Sweet-peas and antique wallpaper...

From the latest clearance, I brought back a little box of old wallpaper... I really did not know what kind of patterns were tucked inside but I was pretty sure that there was nothing antique and I thought then that I wasn't going to find anything interesting in it. 

But as you all know, I love wallpaper, vintage or antique, and I simply could not leave the box there. 

I forgot the box untill this morning when I finally took time to investigate. What I found first was not exceptionnal but...

Well before telling more, I should remind you that Sweet peas are amongst my favorites flowers (the first ones that I grew as a child with my beloved Grandma)... and that I love a hint of black color in decoration...

Look what I found! Look what kind of paper was hidden there! Ofcourse it's only a tiny piece but with such a lovely design! I love it! Oh, yes, I almost forgot to tell that it's marked Sanderson! So happy with my old piece of paper...

Promenade in a Belle Epoque garden...

While some were sleeping on this Sunday morning, early at the brocante I've been truffling pictures... I found that little album and since then I can hardly look at something else.


It is filled with sepia pictures taken around 1914 in Belgium... The Belle Epoque Promenade begins at Ostende, on the beach and at the terrace of the Villa Laura... Then we can see Minou and Annette with their nanny and with their familly in the garden... and what a garden! 

Pictures location is Thuin, a very picturesque town of the rural Belgium and here are even some vistas of the town taken by the photograph. Thuin is still well known today for its terraced gardens. And the familly here seems to have been owning one of these at that long gone era. 










We can see these "Edwardians" in front of their greenhouse and obviously there was nothing missing in their terrace's decor... 

Look at these chairs, at these furnitures, at the planters, at the cast edges... The "Belle Epoque" really earned her name. Everything was such elegant.









But then the war came and who knows what happens to that happy familly...

Le Lièvre et la Tortue...

Christian et moi à la brocante, c'est toujours un peu la même histoire... 

La fable du Lièvre et de la Tortue, vous connaissez? Moi, j'ai déjà fait deux fois le tour et dilapidé toute ma fortune du jour tandis que lui commence seulement à approcher du deuxième stand (j'avoue que c'est souvent fort utile lorsque je n'ai déjà plus un rond en poche et que lui n'a encore rien sorti de son mignon porte-feuille!). Bon, tout ça pour dire, qu'hier, donc, à la brocante où nous étions déjà depuis le matin, où mon budget et ma patience s'étaient déjà envolés depuis peu (les 15 heures venaient quand même de sonner au beffroi...) et où j'essayais, dénué de tout agacement (mon œil!)de retrouver Christian, je me sentais à bout de nerfs et prêt à tuer quelqu'un...

Me rendant compte qu'il était toujours au même stand de livres que la dernière fois que je l'avais aperçu plus d'une heure auparavant, j'étais sur le point de m'adresser à lui en ces termes, toute diplomatie abolie, deux points ouvrez les guillemets: "Mais (censuré) ça fait deux (censuré) heures (censuré) que (censuré) tu es là (censuré) (censuré) censuré) on avance un peu maintenant (censuré) mais... hôôôô...hôôôô que c'est beau...hôôôôô... et il y en a deux! Hôôôôô, c'est combien? Vous n'en n'avez pas d'autres? Ok, c'est bon, j'achète!"... Et voici donc comment, grâce à la Tortue, le Lièvre fit sa plus belle trouvaille de la journée: deux recueils de magazine des années folles, brochés et recouverts du plus beau tissu imprimé d'époque... Mon Dieu que je les aime ces motifs aux couleurs passées!
Rien ne sert de courir, il faut ouvrir le bon œil, sans doute...

Winter mood...

Now that I think about it...














With a little perspective...












Seems to me that I was in a "Winter mood" on my buying trip last week...






Days are shorter now and I wonder if I might be suffering from a lack of luminosity...





and this could explain why I only brought back "shimmering" and "sparkling" items...











Anyway: let there be light!!!

Adèle & Joséphine's precious postcards.

In a cupboard here lies hidden and protected what certainly was once Adèle and Joséphine's greatest treasure...










A very old album filled to the brim with the sweetest antique postcards...








Antiques have a strange power on our romantic minds and are able to bring us in a long forgotten world, a fantasy world...

but this is only true today and for some, at a age of technology and permanent connexion...




Adèle and Joséphine didn't had any television or computer, and they were even not "on Facebook"...



Lives and life were different at the "Belle Epoque" at around 1900...




November 2014, dark cold evening, I'm looking at that old odd album containing postcards each adressed to both Joséphine and Adèle, and most signed by "Tante Maria"...




Who was she? Who were them? I wonder...












And I imagine a cold evening in a dark drawing room only lit by candlelight... Two little girls working together on their album, on their precious postcard collection...





What were they going to get from Tante Maria for Christmas? I wonder...

The wind is cold and Adèle and Joséphine and Tante Maria are all long gone with it...

What was it like then? I wonder...

boxoholic?!?

I love boxes... 

I can't stop buying boxes! 








I love them to be vintage and covered with floral fabric if not with antique wallpaper.

Do you love boxes?













This week-end,I found (amongst others) that one brilliantly colored, hand made and Art-Deco... Yes, I found it nice... but when I saw the inside, I had to buy it!



It is covered with antique and faded fabric with pattern of cherubs, roses and birds...
What would you hide and treasure in that kind of box?






And then, another one very special to me...
Covered with paper showing a galant scene...
But inside, there is an hidden note... how sweet is this!




So you just discovered a few of my favorite boxes...