hand press print

homestic - has been v v busy. So busy no blogging or domesticity has occurred. The house has now been swept, the bathroom sparkles, and the new business is all launched. 

::hand press print::

you can look at the website

you can buy from the folksy shop

you can like us on facebook

you can examine the images on flickr

you can pin us on pinterest

you can commission us - here

Homestic will continue - but this little business needs a fair amount of care and attention at present - but hopefully I'll be back v soon.

hand press print

After a very busy few months Homestic is starting a new venture (after the heady world of cocktail reviewing) - an exciting venture and a whole new chapter. 

::hand press print::

hand press print is just learning to toddle as a business - and items will be made available for sale v v soon. Please have a look around. Find us on facebook, pinterest, twitter & flickr to be updated. 

Please do get in touch if you see anything you like. 

Thanks! 

I've been spending a fair amount of time fighting between writing this blog and my feminist principles. But luckily for my few, few readers I've decided that writing about what makes me happy as an individual, in my own right, is perfectly acceptable. It's not like I'm "keeping house" because either society or 'a man' expects me to - I just like it tidy and clean.

Today I saw Zoe Margolis talk and she was every bit as inspiring as the Dalai Lama.  Me doing what I enjoy, for my own sake - even if it is domestic, cannot be a problem to feminists. 

After much discussion this seems very much to be the case. Long live the matriarchy.... or let's welcome the matriarchy... ether way, job done.

a little out of season

This delightful little post was originally from xmas 2009. I'm reblogging it to demonstrate not only my innate skill with scissors and ribbon, but also my incredible photo techniques ... hmmm, maybe I need a little more practice.

These are dead simple Christmas decorations which look pretty and are tidy as hell – no weird, drooping bits of greenery shedding all over the floor, and damp stems smearing the walls. Oh, do I sound like a hideous scrooge figure… it’s late, I’m tired. It always looks lovely when it’s up. Even with the damp stems and shed. Christmas does only come once a year and if you can’t decorate with the best of them you should probably be left up a hill, on your own, somewhere.

So, getting back to THE PROJECT.

You need: large letter stensils, card (colours and design of your choosing), ribbon, mini wooden pegs, scissors. (Sounds simple so far.)

You can add: glitter, mini pom-poms, glue, sparkles and any other xmas glitter-fest you find appropriate.

I found the 5cm high stensils on ebay, but I think WHSmith or similar have some. All you need to do is cut out words and phrases for your event. Lets call mine, CHRISTMAS, but the same method and supplies can be used for all events -just use whatever words you find most appropriate, or inappropriate. I’m using HO HO HO, 5 GOLD RINGS, and will be adding MERRY CHRISTMAS, HOLLY AND THE IVY, etc.

My supermarket provided the card; I used a multi pack of coloured card, and also a multipack of patterned card. **When using the patterns remember to stensil the letters back to front on the back so you get the letters the right way round on the pattern!!**

Just choose your words, stensil and cut them out. And peg them onto ribbon. Remember that you’ll need 2 pegs for letters like H and K so they all sit nicely.(I got the pegs on ebay but most craft shops and John Lewis have them too – you’ll probably need 100+)

If you want to decorate the letters you can go crazy. I’m intending to do quite a few and then use them as a bribery treat for nephews – the more they read to me, the more tiny prizes they might win. (Who said Christmas decorations can’t be educational.) Mini pompoms are the only decoration so far, but stars and glitter might feature heavily in the future.

A quick and easy project that looks great and can be done by adults (even whilst watching TV) or supervised children. If you got kids to make painted card that was cut up it might make really great patterns too.

I’m off to get more glitter. More soon.

a little more introduction

After some very busy years I’ve finally had a moment to turn my attention to, and to re-invent my little patch of web. If you peruse the essentials page you’ll see that I’ve got all my links, blogs, and basically damn useful sites up, and listed with descriptions. I would genuinely love to hear any new ideas and sites I should look at. Anything from the hideously practical to the sublimely beautiful is appreciated.

After blogging for years it feels very strange to be starting again. There’s too much blank page where the older posts should be; there aren’t enough ‘tags’ in the cloud. It all makes me feel terribly self conscious. And, as this is a blog-with-purpose rather than an amble through my life or running ‘career’ I feel I should start with some information.

Why Homestic?

 I am not, and seriously doubt I ever will be, a Domestic Goddess; this blog started as that very title but has now morphed into something a little more grown-up... maybe even a little more sophisticated. 

I have a genuine abiding interest in all things domestic and the home -it was these interests that lead me to "homestic". I think I might be well equipped to run a household. I’ll happily read around the subject (as there are great books out there – to be discussed at length in later posts) and seem to remember quite random details which help to make life run a little more smoothly. I’m interested in the ergonomics of a domestic setting; and in finding solutions – with the world at our fingertips now the answers really are there, it’s just a case of looking (in the right places).

Despite a great eduction and parents who pushed academic options (which I took up for many years) I think that domesticity is in the genes. My grandmother ran a bed and breakfast/ guesthouse, as did my mother when I was small. The idea of making somewhere ‘nice’ for others is in the blood. I’m just lucky that I’m doing it for friends and family! My mother had been brought up to clean. She hoovered every day (we had cats, but it was not necessary every day) and I lived in the tidiest house I was ever in as a child. (It must have been a ray of light through the clouds when I turned from a hideously untidy youngster into an immaculately organised teenager… unluckily for her my behaviour and demenour meant she still had to deal with an hellion most of the time, just a tidy hellion.)

As she cleaned she would be looking after me, giving me small jobs (dust the edge of the stairs, polish the copper floor plate round the fire); and also talking. The talking was a constant stream of information about why she was doing certain things in certain ways. These methods and routines had been honed by generations of interiors specialists (housewives). The orders and ideas are still all the ‘basic’ methods of cleaning. The cloths and chemicals might change, or they might not; but the actions and routines remain over the years. I mean really, how many ways could there be to clean a room?

This gave me a good basic grounding and when I moved into my own place I used the same methods and routines (albeit a little less disciplined). Over the years the location changed and with it the challenges changed too. As an adult in my own space I’ve lived in a small tenement flat, a 1970s bungalow extrodinaire, an old higgeldy-piggeldy place and now a classic Edinburgh Tenement. All of these places were very different; all needed work, all needed love and ALL needed care and cleaning.

I’m beginning to realise that it sounds like all I want to talk about it cleaning. Even I think that would be too much. It’s all the things that go into making a house that I want to discuss. Building alterations, decoration, furniture, care and maintenance (the most essential of topics), all the crafts that can go into making a house somewhere you want to be at home. Somewhere that regardless of its size or location makes you feel as safe, and as at home, as you can feel.

I’m off for now, to try and craft some less rambling and more focused blog posts. Happy reading.