Thrifted Tuesday + Blog Crush.....

Woot! I finally have my car back (mind you, $800 later....), so today I could go out for a spot of op shopping......funny how taking just a week off sends me into withdrawal symptoms.....

Today's haul was nothing too flash, but satisfying nonetheless....

A few more vintage fabrics to add to the stash...

Including one pillowcase that is so cute it almost makes me want to vomit....

I don't normally do cutesy-poo....but I really wanted the yellow print to put into my quilt, Lord knows what to do with the mini lovers......

I also managed a good shoe day today, three pairs of brilliant, ludicrously bright 80's numbers, all too small for me, so heading to the Ebay Shop....

I also managed to find a very cute coat for my neice....which I haven't photographed yet, because I might do some embellishments, and that will be a post all of its own....

I also scored a few vintage dresses, also destined for Ebay....

And for my partner, who is irrepressibly English, a book to add to his collection....

So there you have it....Thrifted Tuesday!

Now onto more important matters......

After my Internet Frustration post the other day, I got so many gorgeous emails of encouragement on the being real issue, plus the swearing when I want to! I found out that lots of us pretend we are on a TV show like Martha Stewart or Jamie Oliver, pottering around the house performing to entirely imaginary audiences, and that all of us have that Authorial Voice (kudos to Shula for the term), and that we take photos of the good bits, leave out the messy bits when we can, but in the end, we are all fucking human after all.

I can't begin to say how nice it is to recieve letters of encouragement after taking a leap of faith on a post like that. Suddenly I understand why I so often read on the blogs of people I admire posts full of admiration and gratitude to thier readers for being supportive. I extend such grateful thanks to my tiny little readership, and consider myself a pig in shit for having made such lovely aquaintances. (notice the swearing.....oh how naturally it flows.....)

Anyway, so in spirit of this gratitude, I am devising a new topic. It's called Blog Crush, and this here, it's the first one.

So you know how you'll discover a new blog, and you feel so enamoured or connected to the person who writes it that suddenly they are on your favourites list, you're checking every day to see if they've posted yet, you get excited about their projects, their new curtains, their children, their problems? So much so that you feel weird leaving them comments in case you sound like a stalker? This my dears, is a Blog Crush. And I have decided to bare my Blog Crushes to the world, semi-regularly, to let some fabulous people on the net know that I think what they do is wonderful. In a friendly non-stalkery kind of way........

And the honour of first Blog Crush has to go to Manda, of TreeFall Design. I don't know how I found Manda's blog, but it was one of the first craft blogs I started reading, and her links list has led me to a whole world of creative brilliance.

She has an impossibly cute daughter, a husband who doesn't mind how much fabric she buys, and sometimes even shops for it with her....

She makes beautiful collages and patchwork pillows and sometimes toys and things, which you can buy Here

But the best thing about Manda is that she is real, she writes about her life in a way that makes you feel included as a reader, and this, more than the fact that she makes fabulous cushions, is why I read her blog. One of the best bits of reading about the lives of other creative people is that you realise how similar we all are, whether it be a sudden hankering for all things yellow, or how we pull ourselves together after a fall, or the mini Martha Stewart in all our heads......

So thanks Manda, this one's for you.....

Cheers!

(I also should say that I totally stole the above pictures from Mandas blog.... so make sure you go visit and see them in context, and know that all copyright belongs to her......)