P and I had a wonderful weekend. The weather was just perfect, sunny and warm but with a nice cooling breeze and we spent quite a few hours just sitting at the table in the garden, reading, sewing (that was me, not P), chatting and just generally relaxing.
Saturday evening we decided to go out for a Chinese meal. This was the perfect opportunity for me to try out my new charity shop top which I found a couple of weeks ago.
As I think I've said before, I'm not your bog-standard size, being rather tall and well-built so I'm always delighted when I can find something that suits second hand. This top is a Marks and Spencer one and is a beautiful red on white print on a chiffon over-layer with a separate matching red camisole underneath. Although it doesn't show up too well in the picture there is a beautiful 'waterfall' frill feature all down the front of the top. I do like Marks and Spencer clothes as they are well cut and long lasting but I rarely buy any new for a couple of reasons. One, their 'Plus' range is only available in a handful of stores so has to be purchased from their website and I like to be able to try things on before I buy. And, two, their prices are rather too rich for me, I paid £3.00 for this top but would imagine it was £25.00 - £30.00 when new.
The Chinese meal was wonderful - we should do that sort of thing more often. In fact, we were working out that it was over 10 years since we had last gone for a Chinese meal during an evening, although we do often go to the same restaurant on a Sunday lunchtime when there is a set-price buffet menu.
Sunday continued in the same pleasant and relaxing vein. The car boot sale was very good this week. I found yet more Spiderman goodies for DN - a pair of Spiderman pyjamas and a truly revolting Spiderman mask.
Isn't that just horrible - like some junior masked gunman, but I'm sure DN will be absolutely delighted with it.
On a much prettier note is this box of vintage Christmas baubles.
They are in really nice condition and were only 50p for the lot. There is something so wonderfully gaudy about old glass ornaments and I am always amazed that something so fragile has survived all those Christmases.
Best of all there was a woman selling larger size clothes for 20p per item. These were really nice pieces so I grabbed quite a pile of them. Sadly, none of the skirts did anything for my shape apart from making me look like Humpty Dumpty so they will be destined for ebay, but I did get a gorgeous plain black angora cardigan and a black and white print wrap top which I am really pleased with. At 20p a pop you just can't go wrong.
I always keep my eyes open for larger ladies who are selling at a car boot and if I think they are about the same size as me I always give the clothes a close inspection. I've had some really nice finds that way.
I tried out a bit of an experiment over the weekend too. Whilst re-reading The Complete Tightwad Gazette book recently I came across a tip for getting the most out of stick deodorants. P and I both use the same type of deodorant - Tom's of Maine nature's deodorant stick - as it is aluminium free. This is a lovely deodorant to use but is rather expensive and it had been driving both of us mad that so much of it was wasted by being too far down to use. P had tried scraping the remnants out of an old stick and sticking it to the top of a new one but that didn't work as the old deodorant just crumbled away. The tip in The Tightwad Gazette suggested scraping out all the old deodorant from a few used sticks (we had three with only the dregs left), putting them in a glass bowl and zapping it in the microwave. Once the deodorant is liquid again tip it back into one of the empty deodorant sticks, wait for it to cool and harden and it can be reused. I was a bit sceptical of all this but thought it was worth giving it a go. So I duly zapped the scrapings in the microwave - I think I overdid this part as the microwave was full of steam when I opened the door (I would check after every 10 seconds when I do this again), poured the liquid into one of the sticks and voila, next morning about 1/4 of a stick is now usable again.
I'm really pleased with this - I know I know, I should get out more!! Hope you all had a great weekend too.
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