Thrifted Finds: Whitby

While this is totally unrelated to the topic of this post, I just have to start off by saying that I've finally found out that I've got the scholarship I wanted for my postgrad - I assumed I was going to be skint all year, so this is the best news ever!  The worst part was that I was on a computer in the library when I found out and started to cry, awkward times...  These next two weeks until I start back at uni can't go fast enough!

In other news, I've finally got round to taking some pictures of my amazing Whitby bootsale haul.  Some of the things I found might only appeal to me, but I thought I'd share anyway in case there's any other nerdy 90s kids out there!

My bootsale finds assembled!  I also got an orange tupperware dish which I forgot to include in the picture, that and the tupperware salad spinner in the background are presents for my sister Mairi.

Possibly my favourite find was this annual, I don't usually look through boxes of annuals at bootsales but I'm really glad I checked out this one!  The annual is from the 50s and has loads of amazing retro-futuristic illustrations, I'm not sure whether to keep it as it is or use it for some kind of craft project.

Here are some of my favourite pages, I especially like the dog saying 'Yark Yark!'

Continuing with the geeky theme, Tetley and I got a good few pokemon toys - the Snorlax plushie and the pokedex are Tetley's but the rest are mine!

For my charm house, I found this slightly odd truthful horse and another couple of owls...

I also picked up some animals for my mini charm house - you can't tell in the photo, but these are all only about an inch tall, they're super cute!

This Aladdin mug is another very 90s find to go with my retro mugs collection, when you put hot water into it the genie appears.

Last Christmas, Ruaridh and I made wreaths from kitsch Christmas ornaments, so I picked these up to make another one with this year!

Finally, I managed to make a massive addition to my badge collection.  I think the ones in the photo directly above are my favourites, loving that ice cream pun!

What's your favourite things to look out for at car bootsales or thrift stores?

Faye

xxx

Lottie's 2nd Birthday

Hello everyone!  I hope you've been enjoying these last few weeks of summer!  I can't believe I haven't updated in so long, this past week has gone past in a blur...  I'm back up to full-time hours at my summer job in the University halls of residence as we're busy preparing all the flats for the students to move back in in September; plus I had a friend to stay at the weekend; had a few fun nights out; accidentaly invited 9 people round for dinner as a result of one of those nights out; ran a stall at the bootsale and made nearly £200; and had a brief visit to the hospital with a concussion!  What with all of this combined with my still-dodgy internet, I might not be properly back on my blogging schedule until next month!

Keeping up with the past week's hectic theme, I'm going to share some pictures from a very hectic weekend when Tetley and I went to stay with my sister Mairi to help out at my niece's 2nd birthday party.

As you may have gathered from my previous post, Mairi loves vintage style, but is also a total perfectionist, which makes party preparation quite a scary experience!  Mairi's partner Carrie had to make Mairi promise to calm down this year after we helped out at Lottie's first birthday and were forced to deflate and then reinflate most of the balloons to make sure they were all exactly the same size...  If  there was a birthday party version of the word 'bridezilla,' it would definitely apply to Mairi!  That said, Mairi's perfectionism does always result in a pretty amazing party, and this year was no exception.  Somehow Lottie's birthday was lucky enough to fall on a sunny weekend, so we were able to hold the party in the garden, with Mairi's homemade banner making an appearance on the shed.  Every year, we add a new picture of Lottie's face to the display, and I put together this year's rabbit hat!

For party entertainment, Mairi put together a ridiculously elaborate puppet show with help from my three nephews.  It was called 'Intergalactic Lottie' and was the story of Lottie's journey to space to find fame, complete with four set changes and well over ten puppets - I'm not sure how Mairi plans to top this for Lottie's third birthday!

There were also a lot of retro-style party games, including pass the parcel, a dancing contest and pin the tail on the donkey.  I painted the donkey but I feel it was slightly wasted on two year olds who were lucky if they managed to stick the tail on the paper, let alone the donkey itself!

We added a sign and balloons to the door and hung up a pinata (which turned out to be rididulously hard to beat as it was so flat, it took my nephews about 15 minutes to get to the sweets...)

The night before the party was spent making food - we went with a retro theme again with homemade biscuits, jelly boats, cheese and pineapple on sticks, and sausages on sticks displayed in some adorable hedgehogs that Tetley constructed.  Also note the beer and wine hidden behind the jugs of juice... there were a lot of mums and dads at the party too!

The hardworking party planners enjoying a glass of said wine!

The beautiful birthday girl in her new party dress!

My nephews Sam and Leo... when Tetley saw their matching tshirts from afar, he thought Mairi had made 'Lottie's party' tshirts for all the guests, I really wouldn't have been surprised!

Some of the other lovely guests!

Lottie with her grandparents...

...and her Mummies!

Finally, instead of making a big cake, Mairi and I decorated these cupcakes - we were meant to stick to four different animals but it quickly became more fancy!

I'm sorry this has been such a long post - there was so much going on at the party and so many photos taken that it was really dificult to narrow it down.  Mairi claims that after all the effort put in this year, she's going to take Lottie to Pizza Hut next year, but I'm sure when the time comes Tetley and I will be called in again to create an even more elaborate party!

Faye

xxx

Vintage Homes: Lottie's Nursery

I've been meaning to share pictures of my sister Mairi's flat for ages - Mairi is a very creative person, and every home she's lived in has been incredibly stylish, from her first tiny student flat to her current big apartment in Morningside, Edinburgh. I think Mairi has had a big part in inspiring my love for vintage-styled homes, and every time I go to visit her she has some amazing new find to show me.  Today I'm going to share some picture's of my niece Lottie's nursery.  As it's just a boxroom, it was only used for storage before Lottie was born, I wish I had thought to take some before and after pictures because the transformation is really quite amazing!

As the room is so small, most of my photos are detail shots as it's difficult to get any kind of panoramic view!

Mairi bought this vintage wallpaper for the nursery before we knew if Lottie was going to be a girl or a boy, she claims it's unisex since there's boys in the design but I still feel that it's extremely girly!

The ferris wheel on the lamp spins around when the light is switched on, it's very cute!

I drew this picture of Lottie's Mums, Mairi and Carrie.  I tried to go for a Dick Bruna-like style as he is Mairi's favourite children's author, her impressive collection of Bruna books are in the background of this picture...

Dick Bruna's artwork is quite a feature in Lottie's room - there are a lot of pictures of Miffy and a mirrored picture of Snuffy the dog.

Mairi also put up some empty frames to display some of Lottie's collection of vintage toys.

Since the nursery doesn't get much natural light, there are a lot of lamps and fairy lights like these elephant ones.

More of Lottie's toys are displayed in these shelves opposite her bed.  I wish I'd moved the bottle of Calpol before taking this photo, oops!

Last of all, this bluebird music box used to belong to me when I was a baby!

I hope you enjoyed looking at this little area of Mairi's home - I have some pictures of other rooms in her flat too so I'll share them soon. :)

Faye 

xxx

Trip to Whitby

Hello everyone!  Again, I'm sorry for the hiatus in posting - the problem with my photo editing software was more complicated than I thought, so I'm currently trying out a few programs to find a new place where I can sort all my pictures out!  Do you have any recommendations?  Preferably free programs as I am skint!

Although my pictures probably won't look the best (not that they ever have with my pathetic wee camera!) I thought I'd go ahead and share some pictures from me and Tetley's trip to Whitby last week.  In Scotland, it's basically been grey and rainy all summer, but almost as soon as we crossed the border into England it became gloriously sunny and it stayed that way for the whole time we were there - can you guys send some sunshine up to us please?

Whitby is one of the prettiest places I've been to, it's a very traditional English seaside town full of cobbled streets, red roofed houses and cute little old-fashioned shops.  Tetley always makes fun of how much I like it, but I think since he grew up there he's become a bit jaded!  In the background of this photo you can see Whitby Abbey, which gave Bram Stoker the inspiration to write Dracula.  Whitby actually has a Dracula-related museum which is one of the most hilarious attractions I've ever been to, it has so many terrible voiceovers and 80s animatronics...

Whitby is also famous for its connections to Captain Cook, his statue is almost always accessorised with a stylish seagull hat.

Tetley and I spent the first day of our trip wandering around the town and going to the shops and markets.

As well as pretty things, we came across some things in our travels that were a bit more bizarre...

After a couple of days of relaxing in Whitby, we took a trip to York.  It was probably a bad idea to go on a Saturday - York has pretty narrow streets and the town was totally packed, mainly with a combination of tourists and what seemed to be a bizarrely large amount of hen parties, at least I assume that's what was going on as there were huge packs of women in sexy nurse/cat/disney princess costumes everywhere, we even saw a group of about 40 of them on their own bus!  We managed to find some quieter areas down by the river and by the cathedral though, and also managed to fit in a trip round all the charity shops - we're basically old people at heart!

Before we went home, we had just enough time to visit Whitby's car boot sale.  My friend Ruaridh and I always wish that we could travel back in time to buy a ton of vintage stuff at past bootsales before it became popular, and at this bootsale our wish came true since Whitby is still about in the 90s in terms of modernisation...  Tetley and I both managed to score loads of amazing finds, but I think they deserve a post of their own, stay tuned!  I'll leave you with this picture of the bootsale's adorable ice cream van:

I hope everyone had a great weekend - did you go anywhere nice?

Faye

xxx