My ‘Drive yourself crazy project’ - Mrs Puddifoot’s tea shop!

Have you ever had a drive yourself crazy project? I haven’t up until now! :oP Overall I’d say I was decisive and know what I want! Well….Mrs Puddifoot’s took the opposite of all that to a new dimension! The irony is, that this shop was supposed to be a little in-fill project whilst my Art Mache matured ready for me to complete the brick work on Sugar Plum’s sweet shop!    

There has been up and until now very little info about the tea shop….Mrs Puddifoot’s love’s pink and her shop is kitsch…yes…tons and tons of worth while info to chew on there huh! NOT! Lol  :oP

So the style was kitsch and there are two types, I decided to go with Cath Kidston style and looking at lots of pretty wall papers, I then decided that perhaps this wouldn’t go with my bistro style chair and tables…and changed to the other style of kitsch! I looked at lots and bought lots….only to find the real shop is in the style of my original choice! Lol Over weeks I’ve changed my mind on the type of lights and where to have them, types and brands of paints, about cornicing, skirting board and tongue and groove…I've over bought and under bought! You name it, I’ve done it! I’ve been undecided on the type of fire surround and stove to have for the upstairs kitchen…do I want more space or less!? To top it all, I finally learn that the outside of the shop is you guessed it…. PINK! What on earth was I thinking with cream and blue? Lol Where did my few active brain cells go on those days…not in my head that’s for certain! Yes, all the things to drive you crazy and barking mad! lol  !   

I did have a plan this year too, and that was to work on the outsides of my projects and get those completed and then start on the insides, well that went to pot and I have absolutely no idea how nor why! So! I am going to purchase the wall paper upstairs for the tea shop, paint the furniture I am waiting to be made (for downstairs) and then make a hasty retreat (without tiling the tea shops roof and this is because I still have work to do on the upstairs kitchen) and resume work on Sugar Plum’s Sweet Shop and my terrace of Diagon Alley shops….the ’outsides only’ if you please, and this will be during when my cabin's interior paintwork gets finished too! Lol ;oP                

So here was I trying to decide between fireplaces...I did originally have 3! The black one is a better size for the room, but the white one is more like the one at Universal Studios. It will be painted....wait and see! 

After a few days of still trying to decide what fireplace to have, I realised I'd have to make a hearth for this one...

This one comes with its own hearth...but I thought I might make a larger one. :o/

I decided to take the bull by the horns and make a hearth! I used an off cut of the tongue and groove and covered it with a thick mix of Richard Stacey's Modelling Dust, etc.  

I finally decided to go for the much smaller fireplace. It really is a bedroom fireplace..but it's the most likeness to the real one. This one though didn't have a back, so I cut a thin piece of card out and covered with air drying clay. You can see the outline of the back of my fireplace here. I didn't actually need to do that, I could have just bricked it and then placed it in situ.  Always wiser after the event I find! lol :oP 

Here it is wonky brick and all! lol It's going to be painted and you won't see it as you can't get  your head around that kind of angle once in situ. ;o)

The hearth is dry and trying for size...

I would prefer to have the top rail on top of the tongue and groove, but it throws the fireplace out, so it will lay on the upper part of the tongue and groove. 

The nightmare wallpaper (cutting and papering around nightmare shaped windows! lol) is in....and trying the 'look'!

The tea shop has 'steamy windows', so it says...hmmmm....this is an experiment. Not sure whether to have it, it does make the window opaque, but you can still see through it.

Hmmmmm.....undecided, so no acetate glued in situ yet!!!!

 The window frames painted their final colour. and trying looks...with (dry)painty hands!

Finally....my What-not (it needs to be dressed!) is on the wall and so is my giant pocket wall clock (which says the wrong time because it has no battery in it yet!). lol Pictures will fill the blank space. ;o) (Psst, I don't have a leaky cabin, that's the sealant showing through and paint just won't cover it...we've tried painting over it on the other side of the cabin with limited success! lol).

I have been working on my terrace of shops for Diagon Alley...that post will be along very shortly! 

I have also put a link at the top of this blog for my other blog. I don't have enough access to pages on this one so they will be shown on there, maybe with tutorials too....more soon! 

I hope you don’t mind my ramblings and madness! :o))

Michelle xxxx

My Cabin has blinds, curtains and the garden gets its lawn.

This is just a little interim post before I show you an update on my mini work! My cabin's blinds and curtains are made (by my Mum) and fitted. They are are non working and are there just to soften the look. The lower gathered ones are white polker dot on pink.

 This photo was taken before the the upper blinds for the long windows were fitted. 

 I just need to buy the wooden blind pulls (it's just pink cord at the moment). 

Our turf for our lawn was delivered on Friday and my Dad laid it the same day...well it's only the size of a postage stamp! Hard donkey work all the same. :o) He applied a layer of compost before the turf went down. 

Here it is the day it was all laid. It had a good watering in and the next day we had a deluge of very heavy rain (us and 2 other villages lost power for most of Saturday because of 3 downed power cables). :o(  

 It will need lots of water for a while...

It's so great to have something green to look at...it's so calming on the eye compared to soil or hard standing etc.

 The view from my cabin today...the lawn has already grown some! :o))) There are still odd jobs that need to be completed still but it's mostly there now. :o)

I will answer comments on my previous post ASAP! A mini update probably tomorrow. ;o)

I hope you don’t mind my ramblings and madness! :o))

Michelle xxxx

My cabin gets its window boxes and my garden

My window boxes are on and now planted up! I did change a couple of plants (bush fuchsia's ) and this was only because I want the windows open in the hot weather and they'd get damaged as they are fairly rigid, so I opted for all softer stemmed plants and trailing plants.  

The warm weather has made them all grow and most are now either in bloom or will be. Only the roses won't bloom this year.

 I like to pop out there daily and see the changes...

It's settling down now. ;o)

I'm thrilled with it. We did try and get the fabric for the curtains and blinds, but they didn't have what I wanted, so tomorrow we will go to another shop.   

The Angel's Choir Poppies, they need to be 3 times this sized and fully acclimatised before they can be planted outside.

 We've planted up the spare fuchsia's in other receptacles! lol

I just need to do my half barrel which will be filled with water and have water plants and small log for the water loving things to climb out. :o) The lawn can't be laid until the soil is settled down, that bench still tends to sink abit when more than one person sits on it'! lol The soil needs more stomping on! lol 

The garden down the side of my cabin has been planted up too. It has a loganberry and a tayberry plus 2 climbing roses, wild strawberries and sweet peas in an old wash tub that was left here in the garden when we moved in.    

This is what we call the pottery. Terracotta pots have been placed in the branches of a chopped down self sown tree (it's not dead as we thought it might be) and so it has nicely softened the look. Terracotta pots are also half buried in the soil too. The soil here is extremely dry due to the Spanish bay tree, the soil is chock-a-block with roots too, so anything that is planted here needs to be small going in and like it dry and fairly shaded. 

This is our small water feature (the tree) where water runs down and flows back.  My Dad hasn't completed the electrics for it yet. It will be fully planted up with more ferns and hosta's, it will emulate woodland.

 It's all rather stark and contrived looking at the moment, in time it will soften.

 We have a small (bought) bare rooted cherry tree (Stella variety) to the far right.

 The two new purple leafed trees don't grow anymore than 18 feet high.  

The two smaller window boxes made from the left overs from mine. My Mum would have preferred the front wood panels to match each other...if you look closely you can see what I mean. Once the trailing plants grow they will cover the fronts and the differences won't show. :o)    

The fence trellis has been added to support my evergreen honeysuckle, I will have a 'living fence' of green all year. :o) I have some sweet peas (out of view) growing there too...till the honeysuckle gets going.  

There are two buddliea's here, a hardy fuchsia and two non hardy ones. The viburnum was already there.

These two confers are going to be planted into the two black pots in the front garden. They are very slow growing and won't outgrow the pots for many years.

The red and yellow bed is settling in and will in years to come stand out against the green confers already in situ. The red (tree version) forest pansy is just breaking out into leaf. They are always one of the last things to do so, many people think they are dead, they are not...just slow to break from winter dormancy. 

 To the right, you can just about see my blue spruce tree!  

 I can't wait for it to grow more! lol

We are going to try and pull that bottom branch out...it's been shoved up against something whilst at the nursery (we only had a choice of two to chose from and this was the better one of the two). 

There are 3 wild ducks that live down our road, they live on the river at the bottom of it. One of them has had 9 babies! Here they are in their make shift pond-let in our garden! lol They have a lot of fun in that! lol  

 Quack, quack Mrs Duck! :o)

I hope you don’t mind my ramblings and madness! :o))

Michelle xxxx