Ooops. Hadn’t realised I was away so long, it was only meant to be a quick visit to IKEA…

The Manolo he is as amusant as ever, yet I have to admit my blood gets uncomfortable at the idea of spending $153 on (what we call in England) wellingtons (after the duke of). This is because I am mean thrifty. And because I am thrifty I think the time has come to make this blog over into a newer differenter blog about thriftiness, which is basically at the of my homemaking style. On the other hand, I also love thrifty fashion. And Mexican folk art, which isn’t necessarily thrifty, but worth it anyway (click the photo to go to somewhere you can buy it). When these dilemmas have been resolved, you will be the first to know.

If you look this up on the internets, you will not find it, because it is only a local product, which is why I had to take my own photo instead. In fact it is made in San Antonio, which I wonder if that is where the name comes from? Anyway, I bought this for one reason only:

the packaging.

I love packaging, especially when it is beautiful, and there is some fabulous old-fashioned (ie 50’s style) packaging still available here in America (as I mentioned here). Mexican things especially have brilliant packaging, for instance Mexican sodas. And my favourite shampoo for horses:

I don’t have a horse. Just long hair. It works great for humans too. Actually there is also a more human-friendly packaging it comes in, because people started using it for human hair as it is great for that, but this packaging is the best one. Also it is cheaper. Telling y’all about that kills me, in case you never knew and now go and buy it all up. It was in the HEB on Red River. Ouch. Excuse me.

I just bought some of these lovely magnetic hooks, from Amazon, which now sells everything apparently:

I first saw them a while ago in the Home Depot. But on two occasions since then, searches there have been fruitless. The Home Depot is not what you would call up to date with the information age. Their staff wander around searching fruitlessly for and with you, generally look baffled, then give up.

One day, no shops will be this stupid. Now we have computerised everything, there may not be much time left when one can still go in a store, beg to buy something, and leave again empty-handed after 30 wasted minutes. So in a way the whole thing is rather quaint… actually nah, forget that. When asked whether they could find out if and where the hooks were by using a computer, one of the staff actually laughed. “Not on our computers, no.” Enough said. I already didn’t like the HD anyway, (nor does Allie!) Lowe’s has nicer things and better bargains which speaks enough volumes already.

I cannot go on like this. It is killing me to have a blog I update so not-often. However this is stupid, poor blog updatage should not be a cause of illness never mind death, so it will just have to be endured for longer while I figure things out.

In the meantime, this bubble bath and shampoo are from Wal-Mart, and I love them. Such iconic iconic images of femaleness and masculinity translated into bathroom products! They are not for my children, they are mine and they are art works. If the bubble bath was only black when you poured it out and made black bubbles, that would be complete perfect brilliance. And if the pink shampoo made your hair turn blonde with pink streaks, ditto. Although unfortunately technology has not figured out how to prevent such chemicals from staining your bath, making your eyes water and your skin burn and so on, yet.

(I know the bathroom sealant is the wrong colour, it is waiting in a line of jobs to be replaced with the correct biscuit shade.)

This is trendy. It’s Anna Sui, and Hello magazine says, Johnny Depp’s Pirates Of The Caribbean is clearly still holding sway in the fashion industry.

This is Adam Ant, of Adam and the Ants, one of my favourite pop groups ever in the history of the world:

I remember being embarrassed to admit that when I was a teenager, though, as most other teenagers I knew thought Adam was far too teeny-boppy-popular to be in any way cool. Yet unlike other teeny-phenomenae Kajagoogoo,

Adam was actually Great. Thank goodness nobody will ever, ever try wearing a Limahl hairstyle ever, ever again.

Whew.

This isn’t supposed to be a fashion blog, but fashion and design are close together, and the original idea of domestic goodies was to write with pictures about anything and everything from the home. Like the arts and crafts people of the 1920s and the Bauhaus people (more on which on my other blog) of the 20s/30s (do not correct my dates if they are a bit out, I am not good with dates), I like everything in the home to be both functional and beautiful and for the beautiful to enhance or at least not get in the face of, the function. Lately, I have been starting work on my newest art and design business plans, which means domestic goodies is branching out a little into The Culture outside The Home for now: to which end, I have been asking myself for months now, what is it with all these pirates anyway? And drawing a surprising blank.

Connect these pirate themes and tell me their significance to the early 21st century: Firefly (space pirates), Pirates of the Carribbean (pile of invented crazy mush?), Talk like a pirate day, Spongebob Squarepants video games with pirates in (and plenty of other video games with pirates in), Anna Sui’s clothes, and the behaviour of the penguins in Madagascar. We may get to cannibals later (they are related, and even more disturbing).

Finally, here is one of the most potent pirate symbols, the independently-owned sea-faring boat with sails:

It’s a copy of an original Bauhaus design, and only 87 euros (ouch) if you can speak German. Not sure I’d let any nearby toddlers chew that.

Temporary kitchen number one was the little corridor that is destined to house laundry machines. Temporary kitchen number two was these ultra-cheapo plastic shelves stood on top of the old knackered 50s worktops on the terrible destroyed units that have to come out if only so the walls behind can be cleared of giant beetle and squirrel (normal-sized squirrel, hopefully) nests. The plus is it looks pretty good, in a jolly haphazard kind of a way. The minus is, it leaves no room for chopping up onions on the actual countertop. Anyway, all this lot is coming out probably this week, so I took a farewell photo which I think looks really nice. If this wasn’t my kitchen I would wish it was part of a thrift store so I could go there and buy all my own stuff that mostly came from thrift stores in the first place…

I don’t think my 10 year old daughter will mind me showing you this recent painting of hers… She made it up using imagination, it’s not from a real still life.

When I bought my first flat, in London, quite a few years ago, I planned to buy prints of all my favourite art and put them up on the walls. Quickly it became apparent that prints of art and actual beloved paintings can appear very differently indeed. Eventually I discovered that it was preferable to have art made by me on the walls over almost anything else, because (a) my art is pretty good, (b) other people’s art I actually like and can afford is not easy to come by.

I also like weird one-off old pictures from charity/thrift shop-stores sometimes. They summarise the style of whichever period they were made in (a bit like how science fiction shows you the exact fashions of whenever it was made). And luckily, my kids do fantastic genius art which is also great to have up, not for the kind of pseudo-professionalism they teach in schools sometimes these days (which formularises, which I disapprove of) but for the total originality and confidence of vision that really all kids should have and develop, but most eventually lose. (No, I am not biased, whatever, in the least).

jeans, Old Navy, cheap

I have been scoffing at the knobby-kneed horrible sewed-them-up-yourself eighties had-to-spend-all-day-in-a-hot-river look of tight jeans for about a year. Because who wants to look like Johnny Rotten anyway? And also I had put on a few healthy pounds myself and gone from being a rake to more what a reasonable person really ought to call normal, to be honest, ie. they would not pay me to model clothes for a living even if I was a foot taller. In fact, I had just finished scoffing at a gothy girl in the mall in the latest skinny-jean uniform of shoes so flat you look a foot shorter, stripy overlong t-shirt and legs left about six inches long except for the great chunks of knee, when I went in Old Navy and started trying on the straight legs myself.

All my pounds disappeared. I was Kate Moss. It matters not whether you would agree, the point is, at my age, if you feel for a minute that you would make a good Kate Moss (drug-free, sensible, Texan), the of course it is your duty to buy whatever makes that happen and stay in it for as long as possible. So I did.

It is actually quite an interesting exercise, changing your jean shape like this, because it has an impact on everything you wear with your jeans as well. In my old wide mannish jeans, all shoes were invisible. In the new ones, flat shoes and chunky wedges get shown off. With my old jeans, I wore fitted tops down to the waist. Any longer and they would bunch up over the thickness of the jeans. With my new jeans I can wear longer baggier tops, or layer them up (heat permitting), without looking like Grandpa Walton.

So, there you have it. Fashion, as I tell my daughter, is not about wearing what magazine writers want you to wear: it’s about seeing things in a newly-evolved way, developing your vision, and learning about personal expression and aesthetics. Actually.

Mexican tin lamp shade from Mexica via the flea market by the side of the road on the way to Houston. I don’t usually spend $30 on a lampshade, but this was worth it, don’t you think? It’s in the bathroom, with a dim bulb in, for evenings and night.

This is our only garden gnome. Garden gnomes are terrible really aren’t they, but I find that quite amusing. More of an English institution than an American one (what with England being closer to Scandinavia, so it is easier for the gnomes to emigrate by hiding away in the bowels of cod trawlers and short cruise ships), the gnome community does now stretch as far as Wal-Mart from time to time.