Are you sitting comfortably?

Black velour chesterfield chair.

When I was little (really little) my mother would listen to The Archers and I would accompany her, not listening to the series at all, but simply waiting for 'my programme' to begin. Listen with Mother was a highlight of my day. Despite our family being fortunate enough to have a telly set well before televisions were commonplace, I don't remember watching it much before I was 7 years old, but Listen with Mother was my (almost) daily friend. I remember my mum lifting me up so that I could sit on the kitchen worksurface to listen intently to the voice that filled our kitchen.

In our drawing room we had splendid 1960's 3 piece suite, grey nylon, course short hairy fabric and everso firm, it was filled I think with horsehair as I remember the prickly feeling of it on the back of my legs. I am sure my parents would have had something that was very a la mode, I have always admired their sense of style and their ability to put items together to create an up to the minute look or forward thinking style.

In the very early seventies, we spent quite a bit of time in Scandinavia and when my parents had an extension built onto their house in Gloucestershire, they asked the architect to create a Swedish style room. They created an open plan, high ceiling room with vast pine beams and windows set into the wall near the ceiling (about 12 feet up the wall). A huge window seat ran along the whole length of one wall with a big picture window to look out of. Two enormous sofas covered in William Morris's Golden Lily (in brown) graced the space and a chrome and glass coffee table sat between them. They used accessories that we had bought in an amazing furnishing store in Sweden, my friends were in awe at the newness, the unusual style and the chicness of these things. I guess in 1974 IKEA was unheard of in the UK!

Without realising it, Mum and Dad influenced my future business by subtly instilling in me an appreciation of my surroundings and sense of what goes together, what works and what doesn't. I realise more and more that nowadays I may not share someones love of a particular look or style, but I can really appreciate the concept behind it or the care with which things have been selected or placed together.

Red toile de Jouy cushion with feather inner.
This is one of the reasons why I stock such a variety of ranges of furniture, not because I can't make up my mind, but because I realise that one person's grey, itchy coarse hairy sofa is another persons dream piece of furniture.
Chat soon, Liz
All images and text copyright Pretty Practicals 2007 and 2008 except where stated.

Pretty Practicals on show

Wow! What a wonderful experience.

I'm home from the Homebuilding and Renovating Show at NEC, which lasted for 4 days and was brilliant fun (that's dreadful grammer, please forgive me). We met so many lovely people and it was so nice to be able to display our furniture and accessories on a room setting, so that visitors could touch them and feel the quality and see how well things worked together.

A film crew from S4C's Wedi 7 programme came and did a bit of filming on our stand (it should be on telly sometime this week) and although we couldn't understand most of what was said to camera, I got the gist of the conversation. It made me wish that I had learnt a little more Welsh in the time that we have lived here.

Just to explain (for our visitors from overseas) that here in Wales we have some different television programmes to the rest of UK and a Welsh language channel. For people like myself who do not have satelite or cable television and who also have very poor television reception because we are tucked between mountains, our telly viewing options go something like this.. BBC1 - the snowy fuzzy version, BBC2 - clear viewing on most days except when I desperately want to watch something and then it seems to develop vertical snowy bands running across the screen, ITV1 - good picture most of the time and S4C (which stands for channel 4 Wales) - great picture, great sound, mostly in Welsh which I don't understand! Since we moved to Rhayader, we have been DVD watchers.

But I digress... the show... was better than I ever imagined it could be, was busier than I dared hope it would be and was more fun than is polite to admit to since I was working flat out. If anyone is ever wondering if they should do this show, my thoughts would be yes it's great show with a huge variety of stands and a really good forum for displaying your products (and everyone was really friendly).

Today I am exhausted, but luckily, as the shop is closed on a Monday; I have spent the day at home recouperating and relaxing. Tomorrow I will head back into the office to start packing all the orders from the last few days and getting everything as organised as it should be.
Dave has done really well in the shop while I have been absent, but as it is not his domain, there are lots of little bits and pieces to sort out. If he goes away for a few days, I can't even begin to start doing his work as I have no idea how to program in languages that he uses, to do 'the brain surgery' of our website or how to manage our webserver, so it was great that he coped with the basics of my role in our business as well as he did.

Cecily-Daisy was a superstar at the show, she worked tirelessly, cheerfully and conscientiously for the entire time. She was still laughing and smiling as she left on Sunday late afternoon to catch a train back to Bath. A big thanks to her for her unerring support to me this week. On Saturday we were joined by one of Cecily-Daisy's friends, Hannah, who managed to pick up all the information that she needed to impart in superquick time (everyone has been so efficient at the show) and helped us out no end on the busiest day of the event. My friend Clare helped us on Sunday and (bless her) stayed to help us pack everything up ready for our return home last night.

It was interesting to watch peoples' reactions to the two areas that I created, the French bedroom scene was mostly appreciated by women and the dining room furniture was liked by almost everyone who visited the stand. Dave and I have decided on our way home that we like the county style furniture so much that we are going to rearrange the shop so that we can have a big display of it there. I will arrange all the gorgeous hand decorated pottery on it as the two compliment each other so well. Hooray, I get to look at it everyday!

I will be offering the French bedroom furniture at a special ex-display price on my website (in the clearance or special offer section), it didn't suffer any damage at the show, but it just won't have it's original packaging. Obviously there is just the one bedroom set so once it's sold, it's sold!

Well, as always, it's time for the kettle to go on, chat soon, Liz
All images and text copyright Pretty Practicals 2006 - 2008 except where stated.

French beds, french furniture

I love French beds, the elegant shapes, the carved detailing on the head board and often the foot board too. I think that the bedroom is the one place that we can let opulance reign supreme and go completely overboard with the romantic look, if that's what we want.

Having spent quite so much time in by bedroom for the last few days, it has really got me thinking about it and about how it's time for a change in here. I love our wall decor and curtains and our bed will stay (it's an enormous thing that takes up half the space in the sizable room). I've decided that I am going to make a padded cover for the headboard, so that it coordinates with our curtains and invest in some new storage furniture.

At the moment, our bed doesn't have a footboard, so I'm going to ask Dave to construct a footboard from mdf and wood to attach to the base of the bed. Then I can make a padded cover for the foot board too and we will have created our own corbiere style bed. When it's time to replace this monster size bed (and we all know that a new bed is required at least once every ten years or less), I think we will downsize a little and have a superking size bed with cream carved detailing (oh dear, I am already planning the changes after next!).

My love of quilts, patchwork, plain, feather or fibre means that I have a lovely (unreasonably big) collection of them here at home and I have now ordered a beautiful armoire in which to store them and I'm going to put fabric panels behind the wire doors. They will then be stored away safely, out of the light that could fade them where I can find them each time I fancy a change on our bed. Each of our quilts gets used on a regular basis, depending on the season, my mood, the bedlinen we are using etc. and I can't bear the thought of parting with any of them (oh no, Dave mumbles over my shoulder), but I do keep finding new ones that I just have to add to my stash.
Well it's time for a cuppa and to get on some paperwork.... chat soon, Liz

All images and text copyright Pretty Practicals 2007 and 2008 except where stated.