My Vintage Pad – Home Tour – by Happy Harris of Happy Loves Rosie

Hello
there – My name is Happy Harris   and I am going to take you on a
little tour around my home showing you my   favorite things in my home
and what inspires my creativity…but first   you will have to know a
little background information, I was born in 1965 in   Barking, East
London, yes right in the middle of the swinging 60’s and on my   dad’s
birthday.  I was an only child and hated going to school.  I   would
always fake an illness just to get home to Mum, where she would make me
  very comfortable indeed, moving the setee nearer the fire place and
providing   me with a cup of cocoa and my latest library books, which
where often craft   books as I loved the bright pictures of things to
make and do, and whilst   watching Ken Dodd and the Diddy Men, I would
sneak down under the covers   and dream of what I was going to make
next…

…My Mum is a very big
  Inspiration to me, she has showed and encouraged me through life, that
  you can be whoever you want to be – you just have want it enough, my mum has
  suffered from a disability all her life and the determination that she has had
  through life has taught me alot, so i have many photographs of her and my
  family…my Mums Mum was a hoarder and such a jolly lady…I
  have very fond memories of her and its with her that my character Happy
  arrived from….she gave me much inspiration through laughter and fun, she
  hated housework and instead we would go out walking around Hampstead Heath,
  laughing and joking, eating Jellied Eels and watching the band play….often
  we would be walking home and she would have to disappear behind a tree or in a
  phone box to retreive her pantaloons as they would fall down and we would roar
  with laughter all the way home!…armed with a little more knowledge, I hope
  you will understand why I endeavor to acquire the things that i do,
  everything i buy has a little history behind it – there is always a
  reason…buying snippets of my memory of days gone past. (Photograph,
his is a picture of my mum and a necklace that I have made…the color
red always makes me happy and i have always had a love of round things
and this includes buttons i am an avid collector…my Nan used to wear
fantastic clothes with the most gorgeous buttons in them and I always
remember thinking that the buttons looked so much nicer that the actual
clothes they were on!) 

I
also have a love of vintage enamel and whilst looking for a home in
France, we collected so many pieces, to many in fact, that we couldn’t
afford to move there in the end!! LOL! This young lass is also another
inspiration to me…This is Rosie my daughter and I teach her at home, when she was
at school, they used to tell me that she wasn’t very good at her work
and since leaving school and being at home, she has just taken 3 GCSE’s
at 14 and will hopefully be starting an NVQ in hairdressing next
year…she is a lovely girl and I am very proud of her…she inspires
me everyday… the things we learn together…its SO fun!

My
  most favorite things in this room is the hooks above and this dresser
  and my favorite things are the floral enamel and vintage postcards and
  photographs of family.

I love this picture…whenever I look at this pic it makes me feel full
  of the joys of spring…its just a happy cheery kind of picture…and I love
  my Cath kidston shopper – now theres another lass that inspires me…we have
  sold to her in the past, mainly vintage material and small household bits, you
  will see a lot of her things in my house, if you want a happy house with good
  karma – stick to bright colors, lots of floral, red, pinks and blues, in fact  I always say paint your walls white…they can be the
  canvas….and then add shelves and coat hooks and hang your favorite
  things….our house is rented, so we decorate like this so that when we move
  to the next house, we can take it all with us…this house has a blue carpet
  in every room…it always goes with the color scheme, but really I do
  love wooden floors with rugs to set the color scheme…I never choose, purple
  or orange and i never used to like yellow either until just recently
  in fact….i now like it faintly in floral material, as a lot of the vintage
  pieces have it in there.

Vintage material and books are one of my favorite
  things. I love the patterns and textures and just by looking at the
  material, you can see its age,I love that.

I love Old books and annuals – the
  stories in them are so unique and of a time gone by….the days before
  television….the days when, if you said your were bored it meant you
  really were BORED!…..these are all my favorite things in my
  house.

Basically, I love color. I feel its brain food that inspires the
  mind and collecting ephemera of a time gone by.In the future our children
  will not be able to collect things like this so I feel it is important to keep a hold of it all. I feel this is the legacy from my Nan, she was a
  hoarder and now in my collections I want to be too. Computers are here to
  stay, so the collections will never be the same but thankfully there will
  still be us bloggers here to type about it and keep all these memories
  alive!

(Photography, My Nan’s Postcards…I love these as they are so cheeky just like she used to be…)

A special thank you to Happy Harris & Rosie for a look into their Vintage Pad and all the wonderful stories and things that inspire them. I have to mention their on line store Happy Loves Rosie. The store is just as cheerful as their home is. You will fall in love with the home wares, jewelry, vintage finds and more.