Category: crEAting

homemade & crafts

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dear diary ~ November…really….so soon?

I was just enjoying October too.

In October I felt like I had ample time to prepare for the upcoming event, which I think is OK to mention by name now and unlikely to offend.

I have one month to get a grip…. get organised, get baking, making, crafting…..go shopping and go shopping again for the items I dithered over, forgot or just couldn’t find.

I plan (in my mind at least) to get everything done in November so we have a calm, ordered December. I already know it won’t be – I don’t even know what we are doing or where we will be going this Christmas. Most of our family plans have to revolve around mum. In the years since her mobility is almost zero she has Christmas at my sister’s house (as she lives the closest to her) and most years the wider family of about eleven join her, but this makes it a big catering problem for her if we all descend.

With many of the family moving house or still to move or still to sort boxes from moving I am not sure what the Christmas arrangements might be. So until we know more I will turn my attentions to the things I want to make.

I have made a start. I bought a few crafting bits and pieces from Boyes at the weekend that I will might (possibly) turn into something for the Crisis charity craft stall in 3 weeks time. I picked up this printed card for free out of their cardboard packaging recycle bin. It seemed too good to throw out, though the shelf stacker did think me odd asking if I could take it! I am sure it will be useful for something.

Now Halloween is out of the way I can really concentrate on all the ideas I have had for making cards and gifts for Christmas, though the extent of my ideas will be more than I have time to make them.

Trick or Treat night went down well – I made some little treat bags to hand out to the early birds and thankfully we had just handed out the last of them before we had to rush off to see the murder mystery play I had booked for at a local village hall – A Prescription for Murder. The play was excellent and we were kept guessing all the way through to the end. Of course we knew there would be a twist but you never quite know what.

The pumpkins and lanterns are all put away now for next year and everywhere the poppies are appearing. We were in Yarm on Saturday seeing my mum and the local knitters have excelled with lamposts and bollards covered in wonderful red poppies.

It was a beautiful dry autumn day and the sun shone (an added bonus) and always helpful when we have to push mum in the wheelchair to the park. She had her usual sandwich, chocolate muffin and cappuccino…her appetite is good for her age, she can eat more than I do. On each visit we try and solve a problem for her, the bedside lamp needed replacing recently, then the control for the electric blanket and this time it was the ‘glow’ bulbs in the electric fire that had gone. She was adamant that the fire was not on because there was no glow and I could not persuade her otherwise. Thankfully, we were able to get replacement bulbs in Yarm and fitted them for her before we left. I wonder what will need sorting next time!

This all may be a bit of a waffle tonight, it has been a full on few days with a few late nights, (tonight being one of them) when I almost turn into a pumpkin myself.

Back soon, have a good week and thank you for all your comments on the previous posts- I love to have a little chat with you. x

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dear diary ~ a creative few days…

I finally completed my 3 tasks. It took me to the Wednesday of last week.

The sewing of the greenhouse shading took far longer than I had anticipated but it is finished and packed away for next year.

There was little point in me setting another 3 tasks when the grandchildren were about to descend upon us for a few days. The next three tasks would have to wait a while.

Instead I did do a few little jobs that have been waiting my attention just to get them off my mind.

I made some more thank you labels. Currently I am selling quite a few garments on Vinted for my daughter and once wrapped in tissue I add a little thank you label. So far this year I have made almost £200….enough maybe to check if I need to pay tax to ‘Rachel from accounts’ although I am not sure my meagre contribution will solve her cash flow problem!

I also glued the little houses back together that the grandchildren made during a previous school holiday. Then I stuck them down onto a strip of card so they don’t wobble over anymore when I am dusting. Thank heavens for the glue gun inventor.

Since the grandchildren arrived last Thursday we have been busy bees …..making and baking…..and entertaining…….my house is in utter chaos….but we had great fun.

Some of it done in complete secret!

We painted the wooden Halloween train, only to find that 7 of the 19 pieces in the box were missing. We painted the scary plaster figures only to find that one of them was faulty and the base sheered away irreparably. There were tears of frustration and no amount of comforting words helped their initial disappointment.

Luckily, the missing pieces did not stop us putting the main parts of the train together…but nothing could be done for the plaster figurine even with my trusty glue gun and Sweetie had to make do by decorating the Halloween balloons instead.

The little kits were bought at The Works and I did go back and tell them and the lady did refund our money.

My advice is to check these kits as soon as you buy them.

I bought some cute autumn cupcake cases and toppers from Homesense but the children preferred more gruesome decorations on their buns!

We spent all afternoon on the Friday making a lantern from some old 5 litre water bottles for the village lantern event on the Saturday night.

The event is completely free and run by volunteers (though donations are welcomed). The lanterns are made either individually like ours or by some of the local schools, playgroups and other groups in the village. This will be the 5th year now and the first one we have been able to attend. It is such a lovely ‘feel good’ village event with everyone coming together to enjoy a very simple evening.

I had rooted out some old 5 litre water bottles from the shed…the ones I usually use as cloches in my garden….but needs must!

Being too young, Baby Chocolate was not a party to this crafternoon, but Little L, Sweetie and Master Freddie each decorated a bottle with tissue papers, which we then ‘varnished’ over with PVA craft glue to make it water resistant. Grandad assemble the three bottles into one giant lantern and threaded the string of battery lights through each one. The result was quite effective and the children were delighted at their combined efforts.

On Saturday at 3 o’clock we took our lantern down to the People’s Pleasure Grounds to be hung ready for the event later that evening. The Pleasure Grounds were created by the mill owners for the mill workers in the village for their leisure time.

It is basically a path surrounded by some very mature trees and runs alongside what was the mill stream in the valley bottom.

Across the stream is a long imposing terrace of mill houses that were built by the mill owners for their workers like the village of Saltaire. We once lived in one of these houses when we first married.

We chose a lovely dark spot and hung our lantern from the highest tree branch we could reach without a ladder. The whole place was a hive of activity as the volunteers were putting up all the other lanterns that the villagers had made.

We then rushed home to put the baked potatoes in the oven for an early tea and at 6pm prompt, when it was quite dark, we all went back to the Pleasure grounds for the start of the lantern walk event. I would say that it is about a 500 yard walk from one end to the other and it was fabulously lit by strings of homemade lanterns.

The children were so excited to see their handiwork swinging from the tree and glowing in the dark.

There were some really lovely ones – I only managed to get one or two pictures of my favourites.

We ended the trail with a hot chocolate from a catering van and some tiny chocolate brownies that I had bought from Morrisons.

And the fun didn’t stop there as on the Sunday afternoon I had booked us all into a local village Halloween pantomime – Jekyll and Hyde. It was amateur dramatics at its best and a brilliant performance…..scary and funny in equal measure. The children had front row seats and got showered with a pretend bucket of water (confetti of course) but let out shrieks of delight when they realised it wasnt! Baby Chocolate picked every piece of confetti that had landed off himself and then started on the floor. Photography was not allowed but I did manage a couple of pics of the pantomime dame and the two policeman as we left the theatre.

The grandhildren have all gone back to their respective homes now and we had a much needed day off yesterday and spent a few hours in the garden.

Today and Friday I have some little Halloween sweet bags to make up and hopefully put out the paper pumpkin lanterns in the tree outside if the weather stays fine.

And I must not forget to make up my next list of 3 project tasks to make a start on, though I won’t be able to do much until after the visit up to see my mum on Saturday.

Back soon x

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dear diary ~ what a long week…

We certainly came down to earth with a bump after our few days away in Cheltenham.

I had great hopes on the Monday for a good week after being thoroughly refreshed by our trip, but it soon changed; beginning with an official letter landing on the mat – one of those in a brown envelope that creates an instant jump in blood pressure. As it turns out HMRC have got their details wrong and a short letter back should put paid to their request. It appears that Rachel from accounts is looking to boost the coffers by any means possible!!

We did however get out for a lovely walk through the village allotments – one of my favourite places….

….. and then up the track towards the moors above us and the spectacular views – in all we did around 8,000 steps and took a few pictures…..we are so lucky to have this on our doorstep and autumn is such a special time of year as everything settles down to sleep through the coming months ahead. It is quite noticeable in the photos just how green the trees are still and laden with their fruits of acorns and spiky conker shells.

On our way back home we collected a few apples going free in a basket on someone’s wall. They look like Bramley’s too and will go well with the cheap punnet of plums from Sainsbury’s perfect for an autumn pudding – apple and plum crumble.

After a late lunch we popped over the hill here to Last of the Summer Wine Country to wish my brother a happy birthday. He is attempting to dig out a pond – he likes a challenge (even at 77) and the bigger the better it seems.

Tuesday has become our shopping day. We pick up our friend Margaret who is 90 next year to take her with us to the supermarket, since she lost her partner last year she has no means of getting to the shops other than the local Access bus. Ours was quite a large shop after being away for almost a week our pantry and fridge needed replenishing. We managed a couple of hours in the garden too while it was dry and DH packed the garden furniture away under their covers to hibernate as well as giving the front lawn an autumn feed.

On Wednesday we went to my daughter’s old house, which she will be putting on the market to sell very soon. I had the ‘short straw’ task of cleaning up the bathroom grouting and sealant. I was quite pleased at how well it looked afterwards – it is a task I need to do at home when time allows. Meanwhile DH was on garden duty outside, pruning back the overgrown shrubs and trimming borders to give that much needed kerb appeal to the place. This was repeated by both of us on Thursday afternoon after my morning appointment with the practice nurse for my annual ‘Mickey Mouse’ review.

I call it a Mickey Mouse review because to me it seems it is just a tick box exercise that allows the surgery to claim a payment and nothing of any significance comes out of it. The nurse takes my blood for the ‘cheap’ thyroid test that only measures the TSH (I have no thyroid gland at all after having thyroid cancer a few years ago and I am fully reliant on thyroxine medication for life). They never order a full thyroid panel from the lab which is far more helpful to get the correct dosage so that I am well balanced between being hyperthyroid and hypothyroid. She then measures my blood pressure, looks shocked and tells me it is 195 over 90 which is usual when I visit the surgery and hands me the dreaded form to take my blood pressure at home for the week to prove her reading is just a glitch and that usually it is within an acceptable range. Then apart from a few questions in relation to alcohol consumption (only needed after a visit to the surgery) and smoking…. that is it – all good for another year.

Only it isn’t…….these reviews never address the hundred and one niggles that creep up on you as you age.

Friday, we had agreed to have baby Chocolate for the day. Adorable as he is the age difference now, him being just over 2 years old and us in our early seventies, is really beginning to show in many ways….mainly the energy levels. Baby Chocolate is a little whirlwind and fearless climber; you cannot take your eyes off him for a moment otherwise you are likely to find him about to abseil from a great height off some piece of furniture or a windowsill. It was raining too heavily to venture out so we had to play games with him inside, at this age they don’t focus on anything for very long.

We had no recovery time on Saturday either as next on our agenda was the 180 mile round trip up to mum’s. Unfortunately, the M62 that joins the M1 going north was closed completely at 2 junctions and the roundabout (after a police car chase that ended with a fatality) with an endless queue and a lot of diversions. The journey was slow so by the time we reached mum there was not time to take her to the park and back in the wheelchair between her carer’s visits so had to make do with a quick trip to the cafe across the road from her apartment. She had her coffee and brownie and we had a chat but she kept saying how disappointed she was that we hadn’t taken her to the park and that we had chosen to go on Saturday rather than her preferred day of Sunday. I kept repeating that we were late because of the road diversions and that my sister was already going on Sunday to see her and take her out. Her memory is so in decline now she cannot really get a grasp on any situation.

There are little signs everywhere that our village is preparing for Halloween (I noticed this on top of the post box) and Morrisons had pumpkins for only £1. When they stayed over the weekend we got back home the grandchildren made these little Halloween treat bags. The bags are brown paper sandwich bags from Sainsbury’s and I printed off some freebies from the internet for them to colour and paste on to the bags. We had a walk to the village to buy some sweets to put in them. They took them home with them for their Halloween night but I will probably make some more for the children who come knocking at my door.

Whilst shopping I popped in to The Works and picked up a few Halloween crafts for me the children to make in the school holidays (is it only 2 weeks away next week?)

This lovely brown printed Christmas tape caught my eye – I am sure it will be useful for something…and the irresistable little snowflake cutter.

Sunday finally came and we had the day to ourselves…by this time I was almost too tired to do very much other than catch up on a few jobs around the house.

I hope everyone is having a lovely week, at least the weather seems to have settled down now. We have done our shopping again today and tomorrow it will be back to my daughter’s house to lend a hand. On Friday we will be going back up north to look after Little L and Sweetie overnight while their mum goes to her employer’s yearly get together. Our little holiday seems a long time ago now.

Back soon x

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dear diary ~ back in time for 70’s fashion student

I promised you some interesting news and this is something that took me quite by surprise back in early April when one of my blog readers, who happens to be the curator of a museum in Cheltenham, contacted me through the comments section on my blog.

“I love your blog, especially the pages about you being a student in Cheltenham in the 1970s. I am the Curator at the Holst Victorian House in Cheltenham http://www.holstvictorianhouse.org.uk and this summer we are planning a pop up 1970s bedroom as part of our exploration of the house before it was a museum. We want the bedroom to belong to a 1970s fashion student! We would love for you to be involved if possible, for example sharing your memories of your time at the college and advising us about the type of room you had. If you are interested, please get in touch with me at curator@holstvictorianhouse.org.uk.

Many readers who have been following both this blog and my previous one might remember I have mentioned before that I was a student in the 70’s at Gloucestershire College of Art and Design on the Fashion and Textile degree course and have talked briefly about my life during those few years in Cheltenham.  It was a very memorable time for me and packed with fun and hard work in equal quantities.

Intrigued, I replied to the comment and during these past few months I supplied the curator with a few key items for use in their room set display as well as providing a narrative about the life of a fashion student, which must be so different to the experience of today’s students, especially their super deluxe living accommodation.

The pop up exhibition at the museum centres around a fashion student’s bedroom as the owners of the house at that time rented out rooms to fashion students from the college and they have tried to emulate this as well as they can with items they already have in the museum and additional pieces they have sourced from the same period. I wasn’t actually one of the students living at this particular house, nor do I know anyone who did, but it was very similar to the first house I lived in on Prestbury Road.

The photo below is actually of my real life student bedroom in the early 70’s… taken on my 21st birthday at our little house in Grosvenor Terrace – note the mattress on the floor, quite common back in those days and more comfortable than the old fashioned bed springs on some of the beds supplied by landlords. Most accomodation came furnished with some quite old and battered furniture – some with the addition of woodworm! As you will notice there is quite an assortment of tastes – the Indian cotton print bedcover behind me from the Black Market, purple sheets from Woolworths beneath a bright green checked duvet from the Co-op.

Our living room was of the brown and cream era which was the equivalent of the grey period we are presently living through. We stuck thick chocolate brown cork tiles to the chimney breast to display my grandma’s flying ducks. I was much more into old junk shop finds at the time, and influenced by BIBA and Laura Ashley with a bit of modern Habitat thrown in. We all had to endure a tiled fireplace of one kind or another and a cut moquette settee, and I won’t even mention the quality of the carpets (usually threadbare and with a dark stained floorboard surround) so the whole appearance was rather drab on drab.

Looking for pictures and information to send to the curator brought back such a lot of memories. I can’t believe I only spent 3 years of my life there – it seemed far longer and I made some life long friends too.

A very young me on the bike with my friends – as you can see beards were very much in fashion too back then.

When I look back at some of the outfits I made they do seem quite crude and not anywhere near the more outlandish designs produced by students today, but they were more wearable and the whole course was geared up to us getting a job at the end of it as jobs in the fashion world were not easy to come by. I know a lot of people watch and enjoy the Great British Sewing Bee – I only watched it for the first time a couple of weeks ago as I switched over from another program that had finished and I can vouch for the effort that these people have put into making each garment.

So I thought I would show you a few pictures from my time on a fashion course in the 70’s but promise not to laugh!!

This is me in the picture above – I am modelling one of my very first dresses at the end of the first year. It was hand printed on an ivory silk. I was quite proud I had even got to the end of the first year – the drop out rate was very high. 46 started on the course and only 13 of us finished.

Me again, caught in the corridor modelling another students outfit in the third year with much shorter hair and much higher platform shoes!

And below I think this was our second year final show – I always got roped into modelling no matter how much I objected.

We often undertook projects set by fabric manufacturers to advertise their new ranges.

This design above using a new Crimplene fabric was made into a garment and I was lucky enough to get my design chosen for a mention in the Fashion Weekly magazine.

Our final show in the third year was in London with professional models and many top fashion names were invited to view.

My collection was based on luxury resort or cruise wear – some made with hand printed fabrics. The collection included a swimming costume in a relatively new stretchy fabric called Lycra – now a staple in our wardrobes in one form or another.

This was a picture in the press and 2 of my garments were chosen, centre and far right.

The exhibition which includes the 70’s fashion student’s bedroom at Holst Victorian House in Cheltenham will run until Wednesday 31st December.  If you live anywhere locally do go and see it.

I am especially excited to be going down myself to see the exhibition next week and spend four days in Cheltenham where DH and I can relive some very happy memories.  Sadly, the house in the photo with me on the bike at Grosvenor Terrace has been pulled down and is now part of the LIDL carpark and the wonderful sixties fashion block at the college in the lefthand photo at the top of this page has also been replaced by a more modern building.  I am sure though it won’t detract from the visit; the Promenade, Everyman Theatre, Pittville park and Pump rooms and Montpellier remain the highlights of the Cheltenham I remember.

Back soon x