Festive Fun & A Happy New Year!

Hope you have all had a fabulous Christmas.  We have had a lovely time and lots of laughs.  I will let the pictures speak for themselves.

Christmas tree with vintage decs, now depositing pine needles all over the place!

Pugs with new toys.

grain sacks full of presents.

I've got rather a lot of reading to do...........

A Hogfest!

A lovely time spent with my brother and his family.

Now the festivities are over we all feel a bit flat and it has all gone too quickly!  I hope you all had a wonderful time and have A Very Happy New Year from all of us here in Derbyshire.

Jo xx

Have A Very happy Christmas

Wishing all my followers and everyone who has commented on my blog posts a very Happy Christmas and Peaceful New Year.  Hope you all enjoy yourselves whatever you are doing and look forward to catching up with you all next year.

Love

Jo, Andy, Louis & The Pugs xxxx

Captain Pugwash!!

Dirty, smelly Pugs!!

A very dirty Lily

A clean Fonz

Clean Pugs doing 'Pug Runs' round the kitchen.  Yes, we have bathed the Pugs this afternoon and now we are exhausted!!

Jo xx

Yet More Ballet Tutu's

Yes, I have been at it again, with Christmas pressies bought I thought I would treat myself to some naughties.  I'll start at the beginning...it all started with winning some lovely items from Renata in Austria off Ebay, I also follow her Blog Style Revisited.  She mailed me to say she had posted them, one of them being a vintage ballet head dress and I responded saying that I collect antique costumes and love ballet ephemera especially.  She then sent me the details of the most wonderful web site in Holland run by the lovely Merel, please take a look, it is gorgeous, www.demerelbrocante.nl.  

On her site was the most wonderful collection of ballet tutu's dating from the 1920's.  This beautiful pink satin one is now in place on one of my mannequins.  The little tulle tutu is absolutely tiny.

This one also has a dinky little satin leotard with a full tulle skirt and a sweet little matching head dress also trimmed with sequins.

My absolute favourite has to be this beautiful 20's lavender ballet dress with a gorgeous pearl appliqué stitched carefully to the front.  It has layers and layers of frothy tulle.

......It even has frilly pants!  They all have labels in them saying 'Patsy Richter Ballet' but sadly we cannot find out anymore.  perhaps they were travelling players?  The pieces are handmade but not couture pieces so I would imagine they came from a small ballet/theatre company and not one of the larger company's.

The downstairs now resembles a theatrical costumiers in a winter wonderland but I love it.  I love the eccentricity of it all and being surrounded by all these wonderful old costumes that were once on stage, the only problem is I'm running out of room!  I will show you the items from Austria when they arrive.  I'd better get back to the housework as Mum and John will be here on Friday and I'm on a go slow as I've hurt my back (again)!!  Have a great week.

Jo xx

Last Fair of the Year & Christmas Shopping.

The Vintage and Handmade fair on Saturday was my last fair for the year and was certainly one of my best.  The doors opened at 10 am to crowds of eager Christmas shoppers.  The stands looked amazing and I was only sorry I didn't really get the time to go around and have a proper look.  Hubby has taken some pictures on his Iphone  and I will get him to upload them to my Flickr account as I haven't got a clue how to do it!  Hen and Niki both have written wonderful Blog posts about the day and have taken some lovely pictures so if you pop over to their Blogs you will see how fab the day was.  once again Michele and Jayne worked very hard to make the day so special, so a big thank you to both of them.

I was unusually restrained when it came to buying but I did buy Mum's Christmas pressie which I can't show as I know she reads my Blog!  I couldn't resist these beautiful silks and spools of metallic thread from Sallie Ead, she told me they came from Paris and date to about 1900.

They are all the most vibrant and stunning colours.  

Yesterday, Louis surprised me by taking a day off college to come Christmas shopping with his old Mum, pretty good for an almost eighteen year old don't you think?  We ended up in Matlock and horror of all horrors it was blizzard conditions and absolutely freezing!  Thankfully the snow wasn't settling as the ground was wet but we could see it up on the higher ground in the distance.

These two pretty little EPNS dishes had to come home as did the mini antique corsage.

The Victorian glass dome was a great find which I have housed my cherub bust under for the moment but I will probably sell it at a fair next year.

A sweet little French trinket box, French pin cushion and some vintage knitting and crochet hooks in their original case dating from about 1836!  We did also buy hubbys Christmas pressies which I can't show you as he reads my Blog!!

After a lovely day out with Louis I had another surprise, Hubby produced some flowers for me when he arrived home from work.....so all in all a fabulous weekend and great start to the week.  Hope you are all having a great week also.

Jo xx

PS.  Just walked into the kitchen to make coffee and saw this.....

Lily Pug piled on the others!