I would like to know how we have rushed through half a year already? But we have so I'd better look forward to July.
For a start the Tour De France sets off today - from Spain (ITV4) and then Wimbledon tennis on TV for two weeks starting Monday (everywhere on the Beeb).......... that's me sorted then!
Usually the first of the month is a post with weather sayings but there are July pages in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 so getting a bit repetitive. I've written about Dog Days and St Swithin and July is short of weather sayings anyway . But here's one not mentioned before which, thankfully, has no truth.
If the first of July be rainy weather,
it will rain more or less for four weeks together
As well as a Folklore shortage for this first of the month there was a missing financial round up for yesterday, the last day of June - which actually turned out to be a good low spend month.
Apart from food, council tax and the direct debits for the phones and broadband the only other sections of the account book which came to more than £35 were the annual payment for the garden waste bin and the monthly electric bill. I even got away with only filling up the car once at under £35 - but only because I put diesel in twice in May!
At the end of the month I splashed out on - great excitement - a new frying pan and the window cleaner came.
My personal spending was a pair of shorts, the exercise group, swimming and a grand total of £1.80 on second hand books. I had to buy suntan lotion after discovering what I thought was one before-sun lotion and one after-sun lotion in the cupboard turned out to be two of the latter. I really think Factor 50 ought to be much cheaper than it is - it must get very expensive to protect children at £6+ a bottle.
It was a low spend month on fresh fruit because of raiding BiL's strawberry patch and having a few raspberries from home (post about raspberries planned). It would have been no spend on meat until I went to a Farmers Market somewhere I'd not been before (post about this planned) and there wouldn't have been much cheese bought until I got another artisan cheese to try ( guess what - there's a post about this planned too!)
I was having a sort out and tidy of a drawer full of odd and old photos and this one below fell out of an old album.
What a clash of colours and patterns!
Me- aged 13 - at home with curtains clashing with wallpaper and the chairs clashing with everything and as for that dress! My mum rarely bought us clothes from a shop, she didn't drive and Dad worked 6 days a week so not a lot of clothes shopping was possible and we didn't have a lot of say in what we wore. The dress I'm wearing would have been a piece of material probably made up by my eldest cousin who was a whizz on a sewing machine. Or sometimes she would order one of those kits from a magazine where the pieces all came ready to be stitched together - I seem to remember a really BAD bright yellow trouser suit! Memories best forgotten I think!
This week I have been grateful for
- Strawberries from Brother in Law
- Raspberries from home
- Two meals made from courgettes
- Some rain to help the garden at last
Have a good weekend
I'll be back Monday
Sue
How lovely a surprise photo. I have read recently that there were children’s clothes or adult clothes so once we were too big for the former we went straight to the latter so most young people would look like clones of their parents. Can you imagine offering one of todays teenagers a dress like mum’s
ReplyDeleteA photo to puzzle at and wonder why?
DeleteI think it was only in the late 50's that teenagers were invented!
This year is passing by far too quickly. We'll be counting down to Christmas before we know it :)
ReplyDeleteLove the photograph, and all those patterns! Xx
Rather too many clashing patterns - but no one bothered back then
DeleteThat's true, Sue, but I do like the curtains, LOL
Delete--Maxine
Ah, the good old days before social media and glossy magazines showed us how things should look, ha ha! Great photo.
ReplyDeleteCan't imagine a room like that now - probably a good thing!
DeleteGuess what - it's raining here today (and has been late evening/all night I think). The garden is bone dry to a foot or more down so will be grateful for this.
ReplyDeleteThe second rainfall still hasn't done much good here - it didn't last long
DeleteIt's quite fashionable to have contrasting patterns and colours these days!
ReplyDeleteReally? Not quite like those in the 1960s surely
DeleteWhen you have worked out where the first six months of the year went, please let me know. They certainly were moving at speed.
ReplyDeleteLast night after supper I went into the kitchen and realised I had to turn the light on - 😱
Gloomy here too last night - but not a lot of rain out of the grey clouds
DeleteI used to have curtains like that. They are now covers for the cat beds.
ReplyDeleteThink Mum had similar in green stripes as well
DeleteI think the older we get, the years slip by faster. I read that it's something to do with the fact that a year becomes a smaller percentage of our age. At 10 years old a year is 10% but at 50 years old it's only 2% so the year goes much quicker. It sounds plausible enough. I hope this comment goes through, the one I left yesterday seems to have vanished into the ether again.
ReplyDeleteWhoops It's probably my fault for forgetting to check spam comments again - sorry
DeleteI don't mind colours clashing, but not patterns. Most rooms were furnished like that in those days as long as there was a touch of a colour linking them together. Back in the day I made a midi skirt from one of those kits in magazines, didn't turn out too good, but I think that was more down to me than the kit. Women's magazines were a lot better in those days than they are now.
ReplyDeleteI think it was a case of whatever Mum could find - and it didn't matter back then
DeleteWhere indeed has half the year gone like that in the blink of an eye. the worst is that I look back at what I haven't accomplished and see things that are still exactly the same as they were in January.
ReplyDeleteI've forgotten January - would need to read my blog to remember it!
DeleteMum had a yellow kitchen with contrasting orange paintwork. Lots of orange in various rooms! x
ReplyDeleteMy Mum had a yellow kitchen and eventually the yellow front door she always wanted because through the war and after there was hardly any paint available - definitely not yellow
DeleteLove this post, and find Jo's comments about age and perceptions of time passing fascinating too. Also agree with Joan about women's magazines.....
ReplyDeleteI too have memories of the clashing colours of the 60s and 70s.......our mum made some of our clothes, I remember needlecord being a favourite for pinafore dresses.
Alison in Wales x
Oh yes I remember I had a green needlecord pinafore dress - again made rather than bought - with a white roll neck top underneath.
DeleteI love that photograph Sue - it says such a lot about how times have changed.
ReplyDeleteJust looks so dated and old fashioned now.
DeleteI was making a yellow trouser suit for my Needlework O level. It was bright yellow, needlecord trousers with a yellow floral patterned jacket with the plain yellow as lapels and pockets - height of fashion in 1971!. We were supposed to make it over the course of the 5th year and finish it off in a 2 hour supervised session in May but I wanted to wear it to my friend's 16th birthday party in February so finished it off at home and thus "failed" the O level. I didn't care, I got to snog the heart-throb from the boys' school at the party.
ReplyDeleteWhat lovely memories. There was no needlework O level at my school and we only did it for about 1 term between cookery - which I gave up as soon as possible because the teacher was mad!
DeleteI had curtains like that in our first home, only blue. Cheap stuff, great for broke newlyweds. And those clashing colors and designs? Ahead of their time -- they'd be called adventurous now, and how to mix patterns for pizzazz. Or something!
ReplyDeleteI seem to remember other colours for those curtains as well . A bit too much clashing even for adventurous I think!
DeleteThis was quite nostalgic for me! That curtain pattern was called 'Regency Stripe', and I think most homes had a pair of them somewhere in the early 1960s. My parents bedroom had them, together with a lilac floral wallpaper and I think a pink eiderdown, but somehow the whole effect was warm and homely rather than garish.
ReplyDeleteI have a feeling that we also had some curtains the same pattern in green or maybe lilac
DeleteJuly is usually perfect summer weather; warm and sunny with occasional showers. At the half way point on the calendar does not seem possible. Time passes quickly. Fresh veg and fruit seems abundant in July. Your home grown berries must be delicious. That is a lovely photo of you at 13.
ReplyDeleteWe can have all sorts of weather here in July - often good sometimes wet
DeleteSounds like a good month!
ReplyDeleteThe photo made me smile. Certainly not afraid to mix colours and patterns. I know that when I grew up in the 70s the colours and patterns were loud and seemed to clash lol.
I can't believe how many patterns there were in the living room in the 60's!
DeleteThe wall paper is beautiful. And I love your dress, very stylish for that time. I bet you loved it! Do you actually rem the dress?
ReplyDeleteI remember the feel of the material the dress was made of but can't remember wearing it
DeleteMy Mil gave us a pair of curtains just like those for our first house in the 1970s and they're still in use on one of our windows four houses later!
ReplyDeleteWow amazingly long lasting curtains
DeleteI always remember when I think it was Woman magazine came out with a bright skirt perhaps it had tulips on that you had to sew up, I think mine had a navy blue background, and for a while everywhere I went I saw people in the skirt. I like your dress in the photo and your hairstyle. Jean/Winnipeg
ReplyDeleteMy Mum used to have Woman and Womans Weekly magazines - I don't know which had the ads for pre-cut pieces
DeleteI love old photos and they often are good for a laugh. Our tastes certainly change over the years!
ReplyDeleteDefinitely don't wear such garish colours now
DeleteThe photo does make me smile! My trouser suit, made by my older sister was mauve floral! As I got older I realised that, no matter how tempting, mauve and purples do not suit me! We are in the depth of winter and love the distraction of Le Tour and Wimbledon. Trouble is as we get older it's harder to stay up so late so often only watch the start of things then have to go to bed!
ReplyDeleteMy first bathroom was mauve or maroon or purple - something that looked terrible I know!
DeleteI love looking at old pictures. I think, back in the day, coordinating colors for a decorating scheme was not something really a 'thing'. I remember when my parents moved us into a home they'd bought, the woman fancied herself quite a designer, and she left her drapes. My mother was so pleased to have a coordinated livingroom. She bought some marvelous green avocado colored naugahyde furniture. The only thing that that sofa and chair coordinated with was each other. My father's recliner didn't coordinate with curtains or the rest of the livingroom furniture, but it was a comfortable chair and one that he loved. It stayed!
ReplyDeleteI think in the 50s and 60's it would have been a case of use whatever you could find and comfort is important!
DeleteI love the dress, I would wear it today!!! Taken separately I love all of the elements of the room.
ReplyDeleteMy mom had to use what she had because of finances and when she finally could afford to have the furniture reupholstered it was in Naugahyde because a cousins wife worked somewhere that made it. She could get the ends and offcuts cheap. It was hot and sticky, I hated it and having a very sensitive nose I could always smell a chemical smell from it. I was thrilled when it was finally gone.
Nowadays it is cheaper to just buy new furniture as reupholstery is so pricey people won't pay it. They just chuck the furniture in the dump and buy new. I find it sad and hate the cheap overstuffed furniture available today. It is not built for short legged people and I feel like a toddler sitting on "big people" chairs. LOL
JC
I hope it isn't true what the weather is on the first is for the rest of the month it rained yet again. The strawberries were horrid here because of all the rain
ReplyDeleteCathy
I've enjoyed eating strawberries 🍓 but now most of them are gone. I get them from a farm, not a grocery store as strawberries aren't completely ripe when sent. You look nice in that dress from last century. My mom made dresses for me. Some I didn't like when I got older. It's to be hot this week as in the 90 degree F . Temperature 🌡 🌡 I'm trying not to spend much money for now since I'm not working. Get whatever we need and buy things on sale. Gas prices have gone up again. Have a good week!!
ReplyDeleteBecky
I don't think anyone cared too much about clashing colours or patterns back in the day. As long as they had curtains, chairs and maybe new wallpaper every so often it didn't matter if new additions didn't quite match. Well that is until the next generation that married in the late 70's, then everything had to be in shades of cream, brown and orange.
ReplyDelete