A little glimpse of summer

Tags

floral prints, Flowers, Garden Centres, Spring, Summer, Vintage garden theme

I’m sure that many of you have enjoyed, at least, some of this weekend in the garden. I have been putting off doing my pots for fear that they might freeze, well when I saw the sun yesterday and a little bit of today I grasped the opportunity. It’s no surprise I am sure to you that I LOVE flowers. I love nature in general really. I feel closer to my maker and just find a real sense of peace and tranquillity in being surrounded by flowers and the outdoors. I have no doubt that lots of you feel the same. 

Well I have had a little bit of a double whammy as last week saw my birthday so to celebrate we had a little tea party and I decked the house out with daffs and the like to make the house come alive with spring colour. See below the florals that currently adorn our fireplace.

 

A spring mix in the Kitchen, using Olive & Em crockery of course.. 

Yesterday saw me make a little trip to an absolutely little gem of a place, Bud garden centre, it is literally round the corner from my house and run by a lovely lady called Brenda. Thank you so much to all the twitter recommendations that sent me hot footing round the corner to a place I didn’t even realise existed. Well I was met with such a lovely welcome. Brenda guided me to plants that would suit my pots, bearing in mind we only have a little court-yard so space is limited. Her methods are all organic and she supports local growers. If you are in the Manchester area, you must pop in and have a look, you can easily while away an hour or so having a peak and a chat. I’ve included a link to the website here. 

So here are the pics of the pots. I hope these put a smile on your face and spread some spring and summer anticipation. Finally 🙂 

Here are my little alpine plants, just need to add the grit to protect them from the rain. 

 

A couple of these below, in fact the gorgeous two on the right hand side were a little pressie from a friend who knows how much a love flowers 🙂 

 

 

 

 

And here’s the whole display, not all flowered yet but can’t wait to see them all to be in bloom 🙂 Roll on summer when I can properly sit out and enjoy them. 

 

Happy flowering vintages friends 🙂 

Love Olive & Emxxxx

Vintage Village £5 Challenge..

Tags

£5 Challenge, Vintage Finds, Vintage Village

Happy New Year:-) Seems like ages ago now that we were celebrating and watching the fireworks on a little lap top at my parent in law’s house up in Kendal!! Anyway I hope you all had a lovely new year and are enjoying 2013. I am sitting here willing it to snow, as forecast, but I am sure it will only end up being a little bit of drizzle – always is here in Manchester!! 

Anyway so we all love a little bit of vintage fair action but being cash strapped, saving to buy a dream house, and it being just after Christmas. I pondered, how could I have a fun girlie afternoon at one of my fav vintage fairs without breaking the bank.. Well here was birthed the £5 challenge. Find something you love for only £5. It turned out to be so much fun. We: Me, Rachel, Alison, Anna and Ciara made our way down to Stockport’s Vintage Village this afternoon and we found some lovely bargains. 

Stall holders loved the idea of the £5 challenge and one lovely pair, Jemma and Leyla were helping us find bargains on their stall. They really jumped on board and with it being relatively near the end of the day, a little bit of haggling was encouraged. So without further a do, here are the results of the £5 challenge… 

The gorgeous Alison fell in love with this beautiful vintage hat from Jemma and Leyla’s stall. This little number is handmade by Jemma, how clever is she?! It has a gorgeous blue bow on it.. doesn’t she look cute in it? 🙂  Unfortunately they don’t have a website so you will have to pop down to the next Vintage Village to see them. 

The lovely Rachel also bought from Jemma and Leyla too, getting this lovely handbag for a steal at £5. She haggled it down from £6. Well done Mrs. Such a gorgeous bag 🙂 Rachel also may have spent a little more on a beautiful tapestry weekend bag and an authentic 1950s nurses cape with the original embroidery inside saying Bolton Hospital. Rachel is a nurse so she just had to get it 🙂  

Anna found this gorgeous brooch, perfect for her vintage ball gown that she snapped up at our last vintage fair trip. She paid an excellent £3 for it.. Happy days Anna. Anna went slightly over budget by buying two teapots/ coffee pots and bagging a set of bowls, plates and cups with one of the teapots all for £6.  Best bargain of the day me thinks… Her Midwinter teapot on the right was from snygg-cool vintage for contemporary living.  Here she is with her teapots, a very happy lady and underneath her lovely broach. 

Then there was Ciara who did very well, finding this fabulous gypsy, Romany style teapot for £3. I love love love this:-) Ciara and Anna live in the same flat so there will be lots of teapots there. Ronan will be pleased girls 🙂 

Last but not least there is me… I stumbled across this amazing hat after about 10mins.. I loved it at first sight. When I picked it up, I couldn’t believe it was only £4.50!! woohoo… It was from Vintage Cyprus, a stall definitely worth a peek at if you at Vintage Village next month. So so pleased with it, I wore it there and then.. Think it might be slightly too small as have a little headache from it now but hey sometimes a woman has to suffer for the love of vintage. Hehe… 

There may have been one extra buy from me, a Susie Cooper teapot, for just £2!! but shhhh don’t tell anyone. It was from the lovely Laura at Planet Vintage Girl 🙂 I simply could not resist. You will have to wait for a future post to see that one though. 

Until next time, happy vintage hunting and ladies thank you for a lovely afternoon. Love and hugs, 

Olive & Emxxxx

Making Mania…

Tags

Craft, Make Group

It really has been too long… My life seems to have been taken over by my new job. I am totally loving it however by the time I get home from school finding the energy to write a blog post seems to have escaped me these last few weeks. Anyway tonight, with Theo out at band practise, it’s my turn to catch up on a little bit of Emily time 🙂 Just been reading some of my fav blogs to get me back in the vintage flow and here I am.

So I wanted to share with you a little glimpse into a lovely evening I had, last week, with some of the Ivy Fallowfield girls. For those of you who know me well, you will know that Theo and I have moved back into Fallowfield to be living in the community to try to best serve the church that we are part of. I love living in the heart of Fallowfield, well not too close to the revellers, so that we can be near the students and residents of the church we have planted here. 

One thing that I have started up is Fallowfield Make Group. It’s an informal evening where fellow makers and craft lovers get together to hang out, eat treats, drink hot drinks and make something. Our first event saw us making cards. My late grandma on my dad’s side left me lots of card making bits and pieces and what better way to use it than to share it out. So there were four of us in the end and we shared out all our bits and pieces, each bringing to the table what we had at home. It was so much fun and it is a great way to get lots of different people together. 

Check out all our supplies.. sequins, ribbon, buttons, fabric.. so so much fun 🙂 

Here is the making in progress….

 

Naomi successfully using the transfers, I can never do this… however we do now have a permanent transfer on our table cloth now.. hehe, a fond reminder of a fab night.

And here are the end results… 

Our next Fallowfield make group will be in December, we’ll be making button Christmas decks so if you fancy it and live near by give me a shout. 

Anyone made anything crafty recently? or fancy setting up your own make group? It’s simple, find a place, some friends who like craft and pool your resources, make things and make friends. Our next challenge is to invite some of our neighbours 🙂 

Much vintage love

Olive & Emxxxx

 

 

 

 

My new pride and joy :-)

Tags

Vintage Furniture

As some of you may be aware the hubby and I have moved house this summer. We are renting and had the exciting task of making a pretty much empty shell into a vintage inspired home. The house came with some basic pieces of furniture but there really has been lots of room for us to add our own personal touches. So so exciting. We are still adding bits here and there. I honestly think that vintage home ware may have taken over the love of vintage fashion. Don’t get me wrong I still LOVE creating vintage outfits, but I think that I must be getting older hehe.. I’m becoming a little vintage housewife. Is it wrong to have started to enjoy my little cleaning couple of hours every week as I sproose up the house? There is something very satisfying about seeing a sparkling house, a real sense of achievement… Maybe I’m on my own on this one.

Anyway back to the reason for this post, my new pride and joy. So at the beginning of the hols Mr. B and I poodled round to the local furniture charity shop, St. Ann’s Hospice. We went with a bookcase on our shopping list. Our bookcase is a sorry attempt from Argos, put up by myself over 3 years ago. It wabbles very precariously when you touch it and has no back. Well anyway we arrived and there outside stood a beautiful Bureau. Again, Mother I know I always say this but this really is true, I have ALWAYS wanted a bureau. As someone who is OBSESSED with stationery, the little drawers and alcoves for letters and bits and pieces get me very excited. I know I am very sad but hey, it’s the small simple things in life that make me happy, best way to be in my mind.

So after a little deliberation, by which I mean me convincing myself and Theo that the bookcase is fine just the way it is and I am sure that it will be ok. I just won’t store too many books on it! We squeezed it into the car and hey presto I had my bureau. We have popped it in the spare room. It stores lots of craft bits, notebooks full of vintage loveliness, books and generally lots of bits and pieces that make me happy. So have a little look for yourself. Oh forgot to mention, it was an absolute bargain at £25 and in such good condition. The only fault is the slight paint mark on the side but no one notices that.. Happy days…

And inside in all its glory…

More of my bits and pieces…

And inside the drawers… My craft things has their very own drawers.

Happy Vintage hunting.

Lots of Love

Olive& Em xxx

A couple of finds for the house…

Sorry for the quietness here at Olive & Em recently.. Think I’ve probably mentioned a few times that we’re moving house so we are surrounded by boxes and boxes and boxes!! Little bit hectic but looking forward to a new start in a new house and starting a fresh for a vintage inspired home. A blog about that will follow soon I promise 🙂

So here are just two of my recent vintage finds for the home. First is this lovely green metal cooking pot. I snapped this little number up as my lovely hubby “accidentally” put our ceramic casserole pot on the hob.. not realising that this would crack it. Of course disaster struck and the ceramic pot was no more. It did not however stop us from having our lovely beef bourginogne ( not quite sure how to spell) from the lovely Rachel Khoo’s Little Paris Kitchen. We decided again to christen the lovely pot by making the same recipe on Theo’s birthday. It was yummy, the lovely Green pot really did a fab job.

 

I found it when I attended the North West Vintage Network meeting which was held at Institu Architectural Salvage. After having a great evening questioning and discussing all things vintage I had a chance to spend a little money 🙂 I could not resist really, after lots of advice and reassurance that this would not break on the hob I snapped it up for a bargainous price of £8.

My second Vintage find to share with you is more of a gift. At my church we have a fab website where people can share their free items that they no longer want. Well I hit lucky the other day. A lovely lady was giving away a gorgeous retro blue suitcase.. I jumped at the chance to take this off her hands all for free too 🙂 It’s been so so useful as another place to put all of our stuff for our move.

I was even happier with myself when I opened up the suitcase to reveal a gorgeous cream lining and a little mirror. This may suggest that it’s a vanity case rather than a suitcase however it’s a little on the large side to be a vanity case. It is so so lovely and in great condition. I would guess it is 1960s/70s. Any better estimations please get in touch. I can just imagine it being used brand new by a young lady on her summer holidays, feeling very grown up with her lovely blue suitcase.  I’m going to be using it for display me thinks in the new house.

Please do share your finds, happy vintage hunting 🙂 Looking forward to the summer holidays when I will be flooding you with finds.

Lots of Love

Olive& Emxxx 

 

A Few Finds…

Tags

Vintage Finds, Vintage Home

I have been trying to be as good as I can recently, curbing the spends to an absolute limit. We are moving house you see so, as I am sure you all know, this is a very costly business!! However,  it’s ever so hard not to want to buy things for the new place, imagining where they might go. I don’t have full free reign though as we are renting and the house comes furnished. However I am a strong believer that you can still put your signature mark upon a property even if it is rented and the furniture is someone else’s choice. Anyway, that is a whole different blog post. One I will attempt in the summer hols when I have got our new house just the way I would like it.

So to my finds.  My first comes from the fabulous St Anns Hospice shop in Cheadle. Upstairs there is a whole floor dedicated to vintage. All the prices are incredibly reasonable. Unfortunately the day I visited a lot of the clothes section was closed off due to a leak in the roof. However I did find this fab 1960s style draft excluder. I have been wanting one of these for a while. The plan was to make my own however for the small sum of a £5 this little find came home with me. I’m afraid convenience got the better of my making skills!

My next fabulous find came from Stockport’s brilliant vintage fair, Vintage Village. I was actually doing the finds of the fair this month. Have a little peek at the items that caught my eye from this months fair.  If you haven’t had a chance to get down to Vintage Village yet, you must, must, must. The stall holders are just lovely and you are sure to find a bargain. I found these gorgeous squares. I WISH that I knew how to make them myself, however this was the next best thing. I found this fab little collection on the stall of Vintage Vantage. I have bought from the lovely stall holder twice now and I was so so happy with my purchase. At just £3 I couldn’t walk away. I am thinking of making it into a cushion cover. Any ideas are very welcome, don’t worry I will be sharing what I do eventually make 🙂 I definitely think these will be featuring in the new house 🙂 I just love them, the colours make me very happy.

I did get some material when I was visiting my family down south but I think that I will save this for my makes and displays within the new house 🙂 My last little purchase is the gorgeous brooch below. I picked it up from the lovely ladies at Grandma’s Attic. Its handmade from the tail of an old fur coat, with original buttons at the centre. This particular one was so early 40s that I could not resist. I think that it will do just fine on the Aquascutum coat which I got a couple of months back .

That’s all from me for today. Happy hunting lovely people. I think tomorrow afternoon is going to be a making afternoon 🙂 I’ll be customising a new cardie with a collar, its taken me a while to get round to it but I will be sure to share the results 🙂

Much love,

Olive & Emxxxx 

Afternoon tea with Olive & Em

Tags

Afternoon Tea, Vintage Crockery

I’ve almost finished clearing up after such a lovely afternoon. Thank you to all those who managed to make it down 🙂 Today was the first Olive & Em afternoon tea. I decided that I wanted to use the crockery more and bless my friends with afternoon tea. It also gives me a chance to show off how lovely it can look for an event too 🙂

I asked my lovely friend Helena to make some cakes. Helena is just starting out at The Chocolate Cake Cottage. This is a new cake making business for all your special events. Please let me know if I do an event for you as I can now provide cakes too through the lovely Helena. She is well worth a look at and a like on facebook, have a peek 🙂

Olive & Em is passionate about sourcing British made crockery and can now cater for up to 70 people with tea cups and saucers, teapots, milk jugs and sugar bowls.  I can cater for up to 60 people if you are looking for dinner plates and side plates aswell. Please feel free to look at the Vintage Crockery pages for more images of the crockery on offer and then the Prices and T & Cs page for more details about hiring. Do not hesitate to get in touch 🙂

I love vintage crockery and love to share it with others. There is nothing better than a good girlie natter over cake and using gorgeous crockery. I will be running these on a regular basis so do not worry if you missed this one, there will be many more to follow. We’re all looking for something different to do to escape the hum drum of life. What better way to while away an afternoon and meet some new people ?:-) I’m thinking for the next one we dress up from a particular era 🙂

Here are the pics, sorry not many, I was too busy chatting..hehe..

Look at Helena’s gorgeous cupcakes 🙂

And lots of people enjoying tea…

The lovely Vicky and her gorgeous daught Isla 🙂

 Please do get in touch if you like what you see and think you could use Olive & Em crockery for your special event.

Lots of love

Olive & Emxxxx

A little look inside Vintage Barnardos…

As many of my regular readers and friends will know I volunteer every other Saturday at the amazing Barnardos Vintage. I know I am slightly mad, I have lots of things going on in my little life and people often say to me.. How do you fit it all in?! But I can honestly say that spending four hours every other week in this little vintage store is like a little bit of heaven for me 🙂 I love to be surrounded by beautiful and old things. I love to imagine the stories behind the clothes and the homeware that comes in. Of course I also like to nab a few bargains for myself too:-) Ok so quite a few bargains but I do often donate as well! Not quite as often as I buy but I have popped a few things in that I have grown out of or that don’t fit my look anymore.

Barnardos Vintage has recently undergone some exciting changes. We used to be located in Wilmslow. Now however, the shop can be found on Cheadle High Street in a much bigger shop. Nikki, the manager of the shop, and her assistant Jen along with a little army of fabulous volunteers have worked incredibly hard to make the shop look incredible. Nikki and Jen work so well together in creating exciting and artistic displays out of every day objects. Nikki is so open to creativity and is very happy to let me create new displays when I come in. I love the crockery and kitchen ware section, ( as you can probably guess) the little haberdashery section is also become a favourite of mine.

This picture shows you the little haberdashery corner where Nikki and Jen have displayed original old patters, materials and wools in a way that just draws you in. Alongside this area are curtains which can be used for material and pillow cases and aprons. All are very popular.

Ok so enough babble let me take you on a virtual tour of the shop….. We’ve done the haberdashery corner..

Now onto the mens area….Vintage is defiantly not just for the ladies and Barnardos Vintage caters for the men too 🙂 The pictures and the little added extras that make this corner so great are all tailored towards male interests. I just love the detail and the thought that goes into it.

If we are to walk round from the men’s area you will come to the book corner..

 Nikki loves to have the walls covered in old pictures. I adore this look and its something that I have replicated in our house. A feature wall of pictures sets our little lounge alive 🙂 Well I think so anyway 🙂

Opposite the book corner is this great display. This regularly changes, in fact this display is different every time I come in. So it keep customers interested and constantly looking in.

As you can see this display is very much geared to the ladies and ladies accessories. Barnardos Vintage not only sells clothes, accessories  and homeware but there is also furniture available, this tends to be snapped up by vintage lovers creating the vintage look throughout their home so keep coming in to grab yourself a little piece of treasure.

We next come along to the dressing table, again I love this display. I love how the whole shop looks like the inside of someones home..

You can see peeking through at the bottom of this picture an amazing J.K Meakin Kitchen set.. Sorry I just can not ignore the kitchen and crockery stock 🙂 If you were to walk round from the dressing table you will come to one of my favourite cabinets, you’ll see why below..

Some more lovely crockery can be found further towards the front of the shop…

I just had to take a closer picture of the lovely cutlery set on display here…

We’re now at the front of the shop. Here we have women’s clothing displayed in colour blocks. We also have at the moment ( these I imagine will go fast) some beautiful vintage wedding dresses. Below are some pictures of my favourite one. This is an orginal 1960s wedding dress however I think its genre is almost simple Jane Austen style. I just adore the detail on the back. For £19.99 this is such a bargain. Take a peek..

 So I will leave you with some general pictures of the shop and the front window. Please do come in and have a good rummage. Barnardos Vintage is a beautiful shop, so much love and attention goes into displaying beautiful vintage pieces by Nikki, Jen and a whole host of volunteers. Come in and say hello, please mention if you read about the shop on the blog, be great to meet some readers 🙂 I’m next in on Sat 21st April and Sat 28th April.

Happy Vintage Hunting lovely people and a very Happy Easter to you all.  Please do take the time to come and support Barnardos and say hello at Barnardos Vintage Cheadle 🙂

Lots of love

Olive&Emxxxx

A few things I’ve made….

So it’s the Easter Holidays.. Yay 🙂 With the Easter holidays has come a big spring clean, me and Theo spent the day scrubbing the floors and polishing.. Feel very domesticated and rather like Monica from Friends. We had a little break in the middle of the day and watched a fantastic little show.. The Little Paris Kitchen.. I think that I might be a little obsessed. I have now transferred cooking ingredients into little jars and Wednesday will see us eating Beef Bourginion .. Theo of course will be making it and I will set the table 🙂 So have you seen it? What do you think? It’s on tonight at 8.30pm BBC2. Honestly Rachel has got great vintage style and it really makes me want to go to Paris even more than before.

Anyway with the holidays tends to come a little more time so I thought that I would have a making day tomorrow. In the mean time I thought that I would show you a few little things that I have been making.

So first comes my attempt at curtain making. Well one curtain. Our black out blind fell down monnnthhhsss ago!! We have been using a throw and a piece of material to try to block the light. As you can guess it didn’t really work so well!! So I finally found some vintage material I liked.  I started by cutting the correct shape out, hemming it and then added some tabs to hang it. I tend to do my sewing by just making it up as I go along so I was so pleased when I popped it up it fitted the window perfectly.. Have a look…

Not quite sure what has happened but half of my post from Monday seems to have disappeared. Anyway here is the rest of the post…

My next little project was to make a door stop. Now I have looked at many versions of these and have come up with a rather simple method. Cut a piece of material out into a rectangular shape. I then hemmed each of the edges to prevent fraying. After this I placed some small stone bought from a garden centre and placed them in the centre of the material. I then tied the ends together into a knot. To make it look a little prettier I added my favourite Cath Kidston ribbon to give it that finishing touch. See what you think..

My final instalment for my making is cards. Now I have been really uninspired by the cards that are available in the shops so I have started to make my own. I went armed to the shops and bought sequins, cardboard cut outs from hobbycraft, old magazine cut outs, material scraps, buttons and ribbon, all of which I have used to make cards. I’m really pleased with them. Have a little look at what I managed to created below.

This one I made for my mum for her birthday..

This one I made for my lovely mum for mother’s day..

 I made this one for our new neigbours next door..

And finally one for the boys..

Please do share your vintage makes and crafty things..

Much love

Olive & Em

xxxxxxx