WICKED IS WICKED

I had a smashing time in London on Saturday. As part of my Christmas present hubby bought me tickets to see the musical Wicked.


This brilliant show is held at the Apollo Theatre in Victoria. Built in 1930 its original use was as a cinema. It is a most wonderful Art Deco building and the interior was designed to resemble an underwater fairy cavern with wonderful lights resembling stalactites and lots of wonderful chrome. A lot of the theatre has been restored to its former glory and it is now a Grade 2 listed building.   I tried to take some photos of the interior but unfortunatly my camera was not up to the job as the lighting in the auditorium was not that bright.

 
 

 

For all of you who love the story of the Wizard of Oz this is an absolute must. It tells the story of the friendship between two girls who attend the Wizard School – Glinda the popular blond and Elphaba the misunderstood green girl who becomes the Wicked Witch of the West. Suffice to say not all is at it seems in Oz, but I won’t tell you the story line as it would spoil it for those who want to see it....

The musical numbers are great, the scenery and costumes are awesome and all I can say is WICKED IS WICKED.

BILLY BLINCOW AND THE BIKE SHOP

One of my hobbies when I am not busy searching for vintage finds or creating is researching my family tree and genealogy. I have always loved history and I am a nosy devil by nature and love to know what happened back in the annals of time, one of the reasons why I love old houses. I put on my Sherlock Holmes deerstalker to play detective and I just had to start looking into the history of my new home especially as it appears that the bicycle business that was part of my house played so big a part in the village’s life.

First stop the internet, there is always something to find on there and I decided that I would see if there were any photographs of the business or shop, and low and behold I found this wonderful snap of William Blincow the owner for the shop outside what is now my lounge. What a find.

As you can see the bow window is still there I  might even ask Hubby to look under the tongue and groove cladding to see if the moulded detail originally on the bay is still there, I should be so lucky, as would be wonderful to have that displayed again.

In my dining room there is a little window peep hole which opens up and this was used by the owners to look through to see if anybody had come into the shop and needed serving . I love it as it one of the houses features and part of its quirky past.

Next stop is our little village museum and local history society as I expect they have more information to give me.  Then it is back to the internet to start looking at the census's to see who else may have lived in the house and maybe find out exactly how old it is.  I should have been a detective.....

NEW YEAR - NEW HOME

FIRSTLY MAY I START THIS BLOG BY WISHING EVERYBODY A REALLY HAPPY 2010.

Well we are finally in our new home we moved in on the 22nd December..... Yes we moved in all that snow and ice just three days before Christmas. I can hear you saying “they must be mad” and yes it did feel a little that way but we really wanted to be in before Christmas in order to have the holiday time to unpack our many boxes at leisure.


Luckily family were taking care of the festivities this year, a big thank you to my sister for Christmas Day dinner and my eldest daughter for our Boxing Day feast.

Our last house was three stories with 5 bedrooms to spread out into – this house is only two stories with three bedrooms, it has been a little bit like trying to squeeze a half pint into a quarter pint pot with hubby holding things up and saying where is this going and me just looking, putting my head in my hands and saying “I don’t know...” in a very high pitched hysterical way....

I have to say I think we have managed to break the back of it and have packed most of it away but we are going to purchase a VERY large shed for items that we don’t really need but want to put out of sight until we know what we want to do with them, and also to store so many of the bits I have accumulated over the past nine years we were in the old house.

The house used to be the old bike shop in the village and everybody knows it, when you say we are in the old bike shop everybody has a tale to tell, about when they used to get their bikes repaired there which means going shopping can take some time.
 
This is our new front door, which is actually at the back of the house, as you can see it is very solid
 
I hought you might also like to see the key that we have to carry around – no little Yale lock for us.... won't be losing that one in the bottom of my bag any time soon.
 

BENTLEY PRIORY SHOW

I woke up so early this morning – turned over looked at the clock at it was 4.45...tossed and turned for a while and decided to get up and carry on sorting out MORE goodies to take to the fair. I only realised the day before just how big a scale this fair was....really must pay more attention and suddenly began panicking will I have enough stock, then reason took over and my little brain told me WHAT YOU HAVENT GOT YOU CANT SELL.

Hubby then joined me and gave me an early Christmas present that he thought might be useful – a trolley on wheels, useful I could have hugged him to death, anyone else would have been upset but I was elated, that will save my poor back – good thinking Batman.

We arrived nice and early and as you can see Bentley Priory is an impressive venue, the biggest I have shown in, no village hall this one. Bentley Priory is where the Battle of Britain was planned.

Outside on the lawn was a Hurricane and a Spitfire. When you look at how small they were and yet they helped us to win the war I cannot help but marvel at the skill and the courage of the airmen that flew in them.

 

 

 

  We set up the table taking a leisurely time about it and we received lots of wonderful comments.

It was a long day and lots of people came through the doors including Ann’s Aunt and Uncle who made a special trip out to support us – thank you to them.When we got home our grandchildren were there waiting for us as we were having them overnight whilst Mum and Dad went to a party and the first words that greeted Hubby were “Mints” umm think that he might be getting too many sweets from old Mr Soft touch........

MOVING - WHO WOULD DO IT

I have not had a chance to blog recently as have been packing the house up ready for the move.  As far as we were aware all was going well and we were all set for the middle of December move.  I have been busy packing up my home full of little treasures safely - surrounded by a sea bubble wrap and tissue.  It had suddenly all gone quite so we decided we had better chase things up and would you believe it the people in the chain who were so insistent on a move before Christmas have not even had a survey done on the house they are buying!!!! Fuming is the word I would use.  If I were not such a lady I would swear (well I have really).... Still at least it means we will be able to have our last Christmas in this house and I can put up my Christmas tree and decorate my now half packed up home - a small consolation.

In between all the packing I have taken some me time to create some Christmas items for the Bicycle Basket Bazaar this Saturday.

I have made up some more packs of my Christmas tags that always do well and have made a couple of picture shadow boxes.

I like to take some of my hand made items to the Fishmarket as it is a great venue for handmade items and I mix these in with my vintage goodies.

VINTAGE & HOMEMADE FAIR - WHAT A DAY

Phew just catching my breath after yesterdays wonderful turnout to our Vintage and Homemade Fair.

For those of you who visited us a big thank you and I do hope you managed to find some wonderful goodies there. For those of you who had a stall with us an even bigger THANK YOU... Ann and I really hope that you enjoyed yourselves as much as we did.

8.30 yesterday morning we were finishing off the touches to our stalls. Thank goodness we had set the tables up the night before and by 4.30 it was all over and we were beginning to pack up the tables again. All those months of planning and it was over in a blink of an eye.

As it was the first fair we had organised we were not sure how many people we would have visit us but I have to say the folks of Northampton turned out in force. The radio did us proud and continuously kept advertising our fair off and on all day on Friday and Saturday.

Lots of people tucked into homemade cakes and cups of tea and lots of compliments were handed out about the food “lovely sponge” and how lovely it was to drink out of a “proper” cup and saucer and I know that the four in the kitchen were run off their feet the whole time.

Both the halls were equally as busy, there was a real buzz about the whole affair and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves stall holders and customers alike.

It was so nice to put faces to people we have been blogging with – a big hi to Wendy of Ticking Stripes, Annie of Birdcages and Butterflies, Laura of Myvintageparty and Emma of Silver Pebbles.

I managed to take some photos before the fair started but after that was just too busy to get out my camera and so apologies for not having more photographs to show you but if you go onto The Crafty Trundlers blog http://thecraftytrundler.blogspot.com/ she has really done us proud and has lots of photographs of the stalls, thank you so much. I will try and do better next time. DO YOU MEAN THERE WILL BE A NEXT TIME.....

BICYCLE BASKET BAZAAR

We were up and at it again today. Ann and I decided that it would be a good idea to have a bike at the Northampton Bicycle and Basket Bazaar in order to spread the word out further about the Vintage and Home Made Fair next Saturday. 

The morning started very wet and windy but the sun came out which was great as being an old fish market it has a glass roof which is open at the top (this was to let the smell of the fish out) and can get decidedly chilly. I have been known to hug a hot water bottle under my coat there.

Lindsey of Elsie Sparrow very nicely lent us her new bike which her husband had surprised ‘s her with for her birthday – for pictures of her bicycle please see Ann’s blog at Vintage At The Corner House. Lindsey sells the most wonderful children’s hand made items and she will be with us next weekend.

The hall was buzzing and some of the stallholders had really gone to town decorating their pitches. None more so than Aileen, who was selling a wonderful selection of gourds, dried flowers and vintage goodies, she is also joining us next weekend.
I just love the effort she had put into making her bicycle special.  Very creative, can't wait to see how her stall is going to look at the fair.

Throughout the day we were entertained by a trio who played a mixture of jazz and up tempo numbers our neighbours little boy was there and he really loved the drum player and I know what he is asking for from Father Christmas this year.  It is probably just as well we are moving....

All in all it was a great day, we made some sales and we handed out lots of our flyers so MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.