My Paint smells of chicken.........

It does .... really! It smells of chicken! But not nice, Sunday roast, stuffing and yummy gravy chicken - but strange, been warm too long on a sunny window sill chicken. It's horrible - and I have to use it! The two offending paints are in the picture ..... Look at them closely so you will recognise them ..... They never used to smell like this .. so why now? My other ones have that nice, painty, comforting smell - these two make me wretch! Yes - I will be chucking them out soon - but that blue is a good one - although, I have to say, it has lousy spreadability - goes on horribly - but it is a great blue. Using paint so much really makes you realise how different they can be. Surprisingly I find the most common paint of all, Dulux, to be the one that goes on the best . Homebase paints aren't great and Laura Ashley ones - yeughghg - terrible, terrible spreadage. Second only to Dulux are the beautiful Designer's Guild paints - I could live and die with these colours. The purest tones you will ever see - simply gorgeous. Most of my house is painted using them including the plantain shutters in the living room - a divine pale turquoise. Although the chicken blue paint above is a great blue - it's lousy paint - streaky, patchy, bad flow to it - so I guess its not so bad that its days are numbered. I'll have to find a similiar tone in a different make. Meanwhile I want to find out what it is in the paint that makes it smell so bad - does paint go off?

welcome to my toilet!!!

Not the most inviting title for a post but my downstairs toilet it really qiute a nice place to be! As is most of the house, it's covered in dust gathering bits and pieces. So, starting on the left ... two wooden mirrors I painted, thought about selling, no-one bought, so I hung them here. Above and below are little Valentine's pictures I made for my husband ... I don't know what hanging in the loo says about our marriage! Far right is a photo of me, aged 1, frowning and looking generally worried, which i was. There are several other pictures, as you can see, none of real note, the obligatory hanging heart, long starry wooden decoration which took me ages and then didn't get around to selling (this happens alot!). I haven't replaced the tiles yet - on the far right - so that bit is a bit scrubby. Behind the door, which you obviously can't see, is a bookcase with some amusing titles such as "Eating people is wrong" , "The Roman Catholic Guide to Birth Control" and more amusingly "Queer Fish", plus the usual loo books ....about eating shoots and leaves,
whiskey, crap holidays,f irst edition prices and a pile of curious boy's magazines from the 1970's entitled 'World of Wonder". This one pictured, right, says is all - Go, Mark!
Actually the behind the door bit is much more interesting than the photo shown! There are also my marmite jars (!) - my favourite being the 'I hate....' edition, several photos of my husband and I looking fresh, uncreased and stupidly fit (sigh), my eldest son's first shoes (lime green boots) and a lot of dust. The carpet has been taken up - I have three boys so I will not explain any further - so the floor is bare disgrace with gripper rod edges. I did bang all the nails down so we wouldn't shred out feet. I thought that was nice and caring of me! I'm wondering if these World of Wonders are worth anything now - the cover pictures are fabulous in their own right. *Goes off to Google such things*

My hallway......

The walls are meant to be a pale green! *sigh* oh well, you will just have to imagine it!
This is the table in my hallway. As you can see it is showing off what you are meant to be doing with the things I make! I love them all crowded in together like this - there are three of my pointing fish, a pink spotty lizard, a little red heart and a large chunky blue heart. That little red square over the clock is a canvas with a silver heart stuck on it. I made the heart out of .999 PMC silver clay - it has the finger prints of my three boys on it, their names and dates of birth. It was one of the first things I made with the clay - no tentative beginnings there! - and the lettering is not very good but I don't think it's too bad for a first attempt! Inside the big glass jar is 12 years worth of easter eggs. I blow real ones and paint them every year for my husband. The biggest is an Ostrich egg, the smallest a Quail's. The very first one I did is cracked and stuck back together a few times. I try to paint them with colour, patterns or pictures that somehow relate to the past year. The clock was an impluse purchase by my husband at at a craft fair. It's wired to the back of the table as its a bit unstable there - the kids chuck things down the stairs so .. one day ... either the clock will break or the kids will grow up!

It's funny what happens......

Last evening was beautiful - it had actually been a hot day for once - so everything went outside. As you can see I had a very nice glass of white wine! I had no intention of painting a canvas but these things just come over me as and when. The wine glass, empty *ahem*, stands of my middle son's school reading book. "Hey Presto", a thrilling tale in words of one syllable! On the left of the wine glass is a small, stripey sausage dog toy belonging to my youngest son. This is 'dog number 2' - number 1 is temporarily lost so this one is standing in. He loves them beyond all reason and kisses their noses constantly for comfort. Next to the jam jar of blue paint is a gardening glove. I used it to pull nettles out of a rosemary plant's pot earlier. There is also a tin of Spiderman Uno cards, the result of a son pestering for a game. I've dipped my paintbrush into a son's water cup! Well, it WAS right there! Also you'll see a blank canvas - perhaps a lizard pair - I don't know yet. So out of all that came this little lizard painting!

My loved space..

This is where is all comes from! My lovely room ..... it's filled with paints, boxes, unpainted fish, a very annoying rug that moves around the floor even though it is under the table legs - you can see that pesky rug, right there if the left picture. See? It's trying to escape right now! There is also an assortment of carrot top ends (crunching on them is very meditative) and some old coffee mugs .... usually the carrot tops go into those ... I reckon, as it's my room, I can do these slightly scummy things in it! The sad thing is that I spend too much time arranging my things ... although, as you can see, the desk is not exactly tidy ... but I do then have the excuse that I'm 'tidying my workroom' and I can sneak off to have a few minutes peace.
That big black box, on the bookcase, is a kiln. I've been dabbling in PMC clay - doing children's fingerprints in the clay for friends, and making a few bits and pieces for myself. The paint chart up there is a Designer's Guild one - my favourite colours EVER for decorating - most of my house is painted in the colours and I use them for my fish, lizards, hearts and snakes. You can't beat them for purity of colour. On the far left, just above the paint pots, is a mosaic house number I've been making .... can you see the thing I mean? ..... like so many things it's still not finished ... I ran out of green tiles .. actually, I only needed 3 more ..... so there it sits, waiting to be finished to go into our porch. Under the desk is a box (large) of beading stuff, old tea towels (for wiping stuff with), tissue paper (for wrapping stuff), and some grass that came in on my feet after I'd mowed the lawn!
So ..... that's my room ... I could rabbit on for ages about it but I'll leave more ramblings for another day!
Keep checking back ...!

What's in a name .......

'Half an acre? Why?' I hear you ask!
Well, it is taken from a quote from a 1950's recording of Gardener's Question Time.
"No matter how small one's garden one should always set aside at least half an acre for wildflowers."
I say, old chap, thanks for the sterling advice!

Half an acre would be lovely, thank you very much, but, as it is, the Half an Acre garden in indeed quite small with a few weeds here and there. Obviously it has delusions of grandeur.

Anyone trying to name a company will know how hard it is. I find it slightly disconcerting that someone else thought of 'SlightlySquid'. How can that be? Two people, miles apart in the world, having the same random thought.