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!   

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.