I love a good wedding and a couple of weekends ago we had a lovely time at my brother-in-law and now new sister-in-law’s wedding.

Occasions like this are so special, getting dressed up in posh frocks and suits and celebrating love and longevity.

We don’t get to do it every day and for that reason we like to make the extra effort with our outfits. But its always felt a bit strange to me to spend a lot of money on a brand new dress only to be worn once or twice.

I bought my own wedding dress from Oxfam (brides-to-be, if you haven’t discovered Oxfam Bridal yet, check it out) and so I have no qualms about getting an outfit from there for other weddings.

In fact I got my little blue empire line dress from Oxfam and the cute white shrug from The Children’s Society.

The shrug had a small printed motif that I wanted to cover and so Margaret, our Stitched Up crochet queen, made a white crochet flower brooch for me and it was just perfect.

My necklace and bracelet came from the gorgeous Bambi Vintage shop in Nottingham. On my feet I wore my trusty little gold strappy sandals – sourced from my wardrobe.

All in all my whole outfit cost less than £15. More importantly it was all pre-loved so no new materials or energy was used to create it!

Of course, saving money on the wedding outfit means more pennies for more charity shop bargains. Here are a few other recent goodies:

Funky 70’s curtains

Green polka dot dress and a pretty green and purple print shirt.

When I started this blog I decided that one of the things I’d write about is my charity shopping. I haven’t done that in much detail yet so I thought I’d start by sharing a few goodies I’ve bought recently and to dispell a few charity shopping myths.

I won’t list all of the things I’ve bought because some of them need alterations and will come up in later posts but here are a few particularly nice finds.

A trilby to keep the summer sun from burning… Continue Reading »

Guest editor Caley Walsh has written a really interesting article about eco yarns on my other blog Green Girls Global.

She describes the different types of yarns and gives links on where to buy. Most of the links are to US based shops but for those of us outside the US the info is still very useful and we should be able to find alternatives closer to home.

Check out the article  ‘Eco-Friendly Yarns by Caley Walsh‘.