a spring-kling of spring lovelies!

All of these have just started up in the shop, over on eBay!













Check 'em out here.

spring is, well, springing!

It's been so warm here today, and although it's due to get chillier again over the next few days, it's quite clear that my second* favourite time of year - spring - is in the air. In fact, it's so nearly here, you can almost smell it. Or maybe you can already if you get pollen allergies! :( If so, console yourself with the contents of the renvintage shop update which this week includes some great transeasonal pieces that will see out the remainder of the chilly days and then into the warmer months ahead. Check out the new listings and get spring ready!

*Sorry, but winter is still my fave. Perhaps it's my childhood memories of miserable British winters, but there's just nothing like crisp bright winter days in Sydney - you can see your own breathe, you get to rug up in layers with boots, stockings, chunky knits and a blazer, and you're still able to go and sit in the sun to warm up. I still have that change of season excitement with spring's nicer temperatures but all too soon, summer and its relentless heat and humidity will set in, causing me to melt like a little snowflake! Lucky I'm headed to Europe later this year ;)

Anyway on with the spring-ready vintage...







This and much more starting tonight in the shop, check 'em all out.

roadtripping...

Ah, I'm such a slack blogger! I've neglected it completely in the last few weeks. I'm just so much more used to micro-blogging, (I'll admit I'm a twitter addict), which means this whole "put more thought in it and upload photos" method of communication just seems like it requires so much more effort! Yes, I'm the kind of friend to text instead of writing emails too, sigh. I figure motivating myself to blog more often might also make me a better friend.

In fact, I have delayed posting so much that the reason for this blog is now several weeks behind me. Tsk. But I should still share because I did a crazy thing - I decided at a moment's notice to drive from Sydney to Melbourne and back in 5 days.

I had received an invitation to a renewable energy event in Ballarat, VIC which I was keen to attend, so about 3 hours before I left, I borrowed a sleeping bag and my boyfriend's GPS, mapped out a vague route, packed some clothes, booked a night at a YHA in Canberra, and drove into the night.

I had only 3 real commitments; to leave Sydney on Sunday evening, to be in Ballarat on Wednesday evening, and to be back in Sydney on Friday afternoon, so outside of those limitations, I decided to go with the wind a little. I'm not very good at being organised anyway, so sorting out places to sleep for the night every day as the sun went down suited me just fine.


my eventual route

Of course, one of the main reasons I decided to go on this crazy journey was to get to as many opshops in as many country towns along the way as possible! Sydney's opshops are getting ridiculously expensive for the torn, stained or just plain well worn and non-vintage stock they generally carry, and although you can still find gold on occasion, you have to have a lot more commitment and luck! I'm happy to report that although the prices have risen a bit, country opshops do still have great loot...


coming soon to renvintage on ebay and/or Surry Hills markets!

I had a pretty crappy night's sleep on the first night as the Canberra YHA had their airconditioning set to 'baking', which was not something I was prepared for, especially considering it was about 2 degrees outside at the time. During the 2.5 hours of fitful sleep I managed to get, I dreamt that the building was on fire, and then that I was in an oven... then awoke at 3.45am and was totally unable to sleep after that. I tried to fix things by purchasing a really huge strong coffee and some toast, and hitting the road with a serious case of the grump. Luckily my crappy night and crabby mood were soon placated by some good tunes on the radio, some beautiful scenery and some amazing vintage finds along the way.

My trip also included seeing kangaroos in fields, being terrified of seeing kangaroos on windy country roads, lots of morning fog, sunshine, wind turbines, beautiful riverina scenery, rolling green hills , a giant concrete sheep and one too many windscreen cracks.

If I had the trip over again, I would have taken along a friend (or my long-suffering boyfriend who is super patient and frequently car-bound whilst I'm opshopping), because as fun as it was, it was a little lonely and much much harder to take photos on the road! I would have liked to have taken a photo of every new welcome sign whenever I drove into a new town, shire or state, but alas, it's kind of dangerous to do that when you're the driver... Here are some pics that I did manage to steal though...


$60 and a trip to a windscreen repair place later, it's still a bit cracked and in need of fixing :\


fog on the road to Albury-Wodonga



wind turbines, woo :)


giant concrete sheep


total kilometres traveled, phew!

I totally have the roadtripping bug now. Growing up overseas, I still have so much to see of this country, so I reckon my next trip should take me into the vast interior of this wide brown land.

now on sale at renvintage!

My first vintage listings are now up on eBay, including the following which are my favourites...



It's so exciting to have listings going again, and I'm already addicted to refreshing the page to see the watchers climbing!

More listings will be put up this Thursday :)

have a peek

We staged a little photoshoot on Saturday with my friend Melinda (who is also the brains and creativity behind the fabulous Nizeti handbags and accessories label), and although I won't have time to list the vintage things we photographed until later this week as I'm busy working for the next couple of days, I thought I should share some of our results...






We were a bit late in the day to take them all outside, much as I preferred the background of dappled sunlight in the trees to a white wall. We'll start earlier next time, as we slept in, then spent ages having coffee and playing dress-ups before we started shooting!

I'll have some things listed by the end of the week... tell your friends!

back on the mainland

As much as I enjoy the internet on a daily basis (at breakfast my browser starts up automatically with my Gmail, facebook, twitter, ebay, blogger and etsy tabs already loaded, and it's all downhill from there, usually ending with me still browsing on my iphone in bed, the modern equivalent of reading a book under the covers), I always find it nice to get away from it every once in a while.

So when I was asked to head to a remote island with about 400 residents off the east coast of Australia to do some contracting work, I figured a couple of days without the internet and without mobile phone access would be pretty easy, and it was.

Although I think I would have been looking longingly at my iphone for signs of life a whole lot more, were my surroundings not absolutely breathtakingly beautiful...








Yep, that is one tiny plane for a 2 hour flight across the ocean... but I had a couple of extra wine top-ups and the nerves disappeared nicely :)







I didn't have a lot of free time as I was there to work (which is good for the bank balance!), but I managed to squeeze in a couple of hours of snorkelling in the lagoon, which is one of the most densely populated reefs I've ever seen, there were so many colourful fish and coral, and I saw two huge stingrays, which I swam around at speed!! No photos of the snorkelling sorry... boats + water + camera + uncoordinated me is not a good combination. I did get a photo of the huge fish on the ocean side of the island though.




And on the way back into Sydney, the flight took us over the Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge... Having moved to Sydney from the UK as a teen, I'm still blown away by this city sometimes. Wish the photos had come out better, but they were out a dirty plane window.






I wish I'd been there on holiday and not working, and for a few more days, I was sad to leave so soon! But I'm glad to be back in the city, especially as I'm planning for this renvintage malarky to go live this week! More on that to come... stay tuned :)

finally, a sunny day!

Of course, as I type this, it's clouding over again, but for more than a few hours today, it was actually sunny.

I know you're thinking - "It's Australia, isn't it always sunny?", but it has literally been raining for all of winter so far, and was for most of autumn too!

And it's been affecting my mood and motivation levels, which is odd because I was born in England, and grew up with much longer, colder and wetter winters than we get here in Sydney. Really miserable ones, in fact, and I don't remember being so emotionally affected by it!

So quite why I feel like I have seasonal affective disorder in this country, I can't explain. Perhaps it's because for so much of the year here it is hot and humid and sunny, and so that feels like the default. Whereas the majority of the time I have spent back in England has been over wintry Christmases, visiting family and spending lots of time rugged up or indoors taking advantage of the central heating, eating far too much pudding and drinking endless hot tea. So that seems like England's default to me. In fact, I feel a bit lost when I visit the UK in summer and see sunsets after 9pm, and temperatures above 10 degrees!

It also feels much colder here in winter than it should do, considering that the temperature here today is 18 degrees, which is only 2 degrees lower than it's forecast to be in London today, in summer. But Sydney's houses - especially the older townhouses where I live - were generally made without such things as adequate insulation and central heating, so it's generally much colder indoors than it is outside.

Anyway rant and emo-ness aside, I took advantage of the sunshine today and left my position huddling under a blanket on the sofa to take off my ugg boots and go for a walk. First stop, coffee and banana bread.



Next stop, ceasing procrastination and actually doing something constructive to get my shop up and running!!

(don't forget to follow my blog, follow me on twitter, or follow me on facebook to find out when that happens!)