Piwiwiwi and Campervan Dreams

Q. What do you call a Pommy (Kiwi slang for English person) that moves to New Zealand

A. A Piwi.

Q. What do you call a Welsh man that moves to New Zealand

A. A Wiwi?

So when an English girl and a Welsh man move to New Zealand, it makes perfect sense for them to start up a company calling themselves PiwiWiwi… right?

Well it makes perfect sense to me but perhaps that's because I share my sister's sense of logic.

Anna and Niall emigrated to New Zealand earlier this year to set up PiwiWiwi.com, a campervan rental service aimed a the surf tourists who head to NZ for the waves and the landscape. It's quite a scary dream to chase and I'm so proud of them for making the leap. Check out the site for some gorgeous scenic pics!

I caught up with sis on Skype a few evenings ago to hear more of their adventures. Amongst the busy practicalities of starting a new business she's still managing to be shame-makingly healthy, active and eco. Whilst I lounge on the sofa most evenings drinking wine and internet shopping or fiddling with ribbons and frippery in my sewing room, she's been surfing, running, hiking, eating poridge and lentils and other such stuff that us ordinary folk promise ourselves we'll do but never quite get round to. A large part of last night's conversation centered around sustainable energy, composting toilets and worm farming! I tease her about it mercilessly but secretly I'm rather jealous of her drive and ambition, as well as her ever shrinking waistline!

4 wheel adventures are rather on my mind at the moment. Future Mother-In-Law has recently bought a snazzily compact and rather bijou caravan and I just re-visited the amazing website of Roulotte Retreats who rent amazingly decorated static gypsy caravans full of sumptuous fabrics and dripping with chic and it all has me dreaming of hitting the open road. The fiance and I had a vague plan to buy a camper and travel around Europe for a month or so for our honeymoon, before we both realised that taking a month off was utterly impractical and campers are darned expensive!

Still, a girl can dream and me being me I'm dreaming of all the little extras I could take with me to make my compact life a little more swanky whilst remaining practical:

Melamine
I was never much inspired by melamine. It always seemed like the maiden aunt of crockery, slightly dull and utterly unbreakable. I think I was prejudiced at an early age, our family camping set was a couple of shockingly plain seventies brown plates, a few "cheery" coloured beakers and the obligatory thermos. It looks like I judged too early, a quick etsy search and uncovered a host of beautiful pastel shades and iconic shapes like this lovely set for $85:

and this one for $57

Unfortunately most seem to be from the US and I can imagine shipping being astronomical, otherwise one of these sets may already have been on it's way to NZ for use in the PiwiWiwi vans.

Luckily for the more local the trend for vintage-styling has extended to picnic ware. John Lewis has a couple of very cute ranges that I could see gracing the cubby-holes of my dream camper.

Whilst the Brights range is adorable I'm not sure the fiance would be happy travelling in a haven to pastel, plus it being the end of the BBQ season (Boo) it's almost sold out (the set of 4 beakers is reduced to £5) so I think I'd plump for the Summer Folk range (priced between £2 and £11 oer item). OK, it's only marginally less girly, but just about enough to get away with I think and it would certainly brighten up dining alfresco

Bedding

I've never been much of an admirer of the sleeping bag. Clustraphobic little cocoons made of slippery polyester that take ages to warm up then instantly get sweaty and tangled. On recent camping trips I've abandoned the idea completely and just taken a duvet instead, seriously it's the way forward! I think for the camper I'd choose the Twister double duvet cover (available from numerous stockists including Amazon) cause it would tone in with the crockery and... well it's Twister!

Also essential is a snuggly throw for picnics and campfire moments and I can't think of a better one than  this Fleece Map Throw from the lovely Indigo and Bloom (a site I fully intend to preuse further in future). It may be £95 but it would make route planning our European odyssey a lot more exciting.

Food and drink

I love campfire cooking, so lazy but so satisfying. Chuck a can of chunky veg soup and a packet of instant rice into a cook pot, add some chopped hotdog sausages and in a very few minutes (or an eternity depending on the age of your gas burner and how hungry you are at the time) and you have a hot meal. Our cook set is this one from Go Ourdoors (RRP £20 but much cheaper with a members card). It's the perfect size for two, packs down to nothing and is impressively non-stick. Clever fiance even managed to whip up some impressive poached eggs for us in one of the lids.

Tea is another travelling essential. Whilst the fiance is an absolute tea addict I can pretty much take or leave the humble British brew, but when you're out on the road (especially in the wilds of the British countryside when you're likely to be rather chilly) there's nothing more comforting than a cup of tea to warm your hands and your insides. Whilst heating water in a cookpot is fine for camping, in the dream camper van I'm thinking of something a bit more civilised. A proper stove top whistling kettle is just the ticket, and you can never go wrong with Le Creuset in the classic Volcanic colourway. Rrp £65 but £44.83 from amazon

A china teapot is also one of life's greatest luxuries, but for practicalities sake enamel wins when travelling as it's likely to take a few knocks and this Folklore Teapot is utterly gorgeous and only £16.95 from notonthehighstreet.com.

 Finally, a decent tea towel may seem a mundane thing to get excited over but this one by Betsy Benn also at notonthehighstreet.com is such a classic. I'm a sucker for a union jack at the best of times, and when the design is made up of quintissentially British people, places and things you can't go wrong. Even better the diagonal red cross lists the ingredients and (the website tells me reliable) recipe for Victoria Sponge! £10 may seem a lot for a tea towel, but if it makes the drying up a less onerous task then it may just be worth it.

 

 Well, that's the dream camper mostly kitted out, now all that's left to do is win the lottery, find the perfect one and set off into the sunset. Or at the very least start saving my pennies for a trip to NZ to stay in a Piwiwiwi van.

A cheeky little number

I've just been really naughty... But I'm not sorry. Not sorry at all!

I have no idea how I got turned on to A Wear. Somehow I added myself to their mailing list and have been studiously ignoring their emails ever since in an attempt to save myself from temptation. I'm kind of glad that I did, but then I'm also kind of (guiltily) glad that the first email I've read from them in months directed me towards the sale!

Now, I can't resist a good sale. And this is a very good sale. An EPIC sale. Most things at less than half price and they have a good range of sizes left. What's not to love?

How adorable is this blouse? £25 down to £17.50 but only in a size 6, so I bought the white version which is only £7.50

They also sell the Closet range also in Dorothy Perkins which I mentioned previously, but they have a bigger range of sizes available in the sale:

Just look at this dress! Look at the detailing on that belt!

And check out the back! Down from £45 to £15 and also available in red and black.

I wish I'd seen this pencil skirt before I clicked to buy. I do love me a good pencil shirt, and the longer line of this one is divine. Down from £30 to £15. But I did buy the last one of the tan version of this skirt for only £7 (the blue is £15). It calls itself "peachskin" which I really hope doesn't translate as tacky velour..

I really could go on and on here but please take a look for yourselves. The dresses are the most exciting sale section, but there's also some really good denim and knitwear in the sale, like this cute mint cardi for only £10

As well as basic jersey tops for as little as £3 in a really sweet range of colours

So I went a little savings-crazy and picked out a couple of likely-looking dresses to try for the swanky wedding, and when you're paying a flat rate for delivery it's worth buying a few pieces to spread the cost... That's just good maths. So I picked out a few more basics and some work wear and some just for fun items.

I spent over £100. Now I have to do some major sale guilt justification:
Total cost of what I bought before sale: £339
Total cost after sale: £138.5
Then I got an additional 10% off with a voucher code
Then I found another voucher code for free shipping (this totally doesn't cancel out the argument above. Shh...)

So actually I'm quite proud of myself.

Autumn Style Guide - Teal, Burgundy & Spice

I've always maintained that I'm only ever fashionable by accident, that is to say when fashion happens to coincide with my own personal style. So it is with great joy that I'm watching the Autumn trends come out with a wash of jewel tone colours like Teal, Emerald, Burgundy and Plum. They're flattering on alost every skin tone and hair colour and it's so nice to wear richer colours as the light starts to fade from the mornings and evenings.

But the real trend to watch, and a bit of a new one on me, are spice colours. Mustard yellow, Saffron orange, Cinnamon red and Nutmeg brown are all out in force. I've been swishing around an awful lot lately in my new *coughPrimarkcough* Saffron coloured safari-style skirt and rejoicing that it doesn't completely wash out my English-rose skin and clash with my bottle-red hair but actually compliments both.

So here's a little Etsy trend watch of a few Summer to Autumn crossover pieces that I'm loving right now.



Hope you like it!

Back it up

Dress shopping. It's a minefield.

I've been browsing the inter webs for most of the day today looking for the perfect dress for a tricky wedding situation. It's a pretty posh affair in a swanky London hotel so must be relatively smart, must be figure flattering as dearest Daddy will be there and he always manages to sneak some comment in about my waistline, and must be on a budget as all my spare pennies are going towards my own wedding. The sales are all down to tiny girl sizes, (Closet at Dorothy Perkins has some stonking dresses in their sale if you're a size 14 or below) my usual resources for more affordable fashion (namely Boohoo.com) all seem to be either too casual or cut way too far above the knee and I just can't justify shelling out over £50 at Fever no matter how perfectly cut their dresses are. It's all highly frustrating!

But I have found a little something to lift my mood as I continue to search. Seller LEKGALENG on Etsy has some really novel tops and dresses that I just had to share.

Pretty standard vest top from the front...

Party in the back!

Some of the designs are a little bright for my taste, especially the ones where te vest part is coloured rather than black, but I like the boldness and simplicity of the tattoo-inspired designs

These two will cost you will cost you around £21 a piece including delivery (from Thailand)

This one is more like £25 and they do dresses too...

Perhaps slightly risque on the bum clevage front this one, but I'm totally drawn to it. If I were a touch more rock, had a spare £27, and had boobies small enough to go without a bra I would totally buy this dress.

Then I'd probably immediately wonder where on earth I'd wear it. Certainly not to a swanky London wedding. *sigh*

Post (and) Script - Mini Obsession

Mini obsessions come and go in my life. I'm a great one for finding a beautiful item, style or genre, then obsessing over it untill I own at least one item falling in to that category (usually more than one).

One of the recent obsessions that seems to be having a resurgance in my conscious today is vitage postal ephemera, possibly sparked off by the Disaster Designs Dandy items I mentioned in a previous post. Despite the fact I've never been a good letter writer myself I'm compulsively drawn to images of vintage letters, postcards, stamps and postmarks as well as old-looking cursive handwriting. There's something so intriguing about old letters, the secrets and words of love they might contain.

So I'm going to vent my obsession here today in the hopes reliving a few loves, wants and makes will stop me buying anything new! There's the most amazing host of paper items out there with vintage postal prints, from notecards to swing tags to journal covers, but I think the items that work best in this theme are the non paper ones.
Printed fabrics are constantly top of my list of wants, for use with my hatmaking. The quality of fabric and print and the depth of detail in the designs, mostly seeming to come out of Korea and Japan, at the moment is astonishing. Most of my current collection comes from Etsy sellers RetroNaNa and Minnafabric, though given some extra pennies I'd definately snap up some pieces from Renees Fabrics. I could fill a whole post with amazing fabric prints (in fact, maybe I will at some point soon) but for now here's a little treasury of scripty style prints for you crafters:



Actually, that was a really bad idea as now I've found a bunch more fabrics and sellers to keep an eye on! Here's a couple of recent Chapeau Carmine creations vibing off the postal theme

This one's called Write me a Love Letter

and I called this one Meet me in Paris. Old romantic much? This one recently sold, but I have a new one made from the same fabric to be listed soon!

Searching around the subject on Etsy today (this is how all of my obsessions gain ground in my head) I found this amazing Postcards From Europe Corset Cincher by MidnightAgenda which I'm totally in want of (she has a vintage newspaper style one which is eaqually if nore more gorgeous):

There's also about a million really adorable pieces of jewellery around this theme, mostly of the scrabble tile or silver charm kind but this one by kvossdesigns has really caught my eye:

Now, I know I'm totally Etsy-centric and find most of my pretties through there (how cute is this airmail T-shirt, £35.90 with postage from Milatree)

 But it's not only the amazing crafters on Etsy who are feeding my postal frenzy (surruptitious drinking would feel so much more stylish with the Wanderlust flask, £15.10 from the gloriously named WhimsyandInk)    

OK, OK, enough Etsy.

I found these adorable business card holders on Not on the High Street (which I may well have to investigate more. A friend gets a lot of real bargains from there). 4 designs to choose from for £8.07 each

Or you can get the matching compact mirror for £9.50

This Silver Postcard charm is gorgeous too, and personalizable (is that a word?) with your own message for £55

 And finally one for the men: The Postcard Mighty Wallet for £11.99.

There are a lot of really cute zippy purses and pouches out there (made from some of the fabrics I listed above no less) but the Mighty Wallet has Mighty in the name, so it wins automatically.

Well, whaddayaknow. I may have managed to distract myself long enough by the finding of these things that I have no more time today in which to buy them. My bank balance can sleep safe for another night. One day closer to payday...

Teacup and Cakes

I've been craving a proper Afternoon Tea for months now. Not just a cream tea with scones, but the full works with little cakes and dainty sandwiches, preferably served from a silver cake stand and posh tea in proper china. I think the craving was started on a weekend trip to York with Fiance (the tea room was too full of ladies of a certain age in their Sunday best for us in our jeans to squeeze in), and has been fed ever since by reading blog posts about other amazing tea establishments, too often in very posh hotels and almost always in London.

So when lovely Middle Sister came up for an afternoon of shopping in Manchester it seemed like the perfect opportunity to satisfy my craving, and after a touch of googling and a few Facebook recommendations we found ourselves in Teacup and Cakes on Thomas Street.

You can't say no to this sign can you?

Earlier in the day we'd already heartily raided Yo Sushi (hadn't been before but will definitely be back, having your food paraded in front of you in a never ending loop of tasty, genius!) so we opted for one Cream Tea and one Afternoon Tea thinking we were being all frugal. It's a good thing we did...

The Cream Tea came with a choice of Assam, Darjeeling or Earl Grey, we chose the latter. With the Afternoon Tea, however, you can choose any one from the boggling menu of loose leaf options. We were tempted by Jasmine Pearls (who wouldn't be with a name like that) but in the end went for the Heart of Love Blooming Flower Tea. When the many pots and cups arrived, along with little multi chamber egg timers to time your brew, we were somewhat guessing at the propr way to do things. Turns out the Earl Grey should be strained from one pot into another empty pot when the brewing time was up to stop it stewing, easy enough, then pour and serve. With the Heart of Love we received a glass pot full of hot water, an empty glass jug and a small glass cup containig a sachet with what looked like a dried mushroom in it. We guessed (correctly it turns out) that the same pot to pot method was the way to go. When removed from the sachet and dropped into the hot water, the little mushroom thing (which is really very cleverly tied white needle tea) starts to slowly bloom open, letting loose an amazing smell of jasmine and revealing another flower in the centre. This tea would be a winner for visuals alone but the taste was equally delicious, lightly floral with none of the bitterness I often find with white or green teas (perhaps I've just been brewing it wrong).  I wish I'd taken a picture at the time, but have googled flowering tea since and am now seriously coveting this set from Ebay

Look at all the different kinds you can get!

The reason we didn't take a picture of the tea is that we were far too distracted by the arrival of the food! If the table weren't already full enough with multiple tea acoutrements, it was groaning now! We'd already scoffed all of the sandwiches, which weren't the dainty crusts-off kind but chunky wholemeal bread utterly stuffed with hummous and flaffel, and shared the small cakes, devinely light chocolate mousse cake, ludicrously moist carrot and mandarin cake and one drippingly rich one that tasted of honey, before we even though of getting the camera phones out, so you'll have to take my word on how beautiful and tasy it all was. And whaddya know, it came on a silver cake stand too!

But the total show-stealers of the day were the scones. Oh the scones. Just look at the scones!

They're HUGE! No dainty little rounds here but big, chunky rustic scones served with generous amounts of proper clotted cream and really lovely jam.

They were dense but cakey at the same time and stuffed full of raisins and whole toasted hazelnuts which gave a very satisfying crunch. We both made a valiant effort but couldn't finish the whole lot and had some left over to take home, I promised my leftovers to hard-done-by fiance who had been working hard all day and not able to join us, but in the end I scoffed most of his share myself! Oops!
The Cream Tea was £6.50 and the Afternoon Tea £12.95, which is very reasonable for what you get and a whole lot less than a posh hotel, who probably would have disapproved of me in my jeans and trainers anyway. I'll definately be back into Teacup and Cakes to try some more of their amazing looking treats and teas, the atmosphere is very laid back and the staff very friendly. They also sell the Make us a Brew range of teas and accessories from Mr Scruff, Sister advises everyone to try the Mint and Chilli variety

I had a lovely day with my sister. Why can't every Monday be filled with half half price Birthday Shoes, sushi, shopping tea and cake?

Keep Calm and... Whatever

It's Friday, and I can't be bothered. No, more than that, I both can't be bothered and I'm really very irritated. Honestly, everything is an effort, the smallest job becomes the most onerous task and pretty much everythiong is prompts vast eye rolling and huffiness. I need a big sign to stick behind my desk, something that will inform anyone who approaches exactly the mix of lack-lustre/hair-trigger I'm feeling today so they can modulate their tone appropriately.

This poster is adorable, I love the colour and vintage typography as much as the message, £16.66 with delivery from Bear & Robot

I know the Keep Calm and... poster format has been done to death in recent months, but the above is just a little different and I appreciate the sentiment. On a day like this, I think a huge blast of fuschia may just make things a little bit better, though if that's a little too happy for your sad days, it's available in a range of other colours. Only £8.18 from tallistreasures

There's nothing like an insult couched in beautiful print to make you feel better about your bad mood. This Douglas Adams quote print by Chatty Nora is only £8 including free delivery!
But i think the winner of the prints has to be Oh, Dear Molly with the following wonderful bits of wisdom

The Lion King "Dress In Drag & Do The Hula" A3 Poster for £10.62

Tarzan "Okay It's All Fun And Games Til Someone Loses An Eye" A3 Poster also £10.62

Nintendo Mario Kart "Choose Your Weapon" A3 Poster for $14.40

There's a rumour going round the office about free ice cream. I must go and investigate immediately!