September is here and everyone has gone hibernation crazy, straight from heatwaves into knitted hot water bottle covers and paper leaf-garlands and bloody pumpkins. If I see the word “cosy” one more time…

For God’s sake. It’s almost like a fetish, this “cosying up for Autumn” thing. It’s still twenty-two degrees outside! If you’re in front of a roaring fire wearing cashmere bedsocks and clasping a mug of cocoa then you are completely deranged.

It’s too early. I realise that it is officially autumn, according to the calendar, but there should be some sort of transitional period that September sits into - Late Summer, for example. Or Summer End, would sound quite romantic. Why do we have to start thinking about the next thing all of the time, like this crazed conveyor belt, NEXT NEXT NEXT NEXT NEXT! My eleven year-old came home from the supermarket with chocolate reindeer as her weekend treat of choice! Reindeer! I still have a tan! I’m still wearing flip flops!

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Sorry, I feel passionately about this. Seeing C****tmas stuff in September* just makes me feel slightly panicked. It’s also making me angsty because I need to get down to The Dorset Nook and film a load of beautiful autumn/winter content and I simply cannot see any sort of hole in my diary. (Or in the bookings, which is great news for any holiday cottage business owner, but it does make my content plan trickier!)

In other holiday cottage news, because I know you signed up to my blog to constantly hear all about my alter ego life as a holiday cottage-runner, I have bought an excellent new bench for the bedroom to replace the chair that was only ever supposed to be there as a temporary fix. I have comped together some before and after pictures and am wondering, is this sort of interiors stuff, the “problem fixing” side, of any interest to you? Would you like to know how I decide on interiors when it’s a business and also being done from a distance? If so, leave me a comment and I’ll do a post. I spend 80% of my days faffing with room designs and fabric swatches and planning what I’m going to force Rich to do next, so would love to write about this more…

(*I have to admit that I have featured a beauty advent calendar, but I managed to not use the c-word at all, didn’t put any magical jingly music on the content, and it had to go up now because otherwise it would sell out before I could let people know about it. But I wish all these brands would just release them mid-November and then it would actually be exciting, and festive.)

Anyway, let’s do the favourites. Picture me throwing piles of dried autumnal leaves into the air and smiling like an eejit, wearing a scarf and gloves even though it’s the same temperature as a cool-ish Sicilian evening in June.

Autumn, “yay”.

Ad-info: this post contains a sponsored section with Stripe & Stare and outgoing links may be affiliate links.

My Next Skirt

Last year I saw a model called Chrissie Teigen on Instagram wearing a superb outfit, this midi-length black denim skirt and black chunky jumper and black boots ensemble and instantly knew that this was precisely the sort of outfit I could consider wearing myself. No gusset annoyances, good warmth level, flexible in terms of footwear.

Can I now find the video? No I cannot. I don’t even follow this lady so have no idea where it popped up, but on investigation I have found out that she is my age-ish (bit younger), my height-ish (bit taller) (FFS!) and so it all starts to make sense that I was drawn to this practical yet supremely sassy outfit.

I had the boots, (my Arket kitten-heel ones) and I had the jumpers (80,000 of them approx) so I just needed the skirt. Could I find a long black denim skirt, pencil-shaped, anywhere? No! Until last week, when I thought I’d have a delve on the Next app whilst also looking at rechargeable table lamps and there it was. The ideal skirt.

Alas I haven’t taken a good photo of me in it so you’ll have to survive with this video:

I just went to find the link and it’s half price! I’m in a UK12. It’s at Next here.

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My En-Masse Picture Framing Orgy

Getting pictures framed is one of those tasks that just gets pushed down the line year after year. It doesn’t help that it can be astonishingly expensive, depending on the size and the type of frame and glass, but you have to lug all the pictures to the framers and then sit there deciding on the mounting and the frame (which I quite enjoy) and then you have to wait a couple of months (with my framers, anyway!) and then go and lug them all home again.

So by the time I went to get all of the pictures framed that I’d been saving for ages, there were loads. It was like a framing orgy when I stepped into the framer’s with all of my various art folders and bubble-wrapped packages. It was necessity that sent me in the end - I need a load of them for the new cottage, The Dorset Nest, and the deadline for finishing that zoomed past us months ago so I had to pull my socks up with it all.

I don’t know whether you like voiceover videos but I have one here, showing you all of the pictures I had framed and where they’re from. Once I have them all hung on the various walls in various places I shall take beautiful photos of them and then do a gigantic, picture-heavy blog post for you, but until then we are going to be thoroughly modern and sit through a little video. Like when you’re in a museum and there’s the room with the bench and you have to perch there awkwardly whilst a film about screeching birds flickers on the opposite wall.

Budge up:

Stripe & Stare’s Amazing Sale and New Ad

I am treating you to all sorts of multimedia today, aren’t I? I just thought that this Stripe & Stare ad was so good though, it’s just so… on-brand. Optimistic, joyful, beautifully filmed and with a touch of tongue-in-cheek humour.

If you don’t know who Stripe & Stare are then do be advised that they make the softest, most comfortable knickers you will ever have the pleasure of wearing. We’re talking soft as, I don’t know, clouds? Ridiculous.

They make them in all of these hundreds of different patterns and colours, some with contrasting trim, some with lace (I don’t know how they’ve made lace soft, it’s a kind of alchemy if you ask me) and it just feels lovely opening up the underwear drawer to see all of these colour clashes.

But it’s the comfort of them that really matters: even if you have them all in plain black, it’s the cosseting feel of the fabric, the fact that the knickers are designed not to ride up. Bloody marvellous.

They have a huge 50% off sale at the moment, if you’re quick about it - their sales are epic. I wear a size medium, 10-12 and they fit me perfectly and comfortably with no digging in. (I am a UK 10-12, so I’d say they are true to size?)

The sale is here. My top recommendations would be the original briefs, the brazilians (which I love) and absolutely anything from the pyjama section.

If you’re ever buying full price, you can get 20% off your Stripe & Stare order with my code RUTHC20.

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Look What You Made Me Do

I include a book of the month for the Youtube viewer’s really, because it’s the only time I talk about books on there, whereas on the blog I yak on about books all the time! So I apologise that I am repeating myself here, but I really massively enjoyed John Lanchester’s Look What You Made Me Do, so much so that I am picking it out as my favourite of the bunch from the recent reads.

It’s just so….nasty. Unapologetically so. Mean, twisted people intent on revenge. Is the fact that I found this a fun read a weird reflection on my personality? I hope not! I’ve just had it to the gills with overly-sweet thought novels about how wonderful life is at the moment, because NO ELIZABETH IT IS NOT! There are horrendous things afoot! And it’s all very well having a little escapism, and learning about the lives of some people in their sixties in a quiet New England town, but you can get a bit overfed on it, can’t you?

Give me a vengeful TV script-writer who tries to destroy the life of a couple of middle class Londoners but then finds herself on the flipside and yes I will tear through that book like there’s a prize for the fastest reader. Oh, they’re just so awful, the lot of them, I thoroughly loved it: the brutal satire, the clever weaving of the different stories.

Have a feeling it’ll be a bit Marmite, this book, but you have to take a risk now and then. It’s here online.

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Widow’s Bay

Another culture recommendation that may divide us: Widow’s Bay. Have you seen this yet? It’s on Apple TV, so no ad breaks, which I hugely appreciate. When did this thing become the norm that you pay for a TV subscription and then they STILL give you ad breaks unless you pay them the ransom of the even higher subscription? What in the world is that about?

Widow’s Bay, though: now this is the sort of TV I want. Could not possibly be written by anyone but a human because it’s so bloody daft, once you get into it. You think it’s going to be the creepiest show ever, because it’s about a curse on a remote island off the coast of the USA that has clapboard houses and creaky hotels and a well and so on, and then there are horrible shots of a basement with what looks like a torture chair in it and you think ABSOLUTELY NOT. NO WAY AM I WATCHING THIS.

But you have to persevere. Because Matthew Ryhs is a comic genius (we knew this before, but it’s so subtle here, his performance, that you just want to keep applauding him) and the whole storyline turns out to be completely bonkers, and the supporting cast are so good that you can’t wait for them to have more time on screen, each and every one of them.

Brace for the very ending, because personally I thought it was slightly weak, but then I can’t remember the last time I watched the ending to something that wasn’t. Does everyone simply run out of steam? Out of budget? I don’t get it! Surely when you start writing the plot out you have some idea of how you might want the finale to look?

Anyway, a top watch, this was. Burnt through my stash of Mint Magnums, chomping away as I hid behind a cushion, it was so good. I also enjoyed the first of the new season of Slow Horses, though that’s a weekly drip-feed so not as gratifying!

Right, here’s the Youtube video of the favourites - please do, as usual, press the heart button and leave a comment and, if you haven’t already, drop your email into the box to subscribe so that every post gets to you in a timely manner:

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"Stop Saying Cosy" And Other Cheery Seasonal…