Unveiling the New Look Pin Oak Crescent

Excuse the crap photo, I have no idea how to use our new scanner.

Moonee Valley Council has just completed some road works on Pin Oak Crescent where Cyclic Bicycles is located and to celebrate they are having an opening/unveiling event.

There will be free activities and entertainment on the day including:

• Roving entertainment
• Balloon for kids
  
• Face painting
• surprise giveaways

Date: Saturday 1st August
Time: 10am - 1pm with the official opening at 10.30am
Location: Pin Oak Crescent Flemmington

So if you are in the neighbourhood why not drop by. All the shops are up and running again including Flowers by Janelouise, White Pony, Made Cafe and Cyclic Bicycles so it is a good day to get out and do some shopping.

Sunday Stash #19

I thought I would show you something different from my stash today. Some cute vintage hankies I picked up a few weeks ago. I have two in each colourway and thought I could use them for brooches.

Want to play Sunday Stash? You can do so here

Don't forget about the DUST team sale. We aren't having a lot of entries in the prize draw so you have a good chance of winning something. All you have to do to enter is to pick something from one of the participating shops, show us a link to the item you like and tell us what you like about it. It's that easy, prizes are drawn every 3 hours or so and you can enter each round. Find out more here. You will need an etsy username though.

Christmas in July Sale Starts Now

The DUST team Christmas in July Sale is NOW ON!

As part of the sale ruby-jo is offering 30% off the listed price of all brooches! Doesn't include postage.

Every store that is participating in the festivities is having some kind of sale. The full list of shops can be found here.

As part of the sale there will be ❉ GIVEWAYS ❉ throughout the entire weekend from different members of the DUST team.

To win something you will need to keep an eye on this thread here. There is an assortment of prizes on offer, one of which will be a brooch from me.

The sale runs from Saturday July 25th through Sunday July 26th, although a lot of the DUSTers have started their sale from now. To cater for international customers many shops will also extend the sale to finish at 12noon on Monday 27th July (Sunday night American time). Check each store for individual details.

and have fun shopping!

Just Listed

The latest batch of vintage embroidery brooches waiting and ready for the Dust Christmas in July Sale.

SALE Sneak Peak!

Next weekend the etsy Down Under Street Team (DUST) is having a HUGE Christmas in July sale.

From the 25th to the 26th July every shop participating (including me!) will be offering some kind of sale for their customers. There will be lots of lovely hand made goodies on offer and the chance to win some fabulous prizes from Australian sellers (including one of my brooches).

You can find the shops participating in the sale here, so why not have a browse and mark some favorites ready for the weekend ahead.

In my ruby-jo shop I will be offering 30% off all of my brooches.

Stay tuned for more details closer to the date...

Foodgawker

I might be a little late to the party but I just discovered foodgawker.com. It's a great site for finding new recipes and discovering some delightful food blogs along the way. It's a good thing looking at food doesn't put on kilos!

Sunday Stash #19

I am now the proud owner of Paint by Numbers Birds in red by Erin Michael for Moda, thanks for GJ's Discount Fabrics in Brunswick. I had given up trying to find the fabric as it seemed to have sold out everywhere but I was lucky enough to stumble across some at GJ's. There was only 1.2m left on the roll so I bought the whole lot. I want to use it as a trim on a skirt for myself and maybe some bags.

If you want to play Sunday Stash you can do so here.

Trip to Ballarat

We (man, dog and me) took a trip to Ballarat for an overnight stay on Monday to get away from it all for a short time. It was my first visit to Ballart and the highlight (for me at least) was exploring the many antique stores on offer. You can see in the photos some of the goodies I came home with.

1st photo from Joyce’s Junkatique (next door to Antiques, Goods and Chattels) It's not an antique store but pretty much what the name suggests, a shop packed full of junk including the many rooms out the back. The bonus is if you are lucky enough to find something worth buying you won’t be pay much for it.


2nd photo from Antiques, Goods and Chattels - 30 Main Road Ballarat East. They had such an amazing collection of vintage treasures including a selection of peoples old sewing tins and boxes with various collections of threads, needles buttons and other bits and pieces inside.


3rd photo from Alexa’s Treasures - 46 Sturt St Ballarat. Amazing is how I would describe the shop, they have a wonderful collection of china as well as a huge shelf packed tightly with doily’s, linens and buttons. I am kicking myself for not buying one of their beautiful vintage tea cups.

The trip was fun despite a few things not going entirely to plan including a bed and breakfast that didn’t want us to let our dog inside, despite advertising themselves as “pet friendly” (we snuck him in when we went to bed anyway because the temperature dropped to about 1 degree overnight) and a brewery where we had planned to spend our evening with drinks and tapas not opening on a Monday night in winter. We turned up to the brewery ready for dinner at 7pm only to find out they were closed.

I can’t wait to go back and do some more exploring.

Sunday Stash #19

This is an interesting piece of fabric I picked up from the op shop yesterday for 20c! It's only about 58cm wide and 33cm high which is not a lot to work with. I think it may have originally been curtain material.

Stocktake and Breakfast Crumble

Yesterday we did a stocktake of the shop. I have to say I really don't look forward to doing it. If you have ever done a stocktake before you will know what I mean. We had over 1,000 items to count which takes quite a few hours and is surprisingly tiring too. The silver lining is that we always go out to breakfast before we do stocktake. It's kind of like an unwritten stocktake rule and is supposed to make the day a little easier to bear.

We went to Mitte for our breakfast and that's where the breakfast crumble comes in to play. Mitte won Best Breakfast of the Year in the The Age Cheap Eats 2009 and it's well deserved. I had their breakfast crumble which involves cinnamon and vanilla poached pears and apples topped with a macadamia crumble and mascarpone. Absolutely awesome and a perfect way to start a day that involves doing something you really don't want to be doing. If you are in Melbourne I recommend checking them out, they have lots of other yummy breakfasts on offer and are located at 76 Michael St, Fitzroy North