Sandlewood Op Shop

Friday, January 18, 2013

Do you op shop til you drop?

Sandlewood Op Shop is planning it's first ever Op Shopping Tour!

This fundraising event will allow us to provide much needed help to our most disadvantaged clients.

• Join us on Saturday February 23rd for a fun hosted op shop tour in Brisbane South.

Bus departs Garden City at 8.30am
returning at 1pm.

• Morning tea snacks supplied

(byo drinks)

• Lucky door prize; fund raising raffle

• $55 per person ($25 deposit required) Booking essential as there are limited places!

Contact desley@sandlewoodprojects.com.au for further info.

Back to school...

I know personally, with 2 children in school this year (and only one income) it's going to cost us a motza to put our children into school this year!

Even though my girls both will attend a local Public School, book lists alone for the 2 girls this year topped $350, uniforms about $300 each (only buying basics) and decent school shoes around $80-120 per child. That isn't including the Compulsory levy of $100 per child. Hello New Year, buh-bye all the money I had in the bank.

At a local Public High School where a young refugee boy will be starting high school it will cost his single mum $415 for their resource levy, and about the same again in uniforms ... that is without the book list.

We are trying to help out some of our most disadvantaged clients with the increasing costs of our "free" education system.

One of our lovely supporters, Erin from Repeated Originals has kindly donated to us this stunning Vintage Bridal Gown, to try and raise funds for the cause.

Desley has described the dress as "The guipure lace is wonderful quality and the two garments are in wonderful condition. The guipure lace is European (maybe swiss) cotton guipure and would cost close to $1,000 to replace"

The measurements are :
Bust 34"
Waist to 29"
Hips to 36"
Approx height to 5'4" - however the sheath dress does have generous side seams for alterations of up to 2" and the hem can go down about another inch comfortably.

We have listed it on eBay and would really appreciate it if you could share it with all your vintage loving friends.

Here is the :

Link for Vintage Swiss Guipure Lace Wedding Dress and Coat

Monday, August 20, 2012

we're almost out of the terrible 2's

Yep!

I've been a bit scarce from blogging of late, but with good reason.

We recently (probably in the past 4 weeks) have DOUBLED the number of people we have following us on Facebook! This is VERY exciting for me.

I have been involved with Sandlewood Op Shop from the very beginning, and even before it's conception. While the organisation Sandlewood has been around for many years, the Op Shop was the vision of my mum Desley, who spent many hours documenting, tabling and reporting so that the Organisation was able to get a Certificate of Sanction allowing it to operate the Op Shop. The Op Shop was her "baby" as it were. However, after ill health in November, she had to give up the reigns, and I was left in charge.

While I had always liked working at the Op Shop, I never enjoyed the mountains of paperwork involved (I still hate it!) and I was very frustrated by the prospect that we had. We needed to grow the business in order to be able to help more people. But to grow the business we needed to sell more, and with such limited time due to being taxi driver to my 2 girls, and a lack of honest & reliable volunteers I was stuck. Not only that, but space restrictions at the shop are so prohibitive that we aren't able to sell furniture etc, despite being offered it often by our donators.

When the Shop opened we used to sell things on eBay, but this same became too time consuming, and also very costly.

Anyway, I started trying to hammer out a few things on Facebook, since anyone will tell you, I'm on it day and night. Eventually we started getting more followers than just family and friends, and then something happened. Literally within 2 weeks our followers doubled from around 250 to over 500!!

As a result, I've since been selling more via the Internet and meeting some really lovely, interesting people in the process.

But I digress, the point of my post.

It's almost our Birthday!
We are turning 3 on the 31st of August.

Source: enchantedmommy.com via Lee Ann on Pinterest

I need some help to try and think of a good special to run for our Birthday week. It has to have something to do with the number 3 of course!

Friday, July 27, 2012

Where have all the Philanthropists Gone?

It is a stark reality which we see every day. Things are tough, and people are doing it tough. Many people in Queensland have been losing their jobs thanks to Government redundancies and families are struggling.

Sometimes the children from those struggling families, through no fault of their own, end up in Foster Care. Foster Parents are angels sent straight from heaven, they really are! We have several foster parents who come into the shop to get things for "their" kids. One organisation who work closely with Foster families is Kyabra Community Association. We have worked closely with Kyabra on a number of times, and it's an organisation who does some positively amazing work in our community.

One of the services provided by Kyabra Community Association is a Limited Hours Child Care (LHCC for short). Kyabra LHCC is really in a bind. Each year the qualified staff have been taking voluntary pay cuts just to keep the service afloat. These highly dedicated staff are now in jeopardy of losing their jobs, and the service is in jeopardy of closing since the Federal and State Government has cut all funding to this (and similar) services.

Kyabra LHCC is uniquely different from other LHCC services in Brisbane. Many of the children attending the LHCC are in foster care, or at risk of being in foster care. It provides the parents with a respite if you like, allowing them time to attend meetings with Departments etc without having to take the children.

It also has joint programs with two local high schools and assists by placing their senior students who are studying for their Cert III in Child Care. This is such a strong and positive thing and the children at the centre absolutely LOVE the kids from the High School being there.

There is also a much higher child/adult ratio at Kyabra LHCC. In addition to 2 qualified teaching staff, there are, at any given time up to 5 other volunteer staff. This means at times the child/adult ratio is 2/1.

I can assure you there's no place like it!I have myself been fortunate enough to have my youngest daughter attend Kyabra LHCC. My daughter was experiencing troubles at her Long Day Care, to the point that she would burst into tears every time we drove past the centre, pleading with me "please don't take me there!". On the days she had to attend, she would literally cry and work herself up so much that she would vomit.

She was 18 months old when she was offered a place at Kyabra LHCC and from day one, she was a totally different child. In the past 2 years, I have watched her develop into an amazingly confident, happy, loving and playful child. She wakes up each morning asking if it's the day she goes to "Pat's Kindy" (Pat is the Director in the LHCC). I have absolutely no doubt in my mind, that Pat, Sannie and the other staff at Kyabra have been instrumental in this transformation in my daughter.

But I digress, the point of this post... Kyabra LHCC is at very serious risk of closing down. At this point in time, it's touch and go - they will be able to get by until the end of 2012, but beyond that, it's anyone's guess...

They are currently looking for benefactors who would be willing to donate money to support their continuing service. Any support is tax deductible.

Please, I urge, if you know of anyone, or any companies who would be willing to donate towards this magnificent cause, please do so!

You can find out more information by emailing alani @ sandlewoodprojects. org. au (no spaces)

I can't keep singing "where have all the philanthropists gooooone?" in the ilk of Paula Cole's "where have all the cowboys gone?" ... sorry it's embedded in my head! Anyone else? LOL

Monday, July 9, 2012

The Great Adelaide Whirlwind Op Shop Tour

Last month on the Queens' Jubilee Long weekend we visited Adelaide.

It was the first time for us, with our main reason for visiting being *ahem* the Adelaide Zoo, so we could see the pandas.

The reality was, that we just wanted to check out the Op Shops in another part of Australia!

So on Saturday morning, we were absolutely delighted when Tami from More Than Vintage came by to collect us for what I have since dubbed the Great Adelaide Whirlwind Op Shop Tour, or GAWOST for short.

Ever the host, Tami met us at our hotel and swiftly whisked us away to her favourite Op Shops to hunt for bargains and special little treasures. All the while delighting us with trivia about Adelaide, like the population statistics {LOL - sorry it's an in joke!}

After venturing into the first op shop, the boot of her poor car was heaving with all of our purchases.

I was saddened to have to leave behind the.most.stunning! vintage blue dinner set, but alas there was no way to get her home safely to Brisbane :(

We ventured into a grand total of 5 op shops in Adelaide on the GAWOST, in a period of just short of 3.5 hours. Some were small, some were huge, but none really held more treasures than that first shop we ventured into bright and early on that Saturday morning.

Just to prove it, here is Tami (left) and Desley (right) showcasing the results of the shopping trip back at the hotel.

We want to thank Tami so much for taking the time out to meet us, and to take us to her favourite shopping haunts. We thoroughly enjoyed every minute of the GAWOST, and hope that we can come back again some time soon to continue on the adventure.

For those of you who haven't seen her store, Tami runs More Than Vintage where she sells an eclectic selection of VINTAGE - COUNTRY - SHABBY CHIC - VINTAGE STYLE - linen - craft - homewares - home decor.

Friday, June 22, 2012

DOILEYS

Doileys are one of those things that are easy to pick up in an op shop (Sandlewood Op Shop is no exception!).

Many of them are handmade with love by previous generations and although some can be slightly imperfect, there are many uses for them that can still show off their true beauty and all the hard work someone has put into creating it.

Here are five ideas for ways to use Doileys...

1. Frame them

Photo Courtesy of craftynest.com

2. Jazz up your Clothes

Photo Courtesy of blog.craftzine.com

Photo courtesy of gizbabe.typepad.com

3. Make a Lampshade, Cover a Coathanger, or make a Dreamcatcher Yes, I know this is THREE, but think of it as 2 bonus ideas ;)

Photo Courtesy of abeautifulmess.typepad.com

4. Create Dainty, Romantic Decor

Photo Courtesy of twinklemama.files.wordpress.com

Photo Courtesy of greenowlcrafts.blogspot.com.au

Photo Courtesy of needle-exchange.ca

5. Create funky jewellery and accessories

Photo Courtesy of sweetpaul.typepad.com

Photo Courtesy of sincerelykinsey.blogspot.com

Photo Courtesy of craftster.org

Friday, June 1, 2012

Welcome back .... introducing "5 ways to"

BUTTONS

WOW! It's been almost 12 months since I blogged for the shop. How fast that time has gone!

Recently Des has been spending a bit of time doing some research on different uses for some of the common things that get donated to the Op Shop. This has been generating a fair bit of interest, so I've decided that once a week I'm going to blog on 5 ways to reuse/recycle/upscale a specific item.

Today I'm going to concentrate on Buttons. You'll find that at most Op Shops you can pick up an assortment of buttons but my personal favourite are Vintage buttons.

They aren't as easy to pick up around the traps these days, but if you are lucky enough and happen to find them, they are little treasures!

Here are a few simple ideas that you can do to recycle old buttons. Please note that none of these items are actually with us for sale - they are simply to inspire those who like to create.