A trip to Norfolk, a sad farewell & a lovely store!

It was with sadness that we planned our fleeting visit, to one of my favorite parts of England, to attend my Aunt's funeral in Norfolk earlier this week.  We may have said our goodbyes on a very wet and cold Tuesday morning, but this was most definitely a celebration of the life of a very clever and stylish lady!

As with all things in life, our sadness was mixed with happiness at meeting up with my cousin, her lovely family, and finding out all that they had been up to since we were last together - lots of great news, including an amazingly romantic New York wedding!

On our trip down we took the coast road all the way from Hunstanton to Sheringham.  The weather was glorious with blue, blue skies and verges filled with, what I now know as, Horse Parsley. Unfortunately, we did not have time for a walk along the beach, also having with us an elderly parent for whom walking any distance is now an impossible task!

We did, however, get to stop off at Thornham village to visit the lovely Jo Griffiths in her equally lovely store, Vintage Home and Garden at Drove Orchards.  If you are ever in North Norfolk, on holiday or just passing, then I can highly recommend a visit to this beautiful little shop...

Angel x

Ta Dah!

We closed for a week at the end of our Vintage Winter Sale, to redesign the shop, or as my OH puts it "move things around AGAIN!", unpack and display some of our lovely new stock and generally give the whole place a 'spring makeover' - wish I could have one of those!

What should have been a relaxed, easy task, with time for attending a trade fair or two, catching up with suppliers, meeting new ones, etc, turned into a very stressful race against time and the weather!  My design workshop began to leak alarmingly, thanks to the snow blizzard we experienced at the weekend, covering everything inside in horrible, dirty water.  So it was 'all hands to the pump' to sort out the workshop and the shop redesign had to be done in two days rather than 5 or 6.  Best laid plans and all that... at least we are done now, the workshop is dry again, if not a little 'stained', and the shop looks beautiful [even if we do say so ourselves].

We have lots of lovely new postcards and decorative tape from Dots and Spots, as well as more of our best-selling, gorgeous, 'printed in GB using recycled paper', retro gift wrap.

This painted display shelf was obviously calling out for some of Becky's gorgeous decorative tape.  Definitely made for each other!

Our Sophie Conran ceramics collection looks lovely in this vintage French bookcase.  I love the wonderful 'spring green' colour of the presentation boxes - turns them into such wonderful gifts!

  

We are always so busy making our vintage linen home accessories for other shops and for magazine features that I realised we have never had our full range available in the shop.  Daft isn't it?  So that is one of our objectives for this spring - to have at least one of every design we do [which is now over 40] in the shop together as a collection.  In the meantime, here's just some of the ones we do have.  Oh, and do you like the wonderful vintage PIE sign?  Would look really great in somebody's kitchen - particularly if you are an avid pie maker or eater [or both]!

 

A Window for Summer...

Yesterday I spent a few happy hours designing new window displays for the shop.  Feeling very summery [it's amazing what a bit of sunshine will do to a person], I went for a bright, garden-party look complete with wonderful, vintage French day bed, piles of gorgeous linen cushions, in zingy citrus colours, all topped off with a rainbow of paper lanterns!