The Vintage Housekeepers Circle

Heckity pie, it’s all happening around here! This morning The Vintage Housekeepers Circle went live on Amazon and thus the collection of essays once found in Season One and Season Two of the Circle can now live happily inside your Kindle ready to provide a little domestic inspiration to your bedtime reading…
Ste is slowly working his way through converting all my existing downloads in to Kindle books, so you can expect more Brocantehome on Amazon over the following weeks and months as part of the re-structuring of my site and business that we are currently undertaking. A bizarrely slow process as he tries to make sense of the rather cock-eyed chaos I have created during what will now be referred the “dark days”!
Much of The Vintage Housekeepers Circle was written in 2009 and as I checked it over this morning it struck me how much the distance between myself and my ability to both write and keep house has grown since then. There is no doubt that writing became more difficult as my confidence ebbed away, but I am astonished by how the routines and rituals that were once so instinctive to me, and that I was so keen to share with you, have been lost in the maelstrom of my life over the past few years.
Such is that distance that I looked over the book with a deep sense of homesickness. A yearning for what I once was and a sudden, fierce desire to tie my pinny on and step back in to my own life. And it struck me that if it could have that effect on me then to a new reader unfamiliar with the routines and rituals intrinsic to the BrocanteHome way of life, then reading The Vintage Housekeepers Circle could be nothing short of life changing.
Tonight I am going to take my own book to bed. I will take a cup of lavender and limeflower tea with me and read by candlelight. My housekeepers journal will be at my side and as I trawl through the myriad of treats and rituals I documented in the book, I will slowly but surely feel myself coming alive again.
And all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all shall be well…
Won’t you join me in the awakening of your own domestic spirit? 
Click here to buy The Vintage Housekeepers Circle on Amazon.com
And here to buy it on Amazon.co.uk…

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  1. Can I be cheeky and say “Welcome home”, Alison dear?
    I think you’ve just described exactly why so many of us are still here, so many years later – because Life Keeps On Happening Around Us and it means you can’t just ploddle along in a set routine. Humans evolved to be adaptable, and we do just that: we adapt. And in adapting, it’s horribly easy to lose something we barely even think about because it’s such a normal part of our everyday. Suddenly, everyday is neverday and what with everything else, we don’t even notice. We might have a feeling things are uneven, uphill, not quite right, and so we eat some junk food, we have a couple more drinks than usual, we date that guy even though he’s made some unpleasant put-down comments about us… gradually our self-confidence ebbs lower without us seeing.
    Then, something happens, enabling us to step back up into full sunlight. We can see. Properly and clearly, close-to and distance. We’ve been for our Emotional Eye-test, so to speak! 🙂
    And gradually, you start to see the gaps, the holes where nice things used to be… and you realise happily that you know just what to do now to put the pretty things back into your home, your life, your family, your daily routines and above all put the pretty back into you!
    Pretty Alison… you are and always will be, you know. xx

  2. Can I be cheeky and say “Welcome home”, Alison dear?
    I think you’ve just described exactly why so many of us are still here, so many years later – because Life Keeps On Happening Around Us and it means you can’t just ploddle along in a set routine. Humans evolved to be adaptable, and we do just that: we adapt. And in adapting, it’s horribly easy to lose something we barely even think about because it’s such a normal part of our everyday. Suddenly, everyday is neverday and what with everything else, we don’t even notice. We might have a feeling things are uneven, uphill, not quite right, and so we eat some junk food, we have a couple more drinks than usual, we date that guy even though he’s made some unpleasant put-down comments about us… gradually our self-confidence ebbs lower without us seeing.
    Then, something happens, enabling us to step back up into full sunlight. We can see. Properly and clearly, close-to and distance. We’ve been for our Emotional Eye-test, so to speak! 🙂
    And gradually, you start to see the gaps, the holes where nice things used to be… and you realise happily that you know just what to do now to put the pretty things back into your home, your life, your family, your daily routines and above all put the pretty back into you!
    Pretty Alison… you are and always will be, you know. xx

  3. Glad to hear you are “back in the saddle” again! Good for you. I always love reading your work and doing what puttery things I can. Now, please tell me what brand tea you are drinking as the flavor sounds delightful! Lavender and lime flower? Sounds like it smells good!

  4. And all manner of things shall be well. It’s 6 years old, things change. When you wrote it your ‘babba’ was still a babba, not half-way to a man. I took it with me shopping today,and found myself yearning for an easier time when I could put something down in the house and nobody else would move it! I’ll be leaving a review as soon as I’ve finished it; but so far I’m enjoying the trip down memory lane and a reappraisal of what I need to do to keep my house a home.

  5. Oh how I wish I had a Kindle…those early posts were incredibly inspiring! At the time my first daughter was just a little baby, they taught me so much!

    1. You can have a KIndle reading app on your computer, your smartphone, a tablet or even a Kindle itself. In fact, reading on the tablet or phone can be better than the Kindle because you get to see the cover of the book as well as the content! If you have an Amazon account you can have the Kindle app set up in a couple of minutes. But be warned; you will have to have all of the Brocante Home books to be happy! (joke)
      The app is free, and you just need to click on the right part of the Amazon page to download the app for your computer. I’m reading the book at the moment, and enjoying a refresher course on living well!

      1. I purchased this and love it. Your books are the best Housekeeping motivational books I have found. I especially enjoy reading and re-reading the Christmas posts. Please, please write a Christmas book containing your Christmas laundry spray recipes, gingerbread garland recipes and how to’s, decoration pictures with tutorials, recipes, self care ideas and recipes, etc, etc, etc and please hurry!

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