for the efficient housewife

How sweet is this? A vintage chalkboard for the babysitter. The original accompanying paper promotes an "exciting new home accessory for the efficient housewife". Now given that I'm pretty disorganised, this can only improve things at our house. Sometimes inefficient time spent on the internet turns out to be quite efficient after all. Thankyou ebay, sometimes (not very often) I still like you. See a close up here.

raiding the shelves

We have expanded our bigcartel shop to include more items. So over the next few days I'll be photographing and adding more vintage, handmade and just plain old cute things to it. Although with Arthur trying to help me out, things may be a little slow going. Eg: Arthur is selecting stuff and supposedly putting them on a background, or in reality, in a bag and running off with them to have a pretend picnic. The joy and not so joy of running your own business so close to home.

how many posts?

Okay I thought I was approaching 100 posts, but then I checked and it seems I had saved a few as drafts, without realising. So I think they are included in the 100. But then I deleted a few of the drafts and I think I deleted the posts too. It's confused me, so I stopped deleting and I'm back at post 97 (I think). Der, all I needed to do was look at my sidebar and realise that last year I had made 40 posts and this year 47. So I'm only at 87 posts So I'll leave it at that, and you'll have to wait a wee while longer for a giveaway. It may include a magnet set I've been making. As I finally found a cheap online magnet store that had the size I was after and wasn't through ebay. So I've been taking photos, had the badge maker out, super glue and lots of old games bits and pieces out and making a mess. You can find them online at big cartel or etsy.

oh lars

Last night we managed a night out without child. Dinner at the town hall pub, followed by lars and the real girl and choc tops at the cinema nova. Oh what a fantastic movie this is. I don't proclaim to be a movie critic by any means....but the shorts / trailer really don't do the film the justice it deserves. It's funny and sad and a lovely story and not what I expected. Hand claps.....and yay to Lars.

yet another shop photograph

Yet more holes in our walls....Vintage children's book illustration pages. I am always in two minds with what to do with old falling-apart children's books. They have such lovely illustrations that are forever sat on bookshelves and occasionally glanced at and admired. I love them framed on walls but then wonder about the lost story that accompanies the images. Ideally it would be great to copy them but that would infringe upon copyright I'm sure. Especially for us to sell them. We also don't want to be a shop that sells photocopies. So please know that we sell original prints, posters, artworks etc and when they are not, we will make it obvious so you know too.

more stuff

I have been making some more magnets, this time using photographs I have taken of old squeaky toys. I'll be selling these at our etsy shop me thinks. Today I'm working on photographs and changing a few things around at our big cartel shop too. As I am constantly re-arranging stock in our real world store, it makes sense to do it online too, for all of you who can't make it in person.
And the other image are of new letterpress prints by yee haw, which arrived yesterday in the mail. So we have a few available to buy. I love their work. Email me if you're interested. They're $55AUD each.

new prints woo hoo

We have put some new artwork up on our walls. I finally had a day to go framing and make a start on all the delightful artwork we have lurking behind the scenes. First pic is of 2 vintage French safety posters for the railway and the other is a screenprint by Canadian Artist / Illustrator Gary Taxali, whose work I love. Ooops left my umbrella in the shot.