Style

I bought these stylish dusters and dishcloths today at Asda, I couldn't resist them. I think I may just have to change the whole decor of my kitchen to match them,though, as they don't quite go with my colour scheme!

Talking of stylish things do you like my shoes I bought in France? The French women are so elegant and their shoes are just so different. I couldn't decide between the two so had them both!

We have yet more people coming to view the house tomorrow (I do wish someone would buy it) so I shall be using these cloths but I hope your weekend is more of a shoe-shopping than dusting sort of weekend.

France

The recent holiday in France was wonderful. Initially we stayed with friends who moved to the Tarn region last year and are renovating a cottage. How I envy their lifestyle! Absolutely stress-free. The renovation is a mammoth task but I can see it will be absolutely stunning when it is finished. We then stayed in the Dordogne area for a week. The area was just beautiful but, alas, not the accommodation - I have never seen so much bad taste in one place. Plenty of the French shabby but not a chic in sight! This chateau/castle was just down the road from us and the views over the river were amazing.

We did plenty of shopping,

eating and drinking,

and sightseeing.

I took so many photos of all the wonderful buildings, it's hard to choose which to publish here.

The houses built into the cliffs are so unusual.

Of course I was hoping to buy lots of French antiques for my website but didn't find as many as I had hoped. Brocantes seemed to be thin on the ground in this area.

I did manage to find some lovely linen, though, and it has definitely whetted my appetite to go back and search for more.

A Wedding

Today my lovely friend and the other half of OhSoVintage got married in Gretna Green. I so wish I could have been there with her to share her joy but it was to be a very low key affair with just her two children, their partners and her grandaughter. She and her husband originally thought it would be fun to elope and not tell anyone till after the wedding but their secret got leaked! All her friends and the rest of her family will be celebrating with a BIG party when they return. We have a lot of fun running the business together and I wish her and her new husband many, many years of happiness together. This is a photo I took of her last year at a Michaelmas fayre at which we had a stall. We were going to do it again this year but she'll be on her honeymoon - how inconsiderate is that?!

I have just taken a photo of my 'den' which used to be my daughter's bedroom. I love to come here and sew, listen to the radio or just potter looking at my stash of linens, lace and materials. Here it is (looking tidier than usual!).

Our next book we have to read for my reading group is 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie' and I cannot find it in any shops, would you believe? How can it be that two huge Waterstones and two W H Smith's don't have it in stock? I know I could go to the library but I am funny about books, I like to have a brand new copy that no-one else has read, I just love the smell of the new paper - one of my foibles I guess.

Oh dear, yet again I have been neglecting my and other people's blogs and I have no excuse. Please forgive me for not visiting you as regularly as I should but I do enjoy reading all your lovely posts.

I spent Bank Holiday weekend staying down in Cornwall again and visited four car boots and an antiques fair in three days. Needless to say I came home with the car packed up with lots of treasures, some for me and some for the website. I loved these storage jars and they now sit proudly in my kitchen.

I think they are for coffee, semolina, sugar and rice but if anyone knows I am wrong please correct me. You could say I am a 'zucker' for anything a bit different! I also treated myself to two handbags both very different from each other.

The black one on the right is tiny and just large enough for a mobile phone and lipstick. I don't know when I will use it but I just had to have it. The snakeskin one only cost a £1 (ok, I know I shouldn't buy snakeskin but it has been dead a long time).

I also found this item which was sold to me as an East European cheese bucket - wrong! It is, in fact, an early 19th century flour barrel. Much as I would like to keep this too I have decided to put it for sale instead.

Between all the antique hunting we did have time for visiting some tourist attractions. I can't go to north Cornwall without visiting Padstow but, as you can imagine, it was very busy.

We also went to Pencarrow House.

I have lovely memories of visiting here when my daughter was very little and she adored playing in this wendy house.

I am off to France next week on a holiday/buying trip so if anyone knows of any good brocantes in the Dordogne area please do let me know.

Here, There and Everywhere

I have copied Lucy Locket and Sophie Honeysuckle and put some music on my blog. I hope you like some of my choices and I shall be adding more. A lot of my favourites weren't available when I searched on the playlist which is a shame but I am going to copy Lucy Locket again and put a link to youtube. Here, There and Everywhere by Emmylou Harris is one of my all time favourites, it would definitely feature in my top ten and I think the photography in this video is just so beautiful. Hope you enjoy it too.

I am off to Cornwall for a few days over the Bank Holiday. There is an antiques fair at Wadebridge on Friday so I'm looking forward to doing some buying there.

Let's hope the sun shines for us all, Surely it can't rain forever.....

Picnics

After our picnic in the New Forest last weekend it seems to have been a picnicky sort of week. Jane (business partner and good friend) and I bought this picnic basket this week. We both love it but resisted the temptation to use it when we had a picnic and beach barbecue last night as it is now on our website. It was the last night of Cowes which is always celebrated with a firework display so we packed our things up and sat on the beach with our wine whilst the men cooked. It was lovely and such a warm evening.

I'd already been out to lunch at the pub just further along the beach at my Reader's Group meeting so the diet wasn't stuck to yesterday! I've lost 18 lbs and only want to lose a couple more but these seem to be the hardest to shift. We discussed 'Hard Times' by Dickens and 'My Cousin Rachel' by Daphne du Maurier which we'd read recently. Next we are going to read 'Gentlemen and Players' by Joanne Harris - has anyone read it?

Tomorrow is our 29th wedding anniversary so that's another picnic or pub lunch (and gained lbs) but we must make the most of this brief summer we are having while it lasts. Have a lovely Sunday probably car booting which is where most vintage bloggers will be.

New Forest

It was such a lovely weekend so hubby and I decided to go to the New Forest for the day on Saturday. We took a picnic and a bottle of nicely chilled wine and sat at the edge of the creek in Beaulieu. Later we went to Brockenhurst and I had to photograph these New Forest ponies.

This cow was ambling along - he did own the road and was holding up all the traffic. If you've never been to the New Forest, ponies, cows and sheep regularly roam through the villages and roads.

On the way home I spied two antique shops and had to stop and browse. I didn't come away empty handed!

After all those wet Sunday mornings it was great to go car booting in the sunshine. I have never seen so many stalls at our local one and managed to find some nice things so some of these along with my New Forest purchases are now on my website.

My best find was a souvenir cup of St Enedoc church near Padstow (where John Betjeman is buried) which I visited with my mother and daughter recently at Easter. I don't know how to link to a previous post (perhaps someone could let me know) so also here is the photo I took of it then. My mum will love this cup.

I must just mention that is my daughter's 23rd birthday today. It is the first one that we have spent apart as she is on holiday in Budapest. I'm really missing her but at 9.30 pm I'll toast a glass of bubbly to her and remember this moment all those years ago.