Have yourself a crafty little Christmas...

With it being my first Christmas in my little flat, and also being a little bit short on funds, I decided that my Christmas tree would be a thrifty masterpiece with homemade goodies galore. That might have been a slightly over-optimistic goal with the craziness of the run-up to Christmas but my tree did bear the fruits of a few of my stitching labours...

 

The robin was made at the Make Lounge in North London, accompanied by lots of prosecco and a lot more gossiping. Would definitely recommend it as a great alternative to dancing round your handbags for a girly night out.

And the homemade bits under the tree? Some gluten free gingerbread (not JUST for me, some were presents...)

And some pearl earrings for my sister, made from the stash of pearls from my grandparents old jewellery shop.

May all your Christmases be crafty and bright xx

Moving day

Today has been somewhat traumatic due to the pretty bleak state that the previous owners left the flat in. First mission is to get rid of a whole van load of rubbish that they left behind, and to give the flat a good scrub to make it vaguely liveable (enclosed picture of freezer gives you a good idea of the whole flat).

 

 Not too busy to celebrate with some ‘champagne’ (Co-op Brut) and fish and chips though.

And here’s the muscle helping me to move in. Thanks Al, you’re a trooper!

Completion cushions

I completed on my very own 37 square feet haven in South London today, HURRAH! Which means that tomorrow I can pick up the keys.

So obviously the first thing I did was to drive to that well-known Swedish homeware emporioum. The object of this mission was to buy myself a cheap wicker chair that I could use in my lounge until I get my sofa delivered, approximately four weeks from now.

In a fit of indecision and borderline panic driven by firstly getting lost amongst the Milton Keynes roundabouts, and then by going against the arrows in Ikea, I couldn’t bring myself to buy a chair, and so instead bought two large cushion pads and beautiful double duvet and pillow case set as I love this fabric.

Here are the fruits of my labours, and I still have a whole half a duvet cover of fabric and two pillow cases left....cheaper than a new chair.

Patchwork cushion beginnings

In a bid to stop myself from whiling away a whole day of browsing furniture and other people’s interiors blogs on the interweb I’ve decided that it’s not too early to get started on kitting out my new pad (mine in four more sleeps!) So take four fairly nasty cushion pads, which have moved house with me more times than they’d care to mention, plus one pile of scrap material, which is longing to reclaim its former glory and find a place to call home. Said pile consists of:

• Material given to me when I was teaching in Japan
• Two Cath Kidston tea towels (not a fan of drying up)
• One cheap nasty shirt from Brixton market that I liked the pattern of
• One skirt given to me by an ex-boyfriend, also a present from Japan
• 1 old pillow case

Patchwork cushion covers may have been a fairly ambitious project to use to reacquaint myself with my sewing machine but several hours later, here are the finished products. (Yep, there’s only three of them but one of the cushion pads was just too nasty to upcycle and had to be abandoned.)

Oh, and because I was having too much fun to leave the house to go and buy some actual food, I decided that lunch would have to be made out of what ingredients I had left in the house, hence a short peanut-butter-flapjack-making interlude. One weekend day very well spent.