on a 80′s flash back…grab your rara skirt and your my little pony collection, you know you wanna!

80's boys!

80's Toys!

80's Pop Popets and Fashion

80's Girls from movies, I just wanted to grow up to be!

Really….lets go back, please…pretty please! Only can we bring twitter?, and word press and pepsi max and innocent veg pots and vanilla vodka and and..Na that’s about it, you can keep the rest…. come on Marty McFly get into the groove and…take me back to the future ! Xxxx

I love red, I know some people find it a angry, even a slightly threatening colour. But to me  red means warmth, love and maybe a hint of danger. All good things!

I have been researching Red riding hood for a piece of work this week and as usual it led me on my google travels and, also as usual,  these travels led me off on a long, day dreaming detour!

I also looked around my house and found allot of red. As an accent colour,  a wall colour, in vintage jugs, cushions, plates…I must be  mysteriously drawn or something!  

Firstly I began my search with pictures of Red Riding Hood,  and look what I found! As well as lots of amazing  vintage drawings and some more fab etsy pieces I found lots of movie clips for the new red riding hood flick from Twilight directer Catherine Hardwicke. I now can’t WAIT to see it, its stars the totally gorgous Amanda Seyfried with Gary Oldman as the wolf catcher. Ohh, it’s gotta be great!
I have left you the trailer here, in case you fancy a look too ..  Red Riding Hood trailer released | TotalFilm.com

And I also got distracted by this….ohh la la red fashion love!!!!!

 And this…to DIE for interior red happiness!

Red Splashes  from my house.

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And after alot of  ” research” I came up with this, its a ink and water colour illustration  that I’m making into some luberly prints…. I am really quite  pleased with the way she came alive. I made her more modern day with a cool over sized  satchel and some very fetching bluebell blue hunter wellies. One Cool Miss Red I think,  I hope you like her too!

Oh and I made jam, and it being strawberry red, I have left the recipe here. Its total heaven and really, REALLY  easy….honest!

 Strawberry Jam

Ingredients-

500g of stawberries

200g of caster sugar

jiuce of half a lemon

Method- Cut the strawberries in half, or quarters depending on size. Put them in a none aluminum bowl with the sugar and lemon juice. Toss around in the bowl, so the sugar is evenly distributed. Cover and refrigerate over night, to draw out the juices.

Sterilize the jars when the jam is ready to be poured in. Wash the jars (this amount makes a few small jars or one big one) then rinse well with hot water. Put the jars and the lids in the oven on a low 1200c heat for at least 20 mins.

Drain off all the liquid from the strawberries into a large pan. Add half the strawberries and bring to boil. Lower the heat and simmer for about 15 mins, until thickened.

Puree with a blender (i used a hand mixer) until smooth. Then add the remaining strawberries and cook for another 10 mins or until the jam becomes thick enough to place on a plate and not roll away quickly.

Spoon into the sterilized jars and close lids tightly. The jam will last unopened for a few weeks and about a week when opened, ours lasted 48 hours (because WE ATE IT!) ….it was yummy! X xxx

The jam part of this post is dedicated to some of my favorite twitter chums @allaboutheboys @jenkmiller75 @MostlyYummy @momonawire01 @wendymcd83 , I can’t Actually *send* you the jam..mostly beacuase we ate it…but this is the next best thing, sent with BIG love   xxx

This week’s Gallery Prompt  over at Sticky Fingers is Trees. 

This picture was taken while we were on holiday in Salcombe Devon. Our holiday house was a large 60′s retro bungalow  on top of a big hill surrounded by trees. It was way up high and when you went out on the (60ft!)  balcony that swept the whole side of the house, you felt like you were in a tree house. It was lovely!

This shot was taken on the walk from the woods to the beach that we took every day, the woods were strangely spooky even in bright daylight. And the contrast of the bright sun-twinkly sea in the background was really odd, but beautiful! I don’t think we’ll stay in that house again as we were all certain it was haunted! but we will definitely be back to Salcombe, its stunning.

You can read the full story of our Devon adventure here.

Pop on over to lovely Tara’s place for more gallery posts  too, they are always interesting and beautiful. And a great insight into other peoples business  lives! (nosey moi?! ;D ) Xxx

Sorry I’m a bit late folks, been cleaning the oven, ick…. Which I HATE…so now for something I love, Magpie Monday!

So this week we have been concentrating on getting teen Ellie’s room sorted. She has inherited Big J’s office or what we call the bat cave (converted garage) since her baby sister came along. Its pretty cool (for her) as she has her own door and therefor entrance and exit to the house, and her own key (scary for me !) .

Anyway, the room is painted cream, and she has a deep red flock wall paper on one wall where five giant gilt gold mirrors are hung on ribbons. All the other walls are lined with vintage record sleeves, from the beetles and stones. And the whole room has a warm glow lite by a giant original globe lamp from the sixties, kindly given to her by her grandma. All pretty cool, and then I found this beautiful lady at the cancer research shop. She is just the right amount of kitsch and me and Teen Ellie are in awe of her marvelous big hair! She fits with the rest of the Teen retro decor perfectly! Cant seem to find out much about her or the artist though, but she reminds lots of the pretty ladies  my grandparents  used to have on their walls when I was growing up. If you guys have any idea, be great to know more X

When I was a teenager I didn’t have pop stars on my walls, or hot boys, or fluffy kittens, I had Marilyn.

 She was my first inspiration of what a woman should be, I connected with her vulnerability, but also her sexiness. Both new and sometimes scary emotions for a teen. I loved her as many girls that age do (teen Ellie now has Marilyn on her wall too) and I still do now.  What  happened to her at the end of her life, we will never know really. Was she used for her beauty? yes…was she frustrated by the box hollywood put her in? most certainly! But she lived it big, she lived it loud and she lived it proud. A true inspiration of what a woman of any time  should be in my opinion.

There is something timeless about her beauty, unbelievably cool about her style and yet obviously tragic about her soul… all pretty alluring traits in any era.

I found this piece on Marilyn on a fabulous site called Hollywoodyesterday , its so true and so sad, the world our daughters have now is a very different, more complicated one from the one I grew up in….

“Oddly enough, an actress today who looked like Marilyn would diet and go under the knife for plastic surgery.  Marilyn’s perfect figure would be considered too fleshy these days in Hollywood and her natural beauty would surely be ruined with lip injections, a nose job, and goodness only knows what else.  She’d seek out the fat, bee-stung lips, skinny nose, and limbs so skinny you could see bones.

 If that’s not a tragic sign of the times, I don’t know what it.”

 Gone, but never forgotten Lady! ……

A couple of weeks ago they opened a massive tesco’s in our home town. It caused a huge stir of excitement from all the residents (even the *cool* ones ) as our town is a very sleepy one and we really don’t see much action.  I was of cause curious myself. I am not a huge fan of tesco’s but I will admit to wanting a wander, sad but true. So anyway, I waited a week before I went, so as not to appear too keen, and then off I went with Milly and Ten Boy Jack in tow. We decided it would be fun to try and find a new route on foot to our destination with the hopes of finding a nice shortcut and some new, yet undiscovered streets (yes, I know..but its what passes for entertainment here…as  I say, small town…) .

And we did, we found this extremely sleepy row of streets that led us a direct cut through to tesco’s. It was a nice area, super clean, with neat flower beds full of spring flowers and immaculately mowed lawns. Jack sighed in amazement…”mum..I love it here” he proclaimed with a grin. We turned a corner and there before us was a bright yellow super shiny Lamborghini, Ten boy jack nearly wet himself with excitement…. ” mum, we HAVE to move here, its WONDERLAND!!!  look, look that ones for sale”….. as he pointed to the house in question, I noticed it was a bungalow. In fact ALL the well kept houses on the street were. And on closer inspection nearly all had little handrails at their front doors and mobility scooters out front. Hmmm…. I wouldn’t shatter Ten Boy Jack’s image but I think this is retirement city and the Lamborghini in question is not owned by some super exciting Lewis Hamilton type, but more likely some nice old chap who spent all his retirement dosh on a new toy. Unfortunately our young   family would be about as welcome here as a boil on ones bottom! Poor Jack He still  calls it wonderland every time we go now!

But it did make me think. When I first moved to our town I thought I’d died and gone to Saga. I hate, hate, hated it! But as I look around I realize that there are worse places than this sleepy old english hamlet. And whilst it might not be my wonderland, and I still dream of faraway places, exciting non stop cities, hot countries and  beautiful beaches, its not a bad place to call home.  

So here, for your excitement! (don’t laugh)  is my town and a few of our most  treasured  places….

 This is scenes from outside my door (or up the road a bit ) . The first is the Delaine Bus station, they are super uncomfortable to ride in, but I do love the totally retro vibe to these re-furbished old dragons…a real blast from the bus past!

Next is the auction  house, I often wander around on viewing day. I never actually buy anything, but I always imagine I have some *bag puss* type curiosity shop, and my finds can reside prettily in the windows. I simple LOVE the old rocking cradle, that was there today. Only wish I had somewhere to put it.

This next lot are all buildings I love here. The big one with the lovely red door is our primary school, there is actually two red doors, one entrance for boys and one for girls. No longer used for that of course, but I always think how funny when a walk past. The bottom left and right pics are both churches, I think we have 4 altogether, quite alot really. And the house in the middle is one I secretly covet…. Its been up for sale for years and out of my price range but I love its slightly quirky haunted looking exterior and something tells me it would be really, really  pretty inside!

But the park with its fountains and great oaks and DUCKS!!!! is our favourite spot, quite lovely rain or shine here…… So this is my town, wanna show me yours? I’d love to see! XXx

This week’s Gallery Prompt  over at Sticky Fingers is One Word.  I have always loved Tara’s Gallery posts and have watched from the sidelines a little nervously. Seeing as this weeks prompt is so open to interpretation I thought  I’d  jump in, hope I have got it right!
Here goes…. 

 Discovery!

Milly and the doll house

Okay so in yesterday’s MagpieMonday post I explained how there was a very interesting scene at our local charity shop window. A Giant Man doll manikin laying on a massage bed in nothing more than a small towel (see previous post for more detail) .

Well, after a huge response for photo evidence of this wondrous  sight (you guys are so pervy, or suspicious not sure which…anyhow…) I went to town this morning a lovely shade of pink with the intent to take half naked mans picture, without looking like a complete numpty weirdo…..

Unfortunately, when I got to the shop our action man was gone!!!!! some very nice alternative therapist type person must have snatched up the massage bed and Mr action must be back at st johns ambulance resuscitation class, maybe having a cuppa and a rich tea to settle his nerves .

But before you head off disappointed …. I have something else….proof that my charity shop is possibly the most “random” in the country….I do so like the way she is waving…say hello …..

 I  think someone should remind her that ladies don’t sit with their legs open though!

I had so much fun taking part in last weeks MagpieMonday I couldn’t wait to post some more! 

 But then all week I found nothing, all our local charity shops seem to be inundated with *fitness* bargains at the moment. Rowing machines, those little stepper things that you buy “for only 5 payments of 19.99″on shopping tv…you know the kind of thing?…my fave by far though was the rather bizarre tableau I found  in the window at the Salvation Army shop.  There was a naked *man dummy* (looked very old and a bit poorly, like those dolls you have to revive at first aid class) laying on a massage bed with only a small towel covering his manhood. I think they were selling the massage bed? but I can’t be sure…only in my town though! My Lovely Devon pal, shabby chic  queen Karen (@allaboutheboys) gets dazzling  ice cream shaded tea cups and I get ancient life sized action man dolls with tiny towels ?!

Anyway I didn’t give up, I popped into my local yea olde cancer research shoppe on Friday and found these beauties…& I totally love them both. The bright pillar box red coffee pot is such a fab shape and I love the pale sky blue of the jug. And they were 2.45 each…so a pretty perfect price too. Can’t wait to see what everyone else found now….hurrah for MagpieMonday !!!

Toddlers…… gotta love em! X