In the Garden

I am pleased to report that The Shed Project is now officially completed. Here is the interior of our new shed:

With a lot of sorting and clearing over the last few weeks, I have managed to get all the DIY equipment from inside the house and the contents of the old, bigger shed into this one. Everything is also nicely labelled with words I understand (”small bashy things”, “big bashy things”, “things to make holes”, “gooey stuff”). It would have been good to be this organised before I started dismantling the house, but hey-ho.

Today, we dismantled the old shed (which for quite a few hours was known as The Shed That Wouldn’t Die). This is the space that is left:

I had to really hack back the honeysuckle because it was threatening to pull the fence down once there was no shed to support it which is a shame, but it should grow back. I also wanted to clean up the earth and roots at the base of the newly-exposed wall, but discovered just in time that we have a colony of white-tailed bumblebees nesting there. Apparently they only nest in one place for a season, so I’m just going to leave them be and deal with it later. 

While I was tidying up, I was thinking about how this little space could be considered a ‘room’ in Apartment Therapy. I know I want it to be a seating area and a herb garden, and was wondering if thinking about it in AT terms could be a useful approach. And lo! When I finished and logged on to check everyone’s blogs, there is Alana suggesting Garden Therapy. Perfect timing!

 

Ola!

I’m back in Ol’ Blighty. Madeira was wonderful and it was great to get away. Not so great was the fact that I managed to incapacitate myself on the second day, so we couldn’t do much walking. We managed one levada walk, which was amazing, if terrifiying in places (as I’m afraid of heights). Jim took these two photos after I had managed to shuffle along a particularly scary stretch, with much hyperventilating  and swearing and thoughts of lemmings (I was safely around the corner clinging to a tree at the time the photos were taken).

This was probably the worst part of the path:

And here is the view down:

Yikes.

I did enjoy the walk immensely. Unfortunately, when we stopped at a bar for a drink at the end of the walk, I managed to trip on a two inch step outside the loo and heard snapping inside my foot. A trip to hospital for x-rays showed nothing was broken, but that the tendons and ligaments and ‘meat’ (as the Portuguese doctor put it) were badly torn. So, not more walking for me. Instead, I learned to sit around doing nothing.* 

Whilst doing nothing I had three revelations. The first was that I had massively underestimated my capacity for consuming chick-lit. The second revelation was a bit more useful (and probably blindingly obvious to everyone else). This was that I really make life harder than it need be by trying to do everything myself. DIY. Clothes-making. Everything. Having studied my toes (which were more in my eyeline than my navel) for a few days, I have come to the conclusion that this ‘must do it myself’ attitude is a mixture of perfectionism, a misplaced quest for ‘authenticity’ and an outdated sense of poverty. This must change.

The third revelation was that I’m too fat for my own taste, so I’m going to lose two stone. Once I’m back to my normal weight, I’ll be more up for a bit of real wardrobe therapy. Doing my work-at-home wardrobe has been very useful, as it is one step up from PJs and made me put the WT approach into practice, but it is very much an example of ‘It’ll do”.**  However, I am still left with nothing to wear in the Big Wide World, which I have to admit is because I am a Big Wide Girl and unhappy about it. 

*On the foot front, I now have beautifully purple and blue toes, but the swelling has gone down and I can get about now. I just have to be careful for a few more weeks.

** I’ll post photos of the work-at-home wardrobe this weekend, so you can all be underwhelmed and struggle to find nice things to say.

Garden Plans

Over the weekend, we finally assembled our new shed at the top of the garden:

(To the left you can just about see the hazel tree which the tree surgeon coppiced heavily a couple of weeks ago. This should grow back quite quickly into an attractive crown.)

This is a Big Deal in many ways, not least because the shed is no longer in the house. It is a replacement for this old shed which was falling apart when me moved in and has just deteriorated over the ten years that have passed since then:

Other things wrong with this old shed are:

1. It is right in front of the front door and blocks precious light coming into the house

2. It’s ugly

3. It leaks

4. It’s very hard to open the doors

5. Now we’ve had a couple of trees cut down and more light into the garden, it is in the perfect spot for sitting at a table, drinking tea and relaxing.

This is the view from inside the house:

Won’t that look inviting as a little terrace with pots of herbs, the honeysuckle and a little table and chairs? I’m also going to build a little hutch to house the bins. And we’re getting a new front door.

There’s quite a bit of wrangling ahead to get everything from the old shed into the new one along with various DIY stuff from the understairs cupboard. But I have fun plans to whip the garden into shape. I’ve planted a few herbs already and bought a tomato plant today. I was also cheered to see this list of low-maintenance perennials at Unclutterer.com. With a bit of work this year, next year the garden should be looking beautiful. 

Right. That’s me done blogging until I get back from holiday. I hope you all enjoy yourselves while I’m away and I’ll “see” you at the end of next week!

Positive and Negative

I forgot to do the final part of the Week Seven tasks:

HEART: Name one positive thing you intend to do for your image/self-image/look and one negative thing you vow NOT to keep doing.

The positive thing I am doing to trying to improve my posture. After all the “head up high, tummy in, pelvis under” advice over the years, a simple description in Tim Gunn’s ‘A Guide to Quality, Taste and Style’ finally made it easy for me to put this into practice. In this book, he talks about the ‘Bistro Position’, which is the way you hold your body when squeezing between tables in a packed restaurant. It was a lightbulb moment for me and I am reminding myself to adopt the Bistro Position whenever I remember. And it’s true, good posture does make a world of difference. I aim to keep plugging away until it is second nature.

The negative thing is that I am going to stop assuming that all the photos I see in magazines are real-life images. Wende’s links to Jezebel really opened my eyes to the reality of photoshopping. I never knew…

Leftovers - WT Week 7

I’m going on holiday tomorrow so I thought I’d whizz through WT Week Seven today.

Party Clothes

I bought a new dress last week:

As usual, the photo doesn’t do it justice. The colour is a sort of warm mushroom and it has more of a gentle sheen than the glitz in the photo. Also, it was reduced to £9. I bought it to wear to a friend’s wedding in June, but I think it will also be a good standby posh dress for emergencies.

I have also decided that the peach lamé number still in my wardrobe will go on eBay when I get back. I’m more curious to see if anyone wants to buy it than the cash it might generate.

Exercise or Sports Clothes

Yeah. Um. I dusted my trainers (translate: sneakers) back in Shoes Week. I also have a navy blue Speedo swimming costume and just checked to see if it had been eaten by moths and it’s OK. The only time I will ever wear it is when I have the opportunity to play at a water park with slides and rapids and stuff. I love those, but I hate swimming.

Oh, but I did buy some new walking sandals last week for our holiday (we’re going walking in Madeira):

They make me bounce like Tigger and are very supportive. I love them.

On the walking holiday front, I did have a crisis last week about what to wear. As you know, I’m quite overweight at the moment and I half-heartedly tried on various items of outdoorsy gear in shops before having the startling revelation that all I needed was the shoes. I plan to follow our Victorian lady foremothers and walk in skirts and dresses. The shoes look a little weird with dresses, but who’s going to complain? Sartorially sensitive mosquitos?

Uniforms, bridesmaids dresses, etc.

Nope.

Luggage

All sorted. One wheely suitcase. One weekend bag. One little rucksack. One giant rucksack ready to hitchhike round the globe.

Umbrellas

I just counted and we have five in the house. I think there is also one in my car. This is fine by me as I like to keep a little stock of them. I’m forever leaving them places and it’s also good to be able to send guests away in a sudden downpour with their own brolly. 

Phew! All done. That was easy.

General Update

On the work-at-home wardrobe front, I spent Saturday at the sewing machine doing fixies and alterations and finishing a jersey top I was making. I’m also knitting a wrap kind of thing at the moment and I’m not sure it will be finished by the end of next week for the Great Unveiling, but I’ll give it my best shot.  

The perfect accessory

After all the soul-bearing and vein-emptying of the past week, I think it’s time for a little levity. I was saving this for Accessories Week, but have decided to upload it now.

Oui, c’est sexy.

(From icanhascheezburger)

Why WT matters to me

Colleen wrote a brilliant Centenary Post today. I especially liked her penultimate paragraph, which mirrors my own feelings about the whole AT/WT thing. I’d like to add the the dialogue about why this all matters by posting a little quote.  

What is a closet, really, but a catalogue of the different personas we have auditioned and discarded? Hanging there in our closets are reminders, both good and bad, of who we are, who we’ve been and who we’ve hoped to be. No wonder things can get a bit muddled.

… Closets are often where we hide things: skeletons, forbidden loves, terrible birthday gifts we couldn’t return. It is for this reason that deciding what to wear while staring into those murky depths can be not just daunting, but emotionally exhausting as well.”

That’s from Tim Gunn’s ‘A Guide to Quality, Taste and Style’ which I bought on Wende’s recommendation. It’s the last reference to ‘emotionally exhausting’ that sums up why Wardrobe Therapy is important to me and why I want to answer the difficult questions, replace Velveteen Rabbits, buy lipstick and what-have-you. I want to be able to just get on with things and rid myself of this particular emotional exhaustion once and for all. My aim is to feel good and confident and ‘my best self’ in my clothes so I can then forget about them and use the energy currently expended on daily sartorial mithering on better things.

Me, me, me, me, meme

As of 10.30 pm on Friday night, I am now completely up to date on my work. It feels great, especially as I went one better and got completely up to date on my volunteer tasks yesterday. So now my brain is completely free for thinking about important stuff like WT.

So here are my answers to Wende’s meme:

What accessories do you wear everyday?
Wedding ring: one plain, gold unbroken circle. (Yup, I cut and pasted the whole thing from Wende and then realised I didn’t have to change this answer.)

What is your beauty routine?
I’m with SCB on the ‘don’t have one above basic hygiene’ front. I wear moisturiser every day and a little squirt of perfume. I do own make-up but don’t like the feel of it on my face particularly, so only wear it for special occasions. Having said that, I have started to notice that the whole naturally dewy youth thing has begun to deserted me, so I could do with a bit of daily help. Various problems I have with make-up are: very sensitive skin, wandering hands (which will smear and remove eye make-up within hours of putting it on) and super-pale skin which leaves me prone to looking like a circus clown if I actually let the make-up touch my face instead of just wafting the brush in its general direction.

What was the last item of clothing (for yourself) that you purchased?
I went shopping yesterday and bought another pair of trousers for my work-at-home wardrobe and a pack of dye to make them black. I would have bought two pairs, but they only had the one left.

Do you use a dresser, closet, or both?
Neither. I use a ‘chest of drawers’ and a ‘wardrobe’.

What type of earrings are in your ears right now?
None. My ears are pierced and I believe that I do have some earrings somewhere, but I never wear them because dangle earrings annoy me and my wandering hands twiddle with studs until my ear lobes hurt.  This fidgeting thing is a real pain, but I can’t control it. As soon as get deep into thought, I twiddle, smear and fiddle without realising it.

Do you wear glasses?
Yes, but I also have contact lenses which I wear occasionally.

Do you wear makeup?
Yes and no (see above).

What is your favorite perfume?
Lolita by Lolita Lempicka. However, I don’t own any of this - I just indulge in a little squirt whenever I pass a perfume counter that sells it. I’m still working my way through a bottle of Jean Paul Gautier Classique which is OK but doesn’t thrill my senses like the Lempicka one.

Is your motto “quality over quantity” when it comes to clothing and accessories?
I would like to to be, but I’m not quite there yet.

Do you wear rain boots?
Are those wellies or the little things that you wear over your regular shoes? Either way, no.

Do you wear socks or slippers when your feet get cold?
Both. When my feet get cold, they stay cold. In the depths of winter I have a little routine after coming in which involves sticking my feet in a bowl of hot water (or having a hot bath if I’m chilled all over) before putting on three layers of footwear: a pair of normal cotton socks, followed by fluffy bed socks, followed by slippers (mine are a bit like Ugg boots). Then I park my feet in front of the fire. That just about gets the heat back to my poor little toes.

Do you have a set of travel luggage?
No. But I did buy a wheely suitcase a couple months ago. It’s fun to feel like an air hostess, but I still have my massive backpack stored in the loft in case I need to make a rapid escape over the mountains.

If you are married, did you wear a veil with your wedding dress?
Nope. This bride wore brown - a long chocolate brown velvet dress with a matching frock coat (it was a winter wedding and I also wore woolly tights). A veil would have been a bit weird with that ensemble.

Do you wear a watch?
When I go out of the house, yes.

Do you prefer zippers or buttons?
It depends. Buttons on coats and shirts. Discreet zippers for skirts, dresses and trousers (and bags).

By the way, I’m really confused where we are on the Wardrobe Therapy front. This is an alternative Week 6, which I believe we’re doing in the original Week 8, but Wende also says that this alternative Week 6 is to replace the current Week 8 because we all got an ‘F’ for Week 5. Does this mean it’s Week 6 or Week 7 now? Anyone got any idea? I’m lost.