Q.1.
Concerning the new roof fund

A thousand thank yous to everyone who has made a donation for the new roof. I'm trying to keep up and thanking everyone of you personally but I'm running behind so I hope this will do as well.

Out of all the lovely donations, comments, e-mails etc there were also some really nasty ones. Mostly from people who are not regular readers and don't know me.

I have to say that I'm not poor and that I'm capable of paying for my own roof and that the fund isn't there so that you have to pay for my roof, it's there so you can freely make a contribution in a way of giving back. But unfortunately we live in a world where giving is allowed but asking to give something back isn't allowed.

Boohoo to all the naysayers.

You can still, discretely, leave a donation if you wish. But I haven't smeared it all over my blog as, to some people, is disgusting and I want my website to be accessible to everyone.

Thank you xox

Q.2.
Answers to all of your questions

As promised in this post.

Do you find keeping white furniture clean difficult? We have a lot of cream in our home - doors, windows and some furniture and we find that it gets dirty looking really quickly (inside and out). We have no children as an excuse. Do you have any cleaning tips? :)

White furniture gets dirty and there's nothing you can do about that as to clean it and be tidy about it.

There are things we do to keep everything as white as possible. We take our shoes off when we go inside, there are slip covers over all of my sofas and chairs so I can wash them periodically and I hoover and mop all of the floors at least twice a week. It's hard work but that's with having a white home.

Hi Yvonne, I love the curtains in your kitchen. Where are they from? The new shelves look great too.

The curtain fabric is Dotty (in cotton duck) from Cath Kidston. I lined them with just plain white curtain fabric and used the IKEA curtain tape to make pencil pleats.

What a beautiful room! Where did your lovely blue tiles come from?

I love all the rooms and corners of your home. So pretty and elegant. I've been wondering where you got the blue/red tiles in the fireplace. I saw its close-up picture in your flickr account. The design looks so simple, but striking!

I bought the tiles in a friend's shop in 's-Hertogenbosch The Netherlands. I don't know the name of the manufacture but the tiles were made in Portugal. I recommend you Google "Portuguese Cement Tiles" and try to find a supplier in your area.

Where is that gorgeous tea towel from? I'd also be really interested if you did a post on re purposing your fireplace...

The tea towel is from Cath Kidston but she doesn't sell it any more. You may find it in her outlet store in Bicester Village UK. You can however get this really cute one instead.

I LOVE Dille & Kamille! We went to Belgium for our honeymoon 14 years ago and each visit since we have spent WAY too much time in there! I was even thinking of asking you some day to do a swap for our favorite D&K long spoons :)

I LOVE SWAPS!!! E-mail me and we can arrange one. Please, anyone, feel free to ask me for swaps any time as I LOVE SWAPS!!!

Hello, This is a really nice looking site. Are you a website designer or did someone make this lovely design for you?

I'm the web designer, illustrator and developer. MovableType is publishing it for me.

Love your deco style, your colour palette... it all looks so fresh! I love your egg's basket? Is that a vintage thing or can it be purchased online? It's just gorgeous!!! x Pati

I bought the egg basket (it's plastic) a few years ago in a shop that sells RICE products. I don't think they make or sell it any more.

I love everything you do, I have a hand built kitchen painted pale blue and the floor is terracotta tiles, I want a much lighter floor as the room is dark, it's an old cottage. What kind of floors do you have? I would love some ideas...

There is an epoxy floor coating over the concrete floor in my kitchen and it's a disaster as it's matte and the dirt sucks into it. In a few weeks we're going to cover the floor with white Novilon to make the floor warmer and easier to clean. For your kitchen; why don't you paint the pale blue cupboards white? I love white cupboards with terracotta tiles. I love this kitchen and although there's no terracotta on the floor, it quite resembles the colour combination.

Me again, looking through all your decorating posts again I notice you have painted wooden floorboards everywhere. I have just bought some reclaimed Victorian floorboards and will be painting them White. Do you use all White by farrow and ball? Thanks, hope for a reply, I did look through your paint colours post before asking and couldn't see floor colour, sorry to be a pest x

You can read all about that here and here. And yes, I use All White (2005) by Farrow&Ball for my floors but definitely not their paint.

Beautiful beautiful kitchen!! Beautiful beautiful blog!! So many questions are buzzing around in my head, I'll start withfaust one. When you were living in England what brand of paint did you use? What brand would you recommend that is available to buy in England? Thank uuuuuuuuu, your help is much appreciated xxxxxx

I used Farrow&Ball but back then they were oil based and they were brilliant. Their water based switch was quite a disaster to me. I recommend using Sigma Paints with F&B colours, you can buy them in the UK.

And two questions in Dutch, I've translated;

Yes, the Dille & Kamille chairs are quite comfortable but I wouldn't recommend them for an all-night-dinner-feast without cushions ;)

I've hung the plates on to the wall using plate hangers. You can buy them in The Netherlands at Blokker or Marskramer. I've never used cheap (or free) photo editing programs so I can't answer this question. I use professional Adobe programs.

This is my home when it wasn't my home yet but when the bank was making the money ready and notaries were typing concepts. It was almost my home and during those few weeks I started to dread what Bo and I had done. It's too big for the two of us, 2 families could live in our home easily and about a dozen of illegal immigrants could set up house in the basement. But we bought it, contracts were signed and for four years we are the owners of a badly neglected old beaten up house.

I love this house though, I've never been happier anywhere else.

The year of my scary blood disease Bo started to work on the second floor. There he found out that the beams holding up our roof are the homes of termites, bats and probably millions of other creatures. The roof has been there since 1896 and has never been replaced. No one can really see this from the outside or on pictures but, trust me, the inside isn't a pleasant sight. On days when the rain comes from the Northwest (that's today) we keep the second floor dry with buckets and towels. It's all quite romantic but we need to fix this.

We'll start this summer ... eeeeee!!

So I thought you guys can help us by making a donation. I've never asked for donations before, neither do I have ads on my blog or make any income out of my blog whatsoever. I do get some free stuff and for that I'm grateful. With the thousands of visitors a month I could easily turn this blog into a money making machine but those are not my aesthetics as I'm quite simple and humble about the whole "Yvestown Fame" and I want to keep it like that.

So please consider to make that €1 donation and help us fund this new roof. And help to add content to this blog as with a new roof I'll be able to show you all the pretty new bedrooms.

Click on the button below as it will take you to PayPal where you can make a €1 donation.

Thank you so much for reading xox

Yesterday evening we had our very first BBQ of the year and to us that's something really exciting as we love a good BBQ.

After a hard day of work (me garden, Bo boot room) we decided that, although it was quite chilly when the sun went down, we could pull a quick BBQ. And believe me, one can have a quick BBQ. Last year I bought a "Smokey Joe ® Gold" from Weber as it's compact and it has a handle so I can carry it around like a handbag.

I only use 250 gram of organic boneless chicken (marinated in 2 tbsp of soy sauce and 2 tbsp of ketjap), peppers, red unions, mushrooms and 3 organic sausages for Bo as he breaks the "no-four-legs-rule" when we have a BBQ. I wrap red potatoes in aluminium foil and roast them on the Smokey Joe and I serve all that with a simple salad, that's all what it takes.

I love eating outside as all table rules don't matter any more.

I find it quite bad behaviour when people leave the table, or get up, in the middle of dinner or when other people haven't finished their dinner yet. I find it rude when people don't ask to be excused. I have been places where children (almost adults) empty their plates, push their plate to the centre of the table, get up (unannounced), leave the table (while other people are still eating) and don't even have the courtesy to shove their chair back to to the table. Honestly, so many rules were broken.

When eating outside everyone is excused for their rudeness and for their bad table manners. One can get up and wander when pleased, one can have paint and dirt on their hands, cats, dogs and chicken are allowed to run freely around (not on) the table and so on. It's liberating.

To many more BBQ-s this year.

The renovation of my home is still going on and it will so for the next few years as there is still so much left to do. If all goes to plan, and we don't have more employees suing us, the roof will come off this summer.

Bo's busy now reconstructing the boot room what used to be the sun room. The inside is almost done but the outside is still a bit of a monster tackle, but he'll get there.

In the meantime I gave the whole kitchen a brand new coat of paint after the new garden doors were fitted. Those new garden doors are just amazing, we have my lovely mother to thank for them. She gave four sets of garden doors and a boot room window as a gift for our 12 1/2 year wedding anniversary last year. Now those are presents we like as doors don't come cheap. Thanks mum, you are the BEST!!

I also finally decided what to do with the inside of the empty fireplace. I was thinking about a gas burner but it would be really a waste of space (and gas) as there are perfectly working radiators in the kitchen. So I've made shelves, as one never can have enough shelves.

And I took the island out and put the table back in as I missed eating in the kitchen. I really only used the island to dump stuff on and to roll out the odd pastry. I'll have to build myself a small pastry table instead.

All my favourite cook books and Jamie Magazines are in the fireplace. I'm a happy woman now as shelves just make my heart beat a little faster.

I also splurged on new kitchen chairs and bought 4 at my favourite department store in The Netherlands, Dille & kamille, already painted in a very bright white.

I'm thinking of making cushions for the chairs as in winter our bottoms might get cold. I'm not really a fan of chair cushions as you kind of take the construction of the chair down with them, so I'll wait and see.

Our hens do so extremely well I just had to show off. Next job; a pastry table ...

Enjoy your weekend xox

Please ask away, I'll answer all your questions in the next post.

1 A Film to See in the Cinema

2 A Decorating Book to be Inspired by

Homespun Style

3 A Book to Read

Wildwood

4 A Magazine to Subscribe to

Kinfolk Magazine

5 A TV Drama to Watch on DVD

Bouquet of Barbed Wire

6 A Film to Watch on DVD

7 A Cook Book to Cook From

The Farm

Hello everyone, I'm still here. Calming down after our little company had a really sad, hard and emotional week. But we'll survive and we've learned a great deal about people, businesses and the law. Hopefully everything will be back to normal by the end of the week so I can focus on my home and blog again.

In the meantime you have to head over to Mollie Makes to read a lovely article they did on me, my crochet and my shop. Oh my shop ... you guys have been so good to me, you've bought so much over the past few weeks. So many big fat pink bags traveled all over the world. As a treat I'll have another week of 5% discounts. Use voucher code "mollie makes" upon checkout.

I've promised you tulips and here they are, my own little back garden Floriade. I've planted them last September in one of the raised beds so I can take the bulbs out easily and store them for later this year. Initially I've planted them for picking but, how happy they make me filling that bed, I can't pick them.

Good start for a new week filled with sunshine and rain, perfect combination for my garden to grow.

Oh and by the way the breed of my hens are Orpingtons (buff), they rock so I can highly recommend them if you are a new hen keeper.

I had the pleasure to attend Selina Lake's Homespun Style Book Launch Party last Friday in London.

Anki and I drove up to Canterbury, were we stayed, last Thursday afternoon. Spent the evening having dinner at Wagamama and strolling through the town. On Friday morning we went by train to London for some shopping (that didn't work out) and after that we went to the party in Hanbury Hall. We got to meet so many lovely people in the flesh. I was so excited to get to say hi to Emma Lamb, as that was most of what we said, sorry Emma it was so brief. I also had a brief, but lovely, encounter with Jeanette from Fryd + Design.

And, of course as a matter of fact, my two favourite long time blog friends, Charlotte and Cherry showed up. We go way back and we try to meet as often as possible and I'm always amazed we get to hookup at a very short notice and when we meet it's like we've seen each other yesterday. I love them both very dearly.

And this is the reason I never have my photo taken as I ruin photos. I'm a professional photo ruiner.

We all went for chips dips and a Belgian chocolate milk that made my stomach spin with Dutch bloggers Eline and Petra who were also at Selina's party.

On Saturday Anki and I did some Canterbury shopping (that did work out) and had a picnic in the car while Le Shuttle drove us back to France. At 20:30 I was home and this was the first thing I saw when I took the keys out of the ignition. What a lovely few days, I feel so blessed to be surrounded by such creative, smart and integer women.

On your way out don't forget to buy Selina's beautiful book, as all of her books are beautiful, Homespun Style, It's a must have.

My new IKEA LIVE post