“A Sunday well-spent brings a week of content”

OK, so that's an old proverb and not my own words but I definitely agree.  I hate mooching around the house all day on a Sunday wondering what to do and feeling that familiar Sunday night feeling creeping up on you sometime around 4pm.  Now that I'm (temporarily) back in a 9-5 job with an obscenely long commute as well as running Bluefinch Boutique, my Sundays are really precious and I try and enjoy every minute of them!

Friday night was spent having dinner, playing cards and drinking gin with friends, Saturday was early morning clothes shopping in Liverpool, a supermarket dash, DIY and housework so Sunday needed to be unwind day.

We started off our day at Brimstage Hall, an 800 year old hall which houses a range of lovely independent shops.  Recollections is a stunning shop selling a huge range of vintage crockery, furniture and gifts.  Most of the vintage china is sold in matching sets but there are a bunch of lonely cups and saucers you can buy separately and mix and match for £1.50 each.  I've seen a few people turning pretty teacups into mini plant pots so I bought this one with the intention of doing the same:

I had (and, sadly, killed) a cute little heart-shaped cactus from Ikea so I'm thinking one of them might look good in the cup?  And I'll try not to kill it this time - so much for cacti being the option for people who can't look after plants.

I'm still gathering together pictures for the gallery wall I mentioned in my last post and so far have prints from Paris, Amsterdam and Turkey which are all special places to me and my boyfriend.  I had been looking for a local print for a while and came across a great selection in The Stables Gallery .  I made Glyn make the final decision on which print to buy as apart from his guitars, games consoles and laptop, I feel like I picked out pretty much everything in our house!  He picked this one of New Brighton lighthouse in the middle of a storm:

We can see this lighthouse from the end of our road so couldn't get a much more local picture!  It's really hard to see from the photo but it's got great depth and colour.  I also bought this card which reminds me of the Rosie the Riveter posters:

After browsing the lovely shops, we sat in the sun in the courtyard with a cup of tea and lots of very friendly  hens.  

I didn't realise they were ex-battery hens until I saw a sign on the way out about them.  It's so lovely to see them clucking around, happy, healthy and safe.  I know a couple of people who've adopted ex-battery hens and think it's a wonderful thing to do.  As soon as I get bigger garden, I'm joining them!

Next, it was leisurely Sunday pub lunch with my whole family followed by a walk on the beach at sunset...

Whatever you're doing, I hope you made the most of your Sunday and that you're having a lovely Bank Holiday weekend :-)

Jenny

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Vintage finds: Sewing box

So, apparently sewing boxes are like buses: You wait all year for one and then two come along at once...or something. I've been looking for an old wooden sewing box for ages, preferably one that could also double up as an end table/cat lookout post/footstool/mug rest but was having no luck.  Then, a couple of weeks ago, I came across one on ebay.  It was a little small, but it was only £8, local and great quality solid wood so I bought it.  It's a fixer-upper and is soon to be sanded down, painted and spruced up.

It wasn't perfect, but I'd found my sewing box so I stopped looking.  As is so often the case, once you stop looking, you find what it was you wanted.  I was visiting my parents a couple of days ago when I passed a new 2nd hand furniture shop in their village.  Lo and behold, there, sitting outside on the pavement was this:

I have heard lots of tales from more dedicated shoppers than I about the time they bought some old piece of tat and it turned out to be full of vintage treasures and oh, what a reward for trawling 2nd hand shops, you never know what you will find, blah blah blah.  That never happens to me and I suspected certain people were exaggerating the regularity of this happening.  Well, some of them might be but when I finally got round to lifting the lid of my sewing box (after impulsively telling the shop owner I'd take it), I discovered....loads of vintage treasures and oh, what a reward for trawling 2nd hand shops, you never know what you will find, blah blah blah.

This is my very favourite item of all those in the box:

I love it.  For a start, I own Bluefinch Boutique and this is a Blue-tit which is close enough for me, but also because it's just so darn pretty. As if that wasn't enough, it's is chock-full of lovely vintage buttons, like this beauty:

From scraps of paper and old envelopes in the box, I have gathered that the lady who owned my sewing box was called Eileen, and that she lived with her husband in Bootle, Liverpool for at least part of her life.  I haven't even begun to sort through the piles of accessories and supplies in her sewing box but it's obviously a collection that spans many, many years, perhaps a lifetime.  There are items going back to the  at least the 1950s but there are also much newer items. It always makes me a bit sad when I see this kind of thing to think that the owner had no-one left who shared her obvious love of sewing or who wanted to keep this little part of her life for themselves but don't worry, Eileen, it's found a good home.

Jenny

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