Lately

The weather here this last week has been utterly mental - beautiful sunshine & bbq weather one day & then torrential rain & woodburner-going foul weather the next!  It's a well known fact that you can experience 4 seasons in one day in Scotland - and we do frequently! - so when we do have a lovely day, we just have to get out & enjoy it.

We're so fortunate to live in a lovely village with a huge country park just a 2 minute walk from home so this is where we usually head with smallest child on his bike & mad hound in tow.  Conveniently, it's also the walk we have to take en route to the pub, not that it's been warm enough to sit out in the beer garden yet!

However, Murphy (aka Turtle, for some unknown reason!) is happiest just sat at my feet as I sit in my office typing out my blog posts & updating the school website I run (www.monikieprimaryschool.co.uk in case you want a peek!!)

I've been feeling like a need a project to work on again since finishing the school library & after talking to my friend the other day, we've decided we're going to start restoring & updating furniture again.  She used to do it years ago before she had children & I used to do it when we lived in France so we've decided to join forces & start up a wee enterprise.  When I think of the beautiful old pieces I used to find in brocantes & vide greniers, I could cry that I'm so far away now!!  My speciality back then was to revamp old beds, particularly lits corbeille & lits bateau.  I loved transforming  them from manky old pieces that looked like they were fit only for the bonfire to beautiful, repainted & reupholstered beds.  I'll try & hunt out some old before & after photos.  I also had some stunning old armoires too but unfortunately, when we moved back to the UK, we had to sell most of the pieces we had, booo!  I also did an upholstery course years ago but I might do another course to refresh my memory.  I've still got the kit though so I'm part-way there!

Anyhoo, we've stocked up on our first few pieces of furniture, fabric & Annie Sloan supplies & tomorrow.....we paint!!  I'm actually really looking forward to it & just from talking to a few friends about it, we've already got 3 people interested to see what we do & one lady has specifically asked if we can find & restore a dresser for her!  

So watch this space folks, there could be a new business about to be born!!  Exciting stuff......!

Library overhaul part 1

 

How bad have I been on the old blogging front lately?  I know, terrible but in my defence, I have a great excuse!!

 

About a month ago, myself & 2 other mums from my son's school were asked if we'd help to set up a new library in the school.  We were all really keen to do this as quite frankly, the existing 'library' was pretty shocking ie. a couple of bookcases in a hallway!

 

First of all, we took over what was the music room & special education needs room & realised they both needed blitzing as the décor was extremely bleurgh!  We along with the head teacher, spent a morning visiting some local school libraries to see what they'd done with them & came back bursting with ideas.  After much debating, we decided to keep the walls neutral & then add colour with posters, murals & displays.

 

So work began last week!  After 6 hours of de-stapling & filling the walls in the horrible school-toilet-blue SEN room, the first of many coats of magnolia went on the walls.  We just have to now paint the tiles & cupboard doors in here & we'll have a blank canvas to work from.  This will now become a reading area & the music room.

 

The room which used to be the music room will now become the library & again, the walls have been neutralised & are ready to go!  We've already sifted through a couple of thousand books & binned the old, ripped books & are selling the ones we no longer want/need.  Any left over will go to charity.

 

We've installed the Junior Librarian software on our pc & this'll get set up on our fab new reception desk that my lovely hubby is making for the school!

 

So after the painting is completed this week, we'll begin the huge task of updating the book catalogue & then making a list of the many, many new books we have to buy - this part I'm really looking forward to!

 

We organised a Pamper Night fundraiser which was held last Friday night & we raised over £700 to go towards books & resources for the library, which was fantastic!  So apologies for being MIA for a few weeks, but being at the school day long & then getting home & catching up on housework etc has left me short on time!

 

Here's what we've been doing so far......

 

 

 

 

 

I can't wait to put the final photos of the finished library up......watch this space!!