Vintage love

Salt & Pepper shakers

In a fit of optimism, I reopened my vintage online store recently.  I just adore finding unusual, kitcsh, shabby and beautiful pre-loved items.  The sort of stuff that you NEVER see anywhere else. I`ll clean them up, fix them up if necessary and rehome them.  I`ve had a wee bit of sucess in the past with sales, so I thought I`d restart one of my favourite hobbies.  Here are a few of my more recent finds.

19 70sJuicy floral drinking glasses.

Vintage floral and gold glamorous tea caddy.

 I sold the floral glasses this week, to a customer in South Korea, I really hope they get all the way there in one piece - fingers crossed!

Visit Miss Poppy`s vintage store  www.etsy.com/shop/MustardCityVintage

Tuesday 6th November

Much excitement to be had at Miss Poppys HQ at the moment.  After much procrastination, Miss Poppy is going to get her very own workshop!!  Our old, tumbledown, garage is being updated and there is going to be room for Miss Poppy to have her own creative space, I`m extremely pleased and I`m now planning allsorts of stuff!  Here`s a picture of the area as it is now, expect updates about the building work as time progresses!

With Christmas drawing closer, I`m getting ready for fayres and sales.  I have lots of new products for sale, including bath and body oil, handmade with pure essential oils, gourmet christmas soap, all purpose skin balm and a soap deli. 

I have also been experimenting with mens shaving soap, which is being tested my my husband.  I`ve been casting the soap into vintage coffee cups for fuss free storage and the easy ability to get a shaving brush around the soap. With added green kaolin clay to ensure good razor `slip` and shea butter to leave the skin supple and cared for. The coffee cups can obviously be reused afterwards!  These will be ready for sale in 2013, once I have the perfect formula and curing is complete!

Makeover alert!!!

A spruce up of my daughters room was recently required and she dearly wanted a desk.  A trawl of Ebay found a little pine desk unit, which was strudy and in super condition, but, lets face it, a little dull.

My parents had a battered old chair in their garage, which I charmed them into handing over. 

A coat of Annie Sloane chalk paint and wax later......

One happy little lady!!!

What can I do with beetroot?

 With Autumn now firmly upon us, I have started to havest the bounty of my veg patch.  This always leaves me with a profusion of beetroot, which is easy to grow, but not easy to find suitable uses for.

There are only so many cheese and beetroot sandwiches I can eat and I`m not fond of the picke version, so I decided to have a go at buns.







 Ingredients:

4oz S R flour
4oz marg
4 oz sugar
2 medium eggs
juice and zest of 1 orange
grated flesh of 2 small beetroot (cooked & skinned first)

Mix the lot together, but leave out the grated beetroot for now.  Ensure a smooth creamy consistancy, then add the beetroot.  Dont mix too much to ensure a pink marbled effect.  However if you want pink cakes, mix well.  Spoon into bun cases and bake for 15 mins at gas mark 5.

I`ve also been getting ready for Christmas (!) and mave made repeats of my christmas soap. 

Spice, Frost, Snow and Frankincence & Myhrr are now on the curing rack, giving my home a super, seasonal yuletide fragrance.  Now, where are the mince pies........

The great Cromer crab hunt.

Being the very end of the summer holidays I thought it would be a good idea to take my children crabbing on Cromer pier.  We used bacon for the bait and lowered our crab line and basket into the North Sea with great expectation!  An hour later were had caught NOTHING.  A change of position on the pier and a refill of our bait bags did the trick and were ended up with a great haul of the little critters.  Meanwhile, we had Chips and an ice cream while the crabs explored our crabbing bucket.

These aren`t big enough to eat and we let them scuttle back into the water at the end of the day.  A good time was had by all.

See you soon XX