If I were rich, I would spend an obscene amount of money on flowers (remember Richard Gere in Pretty Woman, o b s c e n e amount of money, I have to watch that movie again soon, love her in that beige spot dress)….but the most my cottage usually gets is a $10 bunch while I'm at the greengrocers.  Not, of course, that I'm complaining, you can probably tell, girlies, that at the BeachCottage, we budget so that we can buy flowers, and have budgeted, thrifted, planned and scheduled for the last 15 yrs to get where we are today.  But I still think spending 10 dollars on a bunch of flowers is, ya know, a bit of a luxury.  Anyway I digress, these B E A U T I F U L flowers arrived in a cute little van for my birthday at the weekend & my what an amazing difference they can make to a room.  They dress it up, draw the eye, scream out how gorgeous they are & just somehow make the room look like it attended the best finishing school…all my faves too, pinks roses…sigh,  pink lilies…bigger sigh.

NOW I have to tell you I had a boom boom vintage treasure trip this week, I planned my walking circuit and it was a bonanza for the BeachCottage – I got lots of fabric for mistreatments (there's no stopping me now on those*), heaps of frames for a feature wall I'm working on, a lovely big basket to whitewashfor my bathroom makeover and best of all, an old Chinese room divider – just what I've been looking for to dress up the nothing corner by the formal dining table.  I was SO excited when I saw it, I almost hyper-ventilated…

What kind of question is that?  Surely one that can only be answered in the affirmative.  So this is what we did on my birthday at the weekend, packed a mega simple picnic, cheese, bread, veggies, dip, hopped on our bikes and cycled free.  All the way down to the sea.  It was a beautiful day, buzzy with reckless daytrippers from the city & silly tourists in the sea (people it's winter and 20C and cool), we headed to our sheltered, warm, known-to-locals hotspot, kicked back and chilled out with a couple of mags, my favourite Kidston bag and the view.    Ya like?
 

I wasn't even sure if I was going to join Nester's party and blog this mistreatment as it's not even a good mistreatment but it covers the most gruesome 80's patio doors you ever did see.  Then I thought, ga, if you're anything like me you lurve to see all the real-life stuff too, not just the stuff that turned out well, right?  There are two very good things about this project - firstly it was exceedingly cheap and I wanted to show what budget curtains can do for a room and secondly it was ridiculously easy and I wanted to let you know not to pass by those wire-hangy-up-thingys that you see and don't buy cos you think they won't work. I bought two of these little babies and the little clips that go with them, I had planned to put them to use in my 6 years olds bedroom to pin up his artwork, however Mr Beach Cottage was unbelievably slow in getting around to that (he, of course, would rather be down the beach). 

My first mistreatment idea was to pull out the strings on the top so there were no pleats and then staple the linen fabric to the top, as I pulled them out and got the linen ready to staple I thought stuff that and just simply clipped up the linen bit in front of the curtains.  First of all they were too short, like just a tiny bit so they looked particularly odd.  So I added the lengtheners that were in the packet with the clips and clipped them right on the edge of the fabric for maximum length. Now they are just, barely ok and touching the coir mat…and let me tell you this mistreatment comes complete with raw edges to the linen along the side and the top.  Nice. 

I saw this two layer, contrasting colour idea in a shop a while ago and loved it, of course it was, oh about a million times better done than my attempt and oh about a million times more expensive.