She, She, She Shine On

Today's the day that my childhood home, The Cottage, finally changes hands but I'm not a bit sad. Do you remember me mentioning that when the sale sign first went up I'd had a visit from a couple who loved the house but their property had only just gone on the market and they were only able to make a low offer? Well, I accepted a higher offer from another couple but, after a few weeks, they started to mess me around, asking for a significant reduction in the original asking price. I told them to sling their hook, after all, the house had been empty for years, what was another few months? In the meantime the lovely couple managed to sell their house to a cash buyer for a lot more than they expected, enabling them to increase their offer - which I accepted - and The Cottage is now their forever home (I was offered a heck of lot more than the asking price by a couple of property development companies but I told them where to go). There's a bottle of fizz and a welcome card awaiting H&D when they cross the threshold later today.

Sorry, squeamish people. My bendy body freaks some people out. You should see my arms.

After an iffy start this morning, the gloriously warm weather continues. We went to our first car boot sale of 2018 yesterday in shorts (Jon) and a sleeveless Hawaiian maxi (me!) I did take photos of our finds as lovely blog reader Shelagh had kindly sent me her son's old camera but somehow managed to delete everything.  It's all packed ready for trading at Moseley Vintage and Retro Fair on Sunday (details HERE). It'll be third time lucky for this fair due to the bastard snow. This weekend's obstacle will be trying to negotiate Birmingham's road network as the council have closed the main route for maintenance. I don't know how long it's going to take us to get there - it's usually only 25 minutes, wish us luck!

My Lundby's starting to look good. Here it is in all its psychedelic '70s glory along with the added downstairs extension (which came with another tatty Lundby doll's house - that's project number three!)

As I'm in pink, orange and yellow today's featured room has to be the living room.....

...and as if by magic, here I am!

 I've seen this space used in other doll's houses as a master bedroom with a kid's bedroom on the mezzanine floor. As you know, my house is child-free so I'm keeping it real with an adult-only space (hence the wine!) Beate, it's German Sekt, ready for when you get here!

I love the idea of the main living area being upstairs. I used to have a school friend with an amazing upside-down house with bedrooms in the basement and a split level lounge upstairs with perspex hanging bubble pod chairs, a white space age circular TV set and a shag pile carpet so thick and luxurious her patents used to have to rake it. The carpet is a small scale doll's house in the same shade of russet as the very threadbare original. The rocket floor lamp that Linda made me fits in a treat, doesn't it?

I found this 1970s Lundby Symphony suite on Ebay complete with a glass topped coffee table which now resides in the dining room (as seen in my last blog post). Despite not being a fan of either three piece suites or Dralon at £4.50 I just had to buy it. I removed the shabby pink fringe and replaced it with some orange picot braiding from off the market, much more psychedelic! The perspex coffee table was another eBay bargain, I'd definitely give it house room in my big house.

Remember the groovy wallpaper in The Cottage's bathroom? When it mentioned it on my post recently Sarah, another fab reader, commented that she'd got a slither of the wallpaper in her stash and that she'd be happy to donate it to the house. There was just enough to make curtains and a matching pelmet (very 1970s!) which I finished off with the leftover braid.

The aquarium, funky table and swivel chairs are all 1970s Lundby originals - eBay is brilliant (and inexpensive) when you're a doll's house fanatic!

The plastic piano and stool were in the bag of furniture that came with the charity shopped doll's house. I trimmed the stool with Indian pom-pom braiding and printed off (and scaled-down) the musical scores from the internet. If you're wondering, the sheet music is Carly Simon's You're So Vain. The picture is classic suburban 1970s, The Wings of Love by S Pearson. The plant's another me-made one.

The fireplace came in a job lot of Lundby furniture. The log basket (complete with logs) was in the sale section of an on-line doll's house shop (£1.25).

These two dressers match the one in the dining room. They were originally mahogany (but I painted them white). The books, magazines and other bits and pieces were free printables from a doll's house website.

The details:

• The pictures were sized down and printed off the internet. They were framed in more of the charity shop frames that I'd painted and gilded earlier this week.
• The mustard lampshade is another of the kid's egg toys trimmed with braid and threaded with plug chain.
• The perspex lampshade is an  unwanted cat toy, trimmed with vintage rik-rak braid.
• The cushions are handmade by me using 30p a sheet felt from Shaw's Direct and finished off with daisy appliques from Walsall market's haberdashery stall.
• The "knitting" is cotton thread rolled into balls and speared with two shortened dressmaking pins. The vintage poncho pattern is a scaled-down real one.  

WEARING: Jumpsuit made by me from some 1960s Francis Price screen printed curtains which used to hang in a friend's husband's living room when he was a child; Crazy sunnies (gift from a car boot seller); Jeffrey Campbell Woodies clogs (charity shop), Retro jelly basket (new, retail!)

 Time to get my bikini on and catch a few rays (and try not to watch the proceedings over the road).

See you soon (hopefully in Moseley on Sunday)!