Making Good Use

Fabulous Finds at the Coffee & Jumble

With the boot sale season now firmly behind me (it was most odd yesterday morning not to have to check the weather and get up and be ready early to go to the car boot, though I'm really not complaining as I've managed over seven months of boot sale-ing this years) I'm now pinning most of my thrifting hopes on the local church's weekly Coffee & Jumble.  And this morning it didn't disappoint.

A gorgeous mid-century modern solid teak salad bowl and servers - £1.50.  I seem to have a bit of a collection of salad servers going on at the moment, which is fine by me as at least they don't take up too much room.

And a set of four rather snazzy Ikea dining chairs.  We've only got the one at the moment and will pick up the other three at next week's Coffee & Jumble.  Our dining room table and chairs were bought by me second-hand nearly 25 years ago and much as they are good quality they're definitely showing more than a touch of wear.  One of the chair backs fell off a couple of months ago and although we managed to fix it back on again they are all becoming rickety and the fabric is going into holes.  These new-to-us Ikea chairs stack one on top of the other and can be stored in the shed if / when we need to seat extra guests or if / when our dining room chairs finally give up the ghost!!

Good Life-ish Giveaway

I picked up these two books at the second-hand book sale last week and wondered if anyone on here would like them.

They both date from the 1970's and have more than a 'whiff' of The Good Life about them.  'The Pauper's Cookbook' is pretty self-explantory - lots of cheap recipes (costing, according to the blurb on the back, between ten and twenty pence per head!!  Ah, those were the days.)  'On Next to Nothing' is much more wide-ranging, covering topics such as shelter, food, clothes, machines, transport, toys, holidays and how to grow your own tobacco - lawks, how times have changed!

Anyway, if you'd like these two books leave me a comment and if there are a few names I'll do a draw sometime in the middle of next week.  Apologies, but I'll have to say UK only readers for this one as the books are a bit too heavy to post overseas.

£2 Work of Art

After all the fuss and palaver that came about from my going into the shed the other Sunday to find a picture pin - a torn calf muscle being the unfortunate result - it turned out I had a box of such things in the sideboard all along.  Cue a couple of minutes with a pencil, hammer and the picture pin and our £2.00 work of art, found at the local Cat's Protection League auction, is now gracing our dining room wall.

We're quite stupidly delighted with how it looks, and it's yer actual genuine oil paint too (although more daubings than high art.)  The frame is a bit plasticky and naff but that can wait until I thrift something a bit more suitable one day.   Meanwhile, it's cheering up our meal times no end, especially now the clocks have gone back and it's already pitch dark by 5.00 pm.  Groan, I hate this time of year.