In our most recent e-mailout, we featured this somewhat eclectic mix if items seen below.

Amongst them was this fabulous record set… Escuchar y cantar or “Listen & sing”.

It’s a sing-a-long teaching aid for learning traditional Spanish songs, helping with pronunciation etc.

It comprises a set of records and an accompanying booklet written by Raymond N Jacovetti.

It was printed in New York by Holt, Rinehart & Winston and published in 1965.

The most striking feature is the gorgeous illustrations that the booklet is packed with.

They’re by someone called Mac Shepard.

We’ve never come across his work before, but we were immediate converts.

He’s got his own distinctive style, but if we were going to compare him to anyone it would be Bill Charmatz who we’re big fans of… click here to check out the Flickr group we started.

We’re now on the hunt for more examples of Mr Shepard’s artwork!

We think this is a future classic… having said that, it probably already is!

This biscuit tin was sold through Marks & Spencer only this Christmas gone. They’re already being resold for £15-£20 (without the Swiss biscuits!).

It’s a special commemorative tin celebrating 125 years of Marks & Spencer. It was designed by Sanna Annukka. She’s half English and half Finnish – and the illustration has a real vintage Scandinavian feel.

It reminds us of this original 1960s travel poster we had framed to display in our antiques centre pitch.

Not only the general style, but also the landscapes and even the colours.

The poster entitled Carefree by Coach is signed by ‘Bigg’. We have to confess, we’ve not been able to find out anything about him or her… but it’s a fantastic illustration.

We might have been tempted to pack a flask & sandwiches… and hop on board for our ‘carefree’ trip through the countryside!

We spent a very pleasant, sunny Sunday afternoon in Hebden Bridge today…

…including a visit to Snug Gallery on Market Street.

We were invited to their “Cupcakes & Cordial” open day.

It was a chance to say hello to owners, Ed & Yvonne Chadwick…

…and have a mooch around their recently-opened gallery shop.

The gallery features photographs by Ed himself…

…and some lovely, handcrafted objects by a variety of artists & designer makers.

Including &made, Calico Angel, Rebecca Callis, Kathryn Edwards, Ruth Green, Ikuko Iwamoto, Linzi Ramsden, Louisa Taylor and Sarah Thirwell.

As well as the delicious cupcakes made by Yvonne’s fair hand, there were lots of other tempting things on offer!!

We left with a couple of small purchases – a hanging porcelain bird by Rebecca Callis – a perfect present for someone special…

…and a bit of self-indulgence in the form of a very cute strawberry brooch by &made.

Hebden Bridge is famous for its wealth of interesting indepedent shops & galleries…

…and this gallery is a very welcome addition.

Here’s wishing Snug a bright future!

We’re super-pleased with this purchase we made on Thursday. We’ve been on the hunt for a club chair for some time…

…then not only did we get a club chair, we got two club chairs… and a matching 2-seater sofa!!

It’s an original 1930s Art Deco suite, re-upholstered in the 1960s in a tan leatherette. Fantastic shape, comfortable with lovely stud detailing.

And a little extra… the lady who sold it says it was re-covered in the same leatherette as was used for Concorde. We’re trying to track down some old photos from the plane or Concorde airport lounge interior.

Fudge approves – and has made himself very much at home!

It’s found a home in our top floor bedroom/lounge. We spent the entire day re-arranging everything to accommodate it.

It was worth it though… there’ll be many books read in these chairs…  cups of tea /glasses of wine drunk, crackling fires watched.  We love it already!

We bought this trio of ‘wide-eyed children’ prints this week – a bit of classic 1950s kitsch.

We often buy Tretchikoff prints from this era, but don’t normally go for images quite this cutesy.

They were such good examples of the type though – and they do certainly have their fans… Red or Dead founder, Wayne Hemingway famously. Check out his book on the subject, Above The Mantelpiece: Mass-Market Masterpieces

The artist of these three is Dallas Simpson. Simpson moved with her husband in the mid 1960′s from London to live in a mobile home in West Sussex by the sea. She had no children of her own and her husband used to prime either her canvases or more often she painted on board.

She was a prolific artist of big eyed urchin children and she used to sell the originals and reproduction rights as long as payment was immediate, to fund her simple life and her beloved gin.

She painted under a number of pseudonyms including Emma Louise and Kelita with a subtle change of style in the painting but with the same subject matter. (biographical information taken from Felix Rosenstiel´s Widow & Son Ltd).

All three are in excellent condition with original frames. So if you’re a fan, drop us an email and we’ll give you first refusal before they go into our pitch or listed on our website.

If you’d like to do a bit more investigating, other artists in the genre include Maio, Lee, Betty Raphael and Margaret Keane.

It’s funny how things happen…

…we were looking at these vintage doll patterns for Oxfam on the internet last night… then we walked into a local antiques centre today and found one!

This one’s called Nada and features a young Algerian girl in traditional dress. Here’s another similar one of her patterns that we found featured recently on the Pass the Pattern blog.

They were designed by illustrator, Belinda Lyon. There isn’t a great deal of information about her on the internet. We know she was working in the 1960s/70s – designing fab stuff – including textiles, books etc  She illustrated a number of books by Janet Barber.

In addition to the sewing patterns, she also produced a series of tea towels for Oxfam – this is her psychedelic camel!

We’ve just set up a Flickr group to share images of her work, so if you have any, please share!

We’ve just discovered this great little tool from Wordle that helps you create a visual tag cloud of the most used words on your blog, website or even your Delicious tags.

Here’s the H is for Home word cloud we created earlier!

Go on, try it yourself!

Much of our correspondence is done by email and text message these days…

…but it’s great when you get a real letter or card.

Especially if they look like these!!

These are from our small collection of vintage postcards.

They’re taken from London Transport posters dating from the 1950s & 60s.

Artists including John Burningham, Victor Galbraith, Gaynor Chapman, Robert Tavener, Harry Stevens and Abram Games are featured here.

They’d certainly be a welcome addition to a pile of bills coming through the letterbox!

These were an interesting little buy last week.

A group of three vintage handmade toy houses.

They’re constructed of ply around a solid block of wood – then painted.

We’re not sure when they date from, although they obviously have a bit of age – 1940s/50s probably.

We love these naive toys and folk art.

Probably made by dad or grandad for a young child… very sweet!

We wrote a short blog about growing our own recently…

… or our attempts at least!

How about this for the perfect companion?

This fab 1960s garden DIY annual should help. Even looking at the cover makes us want to get out there and dig!