From Edinburgh back to France

It's after ten at night in the south of France, and we've used up the cooling evening by mowing the lawn, having a dip in the pool, eating a slightly riotous evening meal (Ben's eating out tonight - things go a bit crazy without him at times!) and setting up the electric fan in the boys' bedroom. Now that the sun has gone down it's nearly cool enough to sleep, as long as all your windows and doors are open and you have an anti-mozzie thing plugged in. It's good to be home.

However, on my last day in Edinburgh I had a really rather good time. My sister arrived, which was great. It was her birthday on Monday and I'd given her a lovely pendant made by Juanitatortilla. She was wearing it on a long black velvet ribbon which she'd wrapped several times round her neck to make a choker. It looked fantastic! (Sorry, no photos, but you can see her shoes in a later picture in this post!). I also gave her a super book, Love Pink, which I'd read about on Niki's blog, a vintage book on handwriting analysis (her hobby) and her own personalised version of our family tree. Later in the evening I showed the females of the family what I'd bought in my charity shop trip of the West End and Dalry. (There is no link here, the computer's just being silly.) One of my first finds was this vintage sewing tin - it says 'workbox' in the top left corner. There are little curved 'shelves' for bobbins of thread inside, although it must have originally come with sweeties in - from Basset's. This little rose bowl was a real find. I was so anxious to find one on my travels that when I spotted this on, filled with artificial roses, I snapped it up without really looking. When I got it home my mum pointed out that it is cut glass and considerably more valuable than I realised! It looks good with our French roses in it now.

In the same shop, run by Bethany Christian Trust, I found this handful of photograph folders from the 1930s. Do you see the legs on a sunbathing beauty? I must take proper photos of these for you all later, because they are marvelous. £1 the lot.

This book is by Petra Boase, who is a contributor to my wonderful Flea Market Style book. She produced this one ten years ago, but it was still worth the weight problems of bringing it back on the plane!

On my way back down Dundas Street, I stopped in an antique shop. This is not like me, and even less like me to buy anything, but I expect I will be given a bit of birthday money so I spent some in advance! (Do you do that?) I found this hand-covered fabric box which will be lovely for holding my lace collection.

In the same shop I couldn't resist this old chocolate box full of buttons. The lady in the shop was great, and her stock would be very appealing to lots of people who read this blog. She tells me her daughter blogs too, so I will have to look her up!

Here, then, is the last of my Edinburgh treasure, most of it from the charity shops of Dalry. I'm wearing the greenish tunic dress with a pair of rolled-up denim shorts at the moment - that was a good buy!Life has been hectic since I got back! It's lovely to be home but I think that I will be blogging a lot less until after my party is out of the way... I have all the preparation to do plus a very enjoyable, lucrative, but lengthy, set of 34 interviews to do as an external examiner at one of the Toulouse universities. I have a few posts prepared in the run up to our blog garden party on Saturday/Sunday, but then it's break time from blogging, I think! Do sign up for the garden party if you'd like to join the fun...