New sparklers: diamante and windows

It's probably not something that happens to many people, but I now have more diamante than I am ever likely to need. I'm not talking about jewellery, this is loose stones I'm talking about.


My plan to wear a wider variety of jewellery this year has led to me wearing stuff I don't take out of the box very often, and in the case of brooches with a plain C-clasp rather than a locking clasp, there's a good reason for that. A week or so ago I wore a very nice round, autumnal-looking brooch to work (the one on the bottom-right of the photo). It's got a C-clasp, and managed to detach itself in the Ladies at work – luckily while I was at the sink, it didn't end up in the loo. Annoyingly, one of the stones popped out and I could not find it.

After a couple of days keeping my eyes open for the missing stone, I gave in and ordered a mixed bag of ambers and browns on Etsy. The stones were cheap but the shipping was not, so I ordered a second bag of diamante in springy pastels so if I lose stones from one of my other brooches, I'll be more likely to have a replacement handy and won't have to pay for another lot of shipping. (This diamante is all on top of the hotfix ones I got for my burlesque costume before deciding not to carry on with it.) And then a week after dropping my brooch, the same day as the stones arrived, I found the missing one under the hand dryer.

Dot of glue, brooch all fixed. Super. I mended a broken 'pearl' (finest plastic!) earring and swallow brooch that had lost a stone while I was at it. And I've got about 199 stones spare, so if you ever lose one from a favourite piece, ask me if I have a replacement!

That's not the only repair going on at the House of Robots. Today we had the back doors and all bar one of the back windows replaced (reason: the spare room is so full of kipple, there isn't any way to get to the window. And actually, that one's in okay condition). I am SO excited at having a back door that closes properly and doesn't leak out all our heat. And windows I can see through - the old wooden ones had got all cloudy, which was great for when I wanted to walk around in my pants, but not great for seeing through or letting maximum light in. I can see all the way into our now-much-tidier garden. There's even a shiny new microchip-sensitive catflap for the urchins.

Mr Robot has also ordered a bookcase to match our dining table. We're finally grown up enough to have furniture we choose, not just the cheapest thing in Argos and it feels so good. The rickety old black ash bookcase that we've had for about 18 years and currently holds all the cookbooks in the dining room can GO. Doing all this and seeing Cate and Sarah talk about how they're doing up their homes, and Marija's stories about getting her home more or less rebuilt, have made me look again at our house. I seem to have two 20th century rooms (kitchen and bedroom) and then Victorian Explorer for the rest, but that's fine. That's what we like!