Spend: Vintage Display Cabinet

Last Saturday B and I caught up for a morning of blog planning and tea drinking, only to realize we had run out of milk. We decided to make a quick dash to the shops on Queens Road.

Now it’s not that we are easily distracted but Queens Road in Leicester is a delightful place. There are some rather good charity shops, book stores, bakeries and fresh vegetable suppliers on the way to the milk shop, so good in fact it would have been rude not to nip in and have a quick browse in the hope of picking up a bargain. The shopping trip was soon led completely astray by the discovery of Vintage Utopia, a delightful treasure trove full of vintage goodies. Around 45 minutes later we had managed to explore almost every corner- admiring vintage lantern slides from the 1930’s, tea sets, glass wear and some rather beautiful costume jewellery. We left the shop with a little bit of treasure each. For B a bag of vintage glass bottles and for me a vintage display cabinet. I’ve been looking for one of these for some time, scouring auction houses and house clearance shops. Nothing was ever quite right- either too big or small, not in keeping with the other furniture in the house or irreversibly damaged.

It was a big moment to discover ‘the one’

The cabinet was delivered the next morning and I set it up under the photo wall in my living room. I wanted to update it a little and give it a brighter more modern feel. So I set about fixing it up with a little help (at times hindrance) from Truffle.

We gave it a good clean as quite a few years worth of grime had settled in places. We then added a backdrop using a sample of wallpaper I picked up a while ago (sometimes being a hoarder pays off) We fixed the wallpaper to the back of the dresser with some spray mount, cutting of the excess with a sharp craft knife. After a good polish the cabinet was ready to go, now all the lovely tea cups and glasses I had hiding in the cupboard are on display in my living room. It’s a great addition to the other granny chic items I’ve collected over the last few years, you can see more of my home over at Words That Can Only Be Your Own.

Truffle was rather pleased with our efforts too.

What’s new in your home recently?

Do:Kaleidoscope

Just playing.

Click on the pic and it will take you to the post that features the image, see if you can spot the original!

In Other News, Team MDAS are off to a wedding today……..so excited!

Grow: Sunflowers

It was a sad day today, our homegrown sunflowers had to be chopped down. I grew these from seed earlier in the year, along with some nasturtiums (which haven’t fared so well!) and was amazed at the size and speed at which they grew – they have really brightened up the garden so we were very sorry to see them go.

I was left with hundreds of sunflower seeds which I harvested. I have a few plans for these little tinkers………

I’ve made some little seed envelopes to give to people as gifts, these will be part of my christmas hampers I started working on last week with my rhubarb and raspberry jam. Each envelope will contain 10 little seeds to be planted in the recipient’s garden.

A simple gift provided by my garden.

To make these I used:

• 10 brown envelopes
• a potato which I cut in half and carved into a sunflower (ish!) shape with a craft knife
• emulsion paint for printing ink
• A little Alphabet stamp set I bought from Muji
• home grown sunflower seeds

I’ll still have a few seeds left over to use in my next batch of granola!

Do: Secret Garden Party

Yesterday afternoon, I popped along to a ‘Secret Arty Farty Garden Party’ (along with the Bridget from Thinking Of The Days)

The event was hosted by Janet and Pete from The Refectory Table – who run workshops and courses for creative businesses from their lovely home

The party showcased a selection of work by locally based artists, with pieces dotted artfully around the house and garden

I was a particular fan of Maxine Greer‘s paper sparrows, Helen Rhodes‘ knitted owls, and the cute bird illustrations from Sue Bulmer (I see a theme here)

I tried to be as restrained as possible when it came to spending, and was very happy with the Kay van-Bellen print I came away with (more on that soon)

This was all fuelled by a very healthy (oxymoron?) spread of delicious cakes, some with a fun arty theme – Damien Hirst cow cake anyone?

We even got to sample a lovely lemon drizzle baked by the Queen of Clandestine Cake Club herself, Lynn Hill – a baking celeb!

All in all, a lovely way to spend an afternoon – meeting new people, discovering new artists and sampling delicious baked goods

Here’s a few photos to give you a visual taste…

1. Summer berry cake, 2. Anish Kapoor inspired cake, 3. Damien Hirst inspired cake
4. Elderflower syrup, 5. Work by Kay van Bellen, 6+7. Paper birds by Maxine Greer,
8. Flags in the garden, 9. Work by Nita Nathwani
10. Ceramics by Rachel Wood, 11. Owl by Helen Rhodes, 12. Poppies

Recycle: Jam Jars

Now I have to confess to being a bit of a hoarder. My home is filled with potentially ‘useful’ things that are just waiting to be transformed into something brilliant. Needless to say I never quite get around to this, but its hard to throw away objects that inspire your creativity.

I must have at least 50 jars hiding in one of my cupboards. They seem to be breading, getting ready to take over so I decided enough was enough. It’s too early to make a good raspberry jam so I needed to find new use for these dusty cobweb ridden jars.

Fortunately amongst my useful objects I had some wire, ribbon and some tea lights, and hey presto, jam jar tea lights adding a twinkle to the garden

The daffodils needed a home too and with this mobile jam jar they became a delightful spring addition to my picture wall. I also took a jar of these to my Mothers as an Easter present, simple yet very effective.

This is a rather good idea for recycling jars too.

So now the jam jars have been dealt with I have 15meters of fabric waiting to be made into cushions, a large bag of paper to be crafted into handmade paper….and so the list goes on.

Do you have any recycling tips for ‘useful’ objects?