Charity shopping and camping - a fine combo

Last weekend was officially the start of the camping season for the J and P household. Camped on a lovely peaceful site in the heart of beautiful Kent countryside close to Faversham and Sittingbourne. Glorious weather, excellent company, delicious food and copious amounts of wine made for a very successful weekend.

Saturday, bypassed the cute and fashionable Whitstable (will camp there in June with other friends) and spent much of the day in Herne Bay otherwise known, apparently, as Hernia Bay on account of the droves of elderly folk who retire there! As promised, in my previous post, dragged family and friends around the charity shops. Well, this is what I got:



Beautiful bedding: everyone's favourite - a candy striped double sheet (flannelette - v snuggly and soft)for £1.30, a pretty yellow and white striped cotton double sheet for £2.50, and a peach woollen blanket with satin trimming for £1.99 (v handy for chilly nights in the old tent). Now what else......



A beautiful orange rayon scarf for 50p. Sorry, photo is not brilliant - must get to grips with this photography lark.

A brooch with wooden flowers and beads (£2):



A rather fine looking flask (£2.50):



I have to say that Mr J and P and myself are a little obsessed with flasks. We are a family of 3 and we now own a total of 8 flasks plus 2 insulated mugs. Is this a cause for concern or perfectly normal behaviour????

The piece de resistance this week has to be this glorious apron for 75p.



I thought, at first, it was a home-made creation but it's good old Marks and Spencer. I love it!

I really do enjoy seeing what other people buy on their thrifting jaunts. If you do too, take a look at Her Library Adventures and play along.

Another excellent site is Thrifty Treasure . Check out her fantastic 100th Post Giveaway. Enjoy!

Charity shopping frenzy

Hoorah, the weekend is almost here! This week has gone by and I haven't reported on my recent charity shop finds. Well, last Saturday when the weather was semi decent (Sunday - it poured), we went to Leigh on Sea which is a cute little place next to Southend on Sea for those of you who don't know it. Lots of lovely charity shops - so I was in my element. Here is what I got:



A rather cheerful table cloth (50p)which, contrary to what I said in an earlier post about not using table cloths, is now firmly on the dining table - beautifully ironed as you can see.

A Van Gogh piccy which I bought for the frame - which, although a little chipped, looks the perfect sort of thing for Mr J and P's Grandma Gladys' rose painting. Gladys was a prolific painter of mainly flowers and the odd nude (and when I say odd......). Will show you the roses (and possibly the nude if you're lucky) later. Anyway a chipped frame for 65p - a bargain methinks.



A tin of buttons for 70p. Now what to do with them is the question..... Suggestions (nice ones, if you please, Mr J and P) welcome.



A lovely mint green teapot (Poole pottery) for £1.29:



A pretty blue jug for £1 and then later I discovered a whole stack of blue and pink bowls in the same design (Grindley Lupin Petal) for 20 p each! I bought 2 blue ones and 2 pink ones much to Mr J and P's dismay and when I suggested to Mr J and P that we should buy the whole darn lot seeing as they were only 20 p each, he declared that he wanted nothing to do with my bowls and went off in a little huff! Well really.....



I still haven't quite got over not buying a whole stack of lovely pink and blue bowls that we don't need; but don't worry folks, we're off to Kent this weekend (camping in the Sittingbourne area) and I'll be dragging Mr J and P and friends around the charity shops - you see if I don't.

Crocheted small grany square cushion in all its glory

Yes. I've done it! At last. Here it is - a proper cushion and all:



Here it is again:



And here it is again - just for luck!



Really enjoyed the crocheting experience and loved playing with the squares and deciding which colour should go where! Did not enjoy sewing the squares together. I'm not the world's most patient person and my sewing skills are pretty rubbish. But I managed it in the end (just don't look too carefully). Backed it with a shrunken woollen blankie from the charity shop and Bob's yer uncle.

If you remember, I was inspired to do this by Do you Mind if I Knit's lovely scarf here. Well, recently I noticed that she has a tutorial for her beautiful sisterhood crochet blanket square here. I really like her step by step tutorials. They're perfect for dimwits like myself: excellent photos, easy to follow instructons and lots of encouragement. Well, inspired by this wonderful tutorial, I thought I'd experiment a little and lookee here:



Yes, five granny squares already. How did that happen? Methinks another cushion cover is on its merry way (to go with the other ones I'm planning with some vintage fabric I've got plus I was planning to try my hand at making some patchwork ones). Oh well you can't have enough cushion covers don't you think?

We stayed in a windmill

Yes, how cool is that? For the Bank Holiday weekend. Little old us. In a windmill. Have a look:

The windmill in all its glory:



The stairs!



A small person on said stairs:



A four poster bed:



Views from the windmill (not the world's greatest piccies but you get the idea don't you?):





We stayed in lovely Rutland. It's the smallest county in England and has some very pretty villages. Rather like the Cotswolds only minus the hoards of tourists and ye olde tea shoppes (mind you I've got nothing against ye olde tea shoppes).

On Friday, we travelled up to Rutland via Northamptonshire and stopped at lovely Oundle and a place called Woodford Newton where we discovered the grave of Coco the Clown of all people.

A piccy!



Saturday: charity shopping in pretty Oakham. Lovely dishy thing useful for containing bits and bobs and beautiful 70s tray. 75p each.




Then a walk near Rutland Water. Glorious.

Sunday was a visit to Stamford in Lincs. Beautiful old city. Then onto Uppingham for the event of the year in my opinion - their Scarecrow festival. I love it! Here are just two of the entries:





Roll on the next Bank Holiday is what I say.

Jumble Sale Heaven

A thoroughly bargain full weekend which started off on Friday when I bought this magazine rack from a charity shop (£1.99).



It did look fine as it was but rather too much in the way of brass for my taste. So forked out some more money for some white paint and Bob's your uncle, here it is in its full shabby chic glory:



I bought said mag rack to replace our old one which had been lying in a collapsed heap (yes, literally) in the corner of our living room for some months. However, a bit of hammering later and it was as good as nearly new:



So this one will stay in the living room and the new one will live by my bed and the one that was there already (blimey, this is complicated) is now in Junior J and P's room.

Saturday's jumble was really jumble sale heaven. Take a look at this lovely lot:

A plethora of pillow slips (well, 3 anyway):







A pale pink candlewick bed spread:



A beautiful tea cosy complete with pompom:



A seventies bed spread (I'm very partial to a bit of seventies tat):





A satchel (virtually brand new) for Mr J and P:



Sandals for J and P Junior:



A ladybird book to add to the collection:



The collection:


A fabulous folksy apron affair.



Glorious isn't it? Every home should have one.

Top buy this week has to be this little beauty which was sitting forlornly amongst the dregs on the bric-a-brac stall which I chanced upon just as we were leaving.



"What on earth is it?" I hear you cry. All shall be revealed.....





A little mirror! A design classic methinks and only 20p.

Sunday started started off very creatively on Little J and P's part with this lovely water colour of a lioness.



Then for a walk in Hertfordshire - around the pretty village of Much Hadham. We saw lots of horses including this one that Junior took a piccy of with its rather snazzy plaited mane.



Hope you had a good weekend and that your week is going well so far. That's about it for this post, although I just wanted to say: ONLY 11 GRANNY SQUARES TO GO AND I'VE FINISHED MY CUSHION COVER!!! I'm sooooooooooo excited. Today, I found in a charity shop a rather shrunken woollen blanket which I'm hoping to make into the cushion backing. Will reveal all shortly......

My weekend

Weather-wise the weekend was definitely the best we've had this year. I even got sunburnt for goodness sake! Saturday morning went to a car boot sale. It was utter rubbish - tat city. Junior Jumbles and Pompoms managed to get loads of books. I got 2 LPs and I only got those because the stall holder was a parent from the school and I felt almost obliged to buy something. Mind you, his record collection was very good and very reminiscent of mine! Fancy selling his records though. I couldn't do that, they're part of my very being(!). I bought The Cramps "Psychedelic Jungle" which I had on cassette and It's the Monkees.

Saturday afternoon, we went for a long walk in a local country park followed by a rip roaring and rather rawcus evening at some friends. Needless to say Mr Jumbles and Pompoms and myself were feeling somewhat jaded on Sunday but we all managed to do a number of useful things around the house. Mr J and P put together the waterbutt (at long last I say, I mean "Hoorah! you clever man."). Just look at this piccy of him studying the instructions (this, may I add, is a rare happening, dear readers, Mr J and P NEVER reads instructions).



Another very rare event is the cleaning of the car - the outside this time (see previous post on cleaning the car). I promise not to document every time we clean the car but this, too, is another first in the J and P household. Here is Junior spongeing away merrily.



As for me, I flitted about tidying window boxes, washing down window sills and glueing broken plant pots together. No pics of me (thank goodness) - everyone far too busy.

Other homely events this weekend included the making of the rhubarb wine - it's fermenting beautifully in its bucket at the mo. This year, Mr J and P has already made blackberry and sloe wine, blackberry and elderberry and redcurrant wine. Crikey chaps, we're going to be awash with homemade booze.

Our first crop of mint for the year has also been picked. It always looks so lovely, green and bushy at this time of year and it smells heavenly (as opposed to later in the year when it gets a bit brown and spindly).



Well, ttfn.

STOP PRESS: Rhubarb jam and chutters (that's chutney, my dears) have also been made in the J and P household since the weekend. I think that's quite enough activity for now don't you?

The car

Now, I suggest that you'd better not read this post if you have a delicate nature or suffer from a cleanliness obsession. Yesterday, the dearly beloveds senior and junior cleaned the car... It's a never-before occurrence (or at least an occurrence that has rarely taken place since we bought the car 10 years ago). So now you see why I just had to record this momentous event. The thing is we see the car as being something which takes us from A to B, we can't be bothered to clean the damn thing as well. So, gone are the layers of dust, cobwebs, general debris and colony of ants that graced the car. Back in the day, I remember giving a lift to one of our daughter's little friends. They were playing "I Spy" in the back and the friend had spied something beginning with R. "It's inside the car but can be outside as well." she said. The answer? "Rubbish" she declared. Blooming cheek! Yet - strangely accurate.

We do still have the bumps, dents and scratches on the outside though. The last time we went on holiday, we parked the car at a carpark outside the airport. The woman checking us in had to mark on a diagram any bumps or dents on the car. Unfortunately, we had to abandon the exercise as we have so many. It's good that we're not over precious about our possessions n'est pas? (note to family: this doesn't include the sofa, stair carpet and anything I lovingly craft).

Well, pop pickers, that's enough about our slovenly habits. I can assure you that our sloppiness is limited only to the car and we are pristine and tidy in every other way possible (er hem).

Happy Easter.

Oops, forgot to mention: cleaning the car was a money making operation apparently. Beloved Junior found a total of £3!! Note to self: must clean the car more often.