Mrs Birks Blogs

So readers of this blog will know that for my 40th birthday I went for afternoon tea with Mr Birks at Selfridges.  Well, last week I had an afternoon tea experience with my best friend Paula, which made the Selfridges one look highly boring in comparison even though it was served on a picnic bench!  On a Friday afternoon, we experienced the Science themed afternoon tea at The Ampersand Hotel in South Kensington.  The hotel's proximity to both the Science Museum and The Natural History Museum explains the science theme and it featured dinosaurs, fossils, planets and spacemen. When the afternoon tea arrived, I didn't think I could be any more excited, it had little jellies served in a petri dish, a chocolate spaceman and rocket ship, a planet balanced on chocolate cake and a series of test tubes with different toppings inside.  However, I was wrong.  When the waiter magically made the dry ice appear, I was like an uncontrollable child with excitement. The food was deliciou

Last year I bought 4 new (old) chairs so that I would have enough to host my daughter's birthday party.  Our old chairs were looking a bit shabby and two of them had developed a wobble so after the party, the plan was to get rid of the old chairs and upcycle the new (old) ones.  Skip to one year later and we have finally upcycled our chairs and they look pretty special (although don't look too closely) Before the upcycle they looked like this: These are the chairs after some sanding down, shortly after we collected them.  We bought them through eBay for £20 - a bargain at £5 per chair and collected from about 10 minutes away from our house.  They then sat in our shed for a number of months... Here they are after the upcycle: We used some chalk paints from B&Q - some little tester pots to get different colours and a top coat by Frenchic (which looked suspiciously like watered down PVA).  The top coat gave the finished chairs a nice 'feel' and promises t