Christmas Occasional Home Store

September 23, 2018

If you attended our last Occasional Home Store in March you may have been mistaken for thinking it was our Christmas rather than Spring event on account of the Beast from the East blowing in and rendering Stoke Newington indistinguishable from Siberia. The extremely non spring like weather conditions temporarily transformed me into my dad for the week leading up to the event, frantically shushing anybody who came into the room whilst I was watching the weather forecast.

However, despite the fact that we were shovelling snow when we thought we would be draping spring blossom it all turned out alright on the night with loads of you lovely people coming to the West Reservoir Centre in Hackney to enjoy the array of beautiful vintage & contemporary homeware that our stallholders had battled the Beast to bring you.

Three happy but exhausted Occasional Home Store founders at our March event

@justafewchanges just one of our many happy shoppers

Having had six months to recover from the #posttraumaticsnowstress I am now extremely excited to share with you that the Occasional Home Store will be returning to the West Reservoir Centre on the weekend of the 17th and 18th of November in association with Plum & Ashby and our gorgeous new partner Igigi General Store to bring you a festive shopping extravaganza.

Our beautiful industrial venue the West Reservoir Centre

In the beautiful industrial surroundings of a 1930s water filtering station we will be bringing you a handpicked selection of the very best vintage and contemporary homeware complimented by a programme of workshops and talks to inspire you to renovate, decorate and instagram your homes this Christmas. If this sounds like your idea of a perfect weekend then read on for a preview of just some of the delights we have in store for you

Our partners

Plum & Ashby

We are thrilled to once again be working with Vicky and Freya, the team behind Plum & Ashby. Together with their team (including four legged friend Bertie) they work to produce a range of elegant, high quality, carefully considered products that always lift a space. Their extensive range, from washes, lotions and bath salts to hand poured candles, is made in the South of England. And we’re certainly not alone in our admiration for this brand, their fan base includes interior publications, online blogs and they were shortlisted for the Best British Design at the prestigious Elle Decoration Awards and at our last Occasional Home Store they completely sold out of their candles. This time round they will be introducing some gorgeous new scents in their range as well as stocking their highly sought after Christmas advent candle.

Igigi General Store

Do you have a favourite interiors shop that your heart skips a beat when you think about visiting it? For me that shop is Igigi although sadly for me (but perhaps fortunately for my bank balance) it is situated 150 miles away from me in Brighton. I am, therefore, incredibly excited to announce that Igigi General Store will be partnering with us on our Christmas event and bringing their distinctive brand of modern rustic homeware to the Occasional Home Store including unveiling their brand new range of Igigi designed furniture and lighting.

Owners Alex and Zoe describe Igigi as an ever evolving hub of creativity where they blend a handpicked selection of contemporary homeware with one of a kind vintage finds. From wooden bowls, baskets and spoons from Morocco to beautifully scented Turkish soaps and handwoven Kilim cushions to Balinese water pots and garments handmade from vintage fabrics.

Vintage Homeware

One of our favourite things about organising the Occasional Home Store is bringing a little bit of brocante to the city by hand picking sellers that help to conjure up a marketplace in the South of France in Manor House. We love seeing how our sellers curate their beautiful finds to create instagrammable scenes in every corner. We have some of our favourites returning from last time round including beetle & WILDE, Hellish Designs (aka my mother-in-law), The King and I, Enamelama, Vintage Curator Interiors, My Nook Shop, Fabulous Vintage Finds, Grow & Gather,All the Fun of the Fair and Early Bird Vintage. But we also have some knockout newcomers: Beulah’s Attic, The Shed at Tenby and Little Wren

A selection of beautiful stock from Grow & Gather

My mother-in-law aka Hellish Designs on her stall at the last OHS

A beautiful display from the stall of Vintage Curator Interiors

Contemporary Homeware

I describe myself in my instagram profile as Sarah Lund meets Lovejoy. This is on account of my love of mixing vintage finds with Scandinavian inspired homeware rather than because I have a thick black mullet, penchant for icelandic knitwear and encyclopaedic knowledge of Chippendale furniture. Bringing the Lund to the table at the Spring Occasional Home Store is a stellar line up of independent stores and online businesses including Home of Boho, Nabo Shop, Meylor Stationery, Peastyle, Lisa Valentine Home, Tinker Tailor, Fich Ceramics, Chalk Homeware and Ondine Ash. There is simply not space here to talk about all the amazingness that these brands are going to be bringing to the Occasional Home Store so make sure you are following @occasionalhome where we will be profiling them each individually.

The lovely smily face of Lisa Valentine Home

Contemporary scandinavian home ware from Peastyle

Fich Ceramics will be one of the new faces at this Occasional Home Store

Lifestyle

Our festive Occasional Home Store will be the perfect place to get started on your Christmas shopping. In addition to amazing homeware, we have also picked a selection of broader lifestyle stalls for you to shop from in case your beloved is not a fan of cushions and scented candles. So make sure to visit the stands of Woven the Agency, Buddug, Gil Fox Hats, Meylor, Malako Skincare and Your London Florist to fill your stockings with beautiful clothes and accessories, handcrafted jewellery, one of a kind hats and head pieces, stationery, skincare, plants and succculents (Your London Florist will also have gorgeous fresh flowers to take away on the day rather than to save for Santa). And if all that shopping makes you hungry make a beeline for Norah’s Brownies who will be serving up delicious brownies and bronuts and book in for an express manicure with Minicures London to get your nails ready for the Christmas party season for just £10.

Sorting you out for succulents will be Your London Florist

Plenty of pampering presents available from Malako Skincare

Workshops & Talks

The Occasional Home Store is not just a place to shop. We also have a fantastic programme of workshops and talks to inspire you to renovate, decorate and instagram your homes as well as hands on festive craft activities. Set out below are some of the highlights of our two day programme with more details to follow shortly.

Hygge for all Seasons

After our hugely popular Hygge for all Seasons workshops in Cardiff and London last year, I am excited to be joining forces once more with @Hygge_for_Home in association with Join, to bring you another seasonal styling workshop designed to inspire you to create a relaxed rustic home and instagram feed this Christmas.

All of our Hygge for All Seasons attendees will go home with a beautiful candle from Join

Join us as we will be share ideas and inspiration for how to style your home the modern rustic way this festive season and then, over coffee and Fika, we will provide you with our five best instagram tips. There will be a live table styling demonstration (what could possibly go wrong), the return of our famous gifting Christmas tree (with some lovely hygge themed prizes) as well as an opportunity to ask us absolutely anything you like about instagram. From filters to followers fire away.

The workshop will run from 10:30am to 12:30pm on Saturday the 17th of November. Tickets will be £40 and include a drink, a Scandi inspired Bronut from Norah's Brownies and a luxury botanical candle from Join London. To book your place click here

The Frugality

We’re delighted to welcome fellow North Londoner Alex Stedman, aka The Frugality, to the Christmas Occasional Home Store! In conversation with Malmo & Moss (me aka the lightweight Jeremy Paxman of the interiors world) Alex will share the inspiration behind her hugely popular fashion-focused blog and instagram account.

Offering practical tips for those keen to follow in her footsteps, Alex will retrace the process of setting up and growing her successful blog, reflect on how her content has evolved with time and discuss how instagram has changed the blogging landscape. And, as anyone following her accounts will know, despite juggling motherhood, social media and her career as a freelance fashion editor Alex has spent the last 3 years (and all her money) renovating her Victorian terraced house in North London. As a result renovation dos and don'ts and the secrets of her interior style will also feature in our talk. Finally we will open to floor to questions – so come along and quiz the Frugality yourself.

The talk will run from 11am - 12pm on Sunday the 18th of November. Tickets are £20 and include a Norah’s Brownie. To book your place click here.

We have even more great talks up our sleeve for you as well, including top tips on how to tackle a successful home renovation or revamp from Rebecca Wakefield, interior designer and owner of Studio Fortum based on her hugely popular blog, Six Things. If you have always dreamed of owning your own business or are a small brand starting out then make sure to come along to our panel discussion with Vicky from Plum & Ashby and Emily from Aerende Store when they will be sharing the story behind building their brands, the lessons they have learnt along the way and five top tips for running a successful business (without having to approach Alan Sugar).

Craft workshops

In addition to our programme of talks, we also have a series of hands on practical workshops planned where you can learn to make a festive scented candle with Join London, learn the basics of modern calligraphy and create your own Christmas card with Cherry Rebecca, make unique Furoshiki fabric wrapping paper with upcycling Queen Shed Homeware as well as making festive hoops and learning how to make vintage inspired Christmas decorations using paper craft with the Occasional Home Store team. More details on all of these workshops to follow soon

How to book you ticket to the Occasional Home Store

So if all that has wet your appetite and you would like to come and join us for the Christmas Occasional Home Store here is everything you need to know about visiting.

The Venue: The West Reservoir Centre, Green Lanes, N4 2HA

Getting there: The nearest tube/rail is Manor House on the Piccadilly Line (10 mins walk away) and Finsbury Park on the Piccadilly and Victoria lines and overground (15 minutes walk or 5 minutes on the 106 bus). Bus routes stopping close by include the 341/141/106.

Opening hours and tickets: We will be open 10am - 4pm on Saturday the 17th and Sunday the 18th of November. Single day tickets for either the 17th or 18th will be £5 each. A weekend ticket covering both days is £8. Although some tickets will also be on sale on the day, these will be on a first come first served basis and only those with a pre-purchased ticket will be guaranteed entrance so we would strongly advise booking in advance. CLICK HERE TO BOOK YOUR TICKET

*Please note that all tickets are non-refundable and tickets to the workshops do not include entrance to the Occasional Home Store which will need to be purchased separately *

Thanks to @tiatalula for the beautiful pictures used throughout this blog. We are thrilled Tia will be coming back to capture our Winter event

Malmo & Moss Diary: The Occasional Home Store Autumn Fair

August 7, 2017

3 weeks before the birth of our first son we moved from South to North London in search of a family house we could afford without assuming a debt the size of Germany's GDP. We left behind many of our closest friends who were die hard South Londoners and thus regarded Enfield as a spot on the map somewhere near outer Mongolia. I was, therefore, a bit worried that it was just going to be me and the baby with Mr Tumble for company.all day. So when we arrived for our crash NCT course in an old Quaker Hall I was desperately hoping to meet some kindred spirits to avoid becoming overly acquainted with the contents of Mr Tumble's spotty bag. After an uncomfortable first 90 minutes of the class when the word vagina was said about 113 times more than I wanted to hear it in the company of 10 strangers, we took a tea break. It was then, over an intensely stewed cup of PG tips and a soggy Rich Tea that I met Sally, my kindred spirit. It turned out that as well as both drinking our teas black and both being able to name all of Jordan and Peter Andre's children we also shared a love of vintage homeware.

Bottle blondes who love black tea it was meant to be!

After the first intense period of motherhood passed when conversation revolved around shades of shit rather than chaise lounges we got our non baby produced shit together enough to think about pursuing our passion for all things old and interesting (excluding Des O'Connor to be clear) and took a stall together at a local vintage market. We enjoyed it is so much that inbetween getting Sally to tell me, for the 417th time, the story from her BBC runner days about when she blow dried Nicky from Westlife's hair, we started to dream about putting together an event of our own in the Quaker meeting hall where we had first met.

Some of the lovely vintage bits that @so_sally_vintage took along to our stall together

Sally's most popular items are always her bus destination blinds which mean she has a strong insta following amongst the bus spotter community!

A couple of years passed and although our pelvic floors got weaker as we gave birth to our second (and in my case third) children, the dream just got stronger. Enter Beth. Her stall was often opposite ours and featured a beautifully curated mix of quirky curiosities but whilst we ogled it from afar it wasn't until we got chatting during a drop in trade one Saturday that we realised that she too lived in Winchmore Hill and, in a happy piece of coincidence, used to both edit the wonderful Selvedge magazine and organise their fairs which are renowned in London and beyond. Suddenly the idea of organising our own event started to look a little bit less like something Duncan Bannatyne would laugh out of the Dragons Den and more like something Peter Jones would give a serious ponder.

The kind of beautiful items we used to ogle on Beth's Little Game stall

As is her photographic styling, picture by Katya de Grunwald

Several Monday night meetings around our three kitchen tables later, the Occasional Home Store was born. An event which will bring the best in both vintage and contemporary homeware to our little corner of North London along with some delicious food and drink to sustain you whilst you shop. Over the last few months Beth has grappled with Wix to build us a lovely website whilst Sally has become an overnight expert in event licensing, insurance, food hygiene and pretty much every other sensible thing that i forget to think about when I am getting overexcited about how great it is all going to look on instagram.

Thank you to the wonderful Tia Talula (@tiatalula) for being patient when it took about 1000 shots to get a photo when it didn't look like at least one of us was being tortured/trying to hold in a fart

And as for me? Well I have been working my way through our wishlist of dream vintage sellers, contemporary designer/makers and interiors shops we would like to pop up at the OHS and spent a lot of time pinching myself as one by one they have all said yes. All my Modern Rustic Christmases came at once when Kay of Kinship Creative DC (aka the Modern Rustic Madonna) said she would love to come along and run a workshop for us on how to blend Scandi and Vintage pieces to create a Modern Rustic home. But it didn't stop there, within a fortnight that workshop had become a double bill with Kate Watson-Smyth aka superstar interiors blogger Mad About the House who will be imparting ten top tips to improve any room for those lucky enough to have bagged one of the limited places available.

Styling from a previous Kinship Creative workshop which gives me the complete interiors horn.

The final icing on the cake came when Vicky, the owner of the beautiful home and body brand Plum & Ashby, said she thought our event sounded great and that they would love to collaborate with us on putting it together. So on the 9th of September, in association with Plum & Ashby, the doors of the first Occasional Home Store event will be opening at 10am in St Peter's Church Hall, 10 Langham Gardens, N21 2DN. Our OHS venue is just 2 minutes away from Grange Park overground station which connects to Finsbury Park in just 10 minutes from where you can access the Victoria and Piccadilly Lines. It is also just 10 minutes drive onto the M25, North Circular or M11 so wherever you are coming from we should be within easy reach (unless you are coming from the Isle of Skye in which case I admit the transport might be more tricky). We are feeling equal parts hugely excited and hugely terrified at this point in time so I would love it if you guys could come along and hold my hand for the day.

Some of Plum & Ashby's beautifully packaged products, you can see why I was doing cartwheels when they said they would like to be involved!

Until then (to give you an incentive to come along that doesn't involve my clammy hands) I wanted to share with you just a few of the amazing sellers we have coming along on the day and to give you a peak into some of their homes so you can see how their style translates from stall to semi-detached. Look out for more glimpses through the keyholes of our fabulous stallholders in future blog posts.

Of Special Interest

Of Special Interest is a Crouch End interiors institution. Offering a prodigious range of elegant pieces for the home, the store has grown from its early incarnation as junk shop. Over the last two decades owner Belinda Fulton has taken over two neighbouring shops as their owners moved on and then the annex behind when it came up for rent. Her loyal customer base (including me!) can choose from antique European furniture sourced in Holland, stylish lighting, mirrors and irresistible impulse buys in the form of candles, kitchenware and faux foliage. Her home is every bit as stylish as her shop and if you would like to see more of it be sure to have a look at Malmo & Moss Meets: Belinda Fulton

I start mentally moving furniture around my house as soon as I step inside Of Special Interest because I instantly want to buy things like these beautiful drawers

Beetle & WILDE

Beetle & WILDE is a vintage emporium that delights in blurring the boundaries between art, anatomy, natural history & design - adding drama and intrigue to interiors with an eclectic mix of cultures, periods, styles & scale - from Victorian wunderkammer curiosities to mid century classics and quirky modern finds. If you’re the kind of person who longs to linger in the Natural History Museum past closing time you will love what Beetle & WILDE have to offer and I am certain you will love owner Caz's sultry, darkly sexy home even more.

Parquet floor of dreams in Caz's fabulous kitchen

A cornucopia of curiosities will be coming with Caz to the Occasional Home Store

Wicker & Weft

Baskets are definitely in the category of “items you simply can’t have too many of” – they are just so useful. And they last – a toy basket can become a home for a yarn stash, a picnic or a pet! Since becoming a Mum, Mim English Morgan founder of Wicker & Weft feels more aware of society's 'throw-away' nature. “I want to play a tiny part in preserving skills and teaching the value of using something beautiful with a story." Her traditional handcrafted goods are sourced from workers paid a fair wage; not out of pity, "but because their time and skills are worth it.” Mim's home is a 1960s bungalow which acts as the perfect neutral backdrop for her beautiful baskets. Whilst there are big renovation plans in store for the future, I love how calm and serene it feels already.

One of Wicker & Wefts gorgeous handcrafted baskets

Wicker & Weft's baskets in &Hobbs, another one of our exciting pop ups.

To see more details of all of our exhibitors hop over to our website www.occasionalhomestore.com and make sure to follow @occasionalhome to hear all of the latest announcements. Over the next month I will be out and about sourcing more finds for my own Malmo & Moss stall and trying not to keep everything that I buy for myself instead #failedvintagemogul. Here are just a few of the things I have hunted out to bring along so far.

As you will notice from this picture the ladder from picture above is already looking very at home in my bathroom....

Beautiful 18th Centry entomology drawings

Hope that has helped wet your appeitite. Sally, Beth and me and my clammy hands very much hope to see you on the 9th of September when we open the doors of the Occasional Home Store for the very first time! If you have any questions at all about the event please do drop us an e-mail at occasionalhomestore@gmail.com or DM @occasionalhome and make sure to check out our website www.occasionalhomestore.com