Last Friday it was mine and my dad’s birthday, missing out on sharing the happy day with Queen Elizabeth herself. The weekend before, my family came to visit to celebrate. I’m sure I’ve mentioned last year about me and dad sharing our birthday – we no longer share a cake, but it is lovely to ring each other up and do a mutual ‘Happy Birthday’. Although he did point out this year that despite me being able to drink legally for ten years now, we’ve never actually been out for a birthday drink on the day itself…

We had a great day out at the Stockport Museum of Hatting. Providing a fantastic (and huge) landmark in Stockport courtesy of its giant red brick tower, the museum is well worth a visit. As long as you can find it. Even with a sat nav and that tower, my dad still struggled! He’s not known for his navigational skills.

I received a vintage hair styling kit amongst other things from my sister and a Benefit voucher from my parents, which is currently burning a hole in my Important Box. Definitely needs spending soon! I attempted to use the styling kit on Friday. It wasn’t successful for a first go… I’ll try it again when I have more time and patience!

My nan brought over some old Ladybird books she’d salvaged from the local primary school:

Aidan got me some lovely things, as always. The vintage and retro picks of the lot were:

The black and white West German pot on the right is in the Ankara glaze by Carstens. I love it! I collect this glaze; mostly the collection is built up from the more common blue and black style. This means I now have one red and black, and one white and black. The glaze on this is constructed slightly differently: it has the black underneath the other colour, rather than on top of it like the blue and black version.

I also got this:

Now, I’m not into Meccano, but I am into the Wuppertal Schwebebahn. A fantastic illustration adorns this magazine. I think we’ll probably frame it and hang it up somewhere around the house.

This weekend has been quite busy. We went out for a meal on Friday night (actual birthday night) with a few of our friends, to my favourite restaurant TNQ, which if you’ve never been to, I can’t recommend highly enough. Saturday equalled D.I.Y. Enough said. On Sunday, some of our regular, and favourite, pottery (potty?) people, Steve and Lesley, came round to pick up some Ebay purchases and grab a few more pieces. They never leave empty handed! And it’s always nice to know the pottery is going to a new, loving home. Steve brought me these fantastic magazines:

We spent a while on Sunday flicking through these, and I cannot wait to get to grips with them properly. Expect lots of pictures of a D.I.Y. nature to accompany our own renovations. These magazines form the ‘bonanza’ part of my blog post today – and quite rightly so.

Have you had some kind of bonanza this week? If so, ‘scuse my nosiness, but what was it? I’ll probably bore you to tears with mine before long!

Famous Celebrity Birthday Sharers for April 20th:

• Edie Sedgwick
• Adolf Hitler (oh dear)
• George Takei (yes!)
• Joan Miro
• Luther Vandross
• Napoleon III
• Nicholas Lyndhurst