Merry Belated Christmas 2010

Well I hope you had a very Merry Christmas... ours was particularly vintage-y, as you would suspect :)
The weekend before Christmas we went to swapmeet to sell away some of our clutter. Boxes and boxes of stuff in storage are now gone, hooray!
Plus, very proudly I only came home with these...

Toadstool cushions, which the red and duck egg blue goes PERFECTLY with the colours of the vintage hankie cushion, that and the grass rug, bunnies and birds all about the place...toadstools in the grass, very cool!

You know my obsession with plastic flowers, these could never be passed up...they were $2 for the bunch.

Cute red jelly shoes...$2

30's/40's Green Pyrex dish...$2, I also got a couple of white Pyrex type dishes with red strawberries on them...the beginning of a very pretty Pyrex collection :)

Vintage Tupperware coasters...$2, also the beginning of my 60's Tupperware collection :)

AND a big stash of vintage Christmas decorations...free from Mr in Wonderland's Mummy who we set up

next to, as well as the toadstools, they were from Mr in Wonderland's Aunty :)

LOVE these little elves, they are my favourite!

Notice the little angel at the black with her dicky eye, she looked a bit "Bride of Chucky" so I went to her with some sharpies :)

Not perfect, but definitely better, this way she won't come alive and get me in my sleep :)

We made a lot of our gifts, we have lots of garden-y people in our families so we gathered terracotta pots and did mosaic on them with old smashed up cups, saucers, plates, ramekins...all sorts of things we could find in a pretty design...sadly I was too busy stressing out  about getting them finished in time & forgot to photograph them, but I will try to photograph them all in their new homes...some have gone to accompany equally vintage-y surrounds :)

For my cousins I made cross-stitch kits with designs from Etsy. The lovely gal was very chuffed to know her designs were going all the way from Canada to Australia.

Steph is the most gorgeous geek ever, she's a kind of literary geek, especially when it comes to Harry Potter...so when I saw this, PIXALIZED Harry Potter cross-stitch I just KNEW that she had to have it!

As much as Steph is obsessed with her books, Kate is obsessed with her BF :) So I got the lady to make a similar style based on photos I pinched from Facebook :)

I got a piece of card and hole-punched it to make the thread thingy, cut all the thread into the same length of a kit I own and thread it all through, based on approx how much would be needed, plus a bit just in case. I cut Aida cloth to size and cut a pack of needles in half so that they had three each (coz I always lose the bloody things) and took a baby bulldog clip to attach them to the cloth. I bought two pretty turquoise embroidery hoops and put it all in a brown paper bag with raffia handles, cut square of Christmas wrapping paper and taped it to the front, then tied it shut with a red ribbon.

Here's my mess as I cut, coloured, thread and measured...



That afternoon Steph sent me a message saying she had finished one leg, under the watchful eye of my Nanna, which is AWESOME! My Nanna also taught me to cross-stitch, and knit, long-stitch and a million other crafty things which i now LOVE! I have such fond memories of that, I'm really glad that it continues.

This year we put up the tree after finding all of the vintage decorations that I've always wanted...here's my fav's...

These balls would have been silver about 50 years ago, now they are speckley in silver, clear and pearl white...I love them!

Here's the tree...

Charlie helping

These baubles below always get hung some where...they're retro style ones that I bought years ago from Bed, Bath and table...they say Happy Holidays, Seasons Greetings and Christmas Cake :)

Hope you had a very Merry Christmas!

Vintage Cushion Up-cycle

This is a project that I had been meaning to do for a while, nothing like procrastination to get projects done that you've been meaning to do for a while. Now my cushions were black (I'd gone through a black phase in our last house) and they looked too dark and dreary for our sunny, bright, lolly-coloured apartment :)

1) Firstly I unpicked the hem of the old cushion cover to use as a pattern, actually I cut it coz that sucker was tightly weaved and taking too long and I was going to chuck it out when the job was done anyway. Or you could make a pattern with the top square approx 68cm x 68cm and the longer piece that tucks in 68cm x 84cm, this would work for a standard european pillow (they make the best couch cushions, coz you can sit on them on the floor for movie nights, prop them up against the sofa for extra seating for lazy dinners or as a pillow for guests). Cut the two squares, I've used two vintage tablecloths that belonged to my Great Grandmother, Bena...then found co-ordinating vintage fabric from my stash for the back. The great thing about vintage tableclothes is that they are beautiful thick linen, so they'll last, it's also a great way to use peices of Barkcloth, coz the stuff is from curtains, strong and really unless you use it for curtains, what else can you do with it but admire it in a stash of vintage fabric :)

2) Hem around the edges of the cut fabic to stop it from fraying, you can use an overlocker, it would be quicker and easier. But I did it the "can't be bothered re-threading the black thread in the overlocker with white", and just did a straight stitch. Then put your fabric right sides together and pin it.

3) Sew around the edge leaving the flap part open for your cushion filler to go in...

4) Turn it back inside out to have the right sides facing outwards, does that make sense? ahhh so it looks like this...

5) Put the cushion filler back it...fold the flap over the cushion and tuck it inside and ta da!!!

Now you have a cushion using vintage tableclothes and "sit in your stash" vintage fabrics :)

This is the back of the blue one

And here's the pretty barkcloth of the pink one



Love them!

The little one is made out of a vintage hankerchief and vintage buttons, I'll show you how I made that one soon :)

Melbourne Lindy Exchange

So the blog hasn't been topped up for a while because I was frantically getting organised for MLX...and have been in Melbourne since last Tuesday and just got into Perth last night. We stayed right in the heart of the city on Flinder's Lane which was such a great spot to catch taxi's, trains and trams toanywhere in the city. Plus across the road was RetroStar and Button Mania, needless to say I have SOOO many pretty vintage buttons...the hat making from now on is well and truly well-stocked!!! The food in Melbourne was AMAZING and so well priced...the big breakfast which we ate each morning was $10...the same in Perth would be around the $20 mark...which was awesome because it allowed us to float around and spend the saved pennies on treasures, well that and the magnificent pear cider that they have on tap here! The venues were amazing, unlike Perth, alot of Melbournes old builing are still standing which makes for some stunning venues...the hangar night was actually held at an airport with a PLANE in it!!! The Swing Mafia Pub Crawl was great fun and meticulously organised...Perth crew almost got thrown out of the pub for being too loud, OFCOURSE! I got Buffalloed on a giant glass of cider so then had to down the whole thing...hence the cheering and yelling! I had a stall of hats on the last night and gathered Melbourne contacts throughout my days of scouring the shops, so all in all it was a fun and very productive trip.

The gals shopping

Stunning venues

Hangar Night...the hot Top Gun boys

Steve and the gorgeous Perth gals

Replicating the "End of the War" kiss

Ashliegh in Wonderland stall at the Y dance

The Blues Late Night

Lindy Bombing in the the city

Nicole snogging the graffiti

Madame Brussels

My new umbrella...it bucket-ed down, then it was sunny, then it was cold, then hot, then rainy, then flash flooding, then hot.


It was such a great trip with such an awesome bunch of people...will definitely be up for it next year!!!



Swinging at the Zoo

On Sunday we went to the zoo to dance to a big band for Grandparents Day.

Whao Nelly was it very warm for dancing even so early in the morning...then we had a wander and looked at the animals...btw springtime at the zoo makes for a rather R rated experience :)

Story of the day...in the lion enclosure there is two male lions and a lioness...the lioness makes her way over to the boys to get their attention she nuzzles in, the lion gets up and well, we'll say, "cracks onto" the other male lion...the lioness sulks off and sits by the window. Gives new meaning to "Pride" hehe!

 Channelling Mary Poppins...LOVE this new mini boater hat...my lovely sister Erin bought it for me.

 Dancing with Greg

 Hehe Jake fell asleep he was so exhausted...meanies!

 Chris and Sophie dancing in front of the HUGE stage

 Jon and I doing switches, you can see the swishing tail on my vintage dress

 The crew being shady :)

Jake and Leah swinging out

Nicole and Paul cranking the fancy moves

Kat and Shannan...sexy moves in fluro boardshorts haha!