Eastern infatuation Part I...

On Friday morning, as I strolled past one of my favourite local second-hand shops, Granny's Attic, something in the window display caught my eye...

It couldn't be...? Surely, it couldn't be one of those lovely - I think - traditional Vietnamese or Chinese (?) bamboo rice storage jars (or perhaps copies of) that I have been admiring in some blogs and oriental-themed shops for some time. Admired their beauty and gasped at the normal £ 60- 90 price tag, that is... 

Feeling rather pleased to have finished a large assignment in the early hours of that very morning, I thought this £ 5 (!!) bargain would be a splendid reward...!

  

And so it was that this second-hand find gave birth to a whole new blog post from our front room, where my desire to surround myself with warm, spicy colours and a more gold-shimmering palette has been given free reign...

The second photo in the quartet above is of a basket (also seen in the mirror in the very first photo in this post) on the wall above the sofa, opposite the fire place .

(The original red tassel of this ceiling lamp has been exchanged for a 

window decoration from the Scandinavian oriental-inspired store Indiska.) 

From the mantelpiece hangs a chain with, among other things, a small Buddha. The very same little Buddha featured in a display I made a few years back, from which a photo was used to decorate some candles. Yes, well spotted, there is one of them, in front of the fire place, on a cast iron candle stick I found in a reclamation yard a few months ago.

My wall paper curtain panels (will be shown in their entirety in the next blog post) next to a home-made lamp   from years ago, whose only claim to qualify for this otherwise oriental-inspired room was the colour of the apples...

The wall colour does appear a very strange shade in some of these photos... It is certainly not as screamingly yellow as it looks in the image below, or as apricot as in the one above. More of a soft, warm, matt yellow, and we sometimes call it the "winter room", as this is a room which feels warm, both in colour and, obviously, because of its wood-burning stove.

In one of the photos above is a hint of another second-hand bargain I came across the other day, and which will be the focus of my next blog post from the same room...

Wishing you all a gold-shimmering Sunday!

Helena