So far…

I’ve decided to step up my game on the retro and vintage front. Before the kids were born, I spent a lot of finding vintage items, researching and writing about them. I could spend hours looking at pictures of old signatures, photographing glass, scanning in old magazine illustrations… Then baby number one came along and poof! It all stopped. For a while at least.

Nowadays, I don’t just sell vintage retro online but a bit of everything; but it’s the old stuff I like. Anything with a retro print, mid century line or if it smelt like it has been in your granny’s knicker drawer for forty years… I’m there. All over it. On it like a car bonnet.

These last few months, I’ve been working hard to find and list things online. I like feeling I’ve made a bit of money, and it’s giving me something to think about other than the kids. Some of my favourite finds this month are:

G plan style chairs from a local charity shop. I would tell you which one, but it’s my secretly amazing shop. I always find something good in it – the kids have had so many toys from there!

It’s been a bumper month for some vintage kids toys.

Dexter has the exact same wooden alphabet abacus in his room; i was really pleased when I found another one. Dexter saw me taking the photos of it and was saying, “Don’t sell my wooden fing!” Had to show him them side by side to convice him I wasn’t selling his.

How many children of the ’80s remember Fern Hollow? I used to love the books and now my kids do too. It’s the gorgeous, detailed John Patience illustrations – there’s so much to see in each picture.

We went to Blackpool yesterday, and while it has changed somewhat in the years we’ve been visiting, it still has an abundance of charity shops. Aidan took the kids off for a couple of hours to visit the lifeboat station and the piers, so I could have a trawl round the chazzers. Needless to say, I came back absolutely laden down…

Those are some of the more vintage and retro things I found. I’ve managed to get them all listed on eBay tonight… Told you I was on it! My favourite thing I bought was some vintage mustard velvet curtains. But can I get a decent picture of them to show them off properly? Can I ‘eck…

Told yer…

At least I managed to get an accurate depiction of the colour in that picture. They look almost pale yellow in my other photos. They’re in such good condition, lined; just wish they were big enough to fit our giant window in the living room as I think they’d work well in there. I even thought about turning them around to hang them a different way, but they’re still not long enough.

As well as the John Patience, and Anne and Janet Grahame Johnstone illustrated books I found these:

The pictures inside look great…

So I think we’ll keep these for a bit longer. I fancy scanning these pictures in and looking up the artist/writer.

What are your favourite finds this month? If you follow me on instagram @littleowlski then you may have noticed I’ve edited it a bit and changed focus lately. I realised that I was spending so much time thinking about my kids, and then looking at pictures of other people’s kids on instagram, and felt like I needed to give myself room to focus on other things. Plus Corliss is getting older, starting school – does she want to be on the internet? So I’m focusing on my retro and vintage stuff, showing off some of my finds and trying to do some research again. It’s enjoyable and might slow down my brain turning into mush. I’m struggling to know what hashtags to use now though ((how 2017 is that sentence?!) #punctuationoverload) so any suggestions are welcomed. At the moment I’m loving looking at the Pyrex collectors pictures – those guys are dedicated to their obsession!

So tell me – what are your favourite #vintagefinds #retrofinds and #chazzershopfinds this month?