Drawers Before and After

We bought these drawers from Argos when we moved in to our first rented flat together:

They were unfinished pine when we bought them and we stained them dark to go with the other furniture we had at the time. I have been wanting to give them a makeover for ages and I have now finally got round to it. A coat of Farrow&Ball's Pavillion Grey, new Minton knobs and hand painted white and pink swallows later they now look like this:

Talented Lady

I have sang the praises of our wedding photographer, Lucy Hackett, before on here but she has just revamped her website so I hope you don't mind me posting the link again. She only recently started her business and we were her second clients (we were lucky enough to be recommended her by another photographer who wasn't available for our date) but she was truly amazing and we were both very chuffed with the photos of our big day. If you are planning a wedding or, like me, just can't get enough of wedding porn then her site is well worth a gander. The full set of our photos is on there.

Ahhh - takes me back!

Car booty

What a glorious weekend of summer sunshine we had here in London! Mr Crafty and I spent Sunday at Battersea Carboot Sale getting rid of some of the vast quantity of junk that, as a right pair of hoarders, we have managed to accumulate over the years. After the usual mad rush of house clearance vultures asking for mobile phones and gold jewellery we settled down to a steady trickle of buyers and had a rather nice day of it sitting in the sun:

I was a little concerned that I might bring home as much as I went with but I managed to stay strong and made only one purchase. After my previous post this fella just had to come home with me:

Ok - you got me! There are clearly dayglo yellow plastic cups and plates in this rather butch tartan lined hamper rather than the pretty vintage crockery that I was eulogising about previously but it makes smile and, thanks to a bit of nifty haggling by Mr Crafty, was a mere £8 so just slightly less than the very beautiful Life's a Picnic hampers.

It also fits in with our new plan to do a bit of retro style camping in Sussex for our forthcoming first wedding anniversary. We are hoping to track down a second hand, old-school frame tent and kit ourselves out with a camping stove and some 70s style floral deckchairs. I want to tart the tent up with some bunting and solar powered fairy lights and the plan is to see our anniversary in with fish'n'chips and a glass of champers!

Life's a Picnic

I spent this weekend down in West Sussex, where Mr Crafty hails from. The sun was out in all its glory on Sunday which was a miracle as we had scheduled in a picnic with some friends a couple of months ago and that is usually like a red rag to a bull for the gods to play havoc with the weather. Instead we got brilliant sunshine and spent the day enjoying a heady mix of orange and lavender cake, prosecco with wild strawberry liquer and rounders.

Here are the chocolate truffle torte with fresh raspberries and afore-mentioned orange and lavender cake that I baked for the occasion (please imagine for a moment that these are resplendant on pretty vintage cake stands rather than in tupperware boxes).

I was reminded that when I was growing up my Father always coveted a proper picnic hamper complete with china, cloth napkins and metal cutlery, the sort that is synonymous with Glyndebourne, punting on the Cam and Pimms i.e. quintessentially British. I have inhereted a similar longing from him but these days most picnic sets come in the form of rucksacks with non-breakable, far too sensible plastic crockery and cutlery. What I hanker after is totally a impractical willow basket lined with lovely linens and stocked with patterned china and glasses you can clink.

I was, therefore, delighted to find the hampers of my dreams at Life's A Picnic. They assemble gorgeous hampers from vintage crockery and cutlery and do all the sewing and leather work themselves. At around £180 - £260 a hamper they are not cheap but no two hampers are the same and they are the sort of investment that you could pass down through the generations:

Is it Pimms O'Clock already? Must dash. TTFN...

Familiar Faces

We originally created this display of family portraits for our wedding:

I found the frames at a carboot sale and not one of them cost more than 20p. For the wedding I painted the frames green and yellow to match our scheme and hung them on wide white satin ribbons on the wall of the village hall. The photos are of our grandparents, parents and ourselves as littl'uns. We mananged to get wedding photos from Mr Crafty's side of the family although it proved a little tricky to do the same with my more bohemian relations who were less given to conventional nuptuals.

None of our gradparents are still with us so I loved having them on the wall watching over our day and the display was one of my favourite details at the reception. After the wedding I really wanted to give the photos a permanent home so I repainted the frames in white and now our photographic family tree has pride of place on our bedroom wall which means our family, both living and departed, can now watch over us as we sleep.

The best things in life are free...

I am sure that most of you are well acquainted with the wonders of Freecycle by now but if not then I urge you to join your local group. The principle is that if you have something that you no longer need be it a piece of furniture or even a cardboard box then instead of throwing it away and adding to landfill sites you can offer it to your local community. That cardboard box might come in very handy to someone moving home for example. We list bits and pieces on there regularly and even freecycled our old Micra rather than scrapping it when the cost of the repairs it needed were more than the value of the car. It went to a budding mechanic who could do the work himself and voila everyone was happy escpecially the environment! It isn't a failsafe system. Some people obviously abuse it and sell goods on and some people ask for things and then never turn up to collect which can be very frustrating if you have waited in. Nonetheless in the balance it is definitely more good than bad.

We have received a number of really useful things from kind freecyclers and I got a number of bits for our wedding from there. This weekend's find was a bit of a coup! We managed to bag four of these Danish style teak chairs.

They need a good sand and re-oiling but I love the shape and they are very comfy. It means we can finally retire the folding wooden Ikea chairs we bought when we moved into our first rented flat together.

My one quandary is the upholstery. I know the black vinyl is very period but I am pretty sure I want to re-cover the seats although I am unusually stumped as to what fabric to chose. We have a through lounge and the dining area is at one end. We have predominantly white walls with the splash of wallpaper on the chimney breast and on one wall by the dining table so it would need to work with this already rather busy pattern. It will definitely require a bit of thought but if anyone has any brainwaves on pattern or colour then please comment away!

And the winners are...

Thank you again to Conversation Pieces and Eden Rose for my Lemonade Award!

As promised I am now passing it on. A number of my daily reads who I would have instinctively nominated have been recent recipients of this award (including the lovely ladies above who sent the award my way) so I decided to include some blogs that I have only just discovered but that I am sure I will be visiting regularly from now on alongside some that are already firm favourites of mine.

So without more ado here are my nominees...

le petit oiseau
Paper Leaf Studio
What Katie Does
Tales of a jUnkaholic
Moments Of Pleasure....
Grant-Riley Weddings
A(nother) Rennovation Blog
Slices of Beauty
Kay Loves Vintage
Katy Elliott

For the winners, share the love and pass it on… here’s what to do….
1)Put the Lemonade Award logo on your blog or post

2) Nominate at least 10 blogs that show great attitude or gratitude
3) Link to your nominees within your post
4) Let the nominees know that they have received this award by commenting on their blog
5)Link to the person from who you received your award