Magnificent, Marvellous, Mighty Monday and Sharks, Yellow Roses and Sophie Dahl

Hello,
I spent the weekend working on a crime short story for the annual Sisters In Crime competition. The sunshine was as glorious and light-filled in Sydney as my story was dark.
Here are some lovely things inspiring me as I start my week.
Vintage-style yellow Rose Wallpaper. This lovely paper was recently in the latest Australian Notebook magazine. I do love yellow roses. I've sent for samples of this one (Eglantine) as I'm planning on papering our laundry area and our outside writing shed (Sparrow Chateau). Regular readers will know we've built an outdoor writing shed in our small terrace backyard. Because I've been working on Poets Cottage, I haven't had a lot of time to decorate it. However, we are going to take down our old Hills Hoist line in the next couple of weeks and install an old-fashioned Granny line to open up the space before Sparrow Chateau, so watch this space. I've also ordered the pink and red floral Eglantine for our bedroom. I do love vintage style floral wallpaper. And this one is so beautiful: olde-worlde but with a modern twist and snap.
The Scribe never fails to inspire me. He recently returned from diving with the Great Whites for a story for his magazine. Here is about to enter the shark cage. He went down with the sharks not once but five times and in very choppy conditions as well. He was safe from the sharks (some who he said were bigger than cars). However, a tuna did take a bite out of his finger.
If you care to see a short footage of one of the sharks, it's on his Blog here.
And I can't wait for Sophie Dahl's Cooking show which is coming to Foxtel on September 20th. I think she is the prettiest woman alive, she has the greatest cheekbones. The show sounds wonderful with its literary references and nostalgic blend. I loved her book, Playing With The Grown-Ups.
I hope your week is filled with old worlde glamour, creative and thrilling adventures.
Thank you for visiting me. xx

wallpaper eglantine image source:

sophie dahl image source

Tale Peddler Moving

The spiders have taken over my garden. They have woven webs so thickly we are like a brick cottage version of Sleeping Beauty. And for my miniature Sleeping Beauty there is much work to be done.
We need to unpack bags, clean the mess from the last renovation, weed the garden and paint an easel. Assemble a hundred Billys, two wardrobes, craft organiser, TV unit, CD shelves and arrange the 'pretty finishing touches' after we wallpaper. A shed has to be painted and office papers culled.
Major decisions have to be made quickly on schools and books have to be written. Prints have to be framed. A long overdue post-office visit and dentist arrangements booked. Curtains have to be hung, chandeliers cleaned and a geriatric, incontinent dog cared for. Did I mention the Scribe and I are sleeping on a mattress on the floor as we threw our bed out before we left and somehow never found time to buy another one?
It is raining softly in Sydney and little Brick Cottage is filled with the activity of a home being made. Tale Peddler will resume normal transmission next week if all is well. I hope to find time to visit my dear Bloggy friends this week and say hello. We are happy although chaotic and drowning in mess and activity.
I miss my writing. I ache for my book.
And we all miss the sea.

vintage caravan source:

Chit-chat Wednesday another year older and more organized

Hello,
Thanks for popping in. I had the loveliest birthday. Daisy woke me at a very early hour filled with great excitement, and ran to fetch the present she had wrapped for me (a cosmetic brush she had stolen out of my bag).
On the phone message bank came the welcome news that I had shortlisted again for the Sisters in Crime annual Scarlet Stiletto award. In previous years I have won the Scarlet Stiletto and other awards including the Kerry Greenwood Malice Domestic. For the last two years I have failed to place but hurrah, it looks as if my dry spell is over.
The Scribe and I dropped Daisy at her preschool and headed to Ikea. Regular readers will know I have never been to this iconic store. I almost felt as if I was back in Stockholm when we first entered the doors and found ourselves in the food section.
It was an incredibly overwhelming experience - but we were prepared! We had a list we'd been working on for months. We had our measurements and I had vowed not to be distracted by the 'pretty things' and think purely of storage.
We purchased as much storage as you could imagine, as you can see from the photo (which I have to admit isn't all we bought). Another two trolleys of flatpacks are not in shot. There was a time when I would have sniffed at the thought of Ikea storage and wanted antique or found objects on the street. But I have been living in such a cluttered little house for so long that all I want is ORDER. I felt like screaming "Everybody leave the store right now! It's my birthday and I need the storage more than you, so move out!"
I managed to restrain myself and we finally figured out the very complex method of buying things Ikea style. Who would have thought you do it all yourself? That was a shock! We did stop to buy some needed sustenance and that of course is the Swedish Meatballs. Truly, I could almost have been back in Sweden. Almost.
I bought no pretty things. I did buy a Pax , a Hemnes, a Trofast craft storage and an Extorp. And did I mention Billy? My new and favourite friend. We picked up an obscene amount of Billys and threw in a Benno for good measure.
We realised with horror we had run out of time and still hadn't packed our flatpacks. How quickly three hours doth fly in Ikea! I had visions of Daisy's preschool teachers waiting to go home with a fretting Daisy. With happy hearts we decided to return in the morning to complete our shopping list. Then I reasoned I will have time to head to the pretties. I am not a person who is good at practical things like storage and so I was thrilled with my buys (and faintly disturbed I was so thrilled to be in Ikea). But I do think that my trip to Ikea bought back many happy memories of our holiday in Sweden and made me long to return to the beautiful fairytale country.
Thank you for all your Birthday wishes. I am grateful to have made it through another year and feel very blessed. On Friday I will post a couple of rather beautiful books that the Scribe gave me for my birthday.
The postscript to this is the Scribe and I went out for our second trip to Ikea which nearly killed us. It was incredibly frustrating and where are the sales people when you need them? I think the worst job on earth would have to be an Ikea salesperson! We spent three hours just packing flatpacks onto trolleys and getting totally lost in all the bureaucratic madness of the store. I think my daughter's preschool teacher summed it up well when she said, "Ikea gives you the hope you are becoming the organized person you never do become." Or words to that effect.
It is very difficult for me to even think clearly after two days at Ikea. We have a delivery man arriving tomorrow and then the Scribe is faced with thousands and thousands of flatpacks arriving which he has to somehow assemble. Even an Ikea staff member who saw our trollies said, "Good luck with assembling all that lot." And after another four hours in the store I never did get to look at the pretty, frilly and desirables although I did take home some Swedish meatballs. And so I am one year older and hopefully more organized! xx

Chit-chat Wednesday and the Renovation Blues

Hello, hope your week is zipping along nicely. Here is a recent shot of our new floorboards. Aren't they lovely? Daisy has been running up to all and sundry proudly proclaiming, "We have new clean floors like everyone else!" I'm sure people must think we have been living in total squalor.
Tragically, as a result of the floors our new house (freshly painted and spanking clean) is now covered in fine black dirt from the floor job. The pristine white corridor is now a sad shade of grey and the pink bedrooms are covered in not-so-pretty grey dirt.
When I first saw it, I admit, I did sit in a corner and weep and wail and curse a few people and rant my usual, "I hate this house, inner-city, Sydney” rant but I think of the lovely slogan, KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON and slowly started to think about all the people out there with REAL problems and put my laptop and novel away and got the cleaning cloth out.
And so this very hot week in Sydney hasn't been spent editing my mystery novel as much as I would have liked but cleaning the walls of the house we have just painted.
I'm sitting on a stepladder writing this at the moment and from either side of me I can hear the neighbours renovating their terraces over the noise of the traffic outside. I’ve been listening to renovation noises for about a decade now. Life in the inner-city seems to be about attempting to transform our small houses. Some people glorify in the process, but not me!
I long for it all to be over so that I can focus fully on my writing.
I did buy some lovely vintage children's books in King Street today. I hope to find some time to post them later in the week.
Enjoy your week and I hope you are keeping calm, carrying on and being creative no matter what is is in your path.

stress image source:

Fabbo Friday and A chick leaves the nest

We have now reached a truly exciting stage of the renovation in our Little Brick Cottage: Daisy's bedroom. Until now Daisy has been sleeping with us and we've used the front bedroom as an office. I've loved having her with us for this extended time as I am a Mother Hen who enjoys her family all together under my wing, but Daisy is now ready for her own room.

While the interior is painted and the floorboards finished we’re houseminding by the sea. Over the last few years we’ve been fortunate to be able to do this whilst Ma and Pa enjoy their trips to England.

Here is a photo of Daisy in her bedroom-to-be. I bought some vintage fairy print curtains from my EBay which, along with a little French china poodle, the chandelier and vintage children fairy tale books, are forming the inspiration for how I want the room to look. The shabby blue paint job was by the previous tenants and I can't wait to get rid of it. We are fortunate in the small cottage to have good bones in that the ceilings are very high and every room has original features such as fireplaces or leadlight windows. We took the other doors back to the original wood with the exception of the bedrooms. As we are most likely going to be reselling in the future we don't know if it's worth the expense as lovely as the old doors look with the original woodwork.

Because of the massive moving and all the to-and-fro between two houses there hasn't been a lot of writing happening this week. I miss it terribly and cannot wait until life settles down a little so I can do more. I hope you have a lovely weekend and get to relax and do wonderful creative and fun things with people you love. xx

Chit-chat Wednesday - What's in the box?

Life has been chaotic the last week. We are now in the last stage of our renovation, houseminding at Ma and Pa's whilst they are in England.

At 6.30am my daughter woke me, holding a beautiful little trinket box that we had made together for Ma last Mother's Day. We had laboured for a couple of weeks on this box and I had enjoyed myself speculating what Ma would keep inside it. A lock of Pa's hair? Precious jewellery? Her children's drawings?

"I want to show you something, Mummy," Daisy said as her little hands struggled to undo the container. How sweet, I thought. The mystery was about to be revealed.

Then all hell broke out as my daughter shook a large huntsman spider onto me.

I don't think I’ve ever screamed so much and moved so quickly at that hour of the morning. I ran from the room in a panic, my daughter following me yelling, "It's alright, Mummy! It's dead!"

She then told me that Ma kept the spider for her and that she played with it when she came to visit. "Uncle put it in my hands," she blithely told me.

I don't know what was worse. The fear that shot through my arachnophobic body when the huntsman fell onto the bed or the knowledge that Ma (who up to this point had seemed so sane) kept a huntsman in her Mother's Day special box. Is it any wonder that I have so many grey hairs?

I'll write more about the renovation when I post on Friday.
image source of Miss Muffet