Saturday, 19 January

Some treasures in my living room. My daughter persuaded me to buy this tea-for-one Spode teaset. I embroidered the cloth in Spanish blackwork using coloured thread and the little birthday book was my grandmother's. In it she recorded my own mum's birthday, ninety years ago.

This past week the redecorating of my bedroom began in earnest. Workmen took up the old wall to wall carpeting and laid a laminated wooden floor in Antique Oak. The bedrooms, study and dining room of my house have no ceilings, just the high thatch roof which gives it a wonderful warm atmosphere and a distinctly grassy smell on hot summer days. This new floor complements the thatch roof perfectly and matches the original Oregon pine floors in the other rooms. Then came painting the room and My Big Mistake. In spite of testing four different hues of paint, I still got it wrong and the cream walls looked lifeless and cold. But I decided the most expensive decorating mistake is to live with something you dislike for the next five years so I had the room repainted in Natural Wicker, a creamy colour with a hint of peach. Now the room looks stunning although my decorating budget has suffered some damage.
Fabrics have been chosen for the curtains, swags, coverlet and bedfrill and now I must wait impatiently for the making and the installation in February.