Lovely little local shops

I'm not too keen on shopping, especially when there is great pressure to find a present or an outfit. Supermarket shopping can bring me out in hives and shopping for something I need for the house induces palpitations. Really. The main reason is that there is too much choice. Aisles and aisles of food, 45 different green strappy dresses, 24 white lampshades all just a tiny bit different from each other. I don't care enough I'm afraid, time is too precious to be wasted on the curvature of taps, the shade of pale for a living room and the cut on jeans (although I have to say I am a bit of a sucker for a fabulous pair of jeans darling, just hate to shop for them).

So what if we decided to shop differently. Just used one or two shops for everything. That's what I have been doing of late thanks to a fantastic little place called The Old Haberdashery in Ticehurst, East Sussex. It is a trove of treasures of times past, little gems, home made buttons and necklaces, vintage materials and stunning pieces of glass ware. And its utterly teeny - but I have found every single (adult) birthday present, Mothers/Fathers day presents and Easter presents since it opened in March this year. Even his. Take a look at these fabulous finds.

Two wonderful pieces of vintage material, the green one is a Liberty print and will cover a £2 chair I found at the dump with enough left over for a couple of cushion covers, the other cute red and orange daisy print will make a skirt for P, I'm not a seamstress but there are plenty of blogs out there that believe even I can do this.

Lovely metal 1970's coasters, complete with original sticker on the back!

I have even taken to buying things I don't need, shock horror, storing them away for those unexpected birthdays that creep up on you. After this most pleasant of shopping experiences there is always the Greedy Goat for coffee and cake, The Bell for a quirky lunch and Tatty Tutu's for a pre-loved designer item. And don't forget to pop into see me if you are down this way - I'm the woman on the hill, white house, pink petunias and a rather bedraggled looking vegetable garden.