Saturday night....ordinary but loving (at home)

Sorry about the lack of posting this week, and thanks so much for all your lovely comments on my previous post. This week, both hubby and I have been overwhelmed with work....and to confess, in my spare moments, I have been checking out NY Fashion week....give or take here and there, overall the collections were bland and disappointing...maybe London will be better. Anyway, Saturday night saw the hubby (Gareth) and I watching DVD's, on his computer screen in our combined study/art space. As you can tell from the pics below, my life is pretty much run of the mill at present....but as my dad likes to say, at least ordinary is better than disaster.

I love Saturdays

Citronella scented geraniums in my garden

Photographers Gentl & Hyers at Edge Reps.

These Plaster Dolls from Etsy are just the cutest ever. The top doll is wearing Luella Spring Summer 2008 and the bottom doll is in Prada Fall 2008.

Sarap's beautiful collages at Etsy. From her page, "This collage features magazine clippings, old photos, text, and bits of patterned paper. Part of the beauty of these pieces is the bumps and crannies that add to the overall texture."

Journal page

Some photo's

have a happy weekend!

Finally.....

Yippy!!! I'm finally getting to do some real decorating. I'm busy fixing up my spare room. It's my favourite room because it's particularly bright and airy, with big windows and it get's wonderful afternoon sun.

Ever since we moved in three years ago, it's been a shabby, insipid, way past it's sell by date, shade of pale blue. It's now becoming a bright, sparkling, clean, pure white. Here is the ladder that I'm too scared to climb - I hate ladders, climbing a ladder is almost as scary as climbing a mountain, except when you climb a mountain you get a helmet, a harness, and ropes, and little metal things to plug in and keep you safe.

These are my supplies. Right about now, I'm taking a big, deep breathe and getting ready to go.

And here I am, dressed for business in old jeans and even older sneakers. In South Africa we call sneakers "takkies" - go figure?

I started painting at around 10.00 Saturday morning, and finished the whole room, two coats of paint, by 3.00 this afternoon. Well.... at least the hubby was impressed and said I did a wonderful job. I felt really good. This is one of those projects that has been falling by the wayside. It's been hanging over my head for ages, and now it's almost done. The yucky slog work is over, and now I can have fun with the room, arranging furniture, pictures and accessories. All against a background of pure, clean white. And I think that anybody who has got to know my taste through reading this blog will know what to expect......some very bright colour accents, perhaps a dash of shocking pink, a squirt of lime green, a dab of fabulous purple, and maybe even a touch of sky blue turquoise.

Tomorrow I'm going shopping for curtains. I want to find something ready made, that will be simple, the right colour and relatively cheap. When we bought this house three years ago, we thought that we would be here for quite a while. Now things have changed, and we want to sell in the next 12-18 months, so I don't want to spend a lot of money, but at the same time, I still want something that I will enjoy while I am here. This room is going to be my little sanctuary, a place to read, and think, and dream....so I want it to be nice.

New bracelet

New vintage finds

I recently got back from a short holiday in Port Alfred, a small seaside holiday town in the Eastern Cape. Although the winter cold has started to set in, I was hoping it would be at least warm enough to picnic on the beach. Unfortunately it was cold and rainy the whole time we were there. I still enjoyed it though, it's always nice just to get a change of scenery. It was fabulous to be by the sea, and to rest and relax, go for walks, explore the town, and eat great food.

On our last day there, we stopped in town quickly on the way to the airport to go to the chemist, and I stumbled upon the most amazing little vintage & antique shop. I barely had time to look around because we were in a hurry. The shop was crammed full, and lined from top to bottom with a wonderful array of treasures, and it was the kind of place I could have happily spent an hour in, slowly exploring everything. And, I couldn't believe how cheap everything was, about a fifth less than what similar vintage items cost in Joburg. I was truly in vintage heaven. I only had about fifteen minutes to rush around but I managed to pick up a few cute finds. Nothing comes between me and my thrifting :)

This is my husband walking along the pier in Port Alfred. He soon beat a hasty retreat after getting drenched by the waves.

This is a collection of vintage perfume bottles I found in the shop. I'll be giving them to a friend as a birthday present.

I also found this cute little ceramic deer penholder.

And this ceramic vintage Cango Caves souvenier. It's incredibly kitch, but it belongs to a particular era of South African "Africana" from the fiftiess and sixties, and I like to pick up a few pieces in this style here and there, although it's not something I'd ever go overboard with.

Time for a change

My apologies for going AWOL. I am now back properly. As you will notice, I have made some changes to the blog. To be totally honest, I have to confess that I sort of began to lose interest in Smoke & Ochre. It was starting to feel stale and boring to me, and I just didn't have the same level of enthusiasm that I did before in scouring the web for that perfect chair or cushion. Also, there are so many wonderful blogs out there showing the latest, great new items, I feel it's pointless for me to just post things that I've already seen on other blogs, if I don't have anything more to add. Original content has always been important to me, I've tried my best to find my own content as much as possible. But now I'm tired of posting the same themes I've been focusing on, and I feel I need to broaden and make some changes to the scope of the blog.

I'll still be concentrating on home style posts, and will keep looking for eclectic interiors, but I want to do a little more art (and photography) including older classics and wander away from the new "cute" kind of art, to explore what else is out there. I also plan to do a few historical posts. I love history, especially the way that people have lived in the past, what they wore, what they ate, what they thought. I've read some great books that I think bring out some fascinating aspects of the past that I'd love to start sharing. Some other topics I want to start blogging about are interesting and unusual places, food and cultures. More about lifestyle as opposed to home style, and a bit more of my life, art and photo's. All in all I want to try and add a little more spice, a little more of what's exotic and enchanting.

I really appreciate everyone who reads my blog, and I hope you will continue to follow my journey and explorations, and hopefully I will be able to put together something more interesting than what I've been doing over the past while.

Autumn days are creeping in...

We are having the most miserable, cold and wet weather in Joburg at the moment. I hope this doesn't mean an early winter for us this year, even though I know that all my northern hemisphere friends are more than ready for an early spring:) Last night we had a power failure, no electricity from 6.00pm until after midnight. That meant takeouts for supper. Also our local supplier had already run out of gas by the time I got there, so my hubby made a fire in the fireplace in the lounge and we spent the evening reading our books by candlelight. Luckily no power problems tonight and I managed to get gas for the gas heaters, so we're nice and cozy....and I'm on the computer.

Ben and Bandit snoozing away, enjoying the gas heater.

This is my dining room cabinet which I love. My step-mom gave it to me when she and my dad moved into a smaller place a couple of years ago. In our old family home it used to be a bookcase, but I use it for an assortment of odds and sods like ornaments and crockery.

In this picture, you can see my clay tajine. This is a Moroccan, North African kind of casserole dish. I got it for my birthday about two years ago, and I'm embarressed to admit that I still haven't used it. I am determined to use it this winter, a nice North African dish with couscous will be perfect on a cold winter day. From Wikepedia, "Tajine dishes are slow-cooked at low temperatures, resulting in tender, falling-off-the-bone meat with aromatic vegetables and sauce." Mmmm...that does sound tempting.

My pet giraffes, far better behaved than the dogs...but not nearly as much fun.

Above and below you can see some of my scarf and pashmina collection. I love scarves and that is one positive thing that I can say about winter, I am looking forward to wearing lots of scarves.

The corners of my home

Inspired by Ashley's gorgeous blog Decor Amor, I've been inspired to do a post on some of the items I've collected around my house. Seeing that I haven't done a post like this for a while, this one is looooong:)

These are some African Violets that I planted in old tin mugs

A favourite painting in a pretty frame and a pink glass antique style perfume bottle that was a gift from my mom

My latest vintage teacup, I found it in my local thrift shop earlier this week

This is a photo of me when I was about three. I turned it into a little collage. It was taken at a cottage my parents used to rent together with another couple at the Vaal River. I have such happy memories of those days - the smell of citronella oil to ward off mosquitoes, looking for fourleaf clovers in the grass, a friend of my mom's with long dark hair embroidering flowers on a pair of jeans, a small thatched cottage with whitewashed walls, a poster of Bob Dylan that I thought was my granny because they had similar hairstyles, a poster of a naked lady covered in psychedelic body paint, the scary excitement of trying to catch crabs with my dad along the river bank....

A thrifted 70's plastic milk jug

A bronze statuette from an African country that I fail to remember. My husband immedietely fell in love with it and we bought it even though it was quite expensive for us at the time. It sits on his desk in our shared study.

Two little vintage plastic toy men

These painted dolls are from a west African country that I fail to remember...hmmm....they're a modern take on traditional carved fertility dolls, it's a family with a mom, dad and a little kid.

I found this book at the same time that I found the vintage teacup. I couldn't resist buying it because it has the most delightful illustrations

A ceramic penholder - this is my little kitch corner. On the one side you can 1950's vintage African curios of scenes painted on wood. They're from Swaziland and are very kitch but I love them.

An ornament in the kitch corner, and looking at this photo I can see that she needs a good wipe down. She must be feeling very neglected.

A corner of one of my bookshelves - these are some of the books that inspire me when I'm doing arty crafty stuff.

A traditional African wooden bowl full of seeds from a coral tree that I collected during a visit to Grahamstown last year. In South Africa we call them lucky beans and as their name suggests they are thought to bring good luck.

And finally, a mobile that hangs in my study/studio. I found it at the big African market at Hartebeespoort dam, about an hour north of Johannesburg.