Vintage at Goodwood
22/08/10 15:57 Filed in: Adventures
I am pretty ashamed to say that at 31 years of age, I have never been to a festival before. But when my colleague bought in a magazine cutting about the Vintage Festival at Goodwood, West Sussex, I thought ‘that sounds like the festival for me’, so I booked me self a ticket (plus one for hubby). Advertised as ‘the festival of our lives’ celebrating music, art and fashion across 5 decades (40’s - 80’s) of creative British cool, I couldn’t wait.
Well, my first festival adventure was one of the best weekends I have had in a long time. Even the walk from the campsite to the entrance was an enchanting journey through the trees with strings of lights to mark the way. The festival was only in it’s first year but they had managed to organized so much. There was a pop-up vintage High Street complete with traditional pub and indian restaurant, market stalls selling all sorts of vintage clothes and goodies, a vintage fun fair, music tents for each decade, a Butlins for the kids (including a sock monster workshop of all things), a vintage cinema, vintage vehicles and a lot more. The food stalls were just as varied. You could get hotdogs from a converted Airstream done up as a 50’s diner, or strawberries and cream from a vintage cart, or you could enjoy a glass of Pimms in a vintage London bus.
Music wise, we spent most of our time between the “Leisure Dome’ and the ‘Let it Rock’ tent. In the Leisure Dome we came across an a cappella group called the Swingle Singers. Four women and four men made up the group who sang a variety of covers using only vocals and no instruments. The two guys who did the beat-boxing were so good that I had to keep reminding myself ‘there is no drum kit there’. For me this was the highlight of the weekend.
On the Sunday morning I took part in a Jive lesson in the rock tent on the impressive checkerboard dance floor. I love dancing so it was one of the things had ear marked to do. So, as my husband drank beer and watched from the side lines I attempted to Jive, which is actually quite difficult to do in wellies, (the good old English weather had not disappointed so the wellies came out on the first day).
We love camping and what better place to take our vintage style bell tent with us. When we arrived, it seemed everyone else had the same idea and there were quite a few exactly like ours and there was me thinking we’d easily find our tent in the masses. The festival had also laid on a ‘glamping area’ where tipis and bell tents were ready set up. Glamping was available from £500 for the weekend with room services that you would expect of a posh boutique hotel.
I will definitely be going next year if I can and will make more of an effort to dress up. The amount of people we saw in impressive vintage gear were numerous. But it wasn’t fancy dress, you got the feeling it was their normal attire.
Well, my first festival adventure was one of the best weekends I have had in a long time. Even the walk from the campsite to the entrance was an enchanting journey through the trees with strings of lights to mark the way. The festival was only in it’s first year but they had managed to organized so much. There was a pop-up vintage High Street complete with traditional pub and indian restaurant, market stalls selling all sorts of vintage clothes and goodies, a vintage fun fair, music tents for each decade, a Butlins for the kids (including a sock monster workshop of all things), a vintage cinema, vintage vehicles and a lot more. The food stalls were just as varied. You could get hotdogs from a converted Airstream done up as a 50’s diner, or strawberries and cream from a vintage cart, or you could enjoy a glass of Pimms in a vintage London bus.
Music wise, we spent most of our time between the “Leisure Dome’ and the ‘Let it Rock’ tent. In the Leisure Dome we came across an a cappella group called the Swingle Singers. Four women and four men made up the group who sang a variety of covers using only vocals and no instruments. The two guys who did the beat-boxing were so good that I had to keep reminding myself ‘there is no drum kit there’. For me this was the highlight of the weekend.
On the Sunday morning I took part in a Jive lesson in the rock tent on the impressive checkerboard dance floor. I love dancing so it was one of the things had ear marked to do. So, as my husband drank beer and watched from the side lines I attempted to Jive, which is actually quite difficult to do in wellies, (the good old English weather had not disappointed so the wellies came out on the first day).
We love camping and what better place to take our vintage style bell tent with us. When we arrived, it seemed everyone else had the same idea and there were quite a few exactly like ours and there was me thinking we’d easily find our tent in the masses. The festival had also laid on a ‘glamping area’ where tipis and bell tents were ready set up. Glamping was available from £500 for the weekend with room services that you would expect of a posh boutique hotel.
I will definitely be going next year if I can and will make more of an effort to dress up. The amount of people we saw in impressive vintage gear were numerous. But it wasn’t fancy dress, you got the feeling it was their normal attire.
Living in Store
08/08/10 12:44 Filed in: Interior Design
This week I thought I’d give you another insight into my ‘interior design’ side as one of the projects I have been working on in Marlow, Bucks, has finally finished and we went to the big opening a couple of weeks ago. Living in Store is a new home ware store that “brings together an eclectic range of stylish products covering every part of modern home life”.
If you could have seen the building before any works started you wouldn’t recognise the place. The Grade II listed Georgian building was previously used as offices and the space was divided up into several rooms. We knocked down all these partitions over 2 floors to open up the area completely, put in a brand new shop front, turned the outside courtyard into a conservatory, put in new plasterboard ceilings, lighting and flooring. We designed simple shop fitting to complement the product and the client used some of her own furniture to add to the ‘home’ ambience.
If you could have seen the building before any works started you wouldn’t recognise the place. The Grade II listed Georgian building was previously used as offices and the space was divided up into several rooms. We knocked down all these partitions over 2 floors to open up the area completely, put in a brand new shop front, turned the outside courtyard into a conservatory, put in new plasterboard ceilings, lighting and flooring. We designed simple shop fitting to complement the product and the client used some of her own furniture to add to the ‘home’ ambience.
Re-Vamp your living room in one weekend
17/07/10 20:38 Filed in: Interior Design
About this time last year, my idea to get rid of the carpet turned into a complete re-design of our living room. I hated the cream carpet that we had inherited when we moved into our little maisonette 5 years ago. It was stained and just made the whole room look dirty. Between us (my husband and I) we managed to completely re-design the room in one weekend and on a relatively low budget,
The Floor
The first thing to go, obviously was the hideous carpet. I loved the idea of painted floorboards so the next thing we did was hire a floor sander for the weekend. That is never something I would like to do again though. It was very hard graft especially for my husband who did most of it! You have to make sure every nail in the floorboards are hammered in otherwise they will rip the sheet of sandpaper to shreds, and they are not cheap. After the sanding was done it needed a good clean before we could paint it. We primed it first then gave it 2 layers of white floor paint.
The Walls
We wanted to brighten up the whole room so we painted every wall bar one in brilliant white. It gave us, in effect, a blank canvas to work with. The wall that the fire place was on we painted in a bright blue and then we painted the timber fire surround in white which looks fabulous against the strong feature colour.
Furniture & Accessories
The Saturday was mainly taken up with decorating but Sunday was shopping day! We gave the floor one more coat then hit the shops. We already had a brown leather armchair and an Ikea sofa. Although the sofa had seen better days we knew our budget could not stretch to a new one, until we found a gem of a bargain in a second hand shop in Exeter - a green chesterfield sofa. We both looked at it and fell in love knowing it would look amazing in our new ‘white box’. I tentatively turned over the price ticket to find it was only £185! We snapped it up!
In the corner of the room we had one of those tall cheap bookcases that most students have. Because my husband brings home several books a week there was never enough room for them and it always looked messy. So I banished most of the books out of the room and cut down the bookcase so it was only 2 shelves high, painted it white and used the top of it to place a table lamp and to display our red telephone. (It is also a handy height to place a cup of tea and a pack of biscuits while sitting in the armchair). Building a bookcase for the banished books in the hallway became another weekend project.
Other things we bought on our shopping trip was a white bathroom unit which we used as a lamp table, a gorgeous rag rug which was also a bargain at only £50. (We have to fold it into a quarter of the size as it’s so big!). We bought brightly coloured cushions and a bright green lamp. We found that any bright colours worked really well in our white box.
The latest addition to our living which I have only just completed is our photo wall. Over the last year we have been collecting a variety of different photo frames, mainly from TX Maxx of all places. I printed out the photos on our printer and laid all the frames on the floor until I was happy with the layout.
In total we spent less than £500 re-vamping our living room and one weekend of hard graft.
Get The Look: Tips and Tricks:
1. Floor sander can be hired from Brandons.
2. The white floor paint is available from any DIY store, we got ours from B&Q
3. Paint one wall in a strong feature colour. You can change the colour whenever you want if you fancy a change, and there’s only one wall to do!
4. Create a photo wall with an eclectic mix of frames. Look in charity shops and recycling centres to get them cheaply.
5. Why not paint your existing pieces of furniture to give them a new lease of life rather than buy new.
6. Scour your local secondhand furniture shops. You never know what unique bargains you might find.
7. Search handmade websites like Folksy and Etsy for find unique handmade home accessories. Here are a couple of my finds (clicks photos to view other products):
New Website Launch
17/07/10 15:49
Hello and welcome to my brand spanking new website, along with my shiny new blog. I’ve had fun creating it so I hope you enjoy it too. Click on the links above to view my main website where you’ll be able to find out how I make my sock monsters, a gallery of monsters and of course don’t forget to stop by the shop to view sock monsters that are currently for sale.
Jacob the traveling sock monster has taken over part of my website with his very own travel blog so why not read up on his latest journey to Seattle.
But right here, I will not only be talking about sock monster related goodness but I hope you will find this an inspiration for anything from craft to cooking, design to gardening and anything I have a passion for really which I hope you will share with me.
Jacob the traveling sock monster has taken over part of my website with his very own travel blog so why not read up on his latest journey to Seattle.
But right here, I will not only be talking about sock monster related goodness but I hope you will find this an inspiration for anything from craft to cooking, design to gardening and anything I have a passion for really which I hope you will share with me.
Hi, my name is Kate and I am the chief monster maker. But that is not all I do. I am also an Interior Designer and work in a design studio in Devon. But my passions do not stop there and this is where you will find an eclectic mix of things I love.