I Wanna Live In Nadia Lee Cohen’s Mind- Kali Uchis’s Dreamily Kitsch New Music Video

Wood chip walls , topiary, vintage hair dryers, Nadia Lee Cohen is a creative genius, I wish she could style all of 2018. 

Watch the whole video here-

Quite Frankly Bonkers Bizarre Taxidermy on eBay RIGHT NOW (even I am a little freaked out)

In the spirit of my wanting to return to the Blog's roots, and without a charity shop raid this weekend, I thought a delve into the treasures of eBay might be a good substitute.

All these items are on the site right now and can be found by searching 'taxidermy unusual'. Unusual is an under statement. 

Armadillo handbag for your arm-adillo

What even is this? A mouse with rabbit ears sewn on? A freakish nightmare gone wrong? 

Again, what the hell was this when it was alive?! 

This taxidermist has bought a bulk set of the wrong sized eyes for these beasts and has thought, 'screw it, they'll do anyway'. 

Right at first glance this just looks like a rather sassy badger, but looking closer it has a fox's tail and legs. There must be some crazy taxidermy lab somewhere stitching together these freaks of nature. 

Merry Christmas. 

What is this? I give up. 

OKAY THATS ENOUGH. 

Charity Shop Treasure Hunting- Holywood

Holywood's maypole

Another instalment of charity shop visits, this time Holywood. They have about six or seven shops, and some vintage antique shops too. 

Its a nice little afternoon out too, with lots of quaint coffee shops, specialty delis, and independent boutiques. 

Vintage My Little Ponies. I also spotted a Rugrats doll- the ginger one? I want to say Chuckie? 

Lovely Irish linen

Royal wedding stuff is uber kitsch collectible. Charles & Diana trays, plates, moneyboxes, etc. 

More original packaging. Check out the top left suggestion of how to use your push-light. Fancy dinner time. 

The following items, apart from the last, are all from an antique shop beside the maypole. They are priced up accordingly, so you will pay more than a charity shop price if you want to go buy anything I show. 

I love the bird cage. It's a really big home interior trend to have bronze metal accessories, so this would be a show stopping centre piece of a room. There's even a bird in the cage.

The pair of dogs is a classic kitsch decoration and they come in all colours. It's a 60s/70s 'every home has them' furnishing, like paintings of gypsy kids by Dallas Simpson, or three flying ducks on the wall. 

And there's me! 

Lastly, I like to finish with the weirdest thing I spot, like last week's Mona Lisa, so here she is! 

Charity Shop Treasure Hunting- Ards, Plus the Origins of The World of Kitsch

The World of Kitsch has come a long way since its humble beginnings in 2009. I've had websites of my own since 2000/01, starting with digital camera photos of local gigs in Belfast, updating twice or three times a week as I bounced around partying in my early 20s. 

My gig photo website logo  

That also took on a form of its own with batches of photos of nights out being uploaded, this was before the times where a club would have a designated photographer taking crowd pics to have you cringe at the day after. My photos still made people cringe, but the site got a ton of hits, with its apt headline, "Like the Tatler, but full of wretches".  

If you want to nosy,  parts of that old site are still working.

In 2007 I got married & had Smix, and wasn't drinking or going out any more, so my online presence stilted. 

Then my old flat mate Ron suggested I start a blog, I think after seeing some of my charity shop purchases that week on MySpace, or early Facebook, or whatever I was using at the time. 

So he helped me chose Posterous, and set up The World of Kitsch, and now I had a place to post the photos of the weird stuff I bought for my house.

Then however, the blog took off in a different direction, and I was lucky to begin to work with brands and feature products outside the realm of second hand goods.  

The other factor limiting charity shop posts was that I ran out of room in my home to display any more junk. 

However in the summer there I found this corner cabinet, which I knew I could squeeze into my home, and I have yet to fill it. So I decided to try to keep true to the early blog, I'll be including some more charity shop hunting posts, picking one town at a time to pillage. 

Today I visited Ards. It's a great place to charity shop for two reasons. 

The first is the sheer number of shops, there's at least ten. The second is that there are independent charity shops, which means they tend to have more old fashioned junk, which is what I'm after. 

The best two are the Elim store and the Assisi shop. 

There's also a really great Oxfam, which is excellent for clothing. 

The Elim has stuff decades old, as well as a treasure trove of books to scour, novels and hard back information books. I filled out my Childcare collection a bit more from their shelves. 

I didn't actually buy anything today, but I did stand staring at this cabinet pondering was there anywhere I could fit just one more of these in my house.  

£40 is a really decent price for one of these display cabinets, and this one is a good size too. It was in the independent charity shop opposite Knotts. 

Lastly, Ards even had a version of the Mona Lisa! 

Tiger Stores Have Opened in Belfast & It's a Real Life World of Kitsch

Scandinavian brand Tiger have opener their first Northern Irish store, in Castle Lane in Belfast (near Lush). We discovered  Tiger in the summer in Dundalk, and spent a small fortune on bits & bobs for crafting, homeware, toys, etc. and the best thing is the price, it's tiny!

Here is a snap shot of just some products Belfast has on sale for the Christmas season. I got two rolls of tapestry print wrapping paper, £1 each! The matching advent calendar is for me too.

I've picked up an advent from Lidl which you build yourself into a little village of Christmas houses. So I was able to buy some little fillers for that for Smix in Tiger, growing elf washcloth, set of stamps etc. I also have some fun stuff from today for him to make a vlog about. You can find it at the end of this post.

These are sweet. You stuff them with your cotton wool balls that poke out the back as the bunny's tail. 

Dozens of quirky napkins got Christmas and all year round, £1. 

Also a great selection of bargain cards. 

Tiger don't have an online store, but they do show the items that are new in store that month.

I brought Smix a bag of goodies, here is his latest video. The audio is overlapped at the start but evens out quite quickly.

Surprise Kitsch Birthday Dinner

It was Michael's 8th birthday yesterday and my whole family went to Wolfes in Dundonald. It does giant amounts of food, so I ordered a starter for my main, nachos.

And look how they showed up!  

I now feel a total lack of nacho donkey in my home, everyone should own one! 

Is This The Most Beautiful, Twee & Magical Interiors Instagram Feed in Ireland & the UK? Pretty much, Yep.

I want to share KawaiiGirl79's Instagram feed with you. Her amazing feed came as a shock to me, as I met her through our sons both being in the same class in school. We had her son round to play, and as I chatted to Claire she mentioned she loved blogs. I gave her my link and she sent me her Instagram feed. Now I pretty much assumed I was the bee's knees when it came to being the social media mother of the class, but when I clicked on Claire's online world I almost spat out my cup of tea. The KawaiiGirl79 Instagram she runs has over 26,000 followers! I have only 1037 Instagram followers, and even on Twitter I'm just shy of 4,000, so to find someone by coincidence, locally, who lives practically backing onto our house, was super cool.

The photos from Claire's Instagram speak for themselves and why it's so popular. Her home is a bright, white, clean space with pastel tones and quirky interior features. It's what I would love my home to look like, and many other worldwide viewers must agree by the thousands of likes the photos get. Follow her and you can enjoy them too.