Brightening up the Breakfast Room !

Thanks to Lucy in Attic 24 who creates the most wonderful colourful things for her home, I decided to try out something to brighten up my rather drab looking breakfast room. Lucy's blog is just full of lovely lively projects. I just look at her colourful photos of her work and it makes me happy!
So I started with her Happy flower decoration and took out my basket of cottons. I really could do with adding a few more brighter colours to the basket, but we have what we have at the moment, and I was anxious to get moving on it.

So here it is!!!! It holds pride of place on the light blue wall and has caught the eye of everyone who passed it today. I'm delighted with it.

Happy hanging flower

Then I decided to use another one of Lucy's ideas, Crochet tin cover, and I covered a small tin plant pot for the window-sill. I think it will look great with a nice spring bulb flower which I will organise tomorrow. 

So here's this one! I'm new to blogging and the positioning of photos etc, so I'm off to google some finishing techniques for blogger! I'll also have to brush up on my photography skills.. Have a nice evening....

Flower Pot cover

Brooches and Cardmaking

It's been nearly 9 months since I set up this blog, and it's only now that I've got a chance to try and set it up properly (time flies by in my world.....). There's been lots to do in the crafty section of the house and many projects started, quite a few completed and the remainder hanging around in baskets waiting to be picked up again and finished off!
Since June I've been learning a bit about vegetable patches (we had some great crops last year), I started a bit of card making last September and I love it, and the usual knitting a crochet bits and pieces are ongoing. We've been in our house for 9 years now and it really is in need of a bit of an uplift and what better way that creating a few soft furnishings with some nice yarns. Its all in the plan for the next few months....
They have to wait because, in the meantime though I have been asked to do an interactive demo and our local craft expo on the 3rd March (for a whole hour!) on card making techniques so I'm starting to plan the session. I have also been asked to provide a selection of my home-made brooches for display. I made quite a few of these at Christmas from a variety of media - crochet flowers, tapes, buttons, friendly plastics and beads. Here is a sample of my first one.



So its time to get crafting... watch this space

6th June 2011 - Bank holiday Monday

Ok. So it all began when I was in the 2 Euro shop in February and picked up a seed kit of peppers, tomatoes, and strawberries for the kids to plant..... but by the time I had driven them home I had decided that the best nutritional and money saving venture I could do this year was to  plant some vegtables in the garden. From pot to plate... so there it began. By the begining of March, I had the kitchen windows, worktops, and part of the kitchen floor covered in various seed trays of tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, leeks, various herbs, chilli plants and cucumbers. They had begun to grow, needed to be separated, and after collecting as many small pots as possible (including yoghurt cartons, and any other waste kitchen vessels that I could pierce holes in and plant stuff in), I decided that it was time for them to go outside and free up the house again. So, in a few short months we have the following - several raised beds ( fenced off from the dogs and hens), a mega cheap 13.5 foot X 6 foot poly tunnel, and loads of thriving, and some withering vegtables and fruits!
Today we have ----- (some varieties are still a bit mixed up because I have 4 eager assistants, two of which cannot read properly yet, they are only 5 years old)...
15 tomato plants (moneymaker, beef and yellow cherry). All mixed up and maybe will cross pollinate ???
5 hanging basket red cherry tomatoes
6 cucumber plants
8 sweet pepper plants (bell )  again all mixed up!
2 courgette plants ( with 6 females already flowered but no males......... where are the men when u need them?!!)
6 cucumber plants
1 hot chili plant
1 Asparagus
3 Butternut squash
4 melon (still tiny seedlings)
1 Kiwi vine
15 strawberry plants ( originally 18, but mysteriously lost 3 in the tunnel)
loads a lettuce
radishes (already eaten)
perpetual spinach
carrots
brocolli (Luke's favourite)
parsnips
turnips (we ate a few of those this weekend too)
Early potatoes
Cabbages (two survived)
Beetroot (I will be the only person eating this but I cant wait!)
Peas ( loads of flowers now)
Runner beans
Sweetcorn (one of the disasters due to the cold weather, but fingers crossed, it seems to be greening up a bit!)
Leeks (doing ok)
Onions (red and white...... very slow!)
Red cabbage
Cauliflower (around 3 of them)

Now I am watching them (and the weeds) grow! Also spending around 2 hours a day looking after them and watering them!!