(Cue "Chariots of Fire Music") THE RACE IS ON!

Aaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm so rubbish at keeping secrets!!! That's all I can say!!!

So, my bedroom, the recipient of the goods purchased during my slight offence.

The old boudoir was looking really rather tired and unexciting, so I was thrilled when my lovely Step Mother bought me a hand printed Indian throw for my birthday a couple of weeks ago. It's the tree of life, printed with beautiful bold colours and it really is gorgeous. My favourite colour in there is the blue of the birds and the flowers, so, inspired by that, I chucked a bit of blue paint on the wall behind the bed and the wall in front.

For a long time, I've dreamed of having a bed canopy. To tell the truth, I'd really rather like a four poster, but the room's far too small for that. Having "cooked" the idea for a couple of days, I took down the incredibly long white muslin curtains that I did have at the window (the window looks out onto a hillside, nothing else, so we NEVER close the curtains) and the damask cotton curtain I had up dressing it, and I gave them a good long soak in some bio washing powder. I cut a 3/4 inch diameter dowelling rod in half and had hubby attach a pine door knob to each end, then I Bri Waxed it in a dark tone and left it to dry. I then measured up the wall behind and ceiling above the bed, and screwed in some cup hooks to the ceiling and wall. When the rods were dry, I hung the muslin on one rod and hung it from the ceiling hooks. I then took the other rod in front of the drapes, and lifted the weight of it, hooking the rod onto the wall. The result - a rather attractive and romantic lightweight bed canopy for no money, adding instant height to the room. God, I'm good.

Then the three mirrors came into play, to reflect the drapes, the colour and the light as it's not a huge room. Add in the lanterns hung from the ceiling and it looks lovely in the day, but by night it's magical.

The same day that I was putting all this together, I went to visit my good friend down the road. She had a rather badly painted but lovely pine mirror ready to be thrown out. Bizarrely, as usual for me, the corners of the mirror had detail that EXACTLY matched the bedroom colours, so after a day of paint removal and wire wool treatment, when I finally waxed the mirror in the same shade as the rods, it finished the room fantastically. I should add that my rather clever Husband rescued and renovated the fabulous chest of drawers that the mirror lives on from our garage. It was there when we moved in, all old and unloved and I quite liked the look of it. Isn't it fantastic? He is clever!

So, in the last day, I've been working on Squeaky's combined Birthday/Christmas present. Rather unusual as her Birthday is in July. But, if she will decide to swan off to the other side of the world (Spain) with her chums, then I'm not going to see her for her 21st Birthday (sniff!), so she'll have to have one big pressie. I love making things for her because she's such a big fan of all things homemade. Myself, Meg and her fab friend Chloe spent most of yesterday drawing squares on to denim remnants and cutting them out to make said present. I decided to make her a bag (what girl in the world has enough bags!?) and I have been saving denim off cuts to make it. It now looks rather like a flattened cube, all the pieces are attached and I'm just waiting on the delivery of my heavy duty thread so that I can machine it all together. It's well nice, if I do say so myself. I'm now saving denim again because I want one too. I'm thinking weekend bag for me as I don't really have anything for that purpose so I could really use it. There's not a lot else I can do for that at the moment, so it's on to the next thing. Christmas sacks for the little ones. I'm just about to start on that now.

It's my Friday day off, so, once I've taken and uploaded the photos to go on, then it's cutting, sewing and creating. Oh and coffee. A LOT of coffee.