Housekeepers Carousel

Good morning Honeybees! How the heckity pie are you? You can tell I’m feeling chirpy after three days of nothing but delicious, life enhancing fruit-packed smoothies can’t you? So chirpy in fact that I have decided that it might just be time for a spin around our lovely Housekeepers Carousel.
What was that? Pass you the smelling salts? Heavens feeling sarcastic today aren’t we??
Anyway’s up and at em! I’m kicking off with with the vintage A.K Bilder illustration above “Happiness Aids Digestion” because I want to take issue with it, as I am both a pedant and a slave to my stomach, so while I appreciate the sentiment Mr. Bilder, I beg to differ, because in my world Digestion Aids Happiness and that my friend is that. Maybe it’s a delicious/vicious circle?

* Sticking with the troubles and joys of the female body I am thoroughly enjoying Sara Avant Stover’s (of The Way of the Happy Woman fame) free “I Heart My Moon Cycle” program. While trying to tune into your bodies natural cycle and live according to it’s rhythms might just strike you as ever so slightly crunchy, I promise that this series is both enjoyable and enlightening.
* Next up, this darling first paragraph of my latest Project Gutenberg find…
“The older I get the more convinced I become that the most fascinating persons in this world are those elusive souls whom we know perfectly well but whom we never, as children say, “get to meet.” They slip out of countries, or towns—or rooms even,—just before we arrive, leaving us with an inexplicable feeling of having been cheated of something that was rightfully and divinely ours. That’s the way I still feel about little Miss By-the-Day. Perhaps you, too, have been baffled by the will-o’-the-wispishness of that whimsical young person. Perhaps you, too, tried to find her but never did.”
Isn’t that just a little bit of whimsical wonderful? Download Little Miss By the Day by Lucille Van Slyke here and set about seeking Little Miss-By-the-Day…

* On to the understated, completely natural glam of  Mangle & Wringers cleaning remedies,  inspired by the recipes of long-time housekeeper Bette Smith and lovingly re-created by Vanessa Wiles. There is a Bathroom Balm in the range – how wonderful is that? As if you were nurturing your room instead of half bleaching it into oblivion…

* This months magazine clipping? These gorgeous watercolours, casually pinned to floral wallpaper. Heavenly. Found in British Country Living and clipped to my Evernote memory box for always.
* Do you read Letters of Note? Try it. It is literary and wonderful and true.

* Oh my. Want. Heart. And wotnot. These gorgeous linen pinafores from Retrohome on Etsy.
* Next up: a little bit of news for my Housekeeping Superstars.  Next week see’s the beginning of my all new SUPERSTAR ONLY Shine workshop. An ongoing fiddly, heart-string pulling journey towards being the leading lady on your very own domestic journey. More about SHINE coming very soon.
* Now : A Dining Room of One’s Own: I loved this article about the Bloomsbury group’s apparently heady relationship with food….

* Next: allotments. I have got them on the brain at the moment. Though The Big Allotment Challenge is utterly ruined by the very presence of Fern Brittain, I am rather madly in love with the two bearded men competing against a gang of other couples to grow, arrange and cook with the produce from their allotments.  The whole concept is ludicrous and the man who judges the produce is downright mean, but I rather like this gently British program, though I suspect I am the only person on the planet watching it. So much so, that I rang the local council to inquire about the likelihood of being able to have my own allotment only to be told that the waiting list was about a hundred years.
* And finally my Darlings, a poem. Of course, a poem. This time “Rain” by Raymond Carver.
Woke up this morning with
a terrific urge to lie in bed all day
and read. Fought against it for a minute.
Then looked out the window at the rain.
And gave over. Put myself entirely
in the keep of this rainy morning.
Would I live my life over again?
Make the same unforgivable mistakes?
Yes, given half a chance. Yes.