News flash: I found a charity shop in Annecy!

Who would have thought? There may not be 15 charity shops scattered in the main shopping area like there was in St Annes in the UK, but there actually IS the equivalent if a HUGE charity shop right here in Annecy, literally a ten-minute walk from me! I found out about it on an Expat Forum.

As the van says, it's called Bazar sans Frontieres. It's a association that provides employment opportunities for socially disadvantaged people, much like the Goodwill that I know and love in Canada. The website has different numbers but the French gent with whom I spoke says the organization employs 24 such people on site.

The place is huge, consisting of several buildings in which you'll find clothing, furniture, and books/bric-a-brac. Those are the French Alps in the background, BTW.

Outside there's stuff like old basins and tubs. I thought this iron day bed was particularly French!

You wouldn't believe the furniture building - two floors of it! The first floor is lined with solid wood armoires starting as low at 150 Euros!

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you may remember, from my Toronto apartment, my penchant for green velvet.

Sigh. Retro velvet just doesn't excite me anymore.

But if I could have turned this tapestry chair into a handbag, I would have in a flash.

I can't quite banish velvet from my thoughts though: I hauled hubby back one rainy day last week to look a this brown velvet loveseat. I thought it was quite French looking. He hated it, alas.

You may recall the 20-some lamps I had in Toronto, most of which were thrifted, and then given away when I moved overseas (the ones I couldn't part with are at my Mom's for safe-keeping). Now we are lampless in Annecy. I picked up this green baby for 6 Euros as I liked the shape. I left the shade there as it stank of the smoke of 10,000 cigarettes. Now I need to find a shade. I can never remember what 'lampshade' is in French, so my phrase of choice is when asking shop keepers: "Quelque chose pour mettre sur un lumiere,"  and then some sign language and an air drawing in the shape of a triangle. Oh dear, no wonder I'm not finding one.

I found five paisley boho napkins for 1 Euro total.

They totally complement the paisley tablecloth, pictured underneath, that I found at last month's brocante market in Annecy for 6 Euros!

Here's a quick peep at the table with its new covering. Tres French, n'est ce pas?

So is this wee stool, picked up for 7 Euros, which now reposes at the foot of our bed. Why?

Because my darling 16-year old little stinker loves hanging on the bed, and she has difficulty getting onto it sometimes. Our lovely new Ralph Lauren duvet cover is slowly getting ruined with pick marks as she claws her way to the top, poor wee thing.

The little fart jumped on it right away and slept on it for a total of three days. Now it doesn't exist. Off her radar completely. She looks like the Cat that Ate New York or something here, teehee.

The housewares building was a gold mine of inexpensive ceramics, pottery, bowls etc. Check out this "Made in Annecy" pottery serving plate - boho gorg and only .80 cents! This would be a great place to come and suss out local pottery etc for souvenirs.

My crowning achievement that day: finding these Made in France corkscrews made out of dried grape vines, for 1 Euro each!!!. My bro-in-law has one from France that he loves that broke, so guess what he's getting for his B-day pressie?

In fact, every one I know and love is getting one as they're FAB souvenirs. Most have teeny metal plaques screwed into them identifying the maker and place of origin - this one says Annecy Le Vieux, which is a suburb of Annecy.

I'm so obsessed with these things that I cleaned them out (five in total). Then I went back a few days later and found another for .50 cents. Score!

For now they comprise an 'artful' centrepiece when piled in a French-made bowl (bought new) and sitting atop an April Cornell tablecloth purchased recently on Etsy (I had, like, ten tablecloths in Canada and - surprise surprise - I gave them ALL away, duh).

I have more show and tell but will leave it at that tonight. Have a wonderful weekend every one!

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My fave thrifty decor creations

Now that I'm married to a contemporary streamlined decor kind of guy, I've had to make some major style concessions in our new home together - and indeed, most of what you see in these photos are no longer in my possession, sigh. Not to say that our newly painted living room (pics coming soon) won't have a wee bit of boho injected into it, but let's just say, compromises have been made - on both sides. This post will honour a couple of looks I created in my old Toronto apartment, using salvaged curbside pieces and thrifty decor finds.

TRASH: An ex brought me this wooden dining room table with flip up table extentions - so cool. He found it in the trash. Though it had heaps of shiny paint and varnish on it, I still liked it. The white vinyl chair - covered in a dollar store faux fur rug and velvet pillow - was another garbage find; so too was the curved chrome chair at the front.

THRIFT SHOP FINDS: The silver chair in the back was part of a set of four salvaged at the Salvation Army in Ottawa years ago, spraypainted silver by moi and then covered with a silver tablecloth from the dollar store - tres grunge chic. Ditto for the painting, wall lamp, and handpainted bowl. The lamp was a junk shop find.

BOUGHT NEW BUT INEXPENSIVELY: The curtains were on sale in a fabric shop, tied with ribbon from a gift. I found the heavy crystal Art Deco style vase at a dollar store, if you can believe it. The large black and white photo was a gift, and the two smaller ones are old photos of me that I framed with inexpensive white mattes and frames.
INSPIRATION FOR VIGNETTE: I love the droopy tulips. I had a dinner party the evening before and someone brought them to me after walking through minus 30 degrees temperatures - so they wilted, rather artfully I think. I started with the vase and tulips on the table and went from there.

INSPIRATION FOR VIGNETTE: I really, really loved this creation - I call it my boho corner. The fun thing about this look was that it was created in the dining room space of my one bedroom apartment - but I said, what the hell, let's put the living room in the dining room - something my best friend and I did when we were 20 and living in our first apartment together.

TRASH: The loveseat, a Barrymore made in Canada gem (covered with an inexpensive slipcover from Zellers, a Canadian store) that a beau from years ago hauled out of a dumpster (actually, there were two, and I go them both).  Blue velvet chair: a curbside find in Toronto, as was the amazing wooden console dresser.

THRIFT FINDS: The Chinese style lamp was a Value Village find and the blue shade was also from the thrift shop; the Indian carpet was found at a junk store along with the head vase on the large console; the large mirror and painting balanced on it were both thrift store finds and so were the wooden oval, silver wrought iron and glass/brass tables.

BOUGHT NEW: The boho cushion on the chair was found in Saskatchewan about a decade ago, and the striped silk pillow on the sofa was part of a pair, also purchased new and splurge items if memory serves. The rest of the pillows were thrifted.

LOVE: The green Star Trek decanter on the console (see pic one up) - a gift from my best friend. It belonged to her folks and came with eight teeny shot glasses that matched.
Sadly, though I managed to sell/donate a lot of the smaller items, most of the larger furniture pieces were left curbside in Toronto when I moved. I tried to to donate the furniture to charity shops but they are so under-resourced they could not pick them up. Hopefully some like-minded folk picked up my stash left in front of my apartment.

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Let me indulge in some shameless husband-bragging, because after all, I am feeling slightly like a fish out of water in the UK as I re-learn basic tasks like shopping, crossing the street and performing mundane domestic duties with electronic devices that flabbergast me ... and my new hubby, bless him, has done every thing to make me so welcome in my new home: after sending me a dozen roses for Valentine's Day before I came over, I arrived to our home to find a lovely bouquet of flowers and "New Home" card. Aww, could I love him more? People here put flower bouquets in their windows, btw.

The flowers are apropos as they're every where: Spring has hit this tiny coastal town, and we're not talking mere crocuses: I saw full-grown daffoldils in someone's front yard the other day! I'm amazed at the green here - I suppose that, without the snow we get in Canada, that the grass just doesn't turn brown - period. Then there's the rain here, but then again I'm also surprised on this front as I expected continual torrents of the stuff - not so. The weather, I've quickly learned, changes on a dime, and clouds and rain can blow in one minute and give way the next to blue skies and sunshine.

The sea is lovely - that's an old covered pier behind me. The tide comes in every 12 hours, and when it's low tide people walk with their dogs along the beach. Maybe they even sun tan in the summer, though they don't get the scorchers we get in Canada, alas. In fact I'm already beginning to think I won't be able to wear any of my cute sundresses here - that is, if the woman I spoke to recently is in fact right. According to her, a high of 17 degrees C is all I can hope for, yeeks!

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Funny? Psycho? Bunny cake home made by Mom

Ok, he didn't look like much to start. But my Mom had high hopes for the bunny cake. She started off with two circular cake pans. Dad - the engineer - was able to cut the head from one of the circles (Mom and I could never have managed that). The ears, legs and arms were made from the scraps.

Here's the boiled icing my mother boiled over the stove for, like, 20 hours. Ok. Maybe not that long. Who has ever heard of boiled icing? Apparently it was the only kind for Mr. Bunny as we (Mom) wanted it to spread smoothly over the parts of the cake that had been cut to make the head etc. Gotcha.

Then there was the arduous task of icing the bunny - not easy with boiled icing, let me tell you. The thing with boiled icing is it doesn't stay very liquid-y for long. Plus it's sticky as hell. So you need to spread fast before it solidifies into one big mass of sugary goop.

Kitty was pretty freaked out too. Or awe-inspired? Hard to tell!

Yes, the bunny looked pretty damn strange - let's admit it: scary - with all the white shiny icing on it. Like it had been dropped in a huge vat of Vaseline - or worse, boiled icing.

Thank God! Bunny is looking, well, more bunny-ish, thanks to some pink ears, jelly eyes and nose, and liquorice whiskers and claws!

Whew. The bunny's not funny or psycho. Just a cute big white bunny made with boiled icing, liqcorice and jelly tots! Love the home made thing; sorry I doubted you Mom! (not that I really did).

BTW, Mom tells me her mother used to make cakes "on the farm" with boiled icing as boiled icing could be made with all the ingredients you'd have on hand (ie: did not require icing sugar). Too bad the old-fashioned way took so long, but I guess they always do, no?

Happy Easter every one! In case you're wondering, the bunny was yummy, boiled icing and all.

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More memories from childhood home

As I was telling you in yesterday's post about my childhood home that was just torn down, my sisters and I, and our friends, spent a lot of time playing outside when we were growing up, and the memories abound. Here's my twin (left) and I with our childhood cat, Cleo (who followed us home when we were 13 and lived for 20 years!), on the day we were confirmed in the United church, age 14. Our backyard was so lovely. My sis was married ten years after this photo was taken, near the trees you see behind us.(Please forgive picture quality; I don't have a scanner so I've taken pictures of pictures for this and yesterday's post!).

Another fun memory when we were in our early 20s, after we had moved away to school etc: the annual Easter boat race in the creek across the house. We'd bring the boyfriends home for Easter weekend, and in the afternoon, we'd craft boats out of newspaper and race them in the rushing waters of the creek. There was always beer involved, as you can see. We did this for only a few years but it's still a great memory.

Lots of memories from inside the tiny house too. The white wall-mounted phone by the back door and kitchen table (which used to be black in the really old days). The Captain's chair was at the end of the table and at mealtime, Dad always sat there. But when it wasn't meal time and the phone rang, that chair was where we sat and gabbed.

In fact the kitchen table was the place we'd congregate, after mealtime and at different parts of the day - doing homework when teens; playing Trivia Pursuit with the fam after dinner; or just having tea and talking. Here I am (middle) with my sisters, celebrating our birthdays in the early 1990s.

We'd also hang a lot as a family in the tiny family room, which housed a large and very beautiful Persian rug, a big sectional on which we all lounged, teak bookcases filled with books, and artifacts from my Dad's travels to South Africa, China and Australia. Here are the three sisters in their early 20s, all home for Christmas, wearing our new robes given to us by a close family friend.

A silly yet intimate photo of my Dad (me, looking scary in the middle) and twin, again in the early 1990s after we had left home. Can you see the black wire running up to my lap? I'm pretty sure that was a remote control for our VCR! RETRO!!

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Tribute to my childhood home

This is a black and white photo taken of the back of my childhood home in 1994 (not scanned but rather I took a pic of it), just moments before my twin sis was married in our lovely backyard.

Here's that same home some 14 years later when my Mom and I went to visit it in 2008, a good eight years after they moved out. The home was empty, but it was trashed and delapitated and so sad.

And, as one of my oldest friends told me over Facebook the other day, that house has now been torn down. So I'm going to share some of my fave memories and pics of the home I grew up in and lived in until I was 19!

The First Day of School shot under the kitchen window at the back of the house (I'm on the left and my twin is on the right) was an annual ritual. This is us our first day of grade 9.

Here we are again (me on the right this time) in the front yard in April in the early-mid 1970s with our blue ponchos. Aren't we bloody cute? We grew up in the country so we played outside all the time. Every tree and field carries a lovely memory.

Our beautiful lilac bush in the front yard, close to where the poncho pic was snapped, was always a glory. We would snip the fragrant branches off and pile them in huge rose bowls placed in front of windows, so the sweet lilacy scent would blow throughout the house.

Here I am wearing an emerald green dress with mega shoulder pads (next to my Mom on the left) in the Spring of 1988, when I was a mere 18. Sigh. Collagen is another thing that's disappeared over the years.

In 2008, that same lilac bush, which had been transplanted years earlier to accommodate a new well (yes I kid you not: we grew up with a well). You can see the overgrowth and general crap littered throughout the yard.

Behind the lilac bush up a gently sloping hill was what we called The Sandpile, essentially a sandy field that farmers attempted to plant in for years. But when my sis and I were really young, it was just a sandpile, and we would play in it even though it was a good five minute walk from home. We could see the house from our vantage point up the hill, and I'll never forget Mom and her friend, who were having coffee in the house on day when we were playing in the pile, telling us  to wave our arms if we wanted help and they would see us.

By the time I was 14 when this silly pic was taken (in May of 1984 - can you see the 'rat's tail' at the back of my short hair cut? I imported the look from England a few months earlier after a school trip there and was the first in my school to have one, ahem. Then every one got one and I chopped mine off), the farmers had abandoned The Sandpile again. I used to love coming up here in my angsty teen years. I'd watch the beautiful sunsets to the west. It was calming, and a very special memory.

That sandpile in 2008: grown over. Barely recognizable; kind of like you'd image the decay described in The Day of the Triffids to unfold.

I'll end on a happier note: Christmas in the early-mid 1970s, with my twin (standing) and me (with almost blond hair? Maybe it was the light) in front of the gift that henceforth and throughout our childhood was called The Little Table. The green metal table with vinyl floral top and chair covers was set up permanently in the kitchen, and when company came over, my sisters and I would dine at it.Otherwise we'd use it for Tea Parties.

That Little Table is still in my parents' basement! My sister used it when her kids were growing up!!

More to come tomorrow. Thanks for reading.

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