Paper Leaf Garland

Apologies for the terrible quality in photos, but I just wanted to pop in and show you this crafty little number because she’s sooooo easy to make and the outcome is pretty beautiful! (It’s hard to take photo’s in poor light you know!)

I found the above photo in a Country Living Magazine and knew I had to make one. I really love the white/wood look but used what I had in my stash.

I simply drew some templates on card and when I was happy with the shape cut them out. I then simply drew around them and cut them out one evening whilst watching telly :)

After punching holes in them I thread them onto a piece of yarn. This works better than string because it is not smooth, which would just result in all of the leaves sliding down to the centre of the garland. Not cool.

I hung them with twinkly lights and I LOVE how they turned out!

So save your scraps from wrapping gifts, or use old bits of beautiful paper that you couldn’t bear to throw away and get making!

Enjoy and see you soon, thanks for stopping by,

Hayley

xx

Autumn Love

Autumn has brought about all kinds of change and as it gets darker and colder I am beginning to feel sad as I know that those beautiful leaves will turn to brown sludge in just a few short weeks and the trees will be left standing naked and alone by the sides of the road. It’s going to be brown and grey for quite a while after that!! BUT, I wanted to show up here and share with you a few of the highlights of my autumn. Although I haven’t been here very often, I have been busy making things to share and thinking of ideas to post soon; there is something about Christmas that sparks a creative fire beneath me and gets me in the spirit!

I have truly felt different this year, more aware than I ever have been of the change in the season; the colours; the light; the smells of the air. It has bought me incredible joy on many days when things weren’t going great. Without my noticing I seem to have been through quite a stressful patch recently, and it wasn’t until I came out the other side that I realized how much it had affected me. Autumn however has come and healed me; here’s what I actually wrote in my diary one beautiful autumn day….

‘My heart is overflowing today; the past couple of weeks have bought about huge changes and autumn (possibly winter now?) is truly established. The leaves have turned and are busying themselves around the bottom of the trees and curbs like large crowds waiting for something great to happen. It is beautiful. Small things keep catching my heart recently, whether it’s the kind words of a friend, or the invitation to come for coffee, or a walk somewhere new, I feel so full of joy; so much that today it just poured out of me and I felt peace. I don’t remember the last time I have felt that.’

So, Here are some snippets of autumn love (it goes without saying that leaves are a HUGE part of that joy!)…

Treating myself to beautiful pumpkins to sit on the dresser before they enter the kitchen made me very happy, as did the yarn I bought inspired by colours I’d seen on my walks.

An invitation to make leaf lanterns with friends; Little A’s is the one on the left, I LOVE how it looks, and was the perfect project to use all those beautiful leaves before they start to decompose.

A surprise gift from a friend came through the post all glittery and golden; I felt so loved and valued that she’d taken the time to think of me in her VERY busy schedule!

Autumn hooky; a whole armchair working with me in the making of my autumn project :)

Lots of walks to gather the treasures nature has; this particular day Little H surprised me by pulling a folded up leaf out of his pocket as a gift for me. He always chooses the brown ‘ugly’ ones!! It was also his idea to have hot chocolate and Jaffa cakes at the table whilst we ‘talk about our leaves and their colours when we get home.’ (I couldn’t have loved him more at this point!!)

Trees. Everywhere. And so, so glorious. Most of the time, I was mad for forgetting my camera.

Time shared with friends; eating, playing, watching fireworks and waving sparklers.

I just wanted to show up here and share with you my joy. The reality is that it’s hard being a stay-at-home-mum, and a lot of the time it doesn’t feel very peaceful, but with a little time to yourself to stop and look around, to soak up the good things without an agenda, it can be easier. As a mum I am constantly thinking about ways I can do my job better; take care of my family better. The best place to start is to take care of myself, because If I don’t I cannot take as good care of them.

Happy Autumn everyone…lets get ready for winter!!

See you soon,

Hayley

xx

Ocean Ripple Ta Dah!

Good Morning! It’s a bright, chilly autumn morning here and its beautiful. How is yours? Last time I was here I shared my slow progress on my ripple blankets, and I’m so excited to now share with you a finished article….wow, I know, I finished something! (Actually I have recently finished two things so I’m feeling rather smug, but more about that another time.)

So…Ocean Ripple started life in May. It was actually an odd ball of acrylic bought at a charity shop for 50p that started this entire blanket! It’s the peg that has no name (oh how sad) in the picture above. Its not the kind of colour that I am naturally drawn to but somehow my mind got working and kept nagging away at me until I pulled out a few other blues from the stash to sit along side it on the dresser. Yes, yes, it all looked quite nice. Without too much thought I just began rippling; it was an easy small project that I could take away with me and it was due to its convenience that it grew so easily. 

However, a few ripples in and it became apparent that I just didn’t have enough colours (this was mid-holiday), so I packed it all up and as soon as I got home went to my local yarn shop. The great thing about working with this yarn it that there are just SO many colours to choose from and I happily pulled this and that off the shelf and very quickly found a more balanced set of colours, with brighter shades to cheer the dark ones. 

The yarn, apart from the nameless one, is Stylecraft Special Acrylic DC and it’s the best acrylic I have come across; its soft, washable, colourful and CHEEEEEEP at just £1.80 per 100g ball or thereabouts.

I have loved the steady, comforting rhythm of working on this ripple. As I was making it for me there was no pressure on time which was so much nicer than the last one! (see HERE for the Raspberry Ripple). It’s an interlocking ripple, which means that there were quite a few yarn changes, but that just kept it interesting. The interlocking thing was inspired by Lucy’s interlocking ripple, she also wrote the pattern, you can find them here and here.

I really regret not weaving in the ends as I went; I thought I had a cunning plan to deal with them after by making an encasing border but I was worried that this would look funny on the ripple so I chickened out right at the end! Oops.

The result though is great! I love this ripple more than I thought I would; it’s totally different to what I imagined at the beginning or even expected at half way through. It has truly surprised me; its so bright!

It is comfortably at home on the sofa and has really helped to make our lounge more homely. It happens to have kept some optimism in the air about the weather too as it feels like a sunny blanket, not a wintery one, but we’ll see how long that lasts as we need it more and more in the evenings!

I got snap happy, so there’s a few pictures :)

I also wanted to show you this mug that Little H painted for my birthday at our local Pots2Paint studio (In Viables Craft centre, Basingstoke); I am so in love with it and so impressed at how good it looks considering it was painted by a 4 year old! Part of the studio fee is getting to use all of the tools, stencils, sponges and stuff in the studio and these little stickers were stuck all over by little H before going to town with the brush, and then peeled off afterwards- what a great idea!! Christmas presents spring to mind!

Thanks for stopping by, have you finished anything recently? It’s a good feeling isn’t it? Maybe I’ll get the bug and be back more often to share Ta Dah moments!

See you soon,

Hayley

xx

Sloooow Progress (and a Vintage Haul!)

My crochet mojo has been forced to slow down this week as it has been Little A’s birthday. He’s two now (OH MY Gosh!!!) and as if he knew, he threw a good few tantrums on the day! However, other than that I see in him a calmer side that grows every day and a new kind of relationship between him and Little H as they spend more time together ‘reading’ books to one another and sharing in more thoughtful ways. As a mother I doubt there are many things more delightful than seeing your children live together in harmony! We have family celebrations this weekend and I’m sure I’ll share those with you soon..

I have been doing the odd bit of work crochet, and have thoroughly been enjoying it! Work on the blankets has slowed to an embarrassing rate as a new fixation with granny squares has taken their place. I don’t know what it is about granny squares that I just find SO hard? You may remember last year I made myself a cowl using granny squares (you can find it here if you don’t) and I ended up with half of them considerably bigger than the rest! This made it a bit of a beast to put together and I thanked myself a number of times during their assembly that I had settled on a cowl instead of a blanket. I knew I couldn’t trust myself to get them all the same.

HOWEVER, they are very appealing and something about them has captured me and won’t let go (I’m going to blame my mother I think). I want soooo bad to have a granny blanket to go along with my other, ahem…unfinished, blankets. So, here they are in their primal state;

Just BEAUTIFUL!! I have yet to find a consistently neat way of working into the very first circle; I have no idea how to do a magic circle despite watching You-tube videos several times; as soon as I think I have got it I actually FORGET how to do it- WHAT is wrong with me?? Other than that I am finding them very beautiful and exciting to make!!

On another note I scored some very vintage fabric at my local charity shop and, quite randomly for me, this brooch. The yellow fabric was promptly stretched over my pin board to mask the ugly cork colour…much better :) the pink is a pillowcase crying out for a crochet edge, and the blue, well, it’s just pretty!

The brooch is so… shiny (sounding like a bird?), I didn’t really think of having a use for it, but it’s very happy to look at stuck on my pin board!

Have a great weekend!

See you soon,

Hayley

Xx

P.S. I have been working on something REALLY awesome I want to show you but it’s not ready yet….soon I swear! xx

Colour Therapy

When we first moved into our house, nearly four years ago, I was heavily pregnant with Little H and we didn’t have much time for the usual decorating or organising of the house. Other than our living room and the Nursery, which got a quick lick of paint, everything else just got a good clean and that was that. However, in our bedroom, the wall opposite our bed was red; bright, deep, rose red. Every morning I woke up and the first thing I saw was this wall and it made me soooo angry! I didn’t realise it at first, but this wall was making me irritable, and grumpy from the moment I opened my eyes. I thought I was being silly (pregnancy probably had a lot to do with it!) but one day I could stand it no longer and I took a paintbrush and went over the whole lot in cream paint left over from the lounge. I did a terrible job because I was as large as a whale and I was angry at the wall for being so red that I could’nt stand it.

The next morning I woke, and guess what?...I was calm, and I was happy! It really was the colour that drove me crazy, I knew it all along. Never underestimate the influence of colours in your life!

Its been kinda stressful here lately with a lot of things that need my focus all at once, and some that I’m not even qualified to deal with. There hasn’t been much time for the things that relax me like crochet or painting or making, but there has been time to play with colour. And this has truly brightened some days, in a very small but very tangible way.

My little yarn pegs make it really easy to mix things up and dream of future projects without committing much time just yet. The colours above are the final selection for my ocean ripple blanket which I started a few weeks back for Little A.  Hopefully I’ll share a little more on that when I have actually made some progress!

As if two unfinished blankets weren’t enough, I’m already dreaming of another! Here are my latest set of colours. Do you like them?

How are you? Why not get the colouring pencils out if you’re feeling blue and see what colour can do for you?

Thanks for coming by, see you soon!

Hayley

xx

Lately

 Lately (as in for quite a while lately) I have seriously been lacking the push to post here. It’s not that I haven’t written posts, I have, but I haven’t posted them just yet. It has felt like my life has really not been about what this blog is about, which is seriously silly because isn’t this blog supposed to be about my life? YES IT IS! And I have MISSED it, oh how I really love to blog! BUT, there have been some changes around here which mean I find myself very busy and short of time to do the things that serious people might deem ‘unnecessary’…like blogging.

However, after a two week break in France (crochet with a view above!) I got the opportunity to rest and reset and I’m getting back on track; I’m going to try and come here to meet you more often again, just with a more varied selection of topics than crafts (totally feel like I’m cheating on craft saying that sentence)as my life really is so much more than making in that way.

The biggest change has been a gradual one, and is in fact the result of one of my new year’s resolutions; to eat WHATEVER I want! I don’t mean stuff my face with cake until my body begs for mercy kind of eat whatever I want; I mean eat what I enjoy, not what my children like! I knew this move would satisfy my adventurous side in the kitchen and that my palette would sing out of joy from the release of bondage to bland, but I NEVER expected what has actually happened; my whole family have completely changed the way they eat and it is SO good!

It all stemmed from constantly suffering with coughs, colds and generally feeling rubbish and tired. As a full time Mum to two boys I know it’s just part and parcel of this job that you get tired but I really felt that something had to change. My resolution this year to eat whatever I want meant that back in February I began a journey into looking at what we eat, why we eat it and what it brings to our life. I love food, don’t diet and really am not interested in weight loss stuff: Boring! But, I am interested in nutrition, especially the health of my family; I feel that as a Mum my responsibility to feed my kids well is one of my primary jobs. When they have control over their own diet then they can eat whatever they want, but I want to know that I have done my part and cannot be to blame for poor health or obesity if they go that way when they’re older!!

When I broke down what we ate it was clear that the bulk of it was empty nutritionally; rice, bread, pasta…not much to offer compared to a tasty chop salad, or even an avocado or poached egg! When I looked at the bulk of Little A’s eating it was alarming how much of it was just rice and oats! Add on to that the kinds of snacks they eat when out; biscuits, rice cakes, breadsticks…oh. It was clear that we were missing out.

I’m naturally quite fussy about what goes into my body, don’t get me wrong, I like a good cake, cookie or biscuit, but I hate all the additives that are added to food and it was naturally my next step to cut out all the stuff that held invisible ingredients; colours, preservatives, sugar syrups etc. it turns out that there’s a lot of stuff in your cupboard that contains rubbish. My tiny kitchen feels a lot bigger now that it’s empty of all those nasties.

‘What DO you eat?’ I hear you ask! Well, we now eat everything FRESH and REAL; vegetables, meat, fish, fruit, nuts and seeds. The kids eat small amounts of local wholegrain bread and oats, but really that’s pretty much all.

I have spent much of my time experimenting with recipes and figuring out how to make everything from scratch in the most efficient way possible; I have had some revelations and some epic failures! I’ll be sharing some great recipes on here as we go, including lots for kids as I think these are the hardest people to feed!

The results have been amazing; I have lost a stone in weight without once feeling hungry or like I was missing out; I have a ton more energy; Little H has branched out and now requests things like chicken legs and olives in his lunchbox (WOW!!!), Little A has a love of cauliflower :)…and this is really only the beginning. The real result has been that I have not had a cold/cough or sniffle since January AND I got paid the best compliment of my life by a 16 year old; ‘Hayley, you look really different…’ Me; ‘how?’  Her, ‘er…healthy!’

 I’ll take that thank you very much!

How are your new year’s reasolutions going? People forget to ask after the first couple of months don’t they? Or is it just that we forget we made them? Keep going if you have…it might just change your life!

Thanks for stopping by, see you soon,

Hayley

xx

P.S. Just proof that we do know how to party: tucking into fresh croissants in the french countryside ;)

Miniature Liberty Bunting

Hello! How was your Easter? I’m hoping that you enjoyed a little extra warmth from the sun as we did; it was SO nice to spend some time in the garden eating copious amounts of chocolate! We also celebrated my Dad’s 50^th birthday with a family dinner over the weekend which was made all the better by being able to sit outside at a local pub: how novel it felt, sitting outside after so long indoors!

Anyway… I was lucky to enjoy a completely child-free morning recently and instead of doing all the things I would normally do (things that I feel I SHOULD do, like housework, yuck) I decided to pull out my sewing machine and have fun just making things. You may remember from a while back (HERE) that I ordered a couple of liberty scrap packs from Alice Caroline? Well I thought it would be fun to see just how many things can be made out of a single pack; often the less I have to create, the more creative I become so I thought this might work out well. Yes? Yes.

Given that Liberty has such beautifully detailed fine prints, it suits well to small-scale projects like this one. The idea for bunting cards actually came first but, naturally, you will desire mini Liberty bunting to hang wherever you please once you have made some cards!

There really is no need for a tutorial as it’s very VERY easy; just pick your fabrics, I used as many different ones as were in the pack. Enjoy cutting up LOADS of teeny tiny triangles. Ah.

If you want to make them into cards you’ll need to fix them to your card with a small dab of glue stick; don’t flatten them, just use enough to keep them in place whilst you sew. And then use your machine to join them up.

It’s helpful to start with your needle through the card as it gives a neater finish. It’s also wise to go slow as you may need to stop every now and then to raise the foot and tuck the fabric back underneath. When you’re done just leave a long tail, tie a knot and fix the ends on the inside of the card.

  

                                                                      TA DAH!!

The best bit is that they’ll happily agree to be Birthday, Thank you, Baby or Mother’s day cards!

If it’s bunting you’re making (why wouldn’t you?) then you’ll probably find it MUCH easier to fix them lightly to some baking paper and stitch through the lot the same way as the cards. 

When you get to the end just keep going for a while, then leave a long tail before cutting off. You can easily tear the paper down the stitch line and the triangles should come away without too much effort.

Stand back (not too far) and admire! You may now rest assured that should a small family of mice enter your home, then they will feel very welcomed by the effort you have made.

Happy making everyone!

Hayley

x