Bumbaleerie Mansions

Evening all.

So I've been promising you a tour of Bumbaleerie Mansions for a while now - sadly, due to the arrival of the Perfect, the Mansions are never tidy enough to get a decent picture of. So instead, here's a wee bit at a time. Here's some things you oughter know before we get started:

1) The Crib was built in 1932.
2) It has a bomb shelter in the garden, that I would've taken a picture of today but it was snowing, and I couldn't find my shoes.
3) The people who owned it before Husband and I rescued it were bonkers. They superglued light fittings to the ceiling, shelves to the wall and floor tiles to the..em, floor. Quite, quite mad.
4) I love it with my ENTIRE FACE.
5) It has three original fireplaces in it.
6) The kitchen, where I spend most of my time, used to be the kitchen, dining room and pantry, until the Bonkertons knocked through - so the kitchen is montagonous. We're spoiled if we ever have to move though because I love the kitchen the most.
7) When we came to view it, I loved it so much that I did a wee dance in the kitchen and Mr Bonkers saw me and immediately added more Scottish bucks to the price. Husband was delighted! (False).

There's more here, if that ol' list wasn't enough.

So! Here's where I am right this very now!

This is our kitchen table, which is splendid and also ginormous. It can fit twelve people around it once it's extended, here's what happened when we bought it:

Me: Husband! That table fits twelve people around it once it's extended!
Husband: It's ginormous.
Me: And SPLENDID! We can recreate Downton!
Husband: Why do you always want to recreate Downton?

In the middle of the table is my most recent purchase - Hyacinths! I planted them today, here's hoping they survive. I seem to have this think called 'Killeverything-itus' where nothing green can live in my house. I've been given so many fecking Orchids and they last about nine seconds before sadly passing on.

FUNNY STORY I'VE JUST REMEMBERED: In Dobbies today, a man standing next to me said to his wife 'Look, they've got orchards!' and she said 'Not orchards, darling, ORCHIDS' and he said 'No, they're definitely called orchards' and she said 'no, they definitely aren't' and he wasn't having ANY OF IT. I'd just pushed my sleeves up my arms ready to get stuck in and RIGHT THIS WRONG, but Husband pulled me back and said I wasn't to get involved. They're probably still at it. Very funny and pointless, which is my favourite kind of argument with Husband.

Here's a close up of the, and I think you'll agree wholeheartedly with this, EXCELLENTLY planted Hyacinths:

Next, my second-newest kitchen purchase:

CHICKEN EGG CUPS! From the 70s, so VINTAGE CHICKEN EGG CUPS! Brilliant, although they caused a slight altercation when I bought them. I said to the lady 'I must have these, they are magnificent and a wise addition to any home, including those modelled VERY CLOSELY on Downton Abbey. How much, please?' and she said '£2.50'. There was a brief pause until I yelled 'WHIT? MARVELLOUS BARGAIN!' and grabbed the lot. Turns out, they were £2.50 each. But, as I said to Husband, shouting in a sales lady's face is practically a signed contract, so you can't just change your mind like a total mind-changer. Anyway, still worth it because they are wonderful, and not 'hideously tacky' or 'a total waste of money' OR 'literally the worst things I have ever seen'.

Lastly, here's a picture of my knittingsewingcrochetjunk stash as it is now that we had to clear out my sewing room for the Perfect:

There's so many of my favourite things on this bookcase - a photo of Perfect, right at the top, when he was seconds old. My Govencroft jugs, my tangled knitting, my sewing maching, my jelly mould of Betty. Lovely, and kept so tidy! Also, some of my least favourite things - the iron, lurking sinisterly in the foreground. Husband's unfinished jumper. Some minging rip-offy wool that I was conned into buying, and is a source of everlasting regret and anguish. I won't point it out, it makes me too angry. And I've just realised that Perfect's blanket isn't even in this picture but if it WAS, if I was tidier and it WAS here, instead of on the couch in the living room, I could gracefully and beautifully link into the next picture, which is progress on the ripple blanket, but since it isn't there, I'll just have to do it in a CLUMPY WAY:

Here's how I'm getting on with the ripples! At this rate, he should have it in time for his own children.

Pip pip!

I've been eBuying

Bumbaleerie Mansions was built in 1932 and I love it with my whole soul. As soon as we stepped over the threshold, I felt that the house had been waiting for us. Probably to paint over the lurid yellow the previous owners had in the living room, but that's neither here nor there. It still brings a tear to my eye, the memory of finally shaking hands with Steve 'Wide Boy' Estateagent, making small cuts on our index fingers and becoming blood brothers with the bank, signing our names in tears on the contract and skipping merrily to OUR (original 1930s) front door.

It's hard to say when the obsession with buying 1930s stuff happened. LIES! It started the minute I saw the house for sale on RightMove! Hahahaha! So now I'm on eBay roughly every four minutes, bidding for what I call 'Nice Stuff' and Husband calls 'What is this doing in my house?'

Here are some things I have bought from eBay for Bumbaleerie Mansions:

A sideboard for a FIVER! 

(Husband says I should tell the truth about this magnificent bargain. And I AM telling the truth, but he wants me to add that we had to pay £70 to get it shipped from Wolverhampton or somesuch so it TECHNICALLY didn't only cost a fiver. But actually, it did.)



Four Govencroft Jugs for a varying number of bucks. Don't want to be too accurate because I don't think I ever told Husband how much they were, and I really am too fatigued to get into THAT now.

Handy, isn't it? It's a bookend, a knitting needle holder AND a jug all in one! It's the Optimus Prime of the jug world.

A picture of a dog, from I think 1935 which turned out to be not only hideous but also very scary and sinister. It is now in the loft.

A postcard from Blackpool, dated 1932 from one lady to her friend. I love this very, very much due to my obsession with handwriting and also with 'things what are old'. It is the perfect combination for me.

Anyway, the point of this is: if you, like I do, simply type '1930' into eBay and gleefully scroll through twenty bah-millzon pages of unadulterated BLISS then sometimes you find yourself bidding on what others might call 'have you lost your senses?'. BEHOLD:

 Or, to put it another way:

A hundred million old hankies! Some with roses:

A lot with lace:

A couple of mad ones:

and a very special one INDEED:

a KING GEORGE VI CORONATION ONE!! FROM 1937! Can you even IMAGINE my excitement? I was BESIDE myself. I immediately summoned Husband, who refused to acknowledge the magnificence of the moment, apart from nodding and muttering 'Oh nice', which I don't even think he meant.

Listen, I have to confess, I was a bit worried about coming across an eighty-year old bogey but it didn't happen. They were all as clean as an eighty-year old handkerchief would be.

Now! Some making news! Due to not being able to start myfriendsnephews quilt, I decided to crack on to making a hexagonal one. Ooooooh, I hear you say, a hexagonal quilt? You must have nerves of steel! You are the bravest person I have ever even HEARD of! Yes, that's true, I am.

Well. I'm also pretty lazy. Making a proper hexagonal quilt takes ages because you have to cut individual paper templates, then pin them to the fabric, then tack in the seams, then overstitch them BY HAND, over and over and over again. And I obviously COULD do it if I wanted to, OBVIOUSLY it's not that I COULDN'T do it, which I COULD but maybe I think life's too short. So I am machine stitching mine. And I am cutting the fabric in piles. And I am not top stitching anything. Here's how it's going so far:

 The sharp-eyed will have noticed that there is not a picture of the hexagons sewn together. That is because the sewn together bit possibly does not look as good as the rose-tinted vision of perfection that my inner eye conjured. But it might if Husband irons it, which he is refusing to do.  I tried to explain that probably no-one had ever thought of doing this before (not true - there are millions of tutorials online, but Husband doesn't know that), and PROBABLY even just ATTEMPTING such a project made me some kind of VISIONARY in the making world, and PROBABLY HRH Michael Parkinson HIMSELF would want to come out of retirement just to interview me, but he won't have it. And it's not going to iron itself, so it is resting quietly in the sewing room until my next bout of creative genius.