This week we’re enjoying a sunny break in Devon at our favourite cottage. The front door of our cottage opens out onto the beach and the children have been perfecting the art of sandcastle making and hunting for pirate treasure. pirate treasure straight from the beach There has been plenty of time for me to browse round the local charity shops. I was imagining discovering armfuls of vintage games, linens and quirky seaside souvenirs to brighten up our home. However, despite much looking, my bag is pretty empty. I lucked out on playing cards, picking up a pack of the…
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A new book recently landed on my doormat which combines my love of upcycling and home-making. Creating the Vintage Look by Ellie Laycock encourages you to discover how to make unusual and unique homeware through 35 gorgeous step-by-step projects. What I’m reading: Creating the Vintage Look Upcycling is about taking something old, vintage, treasured, or possibly even broken and giving it a new lease of life by trying it into something new. It’s a thrifty way of decorating and enhancing your home that avoids waste, but is also stylish, and Ellie Laycock shows you how you can make truly beautiful…
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I can often be found scouring my local charity shops for vintage Scrabble sets. I don’t collect them to play Scrabble, which is a shame as it’s a great game, but I use the Scrabble tiles for crafting! Take a look at my latest post about Scrabble tiles over on PinAddicts if you need some inspiration. I thought it was about time I actually made something with them, other than my Scrabble-inspired tile biscuits. When we moved into our house the most noticeable thing was the number of empty picture hooks around each room. The place had been covered with…
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I’ve been having a great clear out over the weekend. We have a friend coming to stay which means we needed to clear out the spare room. It’s become a bit of a dumping ground so we spent a couple of hours sorting stuff out to sell or take to our local charity shop. I haven’t written here about our charity shopping exploits for a while. Since we’ve moved I have to admit to visiting our local charity shops more often as our local high street has lots of them, and there are not a lot of other shops to…
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It seems an age ago since we were lucky enough to come across a really cute little wooden doll bed on a recent charity shopping spree. It was quite big but we managed to get it home on the bus, just! We paid £2 and when we got home I realised it was from Ikea and actually retails at £14 so I felt quite proud of our bargain, especially as Little Sis has been playing with it even since. I knew I wanted to personalise it for her so the first step was to give it a wash, a quick…
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I love a challenge and was excited to be asked to take part in the latest one from MoneySupermarket.com, to improve a room of my choice within my home. As you all know we only moved into our new house last month so it was pretty difficult to decide which room to improve. I settled on Little Sis’s room as she moved into her own bedroom when we moved house. Considering she had shared with us from the day she was born, the transition to her own room went completely unnoticed by her. I miss her little sniffles and snores…
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It’s no surprise that I’m spending most of my time thinking about our new house. We are waiting (impatiently!) to hear that we’ve exchanged contracts and fingers crossed that will happen any day. This time round we’re paying a removal firm to pack and move us. With two small people it’s pretty impossible to concentrate on packing more than the essentials we’ll need for the first few days. At the moment I’m worrying about a cover set, stair gates and black out blinds but I’m sure they will be replaced by something else tomorrow. Our new house is bigger and…
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I’ve had an idea about making a bunting blanket for a while, using a vintage blanket and scraps from my stash. Vintage bunting blanket I love experimenting with dye so tried dyeing part of an old baby blue cashmere blanket with Dylon Sunflower Yellow handwash dye. It didn’t look pretty during the process and I wasn’t too sure about colour mixing rules either. Anyway, I rinsed it and left it to dry and in the daylight it looked nice, a kind of faded green/yellow. From my stash I used some previously dyed vintage wool blankets which had been dyed with…
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Life’s a bit too manic at the moment. Little Sis started walking on Monday (finally!) so any snatched moments of relaxation I once had are now non existent even harder to come by. Whilst I like the fact she can now go and get the toys she wants I have to constantly check she’s not causing mischief. When I returned from the nursery pick up the latest Cath Kidston catalogue was waiting for me. I sneaked 5 minutes to myself to have a look through it whilst enjoying a cup of Galaxy Bubbles hot chocolate – perfect for this bleak…
