Vintage shopping guide

Get ready for vintage shopping season! There's a really good list of guides to markets, thrift stores, brocantes and cool vintage shops at Apartment Therapy this week. So, if you're like me, you'll take notes, grab your map and head off to the first yard sales, markets and auctions to scoop up the good stuff before everyone else ;-)

SF storefronts

I always like to include a pictorial selection of my favourite storefronts when we get back from a city trip. Here's my selection from San Francisco. Love the trendy one-bright-colour look. This first yellow establishment is a newish, very hip, German Gasthaus - Leopold's. I think if you head there for a beer after work you won't be disappointed ;-)

Vintage signage

So many great vintage signs in SF - I especially love this first one - it goes so perfectly with the surrounding architectural details. Enjoy . . . . .

More holiday pictures ;-)

I think I said this yesterday but I'm finding it quite tricky to edit and sort all the images that Doug took last week in SF. here are some of my favourites in the 'general' category! Tomorrow storefronts and vintage signage.

Happy Monday!

Hello everyone!

Thanks for visiting today. It's so nice to be back here! What a great week we had in California. Doug took so many pictures, it was a bit overwhelming to organize them all last night. So today I'm starting with a few iconic San Francisco images and then on to a couple of favourite shops. In the next few days I'll show you some other highlights of our trip including the usual fab, vintage, store fronts and vintage signage that Doug always takes such great shots of. We had 3 days in San Francisco and then 4 days in Carmel - we had a blast and if you are interested in any details, hotels etc I'll post some of those tomorrow. But I can guarantee we will be heading back to Carmel again this year some time - we absolutely loved it. Enjoy the photos . . . .

All Saints

On Saturday we were having a wonderful wander around SF with our friends Martin and Cate from Blanket. It was the only wet day that we had on the trip so we spent a lot of time in shops, restaurants and wine bars! Cate and I squealed when we ran across All Saints (Cate used to live in London so she was very excited to see a familiar shop) So if you look carefully at these images you can see that every window of this tall storefront is filled with cast iron, victorian, sewing machines - seriously there are hundreds of them! This is so up my alley I couldn't wait to explore the interior. So I sent Doug on a photo shoot while Cate and I drooled over the bags, shoes and jewelry(not so much the clothes, that seemed to be a bit 'Goth' for us.)

Note the sewing machines in all the windows.

How cool is this traditional white and gold window decal?

Sewing machines, sewing machines, sewing machines . . . .

Can you see the wooden spools on the wall? - there are hundreds of them(below)

The retail space itself is so impressive with huge industrial fixtures, tables and signage.

All Saints, 140 Geary Street, San Francisco 94108