I was in Oxford for a lovely wedding at the weekend and left myself with 15 minutes to get ready owing to an accidental shop discovery made after getting my nails did. Objects of Use is like Labour and Wait crossed with Native and Co with a touch of Skandium thrown in. It’s all utility-like and sells kitchenware you’d get if you were richer – copper pots, wire implements, tidy ceramics etc. I only took one of my own photos, of the floor obvs, because I love those original tiles and basically forgot to snap anything else. Are they terrazzo? I’m afraid I’m just too much on holiday mode to really find out.

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French do-up: before and after

An email just in this morning from the cousins, who pointed out that the pic I shared yesterday of their amazing and ambitious French renovation project was taken when they first arrived and therefore looked a little sad. Below is the before, from when they arrived in 2011… And here is the after, taken just […]

French village from a distance

Everyone has something that signals the end of the working day. For me it’s a trawl through the Freeview channels for a couple of hours of ‘property porn’. I like to sit on the sofa, and watch people being shown potential dream properties in hot places while they ooh and aah about how much they […]

At last I might be an adult….

…possibly. For the first time in 8-odd years of having this flat by the sea I’m investing in getting some work done. Sure I’ve painted (up to a point, as you can see from the door frame discrepancies in the image below) and I’ve replaced a boiler. But this is the first time I’ve forked […]

Woven garden chairs

Apparently in July and August it’s normal for your garden to feel a bit out of bloom. I found this out during a whinge to a gardening person about the lack of flora in mine. Annoying since honestly, all I seem to have done in the last five years (summers anyway) is plant stuff in […]