Hey everyone! I hope that you all had a lovely Christmas, and Happy (Nearly) New Year to you all. I spent the morning of Christmas Eve around the house in my pyjamas and since these are my favourite pyjamas, I thought I would take a few photos to show them to you. They're very warm and soft and quite retro looking, so they tick all the boxes for me. In fact, my mum bought me a new pair in a different pattern for Christmas which I'm looking forward to wearing.

The very sweet elf in these pictures is our family's version of an Elf on A Shelf - my mum bought him this year after seeing other Elves-on-Shelves and the whole family had fun posing him each day throughout the Christmas period. His name is Hamish, and we're hoping he will become a bit of a family tradition, although it's a bit difficult to come up with new ideas once you've been doing it for a while! As you can see, I think he is a proper cutie.

This is the third blouse I've made for myself from an old shirt of my brother's. Since I've blogged about what essentially amounts to the exact same shirt twice before, I'll keep this short and sweet.

I've been ever so pleased with the other two (one | two) and I plan to do at least one more plus probably one for my mum. I like the thicker material that mens' shirts are made of as it can be a little hard to come by for women - I love a sheer blouse but they're not always practical especially in the winter. Although these blouses are short sleeved, they still feel a bit more appropriate for colder weather than some of my others.

In the shot above you can see that the armholes on these shirts tend to be a bit big for me especially once the sleeves are removed, so I would normally wear them with a camisole underneath to cover a bit of the gap. I also regret not checking to make sure my shirt was evenly tucked in to my jeans before I took the photos but let's go ahead and treat that as a realistic glimpse into my life. It's too cold for me to want to be bothered retaking them!





That's all for now, see you soon!

I hope you all have/are having a lovely Christmas Eve, and see you on the other side!

I mentioned in a recent post that I was going to be attending the Christmas market in Winchester and was looking forward to taking some photos there. In the end I ran out of time to go to the market before I came back to my parents' house for Christmas, but I did manage to visit the Victorian Christmas market in Portsmouth with some friends, and the Victorian Christmas market in Melton Mowbray with my parents, brother, and auntie and uncle. I have blogged about the event in Melton Mowbray before in 2012 and 2013 (I though I'd been last year as well but can't seem to find the post about it right now) but the Portsmouth one was completely new to me since I've only been living in Hampshire since September this year.

I really enjoyed visiting the one in Portsmouth but the weather was really bad all day. We also got some bad weather in Melton Mowbray and ended up leaving a bit earlier than we have done in previous years, which meant we didn't go in to see the Christmas Tree Festival and I also didn't take as many photos as usual.

I'll start with my pictures from Portsmouth.













I actually only ended up with a couple of photos from Melton Mowbray but I thought I'd share them anyway. It was a shame to miss out on the Christmas Tree Festival but I had a really lovely time catching up with my auntie and uncle who I don't see very often.





I really enjoy going to these kinds of events near Christmas time and I keep saying I must get myself a Victorian costume for when I go, although it seems such a shame for it to be packed away for most of the year. Maybe another time!

Ok. Let's talk about this outfit for a moment, because it represents a pivotal moment in my "vintage girl" life.

Firstly, the skirt is one of my very very favourites for the winter as it ticks all the boxes. I love the neutral and kind of earthy colour palette, it makes me feel like the slouchy-sweaters-and-long-socks girls on Pinterest, if you know what I mean. It's made of a medium to heavy wool, so it's nice and warm, and the shape of it is perfectly reminiscent of the 1940s and 50s styles even though it's from around the 1970s.

In fact, this type of look is one I pull out a lot during the Autumn and Winter. I typically change out some of the components but the overall feel and silhouette of the outfit is the same.

I wore the outfit on Hallowe'en for a day out at Elvaston Castle with my parents (when I took these photos) and then dinner in the evening with my boyfriend. We didn't do anything by way of celebrating Hallowe'en, although there were some activities for families happening at Elvaston.

In the evening I was at the bar trying to order my food when a bloke stopped me to offer some probably well-meaning but fairly lechy compliments (girls, you know the type) and then asked if my outfit was a costume.

Now in fairness, it was Hallowe'en, and therefore there were all sorts of people out wearing all sorts of things. But I couldn't really think of anything that this could be a costume of. It's not even (to my mind at least) particularly OTT or costumey vintage compared to, say, a top-to-toe 1940s outfit with hat and gloves or a red polka dot swing dress and giant victory rolls. Now don't misunderstand me, I like and would wear both of those looks and I'm not at all trying to say anything negative about them - but I hope you can see what I mean.

I was actually kind of pleased in a way. I think it's the first time I've been asked if my outfit is a costume (although I've been asked about whether my outfits are for special occasions etc). Now all I need is for someone to ask if I'm in a play and to ask where I bought my wig and I'll have collected the full set. The vintage girl trifecta of awkward questions!

Anyway, if you made it all the way through that long and possibly boring story without ragequitting, thanks for sticking around!

Now onto the rest of the pictures :)









I am super proud of this photo of the berries! I don't know what plant it is, but it's a real living thing and not plastic, despite the unusual colour.





Here you can see how the red/burgundy colour in the skirt matches my jumper. I actually bought the jumper to match something else (which I'll hopefully have an outfit post of when I can find the time to get one done!) but it actually goes with this skirt much better. I love it when things work out so perfectly.

At the beginning of November, Rex London featured me in their blog post about their 14 favourite vintage blogs. As a thank you for agreeing to be featured, they were kind enough to send me a beautiful shopping bag and a £30 voucher to spend in the store.

I was peripherally aware of dotcomgiftshop but I'd never actually shopped on the website before, but I am a full convert now. I also passed the details along to my mum, and together we managed to get a really good amount of stuff for our money.

A lot of these items are gifts for friends and family, so I won't go into too much detail just in case (as I know some of my friends and family read Lovebirds Vintage from time to time) but here is a more in depth look at the things I purchased for myself, and some things for people who are less likely to see (I hope!).





The first couple of items above come from my mum's shopping - two papercraft kits (designated as gifts) and some beautiful little gift tags in the shape of pretty birds. I remember loving these types of craft kits as a little girl and these ones are so cute.

The other things I'll be showing you are all things I bought for myself (as all the other things were gifts and I'm trying to gloss over them a bit just in case!).



I chose this beautiful milk jug to use when I'm properly settled somewhere. I'm living on my own at the moment in a rather small flat with a rather small fridge, so I'll be saving this carefully in the box for when I'm living somewhere that feels like it warrants having a separate milk jug. I didn't take too much notice when I was buying it but it's a really decent size, and the Scandinavian-style hen design is very cheerful.





I bought these pirate memo pads partially because they are adorable and silly (not to mention aimed at primary school children) and partially because I love these kinds of sticky notes and sticky tabs to help me keep organised. I keep a planner which I try to keep colour coded, and make use of stickers to highlight certain items. I'd love a "proper" planner in the future (I have my eye on an Erin Condren) but for now, I hope these cute little sticky notes will help brighten up my existing planner.





The beautiful plates above are in fact the three tiers of a vintage-inspired cake stand. I didn't put the cake stand together as I will very soon have to transport the cake stand back to my parents' house where, as with the milk jug, it will stay until I live somewhere that's big enough to have the space to actually use it (and store it). My mum also chose to have one of these as her Christmas present from me this year so it will be nice in the future to think that we have the same one. Click here to see what the cake stand looks like when it's all set up.



Finally, here is the oilcloth shopping bag which dotcomgiftshop kindly sent me as a gift. It is the "Mid Century Floral" bag which features this orange and green design which reminds me of the patterns you often find on vintage kitchenware or even 1960s wallpaper. They also have a range of other products in the Mid Century design as well as many other vintage-style designs.



I really like the types of products available on Rex London, especially as many of them are vintage-inspired and as such really appeal to my personal sense of style. I found the prices very reasonable and felt like I was able to get a lot of things for my money. I wasn't required by Rex London to blog about the things, but I thought they were too nice not to share. I don't usually think to shop online for presents unless I have something specific already in mind, but I'll definitely be browsing Rex London next time I need something.