Sunshine on window boxes

At about this time of year, I start to get hopeful. The mornings get lighter. I start to leave work as the sun sets, looking at my beautiful adopted city bathed in impossible - and impossible to photograph - colours. Then it gets lighter earlier still, and soon I'll be leaving the office in daylight. The quality of light starts to change - this could be fanciful, but it starts to feel stronger, richer. It is still freezing cold outside most days, but it starts to become possible to believe that some time soon, spring will come.

Not knitting! Emily Peacock Cross Stitch kit

When I was little, I loved counted cross stitch. I loved carefully following a diagram, and turning a blank sheet of fabric into a picture. I loved how complex shapes could be made from lots of tiny squares, and how the texture of the fabric could be completely changed as each square was replaced with a stitch. And I loved the calming effect of carefully putting the needle through the fabric, again, and again, and again.

Kitchen!

So, finally, pictures of the kitchen.

The backstory, if you've missed it, was that we were planning on ripping out our kitchen and starting again, but then the husband lost his job and we reconsidered, and decided to spend much less on buying new storage baskets, fixing broken cabinets, getting an electrician in to fix certain lights and replace others, and painting the doors, walls and tiles.

We'd done everything bar the painting in the previous few weeks, so, after watching bits of the royal wedding despite ourselves, we got to it with the rest of the long weekend.

We started with the walls with one coat emulsion in 'vanilla', and then did the tiles with special tile paint which only came in three colours - we went for the blue one. Then the units were painted with white gloss paint desired for the purpose, which we can still smell, a week later. The Husband spray painted all the handles black.

We split the painting work over two days - long drying times between coats for the tile and cabinet paints made this the most practical way of doing it. On top of this, there was probably half a day's work scraping out sealant and cleaning down before, and a similar amount putting the sealant back in and attempting to remove paint from where it had splashed after things had dried.

Then the paint needed a couple of days to harden before it could be exposed to moisture/steam, which meant cooking was severely limited for a couple of days more.

Most of the paint was easy enough to work with - the gloss on the cabinets being particularly satisfying. The tile paint, however, was evil - so thick it was impossible not to leave brush strokes, and yet still prone to dribble. The finish looks great from a distance, but if you're painting tiles, I'd suggest only doing it if you absolutely hate the tiles you have, like we did.
The handles look a bit retro but were in too bad a state to be left as they were, and we didn't want to spend the extra money on new ones.

All in all, I'd say we spent about £450 - £150 on paint and brushes, £180 on the electrician, and the rest on the storage baskets. We'd have spent at least six times that on a new kitchen, and I have to say, I'm pretty pleased with the result.

There's one more exciting part of the kitchen project to come, when a new bin arrives in a couple of weeks. However, that's probably too boring to blog about!

Tannin stains and rubber gloves

Just a quickie today. I mentioned last week that I got Nigella's Kitchen for Christmas. And as well as cooking from it, I enjoy reading it - I love Nigella's prose style, and her desperate attempts to convince us that she never puts in any effort.

At the beginning of the book, there was a section of the old-style tips and tricks that are now fashionble again - bicarb and vinegar soaks, that sort of thing. One was soaking stained mugs with vinegar and warm water to remove tannin stains. I tried it. It worked... ish, if you gave it a good scrub afterwards.

So I thought I'd share a technique my mother taught me, that her mother taught her, that actually work, and that I haven't read anywhere.

Excuse the different light levels in these pictures. If you haven't realised by now, our kitchen has no natural light. I took the mug into a different room for the before and after pix, but the actual cleaning happened in the kitchen.

Before. Yuck.

It's incredibly simple, quick and satisfying. Rinse the mug and don't dry it so there's still a bit of water in there, put on rubber gloves and pour a teaspoon or so of salt onto your fingers.

(You do need the rubber gloves by the way. You're using the salt as an abrasive, to scrape off the stains, and you don't want to do that to your skin).

Salt, rubber gloves, dirty mug.

Then just use the salt to scrub at the stains for a few seconds. They'll disappear and the mug will come up clean, and you can then wash the mug up as usual to make sure that your next cuppa doesn't taste of salt.

Ta-da!

Then put the kettle on and make a cup of tea. Just to make sure it's worked.

Omens

When The Husband and I first moved in together, many moons ago (well, three and a half years ago), my Aunt bought us a stephanotis as a house warming present. It had the prettiest white flowers and, as she gave it to us, she said it symbolised marital happiness.

Which meant that over the past few months, as it has been conveying its extreme displeasure and generally giving up on life, I've been a bit nervy.

This report has also been giving me cause for concern. Widely reported over the past few days, it states that the happiest couples are young, married and childless - all good so far - and have been together for less than five years. The Husband and I have been together for four years and eight months. Suddenly I've started hearing the Countdown clock in the background!

So when the stephanotis finally turned up its toes and died the other day, I decided to take action. I've binned it (or sent The Husband out to bin it - what that says about marital happiness is a whole different post) and replaced it with something with, as far as I'm aware, no symbolism attached.

In M&S I fell in love with this pretty plant in its vintage-style jug. I know if would have been far smarter of me to buy a vintage jug and a plant separately, but this wasn't planned shopping, it was M&S impulse buying while popping in for milk (um. Poppadums, actually. Oops). It's labelled a Campanula, with nothing on what type of variety it is. I can't find anything on the internet because there are so many different types - known as harebells in England and bluebells in Scotland apparently - and all have different lifespans.

But in many ways the lack of information is a good thing. I'll enjoy it while it lasts, and because I have no idea how long that's supposed to be, I won't feel guilty when it turns up its toes and dies. And at least I can reuse the jug.

Which is not a metaphor for marriage.