Legs Out, Boots On And Handbags At Dawn

It's most unlike me but I've had my legs out twice in a row.
I'd better share over at Patti's for Visible Monday.

I was dying to give this Jean Allen culotte dress a whirl since I bought it from a fellow seller at last week's vintage & collectables fair. 

After a week of pottering around in the garden I'd managed to collect innumerable scratches, cuts and bruises and, to top it off nicely, I got stung by a wasp & ended up a hideously inflamed leg but, faced with a colour this glorious, I can't imagine anyone noticed my skanky injuries.

Talking of vintage fairs, I couldn't resist snapping up this incredible printed dress from my friends, Claire and Maisie's stall on Saturday. It's 1970s dead-stock from Greece. The elastic had perished after forty years of being hidden away in a stock room but it only took an hour to unpick the seams, replace the offending elastic and restore it to it's former glory.

I know, I know, boots! Needs must when it's pissing down! I'm hoping I'll be back in flip flops before too long. I keep reading posts by bloggers waxing lyrical about Autumnal dressing but they can feck right off, there's no way I'm wearing coats and tights just yet, we've got at least 6 months of being miserably confined in layers, as always I'll be the last woman dressed like it's still high Summer in December.

Look at what else I came back with (just as well I managed to sell some stock or they'd be no room in the house for me). My friend Maria noticed my house was lacking a knitted loo roll dolly when she came round to help out with the photo shoot back in June and thoughtfully bought one for me. The downstairs loo looks that much classier now.

As if three months of hand-painting Ebbie wasn't enough, Jon's been on a mission to pimp up everything he can lay his mitts on. First off was this old leather Kelly bag that's been at the bottom of the bag pile in my stock room for ages.....

...followed by two more!

1970s cotton Bandit Sauvage midi dress (Maisie's Closet Vintage) worn with a heap of gypsy & tribal jewellery and River Island stack heeled leather boots (£2, Sally Army)

1960s slub silk culotte dress (£15, Elephant vintage fair), orange platforms (Queen of NZ, Helga), 1960s Lucite chain belt (25p, car boot sale)

We're on a mission to get the website updated and the stock reorganised (I might be a winter-hater but my customers want coats, dresses with sleeves, jumpers and vintage boots) so the house looks more like a jumble sale than usual. I'm woefully behind with blog reading, responding to comments and replying to emails, I was hoping for a mega catch-up this afternoon but the slave driver I live with is cracking the whip and I have to do some more sorting before I can sit down and catch up.

See you soon (I hope!).