And 17 years later....

here we still are!

It's our wedding anniversary tomorrow and it will be our 17th! I have no idea where the time has gone at all, god I sound old.....

So I thought I'd dig some of the old photos out and share with you, I think we had THE best dressed most handsome guests ever, when I trawled through them today I really struggled to find just a few that I liked and I know I didn't trawl through then all, so I'm afraid this post is a bit graphic heavy, however I think you'll enjoy a look back into the past!!

So up first me and Paul on our big day!

We're not being arty these shots were done in B&W originally, obviously we have lots of colour but for some reason the B&W look better, more glam!

Aren't these some of the best dressed, best looking guests you ever saw?!! They include our best mates Lisa & Bloater - Lisa is the stunning tall blonde, Bloater is next to her. Good friends who we don't see as often are Gary & Karen, Karen is in the lovely suit, Gary has his hands in his pockets.

This one is at the reception which turned out to be an all dancing, all drinking affair! We had the Jive Aces playing and I got up to sing, Paul played the trumpet & pretty much any other guest who was a musician got up for a couple of songs, it was pretty crowded up there!

I love this one, everyone looks so cool! Lisa is on the left, Debbie was my bridesmaid, Ken her husband, Pat & Lee looking cool!

And a few more guest shots that I love! I know I have so many more but this is a nice selection!

Our very good friends Kev and Ellie, still good friends all these years later!

Gary & Dave looking like they're waiting outside a prison not a church!!

Roy turned up in his convertible!

We hired a cute caddy for our wedding car!

So here I am sharing again, the anniveraries this week have made me all sentimental! I'll be back to my old self next week!

On a more serious note.....

I don't do serious posts about life very often, and won't do very often, but I'm getting to know you guys so wanted to share.

My husband and I have a very special anniversary on Tuesday 27th April, it will be 10 years since we had a serious car accident which nearly killed Paul and changed our lives forever. This is not as depressing as it sounds, as you've probably realised by now I'm a pretty upbeat type of gal and so is my honey, so really what we celebrate on this day is survival and the joy of life.

We were on vacation and were travelling from Tuscon in Arizona to meet our friends in San Diego, up til that point we'd had a great time, we'd been to LA, Monterey, San Francisco, then on to Viva Las Vegas where we met and had a great time with lots of friends. We then went on to Phoenix, then Tuscon where we found the best vintage finds - all of which were lost dammit!

Viva Las Vegas 2000

But on that journey we had a car crash that did in fact change our lives, neither of us remember it, we were hit so hard and so quick thankfully we don't remember anything, I only remember the emergency crew bringing me round in the car, but even then I was in and out of conciousness. I wasn't so bad, although clearly not great, however my husband had very serious internal injuries and worse still a severe brain injury.

This was taken only about an hour before, little did we know what would happen next.

Long story short, he was in a coma for 3 months, in fact still in a coma when we were flown back to the UK, when he finally started to come out of the coma - believe me it's not like the movies - it was clear, as predicted, that his brain injury was severe and he pretty much had to learn everything from the beginning again, he didn't even understand yes and no at first, and he couldn't swallow which was a disaster for Paul as his love of food is legendary!

It was (and is) a very long and hard road, he was in hospital and rehab for a total of 6 months, and it took a lot longer than that before life returned to anything approaching normality. He still has a disability but he does walk and he does talk, neither of which the docs predicted he would!

However through all this we felt lucky, we had each other, we were alive, Paul had not changed his personality, he hadn't forgotten me which was my biggest fear when he was in a coma (I know selfish huh? but true!), he wasn't the same physically as he was before, but personality wise he was, he just couldn't do some physical stuff that he used to do.

Of course I don't want to make it sound like it was a breeze, it wasn't, there were some dark moments, but our positivity about life and our love saw us through and still does to this day.

We have learnt a lot about life since this happened, we pretty much did live life to the full before and boy are we glad we did, there are some things that are so much harder for us to do now, but we've done them at some point in the past so that's good!

We learnt about people too, some people were amazing, the 'scene' that we are part of raised an unbelievable amount of money which really really helped us through the first few months, we could not have survived without it, some friends went above and beyond the call of duty, our best friends even converted their dining room to a temporary downstairs bedroom so Paul could come at weekends when he was in rehab, we lived in a maisonette upstairs which Paul couldn't access, Bloater and Lisa will never know how amazing that was for us. We also learnt that some people weren't true friends which was kinda sad, but hey you move on!

So the moral of the story? Live life to the full as you never know what's around the corner. I'm not one of those who says live life as if every day was your last, I personally think that's not possible, for a start I don't have that kinda money ;o) You also can't have any kind of normality if you always think like that, we got in a lot of money problems at first as Paul's favourite phrase when we were out shopping was 'buy it I nearly died' and we did live life like that for a while, but the reality is that you just can't live like that.

However I would say try to do things which make you happy, don't pander to people unnecessarily as often they are the people who wouldn't be there for you when the time comes, don't just go with the flow because of peer pressure it won't make you happy! I'm not saying that we haven't made mistakes in the last 10 years but usually we rectify them quicker!

Happiness is what truly matters in life, not money, not where you live, not what possessions you have, of course they all help as well, I'm not naive I'd be ecstatic if I won the lottery, but aim for happiness first, I'm broke, started a business in a recession, can't really afford to go out, but basically apart from being broke I'm happy!

Back at Viva Las Vegas in 2006!

Anyway I just wanted to share my story, there's a lot more to it, but that's the short version and on Tuesday we will be celebrating life, oh and then on Saturday 1st May we'll be celebrating our 17th Wedding Anniversary, we're broke so we can't afford to go out, but I'll cook a damn fine meal and alcohol will be involved ;o)

Just like buses....

No posts for days then 2 come along at once!

Well actually I'm away again for a couple of days so I thought I'd get another post in before I go.

What prompted this post, well slowly but surely I am getting rid a lot of my vintage stuff, clearly not all of it, cos I love it, but I have clothes that haven't fit me since the dinosaurs were around! My biggest problem is I hang on to things for sentimental reasons too, clearly in many ways this is rubbish as I realise I have a house full of clothes & other stuff for no reason! So I'm trying to address this issue, as I've said before I think anyone who loves vintage has a hoarding mentality so it's hard!
So I've posted more stuff up on ebay, and though you might like a peek and the little back stories!!

Ah this is one of my favourite suits of years gone by! It has lots of happy memories, the most vivid is attending the most glamourous wedding I ever have, some friends married in Montreux in Switzerland, it was one of those fabulous weddings you attend where you are really glad you're already married cos you could not have topped it! However it hasn't fit me for soooo many years now it's time to say bye bye, I really hope it finds a new happy home, and has more adventures with it's new owner!

Ok these aren't very girly but they are amazing, 5 (actually I have 6!) matching 1950s original never worn pink ties! What a find! I bought them for my band, we were going to have silver grey suits made for the guys and obviously the ties would look great with them. Sadly life changed and got in the way and we never used them. I would really love these to go as a job lot to a band, but I've listed them seperately. When would you ever find 6 identical never worn ties from the 50s?

This was another favourite, not glam, not sparkly but I used to love wearing this with a brown pair of trousers and some brown and cream saddle shoes, now where the saddle shoes went I'll never know!

If you're interested in any of this stuff it's here along with loads more, jewellery, clothes, and some slightly strange mad stuff too ha ha! I'll be listing more, one day it will be done!

Temptation!

First of all I need to say sorry I've been a bad blogger lately! It's because I've been so busy. As you know I run Notorious Kitsch and this weekend just gone we had our first event of the season. We do all sorts of different events and although it's blumming hard work, it's also quite fun. Lots of us stall holders do the same events so it's nice to catch up and it's like a little travelling community, we all get on so well.

Of course the worst part of these events is seeing all the fabulous stuff for sale, it's a nightmare cos personally right now I'm kinda broke, so seeing everything I could possible want in one place is pure torture! A real temptation!

The event we did this weekend was the Brighton Jukebox Show, it's strange because until we did these events with Notorious Kitsch, we'd never been to a jukebox show, I thought, well I don't want a jukebox - well I would have one but it's not within my budgetary means! However you really should get to these shows, they are soooo much more than jukeboxes, some of my favourite people and stall holders were there at this one, Rocket Original shoes, Home Sweet Homestyle, Heyday Clothing, and Debbie and Mickey with my favourites vintage goodies, sadly they don't have a website so you'll have to catch them at events! There were lots more stalls besides with vintage clothes, shoes, homewares, if you wanted it you could have it there. I really wanted to tell you about it as I've clearly missed out in the past cos I've avoided these fairs!

I did a little video before the event opened to give you a taste of my favourite stalls, the painting on our stall is by my husband, the fabulous dancing man is Mike from Home Sweet Homestyle and setting up the stall is his lovely wife Jan, and last but not least Micky putting a great 50s trolley together for his stall!




Sorry US people it seems you can't view this cos of the music I added, I'll change it later so you can!
There are so many more events we are doing along with most of the guys above, the next Jukebox event is Jukebox Madness at Kempton Park Racecourse. In the meantime most of these people you can see at Hemsby, The Rockabilly Rave, Twinwood and The Rhythm Riot.

Anyway the whole point of the post is to say, don't imagine Jukebox events are just jukeboxes you can sometimes find the best vintage and repro stuff there! It is always an unbelievable temptation to me.

Did I come away with anything? Well now that would be telling.....

My love affair with America

Every now and again I am reminded of the huge love affair in my life, with America. Now don't get me wrong this is nothing about not liking being British, there's something fabulously proud about being British, I love our humour, our quirkiness, so much about us. However because of my real loves in life, America is my home in so many ways!

Everything I want to own seems to be American, most of my favourite clothes, homewares etc are indeed from this great land, and in fact ALL the music. I love visiting to stock up my closet and buy some fabulous new things for my home and since I started Notorious Kitsch, all our money has gone into the business and we haven't been able to visit this fabulous land! This makes me miss it all the more, in my spare time I taunt myself with US ebay, all stuff I can neither afford or they'll even ship if I could!

I'm sure many of you feel the same, I think if you have a love for either the 40's or 50's and probably the 30's too that whole golden era in America is fabulous. Not that I don't have great British stuff, clothes and furniture but if I had a choice.....

Actually my dream one day is to have a little house out there that I can furnish and visit regularly, and buy lots of stuff, of course that's a dream right now but I will do my damndest to make it happen ha ha! My town of choice Pasadena CA, not the cheapest place on earth, but hey why not aim high. There is a lot I love about Pasadena, it's one of those places that we both feel at home in, I can't say why, it's just one of those places, we were lucky enough to spend 3 months there once, we rented an apartment, and that time was BLISS! Now all we can think about is getting back there!

In the meantime I continue to trawl ebay, and so I thought I'd share some of the things I want but couldn't afford to ever ship in to the UK! Well unless I won the lottery, now there's a fantasy!

Because it was such a lovely day yesterday here in the UK, I ended up in the evening looking these I want them so bad!

Oh and this too!

Then of course my real love, lamps! This pair is stunning!

Then of course I would love a mid century sofa, oh and all the rest thank you very much!

Or something like this, which is a repro, but a darned good one!

And it's about time I started recommending blogs that I read that I love, and yes it is connected. I found Welcome to Deluxeville a while ago now, not only is Mary a lovely girl, but I can't wait to see what her latest finds or projects are! She seems to find all the things I wish I could, so I have extreme possession envy! Read her blog, it's fantastic, below is a pic of the lovely lady in her enviable home, I am green with envy!!

And just to balance things out, I do have some lovely things, so I really can't complain! I took some pics yesterday for Notorious Kitsch as we have some fabulous new Vintage design tablecloths in and I thought they would look great on our diner set, I'm right, they do! See below!

I do think though it's about time I started saving and planning my next trip to the US, it won't be til next year, but I'm not sure I can wait much longer than that without having severe withdrawal symptoms!