Milly & Dottie

Tuesday, 24 December 2013

Wednesday, 27 November 2013

Ho ho ho! We’re so excited, it’s our favourite festive time of year. Christmas is fast approaching, the decorations are coming out, the temperature is coming down, and well, it’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas!

The scents of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves waft through the home and when our cats aren't busy tinkering with the Christmas baubles, they're busy wrapping themselves in the festive gift wrap.

We have been very busy recently sending off our brown paper parcels to our lovely customers, old and new. We have been lucky enough to have had our Emporium featured in “Homes and Antiques” magazine, both the December issue and their special Ultimate Guide to Christmas and we’re enjoying the thrill of seeing our names in print and our baubles on display!

In between our daily trips to the Post Office and cups of tea and custard creams in the Stockroom (purely to maintain sugar levels you understand!), we have been filling our shelves with more vintage seasonal finds and festive gifts.

We hope there are goodies and gifts enough to please everyone. There are gardening books for the green fingered. Vintage pretties for the Boudoir, beautiful prints in the Attic, a wonderful selection of tins in the Box Room (these would be lovely lined with tissue paper or filled with sweets or cookies). The shelves of our Nursery are full of vintage puzzles, toys and posters to keep young and old amused. Beautiful haberdashery on the shelves of the Sewing Room.

There are books aplenty in The Library from mystery to mayhem, books for boys and girls of any age. If you fancy a spot of festive cooking or know somebody who does, there is a wonderful selection of kitchenalia in the Scullery (not to mention the perfect something to keep your sprouts warm and toasty on the Christmas table).

Not to forget the Grotto where you will find a vintage array of festive finery and the odd fairy or two!

Wishing you all a wonderfully vintage Christmas. May your Christmas lights twinkle, your baubles glisten and your fairies weave their magic.

Tuesday, 17 September 2013

Is There Custard For Tea?

June 1947 - Custard Pie anyone?

Come tea'o'clock you will find us in the Stockroom, hands wrapped round our afternoon cuppa, fingers dipping into the custard creams tin and eyes drooling over our stash of 1940s Housewife magazines. Slowly, ever so slowly, both the biccies and magazines are savoured. From cover to cover, front to back these 1940s gems are digested as part of our afternoon tea break.

July 1944 - not a piece of fruit in sight

A recurring theme has emerged, for alongside the daily ritual, there on the back pages of many an issue are these wonderful advertisements for Bird's Custard, the backdrop to everyone's childhood. These images reflect so much of the time, the austerity and shortage of ingredients, the simplicity of recipes but above all the homeliness of home. Jelly and custard, custard and stewed fruit, steamed pudding with jam and custard, a glace cherry and angelica flourish, simple or fancy, a comforting pud all year round.

May 1946 Golden Comfort

May 1947 Chocolate and Custard

September 1947, Autumn Fruits are coming

July 1948 Steamed Pudding & Custard

September 1948 Jelly & Custard

June 1949 - the works!

December 1946 - it has to be candlelit for Christmas

Sunday, 8 September 2013

September Sunshine

The joys of September are plentiful - golden sunny days with the whiff of Autumn in the air, hay bales in fields, berries amongst the hedgerows, time spent in the kitchen making jam and chutneys, shorter evenings with more time for the knitting and sewing that we have been planning all Summer, the prospect of woolly socks and tights again (Miss Marple we have missed you), the return of the Great British Bake Off, feeling in the mood for a good old spot of cake making on a Sunday afternoon, a pile of books waiting to be read by the sofa, the prospect of long Autumnal walks (searching out the wellies yet again), heads full of ideas and projects for the coming months AND lots of new goodies on the Emporium shelves.

Thursday, 25 July 2013

Hip Hip Hooray.... We are 4 today!!!

Milly and Dottie are feeling very grown up now... as today we have reached the heady milestone, of four years old!
What a wonderful four years it has been since we opened the doors to Milly & Dottie's Emporium. We have welcomed visitors from far and wide through those doors and made some lovely friends along the way. We would like to thank you all for coming to visit us in our busy emporium and for keeping us company over the last four years; and to join us in our celebrations, by raising a glass of something fizzy and feasting on some of our favourite custard creams!
Hip Hip Hooray Milly & Dottie are four today!