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

Lavender loopy

Its been a lavender frenzy here at MISS POPPY`S HQ today.  Rain was forecast for later, so I decided to get on with my lavender harvest.  I only got to deal with one of my monsterous bushes and filled a cardboard box with lavender flowers.  These will be turned every few days to ensure an even `dry`.  I have lots of planned uses for my bumper harvest, from lavender pomanders, to additions to my soap and balms AND in the kitchen.  Below is a Lavender biscuit recipewhich I made today.  Its apparently a favorite of the Duchess of Cornwall (Camilla) perhaps she offers some to Wills and Kate when they pop in for a cuppa! 

1 Cream the butter and most of the sugar together (save some for later)

 Ingredients :

70g sugar

110g butter/marg (I used Flora Buttery)

150g plain flour

25g rolled oats

1 tablespoon fresh lavender flowers









3 Mix into a dough and chill in fridge for 15 mins.



2 Add flour and oats



4 Roll out so it`s 1cm thick



5 Use cutter of your choice, place on a greased baking sheet and sprinkle with the rest of the lavender sugar



6 Chill for another 15 mins.  Then bake at gas mark 4 for 20 mins.

7 Finally, relax with an afternoon cuppa and a biccie. 

Enjoy!   See you soon XX 







Fresh & French

BONJOUR!  I`m a bit of a francophile, but my French is, frankly, quite shockingly terrible, tres bon, it is not!  To make up for this here are 3 of some of the loveliest French style items I could find in the shops of my fellow FOLKSY shop owners! Click the links to view!

What a lovely fresh blue design,  I`d love this in my summerhouse !  £12.00  from JennyBenny.

http://folksy.com/items/3540833-French-Postcard-inspired-Cushion-Cover

I use lavender all of the time when I make my soap, balms and body butters.  It`s simply one of my favorites and is a truly excellent essential oil with many many benefits so this beautiful print (£63.75 from Eyeshoot phtography) was especially eye catching to me!

http://folksy.com/items/2692994-Three-Shabby-Chic-French-Country-Style-Lavender-Photo-Prints-save-15-



This ultra cute little wooden boat (£8.00 Wood & Rope) can be customised with a childs name etc and would look great in a nautically inspired childs room or bathroom.  I think its wonderful!





http://folksy.com/items/3123690-Little-French-Boat-Le-Squid-



Here in the UK, the summer holidays are almost over, I`m always quite sad at this time of the year as I get so used to having my children around ALL of the time and I do miss then when they start school again.  I`m also struck that they are a year older as they move up a year at school.  I have so many happy memories of this summer and all the fun we have had.  I bet I`m not the only one!


See you soon XX

Caravan cool

£9.00 from London Handmade

I recently holidayed in a caravan and I can tell you it was completely adorable.  It was decked out, beach hut style, with nautically inspired soft furnishings, driftwood style flooring and snazzy polar white and navy colour scheme.  We were about 200 metres from the sea and were woken but the monsterous seagulls every day.  Long gone are the days of dreary caravans, so to celebrate this and the re-emergance of the `staycation` in ths Jubilee and Olympic year, here are some of the great caravan inspired pieces currently available from my fellow shop owners at ETSY.  Click on the links to see more of their very clever and inspiring stuff!

First up is a caravan broach,  there is also a matching necklace available from London Handmade.
http://www.etsy.com/shop/londonhandmade

£4.99 from Mystic Moose

Mystic Moose has this great tote bag available, great to take to the beach or to pick up your holiday shopping.
http://www.etsy.com/shop/MysticMooseCrafts












Lastly, here is a lovely gypsy caravan print by Caroline Rose Art,  if I every have my own caravan, I`m sure I`d want it to look just like this!

http://www.etsy.com/shop/CarolineRoseArt




£13.00 from Caroline Rose Art

 I really hope you have enjoyed my caravan mini fest.  I have been sitting in my garden summerhouse drinking tea whilst writing this.  The sun is shining and I think I am still on my holidays...........


See you Soon XX

Yorkshire in the sun

 

I`ve just returned from a lovely lovely holiday in Yorkshire.  We were blessed by the weather and were able to escape from the holiday crowds and found some wonderfully peaceful spots without another person as far as the eye could see.  

The view from the Pennine Way towards Scarborough

  



York Minster



My children enjoyed fossil hunting on Filey beach and we all marvelled at the splendour of York Minster and the great shopping opportunites in the York Shambles.  I think that there is no better place to be than the UK when the sun shines.





Glorious Filey beach



We had a stop-off at Lincoln on the way and I found a great soap shop with the most yummy looking soap cakes.  They actually look more cake like than the cakes I bake at home!  I was very impressed.  Visit http://www.facebook.com/TheLincolnSoapCompany for more info.

These look absolutely scrummy!

 

Since returning, I have launced three new items, lavender body butter, lavender and geranium bath oil and a gift boxed set of three handmade soap bars



All available from Miss Poppys online shop 

3 pack of gift boxed soap

Lavender and geranium bath oil

Solid lavender body butter



See you soon  XXX





The fruits of my labour.....



Lavender & Geranium bath oil and hand and cuticle balm gift pack.



Lavender and Geranium hand and cuticle balm.

 I have felt really creative today and like many people I just have to follow through with my ideas, otherwise they just blow away in the breeze!

I have come up with two new gift packs today, a lavender and geranium bath oil and hand and hand and cuticle balm pack.  As well as a Lime essential oil soap and lavender solid body butter pack.  Both with ribbon, shredded tissue, vintage style heart embellishment and a handy reuseable flowerpot.  All wrapped in cellophane with a vintage style luggage label.  All will be available to buy very soon!



Lavender and Geranium bath oil



Lime essential oil soap and Lavender solid body butter.







Lavender solid body butter with lavender flowers and lime soap.

See you soon XX

Sunshine!!

Lavender - wiith a hard-working honeybee

It`s been hot, sunny and a whole lot of fun here at Costa-del-Norfolk this week.  With the first week of the sunny summer holidays we have had plenty of swimming pool action, water fights, pizza and a few 10km cycle rides.  Not even a high speed cycle crash last night could dampen our fun!  I was rally glad I wore my cycle helmet though.

Miss Poppy`s garden has thoroughly enjoyed the sun too with lots of honey bees, fragrant sweetpeas and quite huge and stunning clematis.




The veg garden is also blooming!  At last!


Sweetcorn



Cherry toms! As sweet as cherries.



A bit of cucumber action




The trusty moneymaker.  Tomato and mozzerella salad next week!

I`m cheering on Cav this weekend,  I really hope he gets gold!

Have a great weekend  XX