I have a very cool friend called Dave who was introduced to me by mutual friends and who subsequently moved into my old flat when I moved out to live with Bob. He is good people, is GodFather supreme to all the kids and I am generally a crap friend to him since we only speak when he calls or texts me. I am appalling.

ANYWAY, I realised a few weeks ago just what a crap friend I’d been and suggested that we meet up to scour the charity shops of Glasgow. Being that Dave is a big fan of classic architecture and design, we firstly visited Glasgow Architectural Salvage which is just impossible to do justice to with mere words. This warehouse is packed to the gunnels with all kids of reclaimed stuff – my personal favourite today was a wooden crib that I had to be dragged kicking and screaming from. The chap who works there was telling me that it was deliberately built narrow in order to swaddle infants. How cool is that?

We browsed there for a while then drove to this antiques warehouse further down the same street where I insisted that the children pose with Uncle Dave for a photo:

And off we went. I wish I’d taken more photographs but my battery wasn’t looking too great, suffice to say this was yet another treasure trove albeit one out of my price range. There was a veritable feast of beauty including a vintage silk christening gown that I’m still considering going back to buy. No point if I’m not going to have another child to christen but it was just gorgeous and light as a feather. I did take a photo of this cushion though because I was so impressed with the detail! I’m just getting into embroidery and already losing the will to live so I have much respect for anyone who can create this kind of thing.

Erica and Nairn found some “holiday chairs” that they fell in love with:

And I saw this. Oh, reader. Let me tell you my dilemma. I know to the penny how much money Bob and I have. We’ve just used every single spare penny we have to get some essential work done on the house (which I will blog about when it’s finished) and to complicate matters, after consulting with you lovely lot on how to decorate it turns out that we’re going to be playing musical bedrooms in the very near future. With this in mind and knowing that the girls are now going to have a significantly larger bedroom, I saw and instantly fell in love with this (the chaise longue. I’m already in love with the child)

I need you people to talk me out of this. I have a mental pros and cons list going on.

Pros
It’s gorgeous
It’s childsized
It’s gorgeous
There is space for it in the girls new room

Cons
It’s (sharp intake of breath) two hundred pounds. £200. Two. Hundred. Pounds.
Erica couldn’t be more rough and tumble if we put a striped sweater on her & renamed her Dennis
Did I mention the price?
I’m not sold on the fabric.
Seriously. Dude, it’s £200.

I briefly talked to my Mum on the phone earlier and she suggested that I keep an eye out in the charity shops/auction houses for a similarly sized but wrecked piece that I could reupholster myself. I’m confident that I would make a good go at it but I’ve never seen one this size before. Am I kidding myself? Are these common as muck?

Anyway, we left there with Dave plotting on how to spend his as-yet-unwon lottery win and since the kids were now whinging about being starving we popped into the handily situated greasy spoon next door. Since I have been very proud of my recently-acquired ability to put Greer onto my back in the Moby wrap I decided to take a wee photo. I look hideous here:

before we headed down to Dumbarton Road. We hit a few charity shops with no luck until we stumbled into the mecca of all charity shops. I now present to you the most pissed off dalmatian you have ever seen:

At £3 there was no WAY I was leaving it behind. I also managed to get Erica two Disney dresses for £2 each that she decided she wanted and which I know cost upwards of £20 a piece. Alas, it was at this point that Erica broke a cup which was part of an 18 piece set so I had to buy that too but I still walked out of that shop only £14 lighter with a huge box of goodies.

So I had fun today! And I really must thank Dave for being a brilliant friend and excellent children-herder because I couldn’t have done it without him

Folksy is running a Christmas upcycle competition in conjunction with Sue Ryder. Check it out!

Posted under inspiration

Firstly I’d just like to say what an amazing and wonderful bunch of people I am HONOURED to have as readers and therefore as friends. I was gobsmacked by the response to my last post and I’m truly overwhelmed at the outpouring of support and experience that came from you all. Thank you, all, from the bottom of my heart

OKAY! Now we’re done with the schmaltzy PDA I can show you what I’ve been doing while I’ve not been doing anything. I know this won’t come as a surprise to any of you, given that I have four children but I’ve been indulging a lot in that naughty S word…*

…SHOPPING. You filthy minded scamps. What else did you think I was going to say?

So. My good friend Evelyn posted photographs of her gorgeous daughter Esmé over a year ago and of course being me my first response was, “ZOMGshe’sgorgeousEvelynWHEREDIDYOUGETHERDRESS?!!” Evelyn graciously directed me to Cindy’s shop on Hyenacart but alas, she didn’t have any fabulous technicolour dreamdresses available in stock. I bookmarked the store then completely forgot about it until a couple of weeks ago when I was clearing out my email, I found an exchange between Cindy & I. I decided to drop her a quick line to see if she was still making the dresses and oh FRABJOUS day not only was she making the dresses but she had space for me to place an order. Hooray!

I thought Greer was probably a little young for the full twirly dress effect so I got one for Erica and one for my niece Bailey. My sister Stephanie and I have a pretty good deal going, I give her Erica’s clothes once she’s outgrown them then she passes Bailey’s clothes back to me for Greer. We have just acquired a new niece last week when my stepbrother and his girlfriend had a little girl so no doubt these dresses will be passed on to little Maissie too! Anyway, I digress. Point is, beautiful dresses of wonder arrived this afternoon and I immediately stopped what I was doing to make Erica put hers on. It’s so colourful it has immediately washed away bad mood (I was really irritated today because it’s been raining constantly for months and I need some sunshine!)

I think Erica likes it.

What do you think?

*That reminded me of a story. When I was in Primary 3 (so 6-7 years old) I remember grassing someone in my class in for swearing. The teacher asked me what the swear word started with and my precocious little reading mind went into overdrive and I said, “It began with an S.” The teacher had a think and couldn’t work out which particular profanity had been levelled so told me to whisper it, so I whispered, “shit“. She gave me into trouble and told be it didn’t start with S, it started with Sh! Isn’t it funny the things you remember?

Posted under for the kids, recommendations