Mud & Hair Stripes

The rain has been pouring down the last couple of days, and the wind has been whipping up a storm. All this makes for a very bad internet connection (our cables are overhead) and MUD, mud everywhere!

I desperately need a new pair of wellington boots, as mine have a huge hole in them. I have had a hard time choosing some (I really liked the red/pale blue ones at Joules Clothing but these are now discontinued, booo!), and I really hate buying things I need, so alas there are no new wellies winging there way to me just yet, and my suede boots are becoming less and less suede looking by the day.

Mud brings with it mayhem, the children most always forget to remove their shoes before coming in the house, and their arrival home from school is usually punctuated with much shouting about shoes and shoe racks and mud mats. The dogs are another story all together, they both dig, a lot, then come charging into the house, on to the sofa, on to the beds, into the beds, and thus into my bad books as I add another heap of muddied bed linen to the every growing pile of dirty laundry, that renders me almost suicidal.

Laying a Parquet floor in our main living area (You can see the photos on my FLICKR page) seemed a great idea, and actually it would have been, had we not chosen the beautifully neutral finish of oil, as opposed to a slick varnish.
The Oiled floor does indeed look wonderful, but has proved to be massively impractical, as it can only be cleaned weekly with a very expensive specialist cleaning solution. Thus I spend a great deal of time on hands and knees with a damp cloth wiping up muddy prints, bits of food and sticky patches of jam (I have been on a Jam Tart baking frenzy). Mud, I swear, is the bane of my life, with the oiled parquet flooring coming in a close second, if only because of the mud.

When we bought our house, it was of course intended as a holiday home, and so all the refurbishments we carried out were done with that in mind. Now that we are living here permanently we have realised that our budget refurb does not stand up to daily wear, in addition to the fact that this house is much too small, we have lots and lots of work to do this year....

We are currently awaiting planning permission for an extension which will literally double the size of the house (approx 120m2+). All being well, the building will start in early Spring, and should be finished by Autumn, by which time we will have gained 2 more bedrooms, 2 new bathrooms, a library/craft room and the kitchen will be extended into the bathroom we currently have, and an entire new roof. It is an overwhelming amount of work to say the least, and incredibly frustrating as no further work can be carried out on the existing building until the extension is complete.

I desperately want to crack open some tins of paint and start decorating, but it is futile given that it will all be trashed when the building starts, and so for now I have to satisfy myself with planning how it will look, which is no easy task given that I fall in love with almost every interior idea and colour combo I encounter, I wish I didn't have such broad and eclectic tastes, it makes choosing so much harder!

Today marks the first time in my life that I have had a real hair disaster. I was so pleased with the haircuts the village hair salon did for my sproglets that I promptly booked myself in for a cut and highlights.

My hair is naturally blonde, but darkens considerably in the winter when there is no sunshine, so once a year I have a few sneaky highlights to lighten it up.
I reeeally wish I had asked around before succumbing to the lure of dirt cheap hairdressers, or indeed, French hairdressers.
From the moment Monsieur Dominic wheeled out his little tool trolley and started fiddling with the foils I knew something was amiss. It was hard for me to see what he was doing at first, as he started at the back of my head, but as he moved into view I became more and more alarmed.

It was obvious he had NEVER done foil highlights before, it is debatable he had even ever been shown how to do highlights properly. He seemed to be randomly plucking a strand of hair here and there and slapping peroxide on it with great gusto (I normally have a more gentle dye, but they did not offer me a choice on this occasion).
At this point, he had already done almost half of my head, and I did not feel it would be a good time to stop him, and so I calmed myself by clinging to the rather hopeful idea that perhaps this is just how they did it in France.
Just when I was almost convinced of this, Monsieur Dominic called in his wife, who upon seeing his handiwork looked more alarmed than I, before nervously JOINING him in butchering my hair, presumably he realised he was working too slow and decided to draft in his untrained wife to complete the second half of my head. I just sat, very still, scowling at my own appearance in the mirror.

What followed is really quite unbelievable. I was left alone, with the peroxide on my head for what seemed like an eternity, all the while I was convinced it was burning into my scalp and that my hair would promptly fall out the minute they tried to rinse it.
When they did finally come to wash it, I was given a rather slap dash shampoo (no conditioner) and returned to Monsieur Dominic for the cut, oh my.
I have NEVER EVER had my hair cut, in it's entirety, with a razor, but this is what happened, then the wife returned to dry my hair. No sign of a brush, or a comb, just a hand and a very hot hair dryer.

I have naturally wavy hair, not curly, not straight, but annoyingly wavy. This means that any kind of hot air just makes it turn to a mass of frizz unless it is smoothed with a large brush as it is dried.
I left the salon sporting an enormous frizz (which was fortunately calmed by the rain) and enormous inch thick white blonde stripes in my hair, I am ashamed to say that at this moment any notion of giving up smoking went down the drain, I hold Monsieur Dominic personally accountable for my falling off the proverbial wagon.

What is most frustrating is that upon regaling all my friends with the full horror of my hair salon fiasco, they all asked why on earth I had gone to a French hairdresser in the first place, apparently even the French complain about them, le sigh :(

When the children got home they both said how much they loved my pretty stripy hair, oh joy.
The only consolation is that I live in the back of beyond and no one is likely to see the rather bizarre hair do I am presently sporting. I shall have it fixed when I return to the UK in February for my driving test, may the good lord bless anyone who should be unfortunate enough to encounter me on the roads.

Anyhooo my lufflies, I have been busy making more dotee's, here is my latest one, made from Cath Kidston scraps, I have run out of beads and so cut out the stars from a piece of CK fabric and stitched them on to felt backing to create the tail. I love the OTT curls on this one, very Shirley Temple!