Dead T-Shirt Make Do and Mend

Here's a boy (number 2 in our family) in a boy's fleece. When I bought it this afternoon, though (1€50 special offer on fleeces at Veti Relais, the charity shop)...

it was a girl's fleece. Eew!

Double eew!

Thanks to a tiny T-shirt that Son 2 outgrew years ago, but which he'd begged me to keep because one day I might do something with it, he now has a fleece with his favourite glow-in-the-dark Puerto Rican frog on it again!

j

I'm quite pleased with the results of an hour's blanket-stitching. His response when he saw his frog ride again? "Cool!"

j

PS - DS allowed as it's Friday night, in case you were wondering about my relaxation of the 'no video games on week nights' rule!

j

PPS I'm going to take my week's break now. I won't be looking at your blog or mine until next Friday, now. Have a lovely week, friends.

Thrifty Week - Vide Grenier in the South of France

This week the friendly and hospitable Betty is hosting Thrifty Week, over at Mrs Yappy Dog. Do go and visit her for thrifty tips and links to the other participants! My plan is to post daily (we'll see how that goes!) on the theme of Thrifty Living in Foreign Climes, as it's both interesting and challenging to change countries and continue to live a thrifty life. Another blogger who is good example of this kind of challenge is Juanita Tortilla, who has moved from Singapore to Switzerland, via the USA, and all on a tight budget.

Well, I know a lot of you want to know how the first of the spring-time Vide Greniers are going - my book review of The Flea Markets of France prompted a lot of encouragement for me to get shopping! Readers, I accepted your challenge! So this first Thrifty Post is a bit frivolous - it's about thrifting for vintage French treasures, rather than anything more practical. I promise the occasional bit of good sense in forthcoming Thrift Week posts, honest.

Yesterday was the really rather marvellous annual Vide Grenier at Bon Repos. Bon Repos is a lovely (but fast-growing) traditional village which completely closes down its streets once a year and invites brocante sellers and locals to set up their stalls. You get families selling off their outgrown clothes and toys next to dealers in French antiques. It's a car boot sale without the cars, a garage sale grown up and gone mad! My first success was at the stall pictured above, which always has a lovely blue velvet tablecloth. I have nicknamed this stall 'Two Fat Ladies', after the UK cookery show of the same name, but this year it has gone a step up and is now 'Three Fat Ladies', one of whom remained asleep throughout my lengthy conversations with her friends. I bought the bedraggled heap of lace from them, having spent ages sorting out the handmade from the grot, and then felt inspired to ask the price of the monogrammed apron. It really isn't usually worth asking, as I am indeed a thrifty shopper, and embroidered monograms are really out of my price range, even when stained as this one was. But to my delight, the chatty stall-holder told me she'd give it to me for just 2 euros! It is good to spend time sorting and chatting, because I think the stall-holders feel they've had their money's-worth out of a foreigner who takes time to look at their stock and tells them where she comes from and how much she likes French vintage. You quickly learn the ones who will take advantage of that and charge you silly money, and as my friendly Fat Ladies proved, not every dealer is like that.

So, I bought one stained linen apron (I do know an MJ, but he's a Martin, and I don't see him in the apron...), a bundle of lace, some of it very fine indeed but you need to know your stuff to recognise that, and I only barely do, and a fantastic load of vintage wooden, plastic and mother of pearl buttons from another really friendly stall-holder, this time a house-owner doing a clear-out.

When I got home I soaked the apron in Vanish, washed it overnight with the lace in a little net bag, and put everything on the line in the sunshine, hoping for the best as regards the stains...

It looks like Vanish plus sunshine wins again!

Oh, look at that. Really quite impractical, but do you love it as much as I do? So that's my first post for Thrifty Week. No one needs French vintage, but I derive an enormous satisfaction from living somewhere where I can buy it thriftily! It takes time - as with any kind of second hand shopping you can't expect to go to a Vide Grenier and find everything you need/want first time around. This kind of thrifty shopping requires a williness to wait for good things...

Below you'll find the first of my Holy Week posts - I'm writing a prayer for my children each day, and I hope that if you have children you might also find the prayers useful for your thoughts and concerns regarding them.

The Joy of Handkerchiefs!

Oh, the joy of having washing on the line again! And, perhaps more of an eccentric pleasure, the joy of having a neat pile of ironed handkerchiefs ready to go back into the drawer for daily use...

Shall we have a little peep at this pile of hankies? They're just the random results of my washing and ironing over the last week:

At first, I switched from paper tissues to cloth handkerchiefs for environmental reasons - we'd been using regularly-washed cloths instead of kitchen roll for years.

Then we replaced 'kiddy-wiping cloths' at the table with proper cloth napkins - just as good for the environment but a bit more grown up!Having more or less eliminated paper kitchen rolls in this way, it seemed a bit silly for me to be using a pack of paper tissues a day, so I decided to look out for vintage cloth hankies in the charity shops.And there they were, in beautiful detail and appropriate quality!

At first, I'll be honest, I didn't iron them, or the napkins either. They were a 'green' necessity, not something else to go in the ironing pile. But something strange has happened in the last few years.

I've read a few books and blogs. I've realised that being fairly tidy and organised can be rather more of a delight than a bind. I've discovered that, for me, ironing my well-chosen handkerchiefs and napkins is a simple pleasure, which makes the day seem that much more pleasant.

You don't have to feel the same way - isn't variety the spice of life? But you might like to Google 'handkerchief quilts' if you're wondering what to do with your handkerchiefs that you don't want to use on a daily basis!

You might also like to pop over my blog shop, because I found so many handkerchiefs the other day that I've finally felt generous enought to share some of them!

Tell me - did you or do you use cloth handkerchiefs? What do you think about them? And don't forget to find out who won my OWOH giveaway, in the post below...

Frifty Foughts...

Apologies for the title - perhaps I have worked too long amongst small children and French people, few of whom can pronounce the sound 'th' successfully... So, here are some 'Thrifty Thoughts' (please enunciate like Her Majesty the Queen).
Anyone who's been reflecting on the subjects of my posts recently (although probably no one has) will have noticed a definite lack of spending. We have messed around and done some crafting with things we already have... (See my last THREE posts on the subject of my slipper with a hole in the toe!)We have begun Advent with some handmade family traditions.

We have scoured highways (unsuccessfully)...

... and byways (more successfully) for freebies.
I have also MADE some money by finally getting my litte blog shop up and running, selling lovely French Vintage finds I picked up this summer.

But all in all, Tif's Challenge of the Utmost Kind has come at a perfect time for us. See the sidebar if you want to know more about it.When we had the work done on our 'about to collapse' patio roof, we had a choice between getting a big, long-term loan for the whole amount, or getting the smallest, quickest loan possible and just stumping up the rest of the cash from our current and savings accounts. We decided to go for the latter, and therefore had a very lean month in November: very lean indeeed!

I was already reflecting, at the end of October, that the Challenge of the Utmost Kind was beginning to affect how I thought about spending money - I was less prone to think: 'Here is a problem, how can I spend money to solve it?' and more likely to drift into a longer-term, more enjoyable but less 'quick-fix' solution. What good timing, indeed, when we faced a month of basically not spending at all!One useful thing was that I took the time to defrost the freezer and inventory its contents. A bit OCD? Well, perhaps, but ever so handy and money-saving. We barely needed to buy meals, I had so much in there, which only required a bit of thinking ahead for defrosting and recipe ideas, often using the SloCooker (Crock Pot) for the cheaper bits of meat. See the category for 'mysterious pork meat'? That's still in the freezer...
I don't want you to think I'm polishing my halo (and grabbing my pipe-cleaner harp) or that I'm telling you that anyone can live on virtually no money - some financial problems are much worse than ours. But what I am reflecting on is that the mental shift caused by Tif's Challenge has made it easier for us, and actually rather fun, to Make Do for a month, and we think it will actually stand us in good stead for reducing future living costs too.I'll leave you with a photo of the last thrifty thing I bought before we had a Shut Down on spending - the ornate red and gold mirror, 2€ at Veti Relais, as a start of a whole collection of small mirrors we want to hang to brighten up a dark wall in our living area. Finances are jiggling themselves back to normal now, but we have learned, we really have, that thinking you live in a thrifty, environmentally-conscious way, and actually doing it, are two different things, and sometimes it takes a shock to make you realise that!

Rainbow Swap, an Evening Without Electricity and the Utmost Challenge

My Rainbow Swap blue parcel from Kate made it through the English and French Postal services to get to me this weekend! As the internet had been down for a week, I'd managed to mislay my under-used camera, so I got no photos of Son 2 helping me to open the delightful parcels. Now that everything is up, running and re-found, I thought I'd take you on a tour of the house to see where some of my lovely blue gifts have found homes...

The over-loaded hooks in the kitchen now hold this great little vintage apron, which I wore on Sunday to cook for friends - I felt so good!
The cake stand has some blue embroidery silks at its base, and smells great thanks to the Laura Ashley spice bag with that sweet little blue button!

More clutter, this time on my bedside table, but look at the lovely blue polka-dot notebook!

In the vintage sewing box, look at the buttons and that amazing, large rickrack...

I realise now that I forgot to snap the pretty scarf hanging over my wardrobe, but here is the lovely Cath Kidston card which Kate sent with all her super blue gifts - thanks so much, Kate! What a great swap.

The candle-lit image above sets the tone for yesterday evening, because we had a very unexpected powercut of almost two hours at tea time.

Everyone responded in their own unique way. I had fun lighting a lot of candles, and congratulated myself on having matches and candles ready to find for just such an event.

Son 2 decided to get crafting by candlelight.

I took photos of lovely candlelit effects!

Ben got out the camping stove to heat his supper.

Son 1 took out his telescope and took advantage of the night sky without its usual light pollution.

'Muuuummm, will you STOP flashing the camera?'

Here are the moon and Jupiter, without the aid of the telescope.

And now to the 'How is the Challenge of the Utmost Kind Going?' question...

I found a second hand filing cabinet! We had a mega-spend weekend when the internet was down, so now I need to tell you about it. Some friends had a garage sale and we bought a good DVD player/recorder from them to replace our broken one. Score one on the Challenge. On the Sunday I went to visit their Vide Greniers stall and mentioned my quest for a filing cabinet. They had one in their utility room! I went to pick it up and it is now full (too full?) of our files. I may need another... Anyway, Score two.Do you like the thrifty decorations? Doilies from Veti'Relais plus IKEA magnets from years ago... Score three.

Plus an embroidered cloth I already had, on which the old printer, newly fixed, sits. Scores four and five, perhaps...

See my lovely red gingham portrait by Sarah, there? But now, hmmmm... The new computer. Ben bought it, honest! And now everything works again!!! However, Score zero, or possibly negative one hundred, on the Challenge.

We also had a successful time buying second hand ski gear for the boys, as well as trading in Son 2's old ski boots. Decathlon, the huge sports retailer, runs 'Trocathlon' events twice a year, where people can sell their old sports stuff and recieve the profits in Decathlon vouchers. A huge Score for Reduce, Reuse and Recycle from a major retailer - what a pity that stores around the world don't do the same! Maybe it will catch on... We used our vouchers this weekend to part-pay for winter trainers for the boys. I also picked up the box above, which is wonderfully Quirky-meets-Arts-and-Crafts-Movement, and this charming lace collar, over the last week and a bit.So tomorrow it's off to Edinburgh for a few days, where, as many of you have already observed, I will not be visiting the CK shop! Frankly, I won't really be shopping at all, because it's a visit with the boys and I think we will mainly be having bracing walks in the Botanic Gardens and trips to museums. Son 1 thinks he may do a post for you whilst there...