Manchester's Preloved & Ziferblat Event

A do love a good ladies day out and thankfully, a few weekends ago, I had the opportunity to end my drought of girl-time as I had a fab day in Manchester with the lovely Kel, Jess and Sammie booked in, and trust me, I was excited!

The four of us had been invited, by the fabulous Terri Lowe, to attend an event - a Preloved Event - in the heart of the city and, if I'm honst, I had been looking forward to it for weeks.

There's nothing better than spending a day away from it, having a giggle and some girlie conversation.

It was fab

Anyway, to make the most out of the day we arrived in Manchester a few hours before the event to make sure we had time to enjoy a little Manchester-style grub.

(more on that later)

And then 3pm rolled by and it was time to head to our event venue

Ziferblat
(full details here)

Now I had never heard of Ziferblat before and stupidly, I didn't do my research beforehand, so I was really surprised when we walked in to find a very cosy, homely room all set up to look very much like a large sitting room/dining room/kitchen kind of a place.

After a few puzzled comments we were told that for a cost of five pence per minute people can take full advantage of Ziferblat and all of it's facilities.

People are free to eat as much cake and cereal as they like and drink as much tea, coffee and juice as they like, all whilst enjoying the very warm, very comfy facilities, which are complete with free wifi (always an important one!) and simply just pay for the time spent rather than the things eaten.

It is such a brilliant concept and if Manchester wasn't so far away from me I know I could seriously put this place to good use, particularly during the school holidays with my son.

Eat, drink, play Twister if we fancy for as long as we can afford - brilliant.

So back to our reason for being in Manchester in the first place...

The event we attended was in aid of Preloved, but who are Preloved and what do they do?

Well, Preloved are an online selling site, allowing people to sell and rehome their unwanted, unused and unloved things, totally free of charge.

Preloved are also really passionate about the people who use their site - whether they be a buyer or a seller - they want the experience to be as easy and as fast as possible.

By doing this and helping all those uncared for items find new homes, Preloved hope that they can at least help a little to reduce the amount of rubbish ending up in wastefill sites.

I think the concept is brilliant and I'm 100% going to be signing up to try and find some more love for the things I no longer need.

I had so much fun at this event.

It was laid back, relaxed and totally chilled out - just ten lovely ladies sat around a table, chatting, drinking tea and eating cake.

Can a day get any better?

Well, yes actually it can.

As we were at a Preloved event, our two main tasks for the day consisted of using old materials to make something else new and useful.

First up, we delved into the ever popular beauty craze of coffee face scrubs and rather than spending numerous amounts of pounds on buying one, we were shown how to make one for a fraction of the cost...

We simply mixed together

~ coffee
~ coconut oil
~ sugar

~ Voila ~

Face scrub made

Our next, really rather therapeutic task, was to upcycle a selection of old keys by painting them with various coats of nail varnish and decorating them with a ribbon...

Something really simple, easy and relaxing which produced a unique, one-of-a-kind piece of jewellery that we were able to take away with us...along with some fab goody bags too...

It was great to meet some new bloggers at the event and to find out all about Preloved and the things that they stand for.

I'm currently undertaking a bit of a home-design-challenge myself - on a very tight budget - so Preloving and upcycling some older pieces is going to be a must.

Thanks for a fab event Preloved and for giving me a new passion for restoring old things.

Happy Upcycling!