Tag: homemade & crafts

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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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creating ~ ScrapHappy April

Welcome to Scraphappy Day post for April. Apologies to readers for the long gap recently – any kind of craft work has been a challenge these last few months as I have so little time for myself. As I recently noticed my box of greetings cards is very much depleted I set aside an hour or two to make a few more, so this challenge is about reusing paper items such as old birthday cards and scraps of paper as an alternative to recycling them.

Old greetings cards, thank you notes, postcards and even those art cards you can pick up free at exhibitions and galleries can be turned into new cards. Here are some examples:-

Many of these ‘new’ cards have been made from old cards and the card at the bottom was an ‘art card’ from a gallery and cost me nothing.

I make a little label to stick on the back of the card just to tell people this is recycled.

When I was clearing out the craft room last month (and it is still very much an ongoing project) I found a stack of small colour photocopies I had taken of my own watercolour sketches and turned these into little cards too.

I also came across a sheet of rather lovely printed wrapping paper of vintage seed packets and I have no idea now why I bought this – it must be a few years old – though no doubt it would have been for some craft idea of mine back then and I never got around to it.

Instead of keeping it to wrap up a present I cut around each of the illustrations and together with this pack of handmade 3″ square concertina cards (a find at my local art shop that I bought last year) …..

….I decided to turn these cute little pictures into tiny cards – the idea being that I will send them to friends and family with a pack of flower seeds included.

And here they are in the making – not easy cards to photograph especially with the low light levels at the moment but I think you will get the gist.

It is always worth a visit to all the other ‘crafters’ that take part in the ScrapHappy Day they make some beautiful and inspiring things and below you can link through to their blogs. I am just hoping it is an up to date list.

Kate, Gun, Eva, Sue, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Tracy, Jan, 
Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Claire, Jean, Dawn, Gwen,
Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera, 
 Ann, Dawn 2, Carol, Preeti,
Nóilin, Viv, Karrin, Amo, Alissa,
Lynn, Tierney and Hannah

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dear diary ~ rest, relax…repeat

At last some good weather – though it is odd that I have to come all the way to Scotland for it.

There have been changes whilst we have been away we expected it of course as the new owner of the pub, restaurant and caravan site is continually making changes even for change sake, unfortunately, most of them involve planning or licensing applications and he has obviously not applied for any otherwise we would have received notification of them in case we wanted to object.  It appears he has no time to abide by any rules.

The last few days have been so nice we had breakfast and then went straight out into the garden…..whilst the sun shines, make….. full use of it! 

I usually start by going over this little border outside our garden gate that runs along by the upper part of the lane.  I removed a rather large overgrown clump of wild yellow irises to make way for some ground covering plants like geranium and valerian. The hollies, which are all self-seeded and then transplanted, are doing well now and filling out quite nicely – I don’t want huge trees but will keep them pruned to a nice rounded shrub sized plant.  It is so easy at this time of year to dig up some of the dormant plants along with the weeds so I have to take extra care.  DH tackled the Rosa rugosa hedge that runs down along the lane side from the gate – the one that the new owner of the pub and caravan site massacred a couple of years ago – luckily it is hard to kill and has regenerated quite nicely but we always make sure nothing is growing out into the lane so he doesn’t feel he has the need to chop it down again.

We had a rest day yesterday to protect our backs or else we will get little else done for the week.  Instead I used the time to stay indoors and do a little more planning and some digital detox on my computer.

Of course it was too much to hope that mum would be OK during the time both me and my sister are away and we wouldn’t have a crisis on our hands.  It was only a small drama really but to her a major crisis and I wasn’t able to help very much only be on the other end of the phone.  It happened on Sunday evening.  She was waiting for her carers to go and put her to bed.  Her time slot is for 6pm, their previous visit ends at 4 pm so before they put her to bed for the night they usually make her some toast for her tea/supper and a final hot drink.  At 6.45pm she rang me to say they had not come and she couldn’t get through to the office as the answer phone was on. She was clearly agitated as she does not like to go out of routine.  She said she would ring them again to make sure someone was coming.  At 7pm, 7.15pm, 7.30pm, 7.45pm, 8pm, 8.15pm, 8.30pm she rang me again and again to say they still had not shown.  She had spoken to someone at the office, quite aggressively as she does now, and they said a carer was on their way but no explanation was offered as to why they were so late.  Finally at 8.45pm someone arrived – of course mum was hungry, thirsty but most of all cold as she cannot switch the fire on by herself now and the flat had got quite chilly.  She was also dog tired and very angry – I didn’t know whether to feel sorrier for the poor carer or my mum!

Needless to say they have been on time for the last two days.

We had a lovely walk to the village yesterday afternoon, called at the pub by the harbour for a hot chocolate and took a few photos. 

We spotted quite a few new painted rocks along the low road from the village. It is lovely that anyone in the community can add to this – the idea began when one of the residents secretly placed a few painted rocks along the path one night and it has snowballed over the years to the point where the coaches heading for the Mull often stop for their passengers to get off and go and look at them.

Whilst the light was good I managed to complete the last bit of knitting on the little jacket for baby Chocolate.  Try as I might to make it neat I do struggle with edges and picking up stitches but no doubt I just need more practise. Knitting patterns, I find, often leave you high and dry – I am sure for experienced knitters it is not a problem but I need more instructions.  The pattern says to pick up and knit the contrasting band around the hood and then down the front of the jacket which I have done.  It does not say to do both sides….not knowing if I should or not I decided I would and did in fact knit the band on both edges.

I am not sure of the weather today so have no definite plans. There is always plenty to do in the garden but we also need a trip into town for a bottle of gas and to take in a trailer full of old plasterboard from the kitchen ceiling of the cottage. Luckily, the tip here accepts rubble and stuff as not everywhere does. At home you have to get a skip even if you only have a bucketful.

I am starting to feel a litle more relaxed now and am finding the time to sort out one or two tasks off my list which has also helped – things that seem to have been on there for ever and keep getting rolled over each week – you know the ones. It is quite odd that when we are here at the cottage I think about all the jobs I need to do at home and when I am at home I have my mind on what needs doing at the cottage – well mainly in the garden. Perhaps having the distance somehow makes my mind clearer and I feel less overwhelmed. I am sure that life is getting so much busier these days and more stressful and it is not just a matter of being older. Technology was supposed to make things quicker and easier but I find just the opposite…. that you are forever in a queue on the phone or you come up against an answerphone or you get through to some voice telling you to go to their Q&A on their website (don’t they ever think that you have already done that and the answer is not there!

Hope your day is full of promise. x