A new bedside table.

For a while now I have been using a stack of magazines and books as a bedside table and it was starting to irritate me no end each time I entered the bedroom and glanced at my side of the bed!  Clearly, I desperately needed a new bedside table and as we are about to renovate and my bedroom will be completely different once finished, I was reluctant to spend a lot of money on something that might not work in the room post-renovation.  I also didn't want to spend a medium amount of money on a stop gap bedside table that I didn't love.  Instead, I popped into our local Salvos store and picked up this rather ugly bookshelf for $15. 

I gave it a light sand and a new coat of paint and I am delighted with the end result.  After the renovation is complete and once I have found the perfect bedside tables I am going to move it to the future guest bedroom as a new bedside table where it will work perfectly next to my old black wrought iron bed that is currently stored under the house.  Well, I hope it will work anyway!

Look what I found!

After dropping the Captain off at pre-school this morning, the baby and I raced around a few of our local op shops and look what I found!

This divine vintage pyrex bowl, which is going to be used to house the rest of my boring and non-vintage pyrex bowls! Four dollars!!!!

And the discovery of the morning, this lovely unchipped, immaculate (and genuine!) Cornishware vase... Five dollars!!!!!  (Flowers from my mother-in-law, thank you Pat!) The stack of books, yes picked all of them up this morning... 50 cents each!  I am so pleased with my mornings shopping!

Embracing thrift with cute cowboys!

As I have two boys, my intention has always been to buy good quality clothes for Boy One and then hopefully pass some of his wardrobe onto Boy Two.  Boy One though has turned out to be extremely active and enjoys playing in the dirt, trees, sandpit and other typical boy joy places.  Most clothing has survived the mud and the dirt very well.  Seed, Country Road, Gap and Old Navy are definite favourites.  However, almost all of Boy One's pants have suffered in the knee area.  It seems so wasteful to throw out a pair of trousers just because the knees have worn through, so in the spirit of thrift and with noble thoughts regarding the environment, I asked my lovely Mum if she could sew some knee patches for me.  I am so pleased with the end result that I am blogging about it!

I knew that if I was to be happy with the patches that the fabric had to be cute.  So after quizzing a clever pre-school Mum (Thank you Susan!) I found some gorgeous cowboy fabric at a nearby quilting shop.  A fat quarter of cowboy fabric cost a few dollars and if you think about the cost of buying a new pair of decent pants, a few dollars is nothing. 

The patches were stitched on by hand, with some additional fabric stitched onto the inside leg of the jeans (basically behind the patches), in order to meet boy play standards.  This will come in handy as Boy Two is following in Boy One's gumboots and is equally as fascinated with mud, dirt and general outdoor mischief.  

Perfect play clothes for the little one! Thanks Grandma!!!

Berrima

I met up with my parents for lunch today in Berrima, a lovely little town a few hours south of Sydney in the Southern Highlands.  They have very kindly had The Captain to stay for the last few days and so we met in Berrima so that they could return him to me!  I adore meeting up with them here as we can have a lovely lunch at one of the numerous cafes and then I can have a leisurely stroll through the many antique shops whilst they entertain the grandchildren in the park!  Today we had lunch at The Magpie Cafe on the verandah. 


The Captain dancing about with excitement on the verandah at the cafe, telling me all about the wonderful time he has had with Grandma and Grandpa:

Although it would have been just as lovely to eat outside on the pavement under the blosssoms, petals were drifting down with the slight breeze and filling the air with their delicious scent:

The highlands are in the midst of Tulip Time and there were half barrels full of tulips lining the streets:

Even the post office had tubs of flowers outside:

       This cat is a local identity.  He gracefully permitted me to photograph him outside his home:

A must in Berrima is a visit to Peppergreen's.  An absolute favourite of mine:

It is full of vintage kitchenalia:

Glassware:

Vintage linen:

Other collectibles:

Beautiful things:

There are several rooms full of collectibles and it truly is a feast for the eyes!

Thank you to my wonderful parents for having The Captain to stay!  He had a marvellous time and we had a lovely break!

Project Organise: The Family First Aid Kit

The state of our first aid kit was embarassingly messy and as part of Project: get self organised in order to get child to school on time next year and also to not feel mortified everytime the baby sitter, a friend or indeed I have to get something out of the first aid kit, I decided to go through the contents and do a massive overhaul. As one of the boys has a hole in his heart and the other has asthma, it is something that I need to do regularly.

I found the box in an old junk shop located on the road between Bathurst and Orange about 10 years ago. I was on a road trip with a couple of girlfriends. Well, three girls and one border collie, squashed into a 1960s VW beetle. I had to sit with that first aid box on my lap the whole way home to Sydney. They thought that I was crazy, even the dog was rolling his eyes at me. I just love it though, it is big enough to store all the extras in and it looks fabulous!




It even includes a helpful list of items that should almost certainly be included:



After discarding anything that was out of date and re-organising the contents, my beloved first aid kit has been restored to her former magnificence once again:

Ahh, loving my first aid kit, it not only serves a very necessary purpose but also brightens my day with it's prettiness and charm!

Street Shopping

I adore Council Clean Up! Truly someone else's trash is often my treasure! I know how much my street scavenging irritates my husband though, so in the car as we make our way through a neighbourhood that is having Council Clean Up, I very discreetly move my eyes over the piles of inviting treasure rubbish until I spot something that has potential. I am then forced to abandon reserve and screech "STOP THE CAR!!!" at my husband. A mad dash follows, incase one of the dodgy old men in trucks gets to the must-have item before I do. Then there is either joy (from me) as I lug the item back to the car and insist we take it home and excessive eye rolling (from husband) as he futilely attempts to prevent me from taking my treasure home! Or there is disappointment (from me) when I approach the item and discover it is damaged beyond repair or not actually what I thought it was, and annoying smug looks (from husband) as he is delighted that the item truly was rubbish. As much as my love for Street Shopping annoys my husband, he is forced to admit that I have found some gems over the years and this is my most recent wonderful find:

I love it!

NB. Please disregard ugly 1980s fabric on the cane lounges. These are yet to be re-upholstered and I have decided to wait until after we finish renovating to have them done. Researching outdoor fabrics in the meantime though!

Project Organise (also known as Operation get son to school on time!)

Look what I found to store all my cleaning products in!!! (Yes, I made sure to thoroughly sterilise it first!) I have been looking for a container to put all the cleaning items in for a while now and was thrilled with this find! I loathe plastic, (particularly in relation to storage), and so when I came across this lovely old chamber pot at our local antique shop it had to come home with me as a housekeepers pot!


And yes... that is a flatscreen stuck to my back deck window.... my husband is trialling sticky tapes for a project he is doing for a big fast-food chain. He figured if the sticky tape could survive the rigours of small children it would be fine in the drive through window!

Vintage Fisher Price Little People

When I was about the same age as the Captain, my family lived in Indonesia, where my father was working in the Embassy. While we were living there, my parents picked up, (from an American family returning home), a whole bunch of Fisher Price Little People toys. I have the fondest memories of playing with these toys, I especially adored the campervan and was fascinated by the tiny toilet, the beds above the cab and even the little boat. The toys came back to Australia with us and then travelled on to India where we had our next posting. They are still there now presumably. My parents gave them to the children of our servants, I often imagine that their children are playing with them now!



As you can see I have endeavoured to recreate my own childhood for the boys! I have collected, over the last few years, various different vintage play sets. Finding them in all sorts of places, op shops, Church fetes, garage sales and of course, Ebay.


The details in the toys are fantastic. No batteries, yet with handles and levers you can move the baggage carousel or turn the helicopter's propellers.


A fireman going on a camping trip with some mates (and other children of the 1970s... do you remember Lucky the dog? There he is peering out the back of the campervan.)

The baby is filling up the plane with some avgas!

It is extraordinary how many people have catastrophic accidents and serious illnesses in Little People world. Luckily, there is an ambulance, an operating theatre, an X-Ray machine and a lift to move the invalids upstairs to recovery whilst strapped securely in a stretcher.

The baby operating the off shore cargo base.

Hours of play!