Jo's house

I went to visit my thrifty fairy godmother in Ipswich.

Mid-Century Jo from Desire to Inspire beckoned Katherine (theoldboathouse) and I to see her stunning work-in-progress 1860s cottage. She was also cleaning out her cupboards again...you know what that means...lots of thrifty goodies for the Sow's Ear...!!

We had a fab day. Firstly, we saw the changes to Jo's home since our last visit, hit the op-shops, drank great coffee, visited Kerrie's amazing store ES Traders (seriously good things are in this space. Love) and then ate a yummy lunch on Jo's front balcony.

Katherine and I had a great day out visiting - like escapees from a prison. You'd think we found gold from the smiles on our faces.

Thrift-shop-aholics

Here are a few shots of Jo's gorgeous home.

Jo's black cavernous bedroom.
Image from Jo

Jo has a sitting area in her bedroom. It is that big.
She has plans of putting in an ensuite when  time and finances allow.
image from Jo

This is a corner of Jo's living room. Every corner of her home has a point of interest.
She is such an avid collector  of everything.

Jo has wallpapered one of her kitchen walls with vintage Penguin paperback covers. It looks amazing.
My photos do not do it any justice.

The dining area. That's a DQF dining setting and a Featherston chair in the corner.
The vintage textiles on the table are for another Brisbane blogger. Jo asked me to pass them on to her. Guess who?

This is another angle of Jo's living room. She's having the cabinets which sit either side of the fireplace restored.
Check out her Beni Ourain Moroccan Rug, Featherston Numero iv and those delicious chocolaty walls.

Jo's feathered friend on her shoulder.

Our visit was not nearly long enough! The time really does fly when we visit Jo.

Anyway, I have another post up my sleeve to show you the vintage goodies we discovered in Ipswich and of course Jo's cupboards. So good!

Bamileke Headdress or baby Juju hat

The African fertility gods have been kind to the Sow's Ear. We've been chanting hypnotically, "Ju-ju, Ju-ju" for forty days and forty nights and lo, a miracle of a baby Juju appeared before our very eyes.

Perhaps not quite... I just wanted an interesting introduction to this blog post...

Anyway, I won a Juju hat in a blog giveaway hosted by Sarah from Squeezed Daily ( a very cool design blog with an exotic tropical bent). Sarah recently sold her house and is now living on a boat with her family. She no longer had need of her baby Juju hat and put it up for adoption.

I'm its new Mama! And its a girl!

So here she is:

Baby Juju hat
white and magenta

Thanks Sarah!! Baby Juju is just beautiful.

I was trying to find some information about Juju hats on the Internet, but you mostly get the sales and marketing gaff from the people selling it. The term Juju is actually a term which describes West African religion or voodoo according to Wikipedia, my go-to for such things.

The Juju hat is also called a Bamileke headdress or Tsa Ntang Disc from the West African nation of Cameroon. They were used for ceremonial purposes and were traditionally made from parrot feathers.

They are now mostly made from chicken feathers.

How to wear a Bamileke hat
image from here

There is an interesting website which I stumbled upon which talks in more detail about the tradition of the headdress and the Bamileke elephant masks. There are amazing photographs of the headdress being worn in the 1930s. I thought it was fascinating to see the headdress in its traditional context rather than the decor context which it is now often associated. Go HERE if you are interested.

There are quite a few online traders who sell Juju/Bamileke hats in Australia. I've compiled a little list here for those who are interested:
ecochic
ethikl
ikhaya
Safari Fusion
the fairtrade store
table tonic

Air Wick Competition winners

Woohooo!

We have two lucky winners in our midst for the generous prizes from Air Wick and Soup.

But firstly, I'd just like to thank everyone who left such fantastic tips about the best way to freshen a home. There were quite a lot of common sense suggestions and a couple of new ideas that I'd never come across. Some of you made me laugh out loud as well...toilet humour does that, y'know.

not so subtle product placement
It was voted 2011 Product of the Year in the Consumer Survey of Product Innovation , Air Care Category.

So, congratulations to The Distressed Mother who won the $250 Bunnings vouchers and Jenny from Jitta Jack Homewares who won the $100 Coles/Myer gift vouchers. Also, they both receive bottles of Air Wick Aqua Mist for some extra help to freshen their homes. Sweet!

Lucky, lucky them! Yay!

Thanks again everyone.

Mid-century bar stools

Funky mid-century bar stools for our covered deck were on the wish list for quite some time.

A few months ago I picked up two mid-century TH Brown stools from eBay (I bought them from the very spooky Jack Sim, Brisbane's ghost tour operator extraordinaire. Woo..wooo). T H Brown & Sons were a hugely popular furniture maker in Adelaide and made very good quality pieces. Their mid-century range of furniture is quite delicious and still reasonably affordable.

We already have some TH Brown stools which we use in the kitchen. They were another eBay purchase that we bought from an elderly couple in Melbourne a couple of years ago. (Organising shipping is always a pain in the neck though)

Anyway, when I saw a matching pair being sold locally, I knew they'd work well for the bar area. I was so pleased to get them. 

TH Brown bar stools

The new stools are in good overall condition however they just needed a bit of re-gluing at some of the joins to remove the wobbles. Jason kindly did the honours of gluing and clamping the stools together.

gluing and clamping the joins

TH Brown stool being restored

Jason used a good quality wood glue and held everything in place with clamps that were padded with towels and chocks of wood to prevent damaging the teak legs. I'll give the legs a polish with some Danish oil and they should be right to go...

Just in time for summer drinkies on the deck! Cheers!

P.S Today is the last day to enter my giveaway. You could win $250 Bunnings voucher or $100 Coles/Myer voucher on this post HERE. Good Luck!

Puffle Party

We had the puffle party this morning and we are all puffled out.

Puffle cake
Very dodgy cake decorating. (I should've smoothed out the icing with a hot palette knife, but I didn't.)

There was puffle cake, puffle pinata, pass-the-puffle, toss the puffle (Jason just made some rude allusions to a private schoolboy game as I type this! Mind in the gutter, as usual. I assure you, the game was completely innocent!), puffle tag and find the puffle treasure. Puffle, puffle, puffle!

On the previous post, so many people asked me what a puffle was. It is a character from Disney's Club Penguin which is an online game for children. When you sign on, you join an online community of penguins where you can play games and adopt pets called puffles. My older boys play it, usually on school holidays or weekends. Son #2 is mad for it but it is the puffles that have captured his imagination.

Fortunately, puffles are little spherical balls of fluff and very easy to replicate and draw.

The cake was a basic chocolate cake recipe baked in a medium pudding bowl. It took a little longer to cook because of the shape of the bowl.

The frosting was a basic butter icing for the main body, the hair was made with fluffy frosting (sugar syrup and egg whites mixed together to form thick glossy peaks). Please note, green is the favourite colour of the birthday boy. The outline of the eyes and the mouth was melted dark chocolate piped on with a not-so-steady hand. The eyes are just choc chip bits.

As far as character cakes go, it was quite simple. The mini-guests were not too critical with their assessment and ignored the basic design flaws. Phew!

And as for that poor Pinata Puffle...there was no mercy shown. It was an ugly, brutal assault...