And The Winner Is...

First prize: Nicola of Woodbank Crafts
Second Prize: Linda of TabbyRoo
Third Prize:: Alice of An Alien World

Welldone ladies! I'm afraid I may not be able to post out until friday but will do my best to get them off to you before then xxx

Blighty Boutique's 1st Birthday Giveaway

Yesterday was my blog’s first birthday and I had said on my previous post that I’d be doing a giveaway. Well here it is, a day late as my mum and I had a charity shopping day yesterday and I was all out of energy after our many purchases. Most of the goodies I bought yesterday are headed for my stall at The Northampton Vintage Fair on March 19th and I’ll post some pics of my haul in the next few days.

So, back to the giveaway. I’ve decided to make this giveaway different to the usual format for giveaways. No need to advertise my giveaway on your blog or to comment on this post. I’ve decided that since I’ve already got lots of lovely and loyal followers to enter into my giveaway, there’s no need to use a ‘I’m having a giveaway’ button to pull in lots more bloggers. Not that I don’t love to have new followers you understand, it’s just that I’d like them to follow me because they like my blog, not just because I’m having a giveaway.

So here’s the loot…

I decided to put a parcel together on the topic of things that I like;

1. I love vintage Ladybird books and am forever writing lists = A Ladybird Book of Things To Make notebook.
2. I love cakes and afternoon tea = a retro styled oven glove covered in cake stands, cakes and yummy ice-cream scoops.

3) I love vintage annuals and transforming them into envelopes so that the illustrations aren’t just sat on a shelf but are in everyday use = A mixed set of 5 of my handmade envelopes made from vintage annuals and maps.

4) I love pampering myself and particularly love Soap and Glory = Soap and Glory handbag sized hand cream.

5) I love crafting and although I’m not great at it, I like doing basic embroidery = A Sublime Stiching Craftopia embroidery transfer. These are so easy to use and the embroidery illustrations are always super cool.

To be entered into the giveaway you don’t need to do anything at all. Just sit back and eat chocolate whilst watching Take Me Out or Casualty, or whatever takes your fancy, and I’ll throw all of my current followers into a hat and draw them in the morning. I’ll then contact the winner.

Since I now have lost of lovely followers (I’d never have thought so many people would be interested in my babblings) I’ll also be drawing second and third giveaway winners who will receive this book full of beautiful pictures and interesting facts from the War years (2nd place)

and this Rose and Co. Apothecary mini mirror and Milk and Roses bath soak (3rd place).

xxx

Honey, I'm Home

I'm back to my bloggy home! Thank you so much for all your lovely comments! I am feeling much better now and it was interesting to hear how many people experience Chronic Fatigue and similar conditions. I wish you all well and am looking forward to catching up with everybody’s blogs over the next week or so.

I had thought that it was my blog’s first birthday sometime last month, but on checking I have found that it is in fact tomorrow. Just in time for me to start blogging again after a little blog ‘holiday’.

On the Saturday just gone my friend and I had our very belated birthday get together. We put it off until February as Faye (my joint birthday girl) and a friend of ours are both teachers and couldn’t face a big night out during term time, so we waited for the holidays. It was a good job as we all reverted to uni days and got way too drunk. We used to be able to handle wine by the litre and cans of Strongbow, but these days we really can’t stand the pace and the only two of us to move before 5pm the next day were my cousin and work mate (both younger than the other 6 of us I might add). The rest of us spent the day lying in ‘nests’ downstairs watching cookery programs because nobody could be bothered to move to find the remote control, eating Dominoes pizza ordered at 11am and asking anybody who managed to get up to go the loo to bring us more water/tea/orange juice.

Me, my cousin Katie & my friend Katie

 After turning into something from Booze Britain the night before and pushing the taxi driver to the limits of ‘I usually have a swear box but I’ve lost count with you guys’ we all agreed we’d never drink again…until the next time.

Katie, Me & Orla

Katie, Jessy, Me & Faye. Nobody could be bothered with inflating the air beds

Here are some of the lovely pressies I received on my ‘un-birthday’ as my friend calls it.

I’ve had sooo many goodies to open during January and February, and not just birthday and un-birthday presents. The lovely Jo from Hest & the Pugs sent me this gorgeous 1930s Scottie pin. He’s absolutely adorable and now sits on a cake stand in my living room so I can see him every day. Thanks Jo, and I can’t wait to see you again at the next Northampton Vintage Fair!

Now a big apology to Elaine for taking so damn long to blog about my amazing Spread the Bloggy Love parcel. The parcel itself was beautifully wrapped and my goodies contained a Thornton’s chocolate ginger bar, but obviously it’s not in the pics because it didn’t hang around for long. The chocolate was absolutely delicious and it was lovely to receive as part of a swap because it wasn’t something I would have thought I would have liked, but absolutely loved! So thanks for introducing me to a new delish chocolate Elaine.

In my parcel was a beautiful and lovingly made hanging heart; I love the blanket stitch and polka dot ribbon, a lovely vintage style half apron which I wore while playing hostess on Saturday night, a cute red photo frame and the most amazing tea cosy that no sits on top of my fridge giving my much too modern kitchen a vintage feel. Thanks again Elaine!

And, with it being my blog’s 1st birthday tomorrow I will be doing a giveaway for all my lovely followers! See you tomorrow xxx

Picture from http://justnicethingsuk.blogspot.com/

Back Soon

Just a little 'Hello' to say I'm still here and haven't left the blogisphere. I'm super busy at the moment and my Chronic Fatigue has chosen to kick in so at the moment I'm mainly doing this.

Sorry for not blogging or reading and commenting on any of your lovely blogs! & Hello to my new followers! I'll be back to blogging once I'm back on my feet and will be holding a belated Blog Birthday Giveaway. See you soon xxx

More pics of the Cocktail Cabinet

Here's some more pics of the cocktail cabinet as requested by you lovelies. The pics aren't great because as soon as the camera flash went of all the mirrors on the cabinet illuminated everything like a Christmas tree.

I love the swans on a lake scene on the glass sliding doors at the bottom. At the top of the cabinet you can see the original lemon squeezer and metal 'atomic' style olive holders/cocktail stirers.

 Sat inside are two handpainted glasses painted for me by my best friend as a birthday present. There are also 8 Babycham glasses given to me by my Nan and some traditional shape cocktail glasses I picked up at a carboot sale. When I was at uni my housemate and I decided we liked Marks & Spencer's medium dry champagne (all my Nan's fault really for giving us a bottle) and so we took to drinking that before we went out each week, in the Babycham glasses of course!

You can just about see a few glasses here past the camera's flash. There are a set of vintage tall glasses in various colours, a couple of lemonade glasses with bird pictures from a charity shop for £1.50, some 50s shot glasses with gold polka dots £1.50 from a charity shop, cocktail umberellas from the pound shop, vintage plastic cocktail sticks given to me by my mum (each has a different alcohol bottle sat on the top) and some 50s polka dot lemonade glasses in their original carry case with bamboo handle. An old cocktail shaker sits at the back of the cabinet. xxx

Have a Nosey

Hi, hope everyone’s having a good weekend! A few posts back I included some pics of my house in showing bits and bobs I’d recently picked up charity shopping. A few of you commented how you like to have a nose around peoples houses and I most definitely do too, so I thought I’d show a few pics of different rooms in my house over the next few weeks. This week the living room.

I love old houses with lots of original features but as a first time buyer I couldn't afford one of those and so chose to get on the property ladder through a shared ownership scheme, where I own half of my house and I rent the other half from the Housing Association. I can then buy further percentages of the property from them as and when. My house is a 2 bed roomed end of terrace and is on a new estate that has 3 ornamental lakes, a park, doctors and little row of shops. Despite liking old houses new estates are definitely more convenient. 

Here's Lily watching the birds outside. Excuse my ancient TV. I really hate spending money on electronics so as long as this one works it will be staying! The curtains are Laura Ashley and in the corner of the pic you can see my coffee table; an old trunk with the name 'C.Ling' on the top, £5 from the local carboot.

 My fireplace was a moving in present from my Nan & Grandad and is from eBay. When I fall in love with something I don't even think about measuring it and neither does my mum. When my cousin went to pick the fireplace up it wouldn't fit in the car and after dismantling it and dropping it off to me I realised that the fire was meant to fit into an old fireplace and not to sit flush against a new wall. Well that wasn't going stop me. My poor step dad had to attach it to the wall and then build an MSF 'box' around it to hide the fact it didn't really fit. The wooden mantle piece was originally painted in a horrible dark varnish so my Dad painted it a nice fresh white for me.

The 'Keep Calm and Carry on' picture was £10 from Wilkinsons and the mirror around £25 from Matalan. You can't really see in the picture but the mirror's frame is beautiful and has antique style detailing around it. The vintage brass ducks were £25 from a Recycling Shop in Stratford.

These knitted cakes sit on my mantle piece and were made by my mum. The vintage cake stand was from a vintage shop in Brick Lane and was only £8, which I thought was cheap for London prices.

My TV unit was from Ikea years ago and I rescued it from our garage when I moved into my new house.On the shelves I have all sorts of bits and bobs; A plastic vintage terrier dog bought from The Northampton Vintage and Homemade Fair for £3, a quartz Buddha given to me by my Dad, some vintage cake stands I picked up from carboot sales, some decorative hearts, a metal Scottie dog with angel wings brought back from America for me by my Nan and a vintage saucer that my Mum decorated with the words 'Dolly Bird'.

When I bought my sofa I wanted something new but something that had a retro feel to it so I went for this purple leather one. The Scottie cushions were from Matalan and the little 50s table you can see at the side of the sofa was a present from my mum from a local Recycling Shop. The bookcases were purpose built by my step dad and then painted to match the walls. They're so useful for storage and display.

The bookcases house Cd's, DVDs, books, vintage annuals, china and all sorts. The large Russian Doll was given to me by my Mum, the tiny salt and pepper pot owls were 50p from my local Recycling centre and the china vintage dog was £2 from a charity shop. The tins were all from carboot sales and were 50p to £1 and the vintage pin up lady was from a street market in Newcastle under Lyme when I was a student at Keele. She was £8 and is one of my favourite pieces.

 A few of my vintage annuals held up by art deco Scottie book marks bought from a carboot sale for £4.

The art deco jugs and sugar bowls were all from the local recycling centre and the honey pot was given to me by my Nan as I've always loved it. The jug with pens in was bought from an ancient petrol station that used to have bits and bobs for sale before it closed a few years back. The blue floral tin was £1 from a carboot and the rose tin was £6 from an antique market while at uni. The dog is an old money box that I found at my Great Granddad's house recently. He used to put 50p per week in each grandchild's moneybox and I was devastated when he swapped them for tacky new ones a few years back. I thought he must have thrown the old ones out but I found them under dressing table when sorting through stuff at his house late last year.

 The chair and cover was from Ikea and the knitted blanket was £1 from the local carboot.

This little family sit on my living room windowsill. My Mum bought them for me from a carboot and after a really good clean with a toothbrush they came up lovely.

My 1950s cocktail cabinet is one of my absolute favourite things and was my graduation present from my Mum and Step dad. It was around £150 from eBay and we drove all the way to Port Sunlight to collect it. It's full of vintage glasses, jugs and kitsch straws and umbrellas. It lights up when it's opened up and has a mirrored inside with its original lemon squeezer and olive sticks. The ice bucket and 50s shot glasses were a couple of pounds each from a carboot. The 'Summit' salt, pepper and mustard pots were £2 for all of them from a carboot.

The 50s display cabinet was £10 from the local Recycling Shop and is full of vintage chin and teapots, all charity shop or carboot finds. The pretty sewing basket was from the Boots sale and is sat on a 50s sewing box that has legs and was handmade by a man for his wife. It was under £10 from a Myton Hospice charity shop. The teapots on top of the cabinet are (left to right); Arthur Woods £6 from Stratford Recycling Shop, £3 from a charity shop, Sadler teapot from my Great Granddad's house, red tin teapot £1 from a carboot. One of the tin teapots in the display cabinet has the fab makers name of 'Victory Ware'. The union jack oil canvas was done by my mum and has a nice textured effect to it.

This week the house is full off flowers. The carnations were a belated birthday present from a friend and they're sat in my favourite 50s glass measuring jug. I bought a Tete et Tete for my mum and myself this week and planted mine in a blue and white vintage bowl I picked up from a charity shop for £1. It has a lovely windmill and birds scene.

Hope you enjoyed yourittle tour xxx