Add to Cart #5

It’s Add to cart time, the monthly free So Good post where I give you the grand tour of the best things I’ve bought lately: the champions, the MVPs, the NICE BITS OF KIT. This was the month that all our makeup melted off, all our rich friends disappeared and all our children went stir crazy from lack of institutionalisation. I’ve got a tiny sunburn on my neck hump. I’m quite hormonal and keep picking fights with my poor husband. My son is relentlessly trying to get me to buy him a BB gun. I’m on the edge. Andiamo!

A thing I like to include on my doomscrolling itinerary is a little tour of recently added local things on Facebook marketplace. A lot of people felt very smug and clever leaving Facebook, didn’t they? Well, more weird furniture for me! I sort of just have a look in a soothing, window shopping sort of way. I like when people are selling weird things like pewter spearheads or avocado bathroom suites, and it really is mostly in the spirit of nosiness that I am there. That said, I had been vaguely looking for a new kitchen table: The one in my kitchen was just…TOO BIG. I knew it was too big the moment I saw it, but it had been ordered before we moved in and my husband had built it all with a significant level of struggle and I just didn’t have the heart to dismantle and return it. Marriages have been based on less, I guess! Anyway, it continued to be a bit too big for our kitchen and I knew that I needed something different: something very beautiful and ideally FREE. Enter from stage left:

This old girl was being given away for free, and the thing that got my hear racing was the black paint peeling off to reveal TEAK! This was a G Plan Fresco table, I was pretty sure. I got my van driver guy to collect it for me and got it into the garden and did a little squeal when I discovered I was ABSOLUTELY RIGHT.

Here’s one on Etsy that was £1200 (though that included chairs, but still).

Anyway, I got to work with the tedious paint stripping and sanding and scraping - it took about four days because I have a short attention span and it was really head-on-table-thumpingly dull work. I was left with this:

At this point it was looking extremely unpromising. I didn’t give up because I didn’t really have a choice, but I’m telling you in the same way a recipe will tell you not to worry if things look curdled/burnt/green at a certain stage, to reassure you in case you ever do something like this yourself. I bought myself a little palm sander from Black & Decker called a ‘Mouse’ which really did make lighter work of things (though buy loads of replacement sanding block things, they don’t last). Then I went in with my Danish Oil, which is actual black magic (or brown magic, should I say?). It’s an oil/varnish hybrid product and was an absolute piece of piss to rub on and made my poor shit looking anaemic table look nothing short of majestic. It is like a tinted moisturiser for wood. An absolute triumph, and I will be Danish oiling all my wood from now on.

From one brown lacquer to another! It got so hot and I subsequently got so sweaty that I couldn’t wear brow pencil. I smudged it all up my face and liked like Divine for half a day without realising.

Now, I need a darker brow for my face to look right - I just do. My features are nice but everything can feel quite low contrast because I’ve also got pale lips and no natural blush or tan to my face, so I feel like a face drawn on a balloon in sharpie in my more vulnerable moments. This would absolutely have been the time to dye my eyebrows, but I just never got round to it - and it was hot! And my kids are off school! I bought this on a whim whilst picking up a prescription at the Chemist, which has one makeup brand for sale only and that is Rimmel. Incidentally, did you know that the makeup display thing, like the actual piece of furniture with all the dispensers and testers and mini mirrors is called a ‘Gondola;? Isn’t that heaven??

Guys, this brow mascara is very useful! I don’t really see myself going back to pencil. It has a sort of waxy finish to it, and positively needs a section 21 served to it before it will come off your face. It darkens the actual hairs, so it doesn’t look blocky. It is like Glossier Boy Brow, but not for pussies people who want a very very subtle look. At £8, I highly recommend it.

A notable thing that happened this month was that I was invited to a 50th birthday party - the person turning 50 is extremely fun and sunny and looks a good ten years younger. She is a dopamine dresser, talks to strangers with ease and is extremely funny. A general bon viveur! So, the party. Big camp event at a venue in Blackpool, think pink flamingos and disco balls. I threw open my wardrobe which is unhelpfully 95% navy utility wear these days, and of course instantly felt nervous. I blobbed about on Vinted for a few days and ended up ordering this very jolly frock, originally from smug dangly paper crane purveyors Anthropologie.

Very pleased I was with it as well! It was fun and comfortable and festive - I could also imagine wearing it on a hot day. It had little pockets for your phone and lighter!

On the day of the party, I shaved my legs and quickly realised that maybe they needed more help. They were palid, spotty, bruised. Normally they were under a veil of navy canvas, as I mentioned earlier, but that night I needed new legs. It was too late for a fake tan, I would need leg makeup, a la Death Becomes Her.

I went straight to my provincial branch of Boots where I was delighted to find not only St Tropez but Vita Liberata Body Blur, which everyone raved about approximately 6 years ago. The St Tropez was on offer for a cool tenner, and the Vita Liberata was £36, so I obviously went with the former, but I picked up a Vita Liberata body brush applicator thing as a consolation prize.

It was a little bit orange, it was messy (somehow ended up getting loads on my bra???) and it needed careful buffing in, but my legs did look much better and it stayed on well past my hangover. Looking forward to my next party!

Sorry, but how lovely is this? I mean, in a world where a normal bog standard bottle of perfume from the airport is circa £100, I am so thrilled to have found this gorgeous spray cologne for £20. Nothing as pleasant and cooling as cologne to wear in the heat, and this has a bit of interest in the form of a jasmine/ylang ylang note which I find very sexy! I think this is because I almost exclusively wore ylang ylang essential oil behind my ears and between my boobs as a fragrance in my online dating days. I need only whiff the old blue Neal’s Yard Remedies bottle to be brought back to getting screaming drunk in East London just so me and the poor chap could move past the awkward small talk and start snogging. ANYWAY, I just think this is a delightful little bargain. It also comes in Rose and Magnolia flavours.

Now, whilst we’re talking sex, let me show you these amazing brown non stick paper air fryer liners. I am loathe to contribute further to tedious air fryer discourse: suffice to say I use mine nearly every day, mainly for cooking fish fingers for children but also occasionally for doing things like pre cooking aubergine slices for melanzane parmigiana or dehydrating cherry tomatoes. I once even made scotch eggs in the airfryer.

These liners make short work of the worst thing about air fryers, second only to their horrible Darth Vader appearance and obnoxious counter footprint: cleaning the baskets. Absolutely FUCK cleaning the airfryer baskets, they are the worst shape, they never feel quite clean and you always end up getting water all over yourself as the tap hits one of the many awkward angles. A more slatternly woman would just replace the liners rather than cleaning the baskets every time. I mean, not me obviously. I could never.

I mean, in a perfect world you would go to your local framer, a friendly Geppetto-esque man with a problem solving attitude and retro prices. Some day, when I have more time and money, I will. For now though, I buy them ready made.

There are lots of lovely framing ideas about, things like big colourful mounts and off centre framing like the below (sorry, I can’t find the person whose wall this is, please let me know and I’ll add the credit!) which you could definitely do yourself with a stanley knife and a steady hand.

High street frames are all a bit lacklustre, mainly only fit for hanging food hygiene certificates in view of the public, but every once and a while you can find a nice cheap ready made one. And this is one of those times! The Hertford Green comes in lots of sizes and I’ve now bought two - there is a lovely carved wooden outer, a dark green inner and room for an extra mount if you fancy one. Behold, my lovely fish from Hadley Paper Goods (total cost £20)

Also here it is bigger, with an additional mount - shells painted by my lovely mother! Need to find the right place for it still.

That’s it for Add to Cart #5! Please click ‘like’ or a leave a comment or restack the post if you liked it and you like my writing. I appreciate not everyone can afford multiple Substack subscriptions, but those are totally free things you can do to support and they mean the world. Though if you are worried about cost of sub, do please message me :)

Happy shopping So Gooders, stuff of life innit?

Claire x