CHILDHOOD FAVOURITES: great story/sweet style

It makes me so happy to see how much Josephine loves books. Whether it's a picture book in her toy box (cardboard only as she's still chewing everything she gets her hands on!) that she'll sit and flick through quietly on her own, or the stories we read together in the afternoon or at bedtime.

Of course, right now, it's up to Ben and I to choose which books we read to Phiney and we're loving the opportunity to re-discover our own childhood favourites. For both of us the beautiful stories by Shirley Hughes and Janet and Allan Ahlberg bring back fond memories and have been the first picked from the bookshelf.

Looking at these books now it's not just the story that I'm enjoying, it's the illustrations and style of the characters too. Traditional children's clothes - think homemade knits, t-bar leather shoes, sweet little dresses and woollen bonnets all of which are offering some fantastic winter wardrobe inspiration - as well as beautiful toys and prams, and real and endearing family scenes that are lovely to see. And that make these classic reads as enjoyable as ever.

Josephine's favourites? Peepo, of course, and The Baby Catalogue. Our cardboard copy of the latter is, as you can see, much loved :)

On the mission of creating the perfect invites, the next aspect was the illustrations. I sent my sister, Dora, a mammoth email with all the designs we'd seen and that we liked aspects of as well as the colour palette we wanted and an explanation of the look and style we were aiming for. About two weeks later we got exactly what we wanted. I set to work on the back of the invite using my faithful InDesign and soon enough our invitation was ready to go. And everyone loved it.

I sent Cori from August and After an email once the designs were done to thank her for the help her blog had given us and when I visited her site a few days later, you can imagine how freakin' excited I was to see our invites staring back at me. So thank you Cori. I'm sure I'm not the only bride-to-be to have found your blog and been reassured that planning a wedding with a difference on a teeny budget isn't a completely mad idea, and is in fact a rather lovely one.

When we were planning our wedding, I scoured numerous blogs on a daily basis for inspiration and unusual ideas that would sum me and my guy up and be perfect for the laid back, brightly coloured, unique day we envisioned. On so many occasions I was tempted to start my own but with a full time job, crafty projects-a-plenty to prepare for the wedding, a fashion and textile evening course at college and some sneaky snuggles on the sofa with my love to fit in, I just didn't find the time. Of course the problem with starting a blog after the wedding is that I have so much I want to reveal from our whole wedding process. I figured the best place to start is at the beginning, so first things first - our Save the Date cards.

From the moment we got engaged, we knew what we wanted our wedding to be. Young and fun and everything that went with that, so when it came to designing our Save the Date cards we knew we wanted to reflect this. After all this will be the first glimpse our guests will have of what our wedding will be like. So we called in my sister Dora; AKA an artistic genius who had just finished a Fine Art degree. We planned to put her talents to good use across all our wedding stationary and so we talked to her about what wanted and came up with the idea of doodle style postcard with a graffiti hint to it. Then I put a beyond simple font on the back. Perfect.

* when it comes to the perfect time to start a blog, dear readers, it turns out the during the World Cup is it. With my boy determined to watch as many footie matches as possible I can spend guilt free hours on the computer. Luckily for me our computer is in the living room, so I can still get the odd sneaky kiss!