Recent Thrifty Puchases

I spend most Sunday's browsing car boot sales, I check out the charity shops at least once a week and I try as much as possible to peruse flea markets and street markets.

As a result, our house is filling up nicely with quirky pieces, I'm finding many items to upcycle and gift to friends and family, and after summer I shall be launching into a new business venture concerning all things Thrifty. Watch this space....

Some of my recent purchases include:

Pretty plates - £2

Picnic hamper - £5

Old map - £1.50

Gorgeous lace doilies - £4 for 12

Adidas bag - £1

Selection of glassware - £1.80

Wooden cutlery tray - £1

 

Thrifty Inspiration

We recently held my 29th [ahem] birthday party in our new home. Friends seemed [and rightly so!] to be gushing about our house renovation and quirky furniture, decorations and objects about the house. Moreover, I was looking through a close friends' photos of the party and they were mainly of items in the house! More house pictures to follow in later articles.

People constantly ask where I get my unique and thrifty inspiration from, and the answer is from many sources.

The 'make do and mend' mentality comes from my family. During the war, clothes were rationed just like everything else. I remember my Gran telling me about unwanted jumpers which were unravelled and knitted into something else, or just like Julie Andrews in 'The Sound of Music' old curtains were cut up to make skirts and dresses. This obviously past down to my mum because when my brother and I were little she made all our clothes, and has brought me up to make my own soft furnishings, not to buy them.

Maria made clothes out of curtains - very make do and mend!

My love of salvage was probably first inspired by dad who was a dustman in the 1970's. During a house clearance he managed to salvage a pair of beautiful Ercol chairs, that are still to this day, in their kitchen. Later, as elderly relatives died and I inherited old furniture and stunning pieces like cut glass perfume bottles, I really began to favour the old over the new. Something about my things having a bit of history about them, excites me.

My parents salvaged chairs.

Other than that, I've always read a lot of house and interior magazines, I check out other people homes quite a lot on Right Move (maybe I should become an estate agent?) and I spend many a weekend scouring charity shops, car boot sales, flea markets and antique shops looking for the perfect items for our home.

Our Thrifty House Purchases

Since moving 150 miles, myself and my better half have spent a large proportion of our time scouring flea markets, car boot sales and antique fairs looking for the perfect vintage (and cheap) accessories for our home. Here are some of our beautiful finds:

Left to right: a printing block tray £15, an old clarinet case £5, a 'Camp Coffee' box £15, an old trunk from WWII free, 2 bird seed bags £6, a painted fruit box £10 and a glimpse of our new kitchen table £90

Most of these items we already owned, but we bought the  pair of chairs (dating from the 1950's) from eBay for £52

We bought four apple crates for £20 each to use as kitchen shelves to display our favourite items of crockery. We lined them with vintage fabric, courtesy of my mother's fabric trunk!

The colander belonged to my late Gran. But with a broken handle, we up-cycled it to make this Ikea lamp a bit more 'us'

Possibly the best £17 we have spent so far. A beautiful set of vintage kitchen steps. With such high ceilings it is making reaching up for high up items a whole lot easier...