January citrus and antique markets

For my birthday I planned a trip to the ICAF antiques fair in Shepton Mallet. One of the things I was most excited about our move to the UK was all the antiques and vintage homewares that I'd be able to buy. So, I eagerly anticipated this particular birthday treat. I had visions of baskets, French dough bowls, milk glass vases, plant stands, kitchenalia and all manner of curiosities coming home with me. In other words I expected to be parted with cash, and be happy about it. After all, I'd heard good things about ICAF fairs HERE and HERE.

Although I did make a purchase- or should I say Alex made the purchase, being the one to haggle the price while I pretended not to know him and look busy on another stall... But, I didn't come away with a car load of beautiful-but-maybe-not-practical wares like I had imagined I would.

My sole purchase was some beautiful Edwardian era transfer ware.  I'm hopeless when it comes to resisting blue and white ceramics. And I have long admired the Asiatic Pheasants design first released in 1862 by Burleigh.

This is a lovely pie dish which I promptly filled with the season's best clemetines.

Accompanying the pie dish is this small platter plate, shown here with my grapefruit breakfast.

They weren't bargains per se (Alex did negotiate 7 pounds off the total) but they make me happy, and I am sure I couldn't have bought them back home in Australia at the same price.

I'll just have to keep looking for more treasures.

Kate  x

Linen

I love the freshness of all white manchester. I have slowly been collecting new sheets, pillowslips and towels in white to replace worn out, mis-matched and generally less attractive manchester. The white things we already owned have also been getting a 'white boost' with some extended soaks in the laundry tub.

I spied these lovely Euro slip covers in a shop on Saturday and couldn't resist them. I adore the embroidery detail.

In my experience as a once-a-week bed sheet changer, Euro slip covers tend to wear out at a very fast rate. And, they can be rather pricey. These weren't, so at $40 for the pair I didn't really think twice about bringing them home with us.

Washed and ironed (loose use of the term ironed), they're going on the bed on this Clean Sheet Monday (as Mondays are referred to in our household).

Such sweet details.

It has been a weekend of acquisitions. As well as purchasing these covers, we were also graciously gifted two nearly-matching old oak bank swivel-chairs. They need a little TLC. I was going to photograph them, but I am not sure how best to capture their patina and loveliness. I would like to have them completely restored, but the expense of having someone else do that for us is silly. It might have to be a project for me to complete myself. I know nothing about stripping and refinishing antique wood though. At this point, I don't know if I should leave the wood as is and just have the seats re-done in a nice heavy duty cream coloured drill material to give them a 'lift', or bite the bullet and do a proper restoration start to finish. More research is needed...

Kate  x