Tick-Tock

For the past wee while Richard and I have been working a few new products for the shop, and I'm really excited to show you some of the final products! It's no secret that we (ok, I...) love embroidery hoops and on a thrifting expedition awhile back I noticed that there were shelves and shelves of old clocks. While an electric blue stained glass windmill or ceramic duck may be someones idea of a lovely clock, I was pretty sure that we could whip up something a little more appealing.

I used some thrifted wool suiting for the clock faces and then embroidered the numbers on freehand. I really enjoy the rhythm of embroidering, so we cozied (ok, maybe not cozied per se as it was so bloody hot) up on the couch on the weekend evenings with our string of Bette Davis movies, cold beers and some embroidery floss. Richard was in charge of putting them all together, which is good because as it turns out I have no patience for fitting them all together when it's so hot, haha.

Not only are these now in our shop (with more to come!), but they are also on our 'table' at the Poppytalk Handmade Market as part of the 'Home Sweet Home' theme. The current market is running from today until August 15th and you really should all pop over and check it out, there is a lot of great handmade and vintage stuff to pretty up your home!

Afternoon sun & lace

I couldn't resist using the afternoon sun last Friday, as the backdrop of this beautiful lace collared blouse I found while thrifting recently. I was so excited to find this. A perfect fit, lovely and light and floaty and the collar kills me. It isn't too high a collar which is often what I find with blouses like this. The high collar does me no favours whatsoever.

I also picked up a couple of pretty Italian scarves for a dollar a pop, that I'm looking forward to wearing with some Spring outfits. I'm really willing Spring to appear, despite me just seeing that the forecast for this Wednesday is....snow.

Have a lovely start to your week!

xx

New to me.

Our days thrifting have produced some real treats lately. I'm loving this orange gym bag, which will come in hand as a doula bag and holding snacks, heat packs and essential oils. I also love those little Norwegian....gravy boats? We're not actually sure what they are, aside from being pretty with a fantastic motif winding around them.

Speaking of fantastic motifs, we also picked up these lovely red pots. Nice and sturdy so practical for the kitchen, but really I just love the red and white.

This mixer was probably the most exciting find. We have a great moss green Sunbeam Mixmaster, that I really try to pretend works...but it really doesn't. Our new Hamilton Beach works like a dream (now that Richard has cleaned the insides out and it doesn't smoke anymore...) and the Pyrex mixing bowls are so nice and heavy.

Finally, I can't wait to sip lemonade from these glasses while lazing about on the balcony this summer. Ice cubes clinking, and all that.

Hold on tight (blog-o-rama).

I have a truly wonderful husband. The other day, I had a crappy day at work. I mean, really crappy. So of course came home grumpy and generally annoyed at life. I was greeted by a giant hug and instructions to go look on the coffee table. On which I found....(dun dun DUN) my new birth ball (for doula stuff, that he'd gone and picked up for me), a GIANT bag of yarn (he'd gone to the thrift store and basically bought everything they had), my singlet from Toast (ok, he just got that out of the mailbox but it was still exciting) and these two amazing books that he'd found in the alleyway and thought I might like. Look at the cover illustrations, I love them! They are; '429 Great Gifts To Make all year around for just 10c to $10' by Anna Marie Doherty and the Editors of Family Circle Magazine (1977) and 'Sewing For The Home' by Mary Brooks Picken (1973). Actually, the second one was originally copyrighted in 1941, which of course is why it has such gems in it as 'A bride naturally expects to mark her linens or to have them marked. The linens she has before she is married and those presented to her for the hope chest should, of course, have her own initials. A bride who does not wish to do a whole monogram may quite safely use the initial of her new name. Often regulation household linens are marked with the single initial of the husband's name, as B for Brooks, or V for Valentine.'

Naturally.

There is actually a lot of really good patterns and ideas in both the books, although I'm not sure that I'll make a full on bedspread. I would, however, love to make these/be these glamorous women. I love that not only are their aprons wonderfully long, but that you also get to recline while wearing them instead of cook or get messy. The 70's must have been a wonderful time.

Another recent alleyway present was this little treat. Apparently he found it near our house on his way home from somewhere, so grabbed it and re-strung it for me! I left my acoustic at home when I left NZ, so Im excited to have one to play now. Plus, its pretty darn cute and rather old from what we can tell. Lucky me.

In other news, for quite some time now Richard and I have been talking about making better use of our growing cook book collection. Our schedule isn't very conducive to hang-out time, as I get home around 7 most nights and then he leaves for his night shift by 9 (sigh), so it's usually a quick dinner and chat before he's out the door. What we've decided to do is, each one of us has a designated night of the week to make a new (one neither of us has tried before) recipe from one of our cookbooks. That way, we get to eat a nice meal together and we also make sure we're cooking up something other than our 'go t0' recipes twice a week. I also just like food, so it's perfect really.

It was my turn first, so last night I whipped up the above Hazelnut & Chard Ravioli Salad from 101 Cookbooks. I know it technically isn't one of our cookbooks, but I do use it quite often and of course I hadn't planned ahead far enough so looked this up at work and got the fixings for it on the way home. I must say, it was bloody good. Really easy, but tastes fancy (my favourite kind of recipe) and although I didn't really have time to make the croutons like Heidi says, I just popped the squash cubes in the oven and roasted them while I did everything else - which worked really well! I think you should all try making this, the lemon (even though I used lime...) totally makes it - Yum.