Secondly I better say, after all the umming and ahhhing over what to wear for the wedding, it turns out I needn't have procrastinated so much, we were both sick as dogs and didn't end up going. Thanks to the wonders of Facebook though I at least got to see the photographs!
Anyway, its been a while since the last blog and I have quite a few things to get down so I'll try and stick to one thing at a time. I'll start with the swapping. The last few weeks has seen some excellent swaps;
I got a beautiful blue anchor print Laura Lees dress from Top shop, (which I had been seriously coveting from a far while it was in the shops) still with the tags on. It will be perfect for work and play so I am very pleased with it. A Mustard yellow three quarter sleeve cardigan which goes with everything I own. An amazing vintage wrap skirt from one of my favourite swappers, and a Brilliant 1960s hand made dress which i took on holiday with me and loved! So actually, I have managed to swap quite a lot!
As much as I love swapping over the internet, I had yet to experience an actual live swap but there was one in Sheffield at the Millenium Galleries, details here:
http://www.sheffieldgalleries.org.uk/coresite/html/events.asp?id=914
http://www.vintagefair.co.uk/#/julyaugust/4529058503
I took some really nice items in the hopes that karma would repay me with something exciting. I have to say, I enjoyed the whole experience immensley. I came away with an original 1950s egyptian print skirt and a top shop shirt. I would definately recommend going to one, the atmosphere was fantastic and it was incredibly interesting looking through lots of other peoples clothes!
So on to selling. I have tried two ways of selling at the minute, the first way is through my swapping account on whatsmineisyours.com, the other was at the Affordable Vintage Fashion Fair (http://www.vintagefair.co.uk/). Through whats mine is yours I have sold a coat for £15, a pair of shoes for £20 and a top for £10. so that leaves me in + £45! The vintage fair was amazing, it was at the Millenium Galleries in Sheffield and held in conjuction with the Vivienne Westwood exhibition (which is amazing by the way if you have a spare afternoon in Sheffield). I thought I might get a bit bored, it was 1-7.30pm so getting there at 11.00 made it a really long day. However it went so fast! It was jam packed with more people queueing waiting to come in. I shared a stall with miss frugal selling all our unwanted vintage gems. I had loads of fun on the day, and found a couple of gems for myself. Now I know the whole point of this excersize is to stay frugal, however if there is one thing i love it is vintage. It is my weakness, and as long as i stay + in my money for clothes then I think I am still being frugal. It also fits in with our environmental aims and the thing with vintage is, as long as you look after it, you can more than likely get the money back for it anyway. So I found this gorgeous dress from the Glass Onion Vintage stall for £10, I never fail to find something from here, I got my favourite yellow mac and one of my favourite 1940s dresses from here at the last vintage fair so was very pleased with this find, it needs a couple of stitches here and there but still love it:
Other purchases (i know i know i'm not supposed to be buying stuff!) were a really great top shop smock top which is perfect for work for £1 from a charity shop and a pair of shoes. Now i didn't really need new shoes and i didn't particularly want to buy them, but we went to Manchester for the day, I was wearing a pair of shoes i have had for about 2 years and are normally very comfortable. However for some reason they decided to try and kill me one toe at a time and my feet were cut to shreds! I ended up venturing into clarks which had a massive sale on and bought a pair of red shoes which were reduced from £44.99 to £9.99! They are very comfortable and perfect for work so i don't feel too guilty!
Making my money is still +£109. Yey!!
Right I am going to go off track a bit here and talk about cosmetics, well shampoo really. I used to work at Lush, which is a wonderful company and much more than just a soap shop. When I left (a year and a half ago) I stocked up on my favourite shampoo, I love juicy, and my favourite conditioner, Veganese. I ran out, but luckily it was December and at Christmas they have this amazing sale, well not really a sale but an offer that if you spend £15 or more you can get anything, and I mean ANYTHING made before that December absolutely free. In the past I have had gifts which retailed for £50 and a £35 moisturiser amongst my goodies. However this year I chose to get some shampoo and conditioner free as the large bottles of I love juicy are £12.75 and Veganese is £10.95. So for someone who used to buy just whatever was on offer at the supermarket this is a lot of money. However, like I said, I got my last bottle in December and I have only just run out of the shampoo(my boyfriend also uses it!) and I've still got half a bottle of Veganese left. You may wonder why on earth I am waffling on about shampoo, basically I am trying to save money wherever I can and I have run out of shampoo. Should I spend almost £13 on another bottle of my favourite or does this extravagance contradict my new frugal lifestyle? Well, the 500ml bottle lasted both me and my boyfriend month, which works out at £1.59 a month. Which also works out at much cheaper than buying supermarket shampoos.
If you are like me and am a bit precious about your hair then read this next bit very carefully. I promise I won't try and sound like an advert for lush, but I used to continueally have to change my brand of shampoo because my hair would get greasier and greasier. I have used the same shampoo for almost three years now without having any kind of problems because the grease was caused by a build up of silicon and Lush shampoos don't contain silicon! What would happen is I'd buy one shampoo, all the nasties from it would stick to my hair and build up over time, so I would change the brand. The new shampoo would get rid of the nasties from the old shampoo, (which is why when you try a new shampoo your hair feels all lovely) but then it starts building up its own load of nasties and the cycle would start again. Because theres no silicon, there is no build up. I love Juicy is good for my hair, but there are loads of different shampoos for different types of hair. If I am going out and I want big hair, I use Big shampoo as it is amazing for adding volume, as the name suggests! There are full details of the Lush shampoo range here:
http://www.lush.co.uk/categories/Shampoo_1130.aspx
Anyway, now I am really rambling. What I really want to say is I was going on holiday, camping no less, and didn't want to lug a brand new 500ml bottle of shampoo along with me so i decided to go with a shampoo bar instead. They are basically shampoo in a bar form and you can get a nifty little tin with to keep it in. I was a bit in love with I love Juicy I was a bit apprehensive but I have to say it is brilliant. It is so easy to use and convenient. I imagine if i ever did anything like going to the gym (ha ha!!) on a regular basis it would be perfect for carrying about. Details are here:
http://www.lush.co.uk/categories/Bars_72.aspx
I got Jumping Juniper for my greasy locks and it is really lovely, and smells gorgeous.
The other amazing thing about Lush is its animal and environmental policies. I have never heard of a company which is so ruled by its morals before, and not in a cheap marketing way. If I didn't work for them I would never have known about them, I would have just assumed they were just another fancy soap shop. Basically they don't just not test their products on animals. They don't buy ingredients which have been tested on animals. They don't even buy ingredients from companies who test on animals, even if the ingredient they want isn't! They have vegan products and work with poultry farmers and bee keepers for the things that aren't. They don't use excess packaging or carrier bags, all plastic bottles are recyclable. And thats not it. They are so concious of every ethical issue I can't even begin to explain. One example is whilst working there one day the price of every item containing Sandlewood went up by a few pence. On enquiring why, it turned out they got their Sandlewood from India where they'd discovered protected Sandlewood trees were being illegally chopped down in order to make Sandlewood oil. So they just changed suppliers and sourced it from a whole other country. There is nothing more important to this company than doing the right thing and they also do lovely soap. This is one of the reasons why I will continue to shop there forever more! And continue to get other people to shop there!
Don't get up yet because I still haven't finished. After all that faffing, the washing machine broke after all! The bearings went and the cheapest quote was £110 + VAT, I was also advised it wasn't really worth fixing. So I thought about the fancy 14 minute quick wash cycle washing machine and decided to have a look around first. We went to Currys, Comet and Tesco. However, having just finished reading 'America Unchained' by Dave Gorman we thought we'd try the independant route. So we went to Eastwood Domestics in Rotherham town centre (incidentally we bought our Fridge there!) and had a look. We ended up with a rocket ship washing machine!! Well, an Indeset Moon really, but it looks very futuristic and has flashy lights. It also has a brilliant 30 minute 30 degree quick wash, and lots of other excellent programs too. Not only did I get an excellent deal, £220, I got it delivered within two days (the first day being a Sunday!), fitted and my old one taken away for an extra fiver! From the big shops it would have cost £19.99 for them to just drop off my new one and take away my old one. No uncoupling, no fitting, just dropping it off and taking the old one away. So the moral is, shop local!
Well, I think that might finally finally be it now, you can relax! I will be doing the next vintage fashion fair in Sheffield so I shall keep you updated!
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