I’m a huge fan of Elyse Major’s blog, Tinkered Treasures, so was very happy to be sent a copy of her new book to review. Adding charm to the everyday is the concept behind Elyse Major’s first book, Tinkered Treasures. It features more than 35 projects, each craft is designed for beginners and can easily be elaborated with, according to your own skill level. Tinkering is the name given by Elyse to the transformation of everyday items. Through you can pick up some great ideas for embellishing, repurposing and altering using items you’ll already have. The projects are split into…
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It’s official! We’ve sold our lovely Edwardian cottage. Over the last few months we’ve been busy de-cluttering, painting, building walls and hiding as much as possible in the shed(s). Our house was on the market for a week, is now off the market, and we’re ready for a new adventure in a different part of London. We’ve had lots of people round to view, even before the photographer had been. We’ve also been arranging our own viewings which is exciting. I’d forgotten just how hard it was to keep the house clean and tidy though. Every day I was trying…
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Was Father Christmas good to you? I must have been a good girl last year as he was very nice to me. I received a years’ subscription to Ancestry which will really help me with my family history research. I want to capitalise on the creative writing course I did at the end of last year so I’m going to make time each week to work on it. I was also given a subscription to Mollie Makes. I think it’s rather expensive for a magazine but I do love reading it and now I won’t feel guilty about spending the…
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Over the weekend I attended the inaugural Mumsnet conference. I applied to join the Mumsnet bloggers group when it launched but I never heard back, so you might wonder why I would pay money to spend a day with them. conference essentials: programme, iPad mini and Orla Kiely I saw it as a day off from my children and yes, I’d happily pay for that pleasure. When I saw my old blogging friend Liska she told me I looked radiant. Yes, I told her. I have a child-free day. I had make up on. My clothes were clean and I’d…
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Last month two new books were published by the Irish fashion designer, Orla Kiely, in her range of cloth bound board books. Just like numbers and colours, creatures and shapes are two beautiful books for babies and toddlers. Shapes focuses on some of the most common geometric shapes and then places them alongside a common object or animal featuring that shape. I love the hexagon and honeycomb page, but there are also a rectangle and house, an oval and a ladybird as well as a star and starfish. Creatures shows her strong geometric-style graphics and patterns to illustrate a variety of animals, from monkeys…
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Tots100 and Ratedpeople.com have challenged us to makeover a room in the most creative way we can think of. The timing is perfect, given as how I have moaned before about our lack of space. Our 10 month old still sleeps with us and I haven’t enjoyed sleeping through the night since she was born. So, our plan. Our front bedroom was originally two bedrooms but converted to one when the loft was converted and a staircase put in. My husband works from home so the room is his office and our guest bedroom. We would like to turn…
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We’re getting both the children christened at the end of the month. We’ve arranged the service, the god-parents, the gifts, a hotel for us all, and a great big family meal to finish it all off. All that’s left are the clothes. The toddler has a lovely pair of smart trousers and a shirt. His sister has a pretty cream dress, her first pair of shoes, and a cardigan. My husband always looks smart in trousers and a shirt. Which just leaves me. I’ve seen some really pretty summer dresses but it just doesn’t feel right to wear a dress…
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Given my frequent mentions of the Queen of Print, Orla Kiely, it will come as no surprise I fell in love with these the moment I saw them. Paper cupcake wrappers featuring a very Orla Kiely-esque car print. I love this design and already have some luggage and a notebook featuring it so I thought these would be fun to use. I am the Queen of the packet mix so tried a Chocolate Muffin Mix from Tesco which I bought recently. The muffins were huge but don’t look too big in these lovely cupcake wrappers. I’ve only heard of…
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I’m definitely more excited about planning how we’re going to decorate our new house than I am house hunting and actually moving. We’ve let house hunting slip recently although we’re planning on going this weekend, weather permitting. We’re all getting fed up of constantly tripping over things, items falling out of overstuffed cupboards and just in general dread of the children needing anything bigger than a pack of nappies. Decorating and buying furniture is exciting though and I’ve been spending hours looking at nursery furniture as Little Sis will finally get her own room. I’m trying to steer clear of…