Last Week in Pictures

This week I have been mostly loving:

Free yarrow from the lawn outside the flat popped into a 49p vintage glass bottle from the charity shop down the road - what a bargain way to add a little decoration to my already nearly-full makeshift mantelpiece!

New charity shop bargains - a small floral dish and a vintage candle-holder from Barnardos, retro doilies and a 70's paisley skirt (to use as fabric in various sewing projects) from Sue Ryder, and a lovely selection of vintage-y tops from British Heart Foundation. Apart from the shop I work in (and supermarkets!), I can't remember when I last went in a shop that sold brand new things!

Beautiful sunsets from the lounge window and the light filling every inch of the room.

My ever-expanding plate collection. When we move house, my three requirements are going to be a third bedroom (for crafts, not extra babies!), a large garden (for the existing baby!) and a plate rack!

Beautiful gladioli and sunflowers from a beautiful friend.

Our bedroom being full to the brim of vintage and second hand clothes ready for customising and selling on. They seem to have spilled out of the wardrobe and across anything I can hang them from!

All in all, a good week!

The Eternal Wedding

It's been two-and-a-bit weeks since the Husband (I can't call him the Nearly-Husband anymore - must think of a new nickname) and I tied the knot, and I've got a serious case of PWB - Post-Wedding Blues. I have a niggling envy of any brides-to-be still in the planning stage, and keep seeing little details that I could have added, or extra things I could have had. Since we had a civil ceremony due to a lack of funds, we're planning on having a blessing in the church where I was Christened at a later date - so that gives me something to prepare for at least!

In the meantime, our reception venue had kindly packed up all our silk flowers, and sent them back to us, which meant that for the last week or so, there has been a crate of jars, flowers, lanterns and bunting stuck in the middle of the hallway. I had thought about giving them to the local hospice, but my Mum had spent so long arranging them that I decided I wanted to keep them at home - cue an entire evening spent shuffling and reshuffling bottles and tins, postcards and photographs, until I found a home for every single bunch of flowers. There are some in every room (except the Boy's bedroom), so wherever I go, I get a little reminder of our magical day. Which I suppose will tide me over until the blessing....

The Hallway

The Kitchen

The Lounge

The Bedroom

Wedding

I decided to post just a handful of photographs from the day, which ended up being a fairly difficult job as there were so many wonderful ones to choose from. My photographer, the massively talented Lauren French, did such an amazing job - she captured exactly the look and mood that I wanted. (Although I have played around with them a little for this post - I am currently obsessed with the 1960's effect on Picnik, and the Poladroid application!)

My cousin and his wife were vegan, so rather than giving them the option of salad in bread with no butter, my mum and I whipped up some tasty vegan treats - scones, falafels, and the wonderful chocolate cake above. They had vegan cheese and mayonnaise in their sandwiches, and soya milk for the tea - I heard from my Aunt that they actually took the leftovers home in freezer bags!

The flowers were all from the Boarhunt Flower Mill, and are completely fake. Real flowers were out of our budget, but to suit the country-vintage-retro-afternoon-tea style day, some sorts of blooms had to be present. I was amazed at the quality and choice, and now also have flowers that will never wilt dotted around our little flat! We simply bound them together with stem tape, and then wrapped ribbons over the top. The dress was £200 from eBay (never worn - the seller found a nicer one) and the bag was £5 from New Look. Bargains!

My lovely, wonderful, amazing Dad.

My beautiful Mum, who helped with absolutely everything - if it weren't for her, nothing would have looked even half as nice as it did.

Continuing with the theme of DIY, my Mum and I (well, mostly my Mum actually - she's wonderful with flower arranging) tied ribbons around the tops of jam jars, pasta jars and the Boy's old juice jars, and filled them with more flowers. This was massively time consuming, but well worth it as the effect was just perfect. Favours were little retro-style paper candy bags filled with boiled sweets and chews. Nom nom nom!

The cake was probably one of the biggest triumphs - three different size layers of 'Celebration Cake' from Asda, stacked on top of each other and decorated with more flowers. My Mum found some little sugar hearts in the bakery section, so we spent a good hour 'gluing' some around the edges of the layers with icing. The whole thing can't have cost more than about £30, which in my eyes, is a whopping bargain!

The day was everything I could have wanted, and although there were some hiccups (I couldn't get the ring on the Husbands finger, and we arrived at the reception before everyone else!), they only made the day seem more 'us'. How does it feel to be married? Absolutely no different!

Thank-You Very Much

Rather than spend money on commercial cards, we decided to make our thank you notelets that were in keeping with our wedding and honeymoon. The end result will hopefully have some sort of further embellishments, but for now, this is what we've come up with. Not bad for a home jobby and a first try!

The Haul

Thanks to our lovely, generous guests, not only could we afford to go and stay in a fabulous b&b in Brighton but we also had enough money to do some serious shopping. Our flat, although we've lived in it for over six months now, is still looking a little bare, so the first thing we bought was a ton of artwork, wrapping paper to put in frames and postcards.

One of the things I was most excited about was being able to have a right good rummage through all the flea markets - we don't have anything like that in Portsmouth; the closest we've got is charity shops and old furniture shops that sell sofas with holes in and scratched filing cabinets. As you can imagine, I was in my element in shops that were crammed with shelves jostling with 1970's tableclothes, 50's china and old tin boxes. So much so, that we ended up buying so much that once we got home, the Husband had to put a new shelf up in the lounge to hold it all!

Flea markets well and truly rummaged, the next places I stumbled across that made my pulse really race were two fabric shops nestling in the North Laines. One was called Ditto Fabrics, and offered such patterns and prints that I've only ever dreamed of finding. Retro print hearts! The eiffel tower! A metre of seventies style floral cotton for just £3.99! I was a happy Mrs indeed. The other one was an utter fabric chaos - a veritable maze of materials (none were really to my taste, I'm a bit picky when it comes to fabric quality...) and a cabinet bursting with buttons - I could have happily spent a good hour just picking out buttons, but I had the Husband to think of, so I gathered a good handful and we set off again.

While we were wandering around, we decided we had to buy presents for people, so we came up with wonderful jams for the parents (and a Beano mug for my Dad and a bag of yummy fudge for my Mum), and a lovely wooden, eco-friendly, sustainably-made scooter for the Boy. I have a real thing for wooden toys - they satisfy the traditionalist and the love of eco-friendly in me, as well as being more hard wearing and durable than plastic. The Boy has a LOT of plastic toys, as the lovely wooden ones come at rather a high price, but if money were no object... well, there'd be no garish plastic in his toy box! When we presented it to him after arriving home, he ran towards it excitedly, stood on it and...... waited. Obviously he thought that simply standing on it would make it glide across the room! Fun times ahead with that scooter indeed....