The end of the sunshine

Here in the UK, we have just had a solid week of 20+ degree centigrade, blue sky filled, beautiful, glorious sunshine - a rare occurrence for us!. However, all that will be stopping overnight, when the grey skies and rain return. So in order to remind myself of how good the sun makes me feel, I decided to look for sun or sunshine related items. Five of my favourites are coming up now!


This first item comes courtesy of Rosylnscloset and is just perfect for that little ray of sunshine in your life. Unless that ray of sunshine is an adult, in which case they will look like a numpty wearing children's clothes!

The second item is made by the hands of Loreto and is described as "liquid sunshine". Ok, so the picture is of a lemon, but the actual product is a citrusy smelling perfume, which is just perfect to wear in summer.

This beautiful decoration currently resides in the joysmoon Etsy shop. The face reminds me of a book I read as a child, about a very windy day or something, so it was nice to be taken back to my childhood. I'm sure with this hung on your wall, your life will be brightened up!

This incredibly cute nursery mobile was made by AmyGaines. In fact, I'd say it was one of the cutest items I have ever seen on Etsy. My favourite bit, ironically for a blog about sunshine, is the raindrops, though I do love all three levels!

A glorious photograph for sale by grafixmode. What better way, on a rainy day, to remind you of sunshine is there than an actual photo of rays of sunlight shining through the trees and a great big sunflower smiling at you too?

So all in all, a sunny and warm collection of items to warm you on those rainy days! Imagination is a great friend!

Can you recommend any solar powered lights?

I've been searching the net for some lighting for our market stall. We will be travelling around most of the summer festivals selling Hoops and Hats. and I want to try and light the stall at night with solar powered lights. Now the problem I'm having is finding a lighting system that will work even on dull overcast days. I've found countless people selling the little garden lanterns, but I don't think they throw out much light and most of the reviews I've found of them say they do not work at all on over cast days.

Hopefully the summer will be bright and sunny, but in the UK you can't guarantee that it will. I don't really need these lights to be like flood lights as we hope to have a more soft ambient glow in the night than look like a night match on a football field, but I do need them to work all the time, whether the day has been 12 hours of bright sunshine or dull and over cast all day.

I saw these LED solar lights and though they would look great along the front edge of the stall, but again the reviews were nothing less than bad, saying they were not very bright and that they only lit up after a very sunny days worth of charging.

I really don't want to have to get a generator to run lights, as they are noisy, polluting and costly to run... any ideas all you lovely Blog readers? Have you go a set of solar powered lights you can recommend? If we can't find anything we will have to resort to tea light candles in jars, where the festival organisers will allow us, although that can be a fire hazard when slightly drunk festival goers try to hoop for the first time, late at night next to a candle lit stall.