Market Harborough Vintage Fair

Just a reminder that this Saturday is the 2nd Market Harborough Vintage Fair. It would be lovely to see some of you there. This time there are more stalls than ever with a second room of stalls and lots of new sellers joining us for the first time. As usual tea and cakes are available provided by the hotel. There will be lots of lovely ideas for Christmas presents as well as the usual vintage goodies to treat yourself.

Lull Before The Storm

Things are fairly quiet here at the moment but I can sense the hectic build up to Christmas will very soon be upon us. The house has started to feel quite cosy, we have had a few log fires and I have started trying out some of the festive scented Yankee candles that have just appeared in the shops.

The garden is looking horrendous especially now the chickens have made it their own. However there are still a few flowers brightening things up and I always bring a few indoors to enjoy.

Mr C has been busy preparing for the fairs and renovating various pictures and pieces of furniture. These frames were a boot sale find some time ago. They were dark brown wood and falling apart. I wouldn't have looked twice at them but Mr C knew they could be repaired and that some light paint would show off their pretty detailing.

They still had their original old mounts and just needed the right pictures to set them off.

I remembered that I had these two original Victorian chromolithographs waiting for the right frames and they fitted perfectly. These will come along to a fair with us or find their way to our stand at Brackley Antiques Cellar.

The Christmas build up starts in just over a week's time on Saturday 19th with our second vintage fair in Market Harborough. We are both really looking forward to this as the venue is great and we had a lovely day last time.

The next day we are having a stall at the Winslow Festive Fair which will be good fun but means I will be pretty exhausted by the time I have to go back to work on the Monday morning.

The following Saturday Mr C is having a stall at another fair very local to us. There will be a range of antiques and vintage goodies on offer including some furniture and clothes.

Before we know it we will be in to December and we will be preparing for our Christmas vintage fair in Northampton. This will be our 7th fair at St Matthews in Northampton and we are supporting a local charity by donating raffle prizes for their own fundraising event the following day.

If you are free next Saturday the 19th please pop along to The Three Swans in Market Harborough and say hello, you will be made very welcome.

Dogs and Chickens

Another dog on wheels has recently joined my collection, this little chap was found at Brackley Antiques Cellar and I couldn't resist him.

This is my lovely Josh proudly modeling his red rosette he won in the summer. We entered him in his first ever dog show which was held in the local park for charity. We were so happy when he won first prize in his category. My dog on wheels now wears it and looks very smart.

This week my lovely girl and I had our traditional half term trip to london. This was the view outside St Pauls along with lots of TV cameras.

We popped in to VV Rouleaux and bought some ribbon. This is to hang some pretty glass chandelier droplets I have been saving for Christmas and also to hang some lovely old rusted French keys.

Of course we had to visit Cath Kidston and I stocked up on some of the christmas goodies.I really like the bird design featured on the wrapping paper and cards.

Some of you know that in the early summer this pretty pair moved in. It wasn't long before it became obvious that Eliza on the left was not a she but a he. Thankfully after a stressful few weeks of wondering when the neighbours would start complaining we managed to re-home him to a friend of a friend in the countryside. We were sad to see him go but really had no choice and hopefully he will enjoy his new home where he can make as much noise as he likes.

Last week we decided the time had come to find some friends for Sasha and these two lovely girls have now started to settle in with us. There has been a bit of bickering but they are starting to accept each other. We finally have our first eggs which is exciting. Sasha still isn't laying which is a bit strange as she is definitely old enough but we will just have to be patient.

Neither have names yet but this one is a Columbian Blacktail made famous by Waitrose as their egg laying breed.

The black and gold one is a Rhode Rock.

Finally I am not too sure what Sasha is but I have been told that when she does start laying they will be blue eggs.

This morning we made pumpkin soup adapted from the BBC Good Food Guide recipe and it was rather scrummy. We had bought a couple of pumpkins to make Halloween lanterns and really didn't want to waste the flesh.I tried to tempt the chickens with the seeds but they were unimpressed.

Happy Halloween for tomorrow.

Giveaway Winner

My special giveaway closed last night and so today the winner had to be drawn.I thought about using a computer generated hi-tech approach ... but in the end I settled for the tried and tested method of Mr C and a hat !

And the lucky winner is ...... Lalabibaby of Dreaming of The Simple Life. Congratulations to Debbie who had an extra entry as she also did a lovely link back from her blog for the giveaway.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to enter. If you haven't checked it out already the Ramsign website is definitely worth a visit if you are looking for a beautifully made traditional sign.

SPECIAL GIVEAWAY-Now Closed

The lovely people at Ramsign approached me a couple of weeks ago about hosting a giveaway and I thought you would like the chance to win one of their beautiful vintage style, enamel house numbers so here we are.

Ramsign are a Danish company producing traditional hand made porcelain enameled house signs. The beautiful enamel signs are typical of the vintage enamel signs seen across Europe.

All of the signs are produced by hand using original stencil techniques in porcelain enamel.

The signs have characteristic, fat glossy enamel and have a 30 year guarantee.

Five different designs are available in a range of sizes, shapes, colours, trims and typeface. They are Metropolitan, Arrowhead, Lighthouse, Highlander and Engelhart. Visit the Ramsign website to see more details.

The winner of the giveaway will receive a house number sign of up to five digits in the design and colour of their choice.

The giveaway is open to everyone, as Ramsign will ship free of charge anywhere in the world.

In order to enter please leave a comment and for an extra entry please do a link back from your blog. The draw will take place next Wednesday the 19th October. I will send the winner's contact details to Ramsign who will then arrange for the winner's choice of house number sign to be made to their specification.

Good Luck !

My giveaway will close at 10pm tonight and the winner will be announced tomorrow.

My Special Stanley Calendar

I am afraid I have been rather absent from blogland recently but the weeks seem to fly by and I don't spend so much time at my computer in the summer months. I guess now the days are getting shorter I will be spending more cosy evenings indoors catching up with my favourite blogs.

When I was Edinburgh a few weeks ago I popped in to the gorgeous Cath Kidston shop. To my amazement I spotted this sweet dog treats tin and packs of playing cards with this lovely image of 'Stanley' on the front. Nothing unusual in that I guess you are thinking. However a couple of years ago I acquired some gorgeous 1940s ex-shop stock calendars with this lovely terrier picture on them. I sold a few through my Etsy shop and at my unit at the Brackley Antique Cellar. Of course I kept one or two aside for myself and have had one on display since I bought them. Around 18 months ago I sold one from my Etsy shop to Cath Kidston headquarters in london. I thought that one day it might pop up in a picture of a room setting in the magazine or as a display piece in a shop. Anyway I had totally forgotten about it until I walked in to the shop in Edinburgh and there it was on the shelf. It is currently on the website as one of 'Cath's Favourites'.I have to say the original image on the calendar is far lovelier than the reproduction but I couldn't resist bringing the tin home with me.

A few weeks back was the Northampton Vintage Fair which was great fun and very well attended. I treated myself to these little dogs from one of our lovely new sellers , Bryony. She will be joining us again on Saturday at Olney and at Market Harborough in November.

I couldn't resist this lovely cushion from Vicky of 'Vicky Loves Vintage' another of our regular sellers.

This pretty rose print was another recent purchase from Suzette who has a beautiful stall selling mainly her hand made items under the name of 'Hearts n Kisses'.

I have had a few lucky boot sale finds although nothing like the amount in previous years.I was really pleased with this enormous pile of vintage fabrics and curtains I found at a recent boot sale. It includes bark cloth, Sanderson linens, and lots of floral fabrics.

This is a large piece of screen printed Sanderson fabric which is beautiful and very unusual.

I love this sunflower bark cloth and pretty 50s apron.

There are three different vintage Sanderson floral linens, my favourite is the gold coloured one on the top.

These 'atomic' 50s curtains are not really my taste but still pretty amazing. I am no expert but they remind me of a lot of the Eames era designs.

And last but not least this enormous vintage Girl Guide/Scout camp blanket. The actual wool blanket has a label dating it to the 1940s. The badges sewn on to the blanket date it from the 1960s onwards. It has a hole in the middle which has been bound to create a poncho to wear whilst sitting around the camp fire. Definitely another Cath Kidston original I would say.

Saturday is the second Vintage Fair to be held in Olney and there are going to be some wonderful sellers attending. Unfortunately I will have to miss this one as I am in Leeds with my lovely girl at another Uni open day. Mr C will be there as usual, hopefully keeping everything under control without me flapping around panicking about something going wrong.

I will be back next week with news of a very special giveaway.