Amazing April...

This month I've loved...

* payday *  ikea * shiny new books * listening to The Smiths and Eddie Reader * glue stick and felt pen sorting * new pink posters * chips and onion rings * workie-mates *  reading The Hunger Games, Cross Stitch and silly teen-girl vampire books! And A Midsummer Tights Dream by Louise Rennison, which I nabbed when it came in on the new books delivery at work, reminds me of being 14 and reading the 'Angus,  Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging' series by the same author! * selling stuff * booking 2 craft fairs * making new, vintage fabric bags * Slightly tidier bedroom * new charity shop dress for £1.50! * seeds shooting and sprouting * homemade onion bhajis * baby robins in the garden - Bobby, Betty and Billy Bobbin! * 

I've been sick allll month with a cough/cold/sore throat/feel like I'm dying/temperature/chest infection thingy that just hasn't gone away and is still making it's presence felt...so mummy made me some happy cakes to cheer me up!

I love Kay and Simes blog, Just Humans Being and Kay gave my blog a cheeky mention and paid me a lovely compliment the other day, thank you! :)

Hope you've had an amazing April!? xx

World Book Night...

Happy World Book Night!!  I picked up a free book at work, The Blind Assassin, a left over from last years World Book Night and one of the only Margaret Atwood books I don't think I've read.  We held an event in the library today for a local author, aged 90+, to launch her second book (very crowded, she was a success!  What an inspiration!) and tonight the author Manda Scott is giving a talk, I didn't go because I had already spent 8 hours in the library today and I don't really read crime books, but I hope everyone else enjoyed it!

I'm going to bed now to read my vampire book!

Did you do anything exciting for World Book Night?

Handmade Birthday...

Last week was my mum's 60th birthday...I made her a special badge...

It's just a big crocheted circle, with a frilly edge and felt numbers and dots stitched on...

...and a card that would have had 60 candles on the front if I'd have done my maths properly!

Do you have any crafty projects on the go?  I've got a big pile of fabric to make into bags and a LOT of crocheting to do to get ready for a craft fair I booked a stall at in June!

Library Love...Cake Angels, The Hunger Games, Pompom Pals, One Piece of Fabric...

The library I work in moved to a new building over the last 2 weeks, the best part about this is the zillions of shiny new books we put on the shelves!

Cake Angels - Julia Thomas

 I borrowed this mainly because it has a recipe for vegan caramel to make millionaires shortbread with (I sooo miss this from my pre-vegan, pre-soya-free days!)  Of course, you first have to make (make!!) your own vegan condensed milk, which sounds a little complicated, but probably worth it.  The book contains lots of recipes for gluten and dairy free cakes, mum's friend at book club can't have gluten so she tried a couple of recipes for book club night and both were very successful too and worked even though we couldn't find any xthanthan gum to put in (nearly every recipe recommended to use this, but we just used gluten free flour and they turned out fine - my mummy is magic at cake though so perhaps that has something to do with it!) 

Pompom Pals - Michelle Tilly

I want to make an orange wave-y pompom pal like the one on the front cover, and the owl shaped one and the hippopotamus-ish one!  These are very cute, but seem to take up a lot of wool to make them and then I think about all the lovely things I could crochet with that wool instead and it seems like waste to make pompoms from it.  Maybe I could make mini pompom pals!

One Piece of Fabric - Lena Santana

I mostly like the bag on the front cover and the dress on the back cover of this book, it's a bit rubbish that the patterns aren't included, you have to draw your own or enlarge the ones at the back with a photocopier, which would be a bit tricky for something like a dress pattern.  But some of the ideas are nice and the pictures are pretty.  Mostly a pretty picture book, some of the projects are a bit weird, like a bikini and a table rosette thingy, but the bag patterns are nice.

The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins

Oh My Gosh!  Read The Hunger Games.  It is soooo good!  

Happy Easter...

I have eaten waaaaaaaaaaaaay too much chocolate!  Hope you had a good one! xxx

Charity Shop Treasure...Granny Crochet Blanket...

This granny square crochet blanket cost me 50p!  50p!!!!!

 I LOVE charity shopping!  Have you found an excellent bargain recently?

Marvelous March...

This month I've been loving...

* having a craft fair stall for the very first time and actually selling stuff * lovely emails from my lovely friends * playing my ukulele * bit tidier bedroom * crochet * rainbow glittery nail varnish * 50p crochet blanket from the charity shop * very loud meeowing cat * listening to Placebo, Norah Jones, The Smiths and the Freaky Friday soundtrack * watching Glee and 90210 and Greek and Winners and Losers * my aloe vera plant producing a baby * yummy curry and birthday tea and cake for my mums birthday * plum blossom * new fishies * croaky frog and frogspawn * sticker books * toast breaks * ice lollies * wearing suncream * wearing my PJs to work * shiny new library and shiny new library books * planting seeds * making yummy vegan burgers * visiting my extremely cute little cousin for her 2nd birthday *

A handsome young pigeon who will be allowed to live in our garden so long as he stops pecking the brassicas!

Crochet!

Woke up this morning to this!  What's going on...I had suncream on last week!

Hope you all had a lovely month! xxx

Sunshiney, Gardeny Day...

Today I gave myself the afternoon off work (I could have stayed if I wanted to but I've been in every day this fortnight and needed to escape to frolic in the sunshine!) and played in the garden...

First I made my Christmas greenhouse...it went together with only a little swearing...

Snail helped to hold the instructions!

Then I got alllll my seeds out and decided what to plant!

I put some courgette, pepper, mini-sweetcorn and a few of each flower seed into pots to grown on...and we've established that all varieties of onions HATE our garden, so I'm doing my spring onions in the big blue  they'll start off the the greenhouse then move outside to grow!

This year mum's given me an 'allotment' at the bottom of the garden to grow my seeds in (I feel like the little girl in the Secret Garden when she's told she can have a little bit of land to grow things in!).  This is it, everything between the two fence posts is mine!

 I cleared all the weeds and some leeks that didn't do very well last year from the back of my patch, then dug it over, raked it, chicken pooed it and raked it again...I planted a row each of spinach, parsley and broad beans.

I managed to pick a little basket full of leeks, kale and purple sprouting broccoli that had overwintered...

These plants gave us broccoli all last year and we didn't quite get round to pulling them up, I was just about to clear them away when I saw they were sprouting again...so I'll leave them where they are for now, until I need the space for something else 

In the mummy part of the veggie garden we have potatoes....

Wild strawberries (rescued from a patch that seeded itself in the garden of our old house!) garlic and leeks...

A pea net and a row each of beetroot, carrot and salad leaves.

 And just 'cos it's pretty and pink...a new hydrangea in the flowery part of the garden!

I've had such a lovely day playing in the sunshine, listening to Mr frog croaking and Mr bird singing and Mr Bee buzzing!  Have you been playing in your gardens?  Have you started planting yet?

Charity Shop Treasure...Cath Kidston Keyring!

I bought this today in my local Shelter shop...I don't usually buy new things from charity shops (I think it kinda defeats the object!) but I saw a box of these hidden away by the counter and had to have one...£3!  Why yes please!  They're sold in aid of Shelter for a raise the roof appeal, which I have googled and am unable to find anything else about...which is funny because there's a code on the back to enter online to 'register your £3 contribution and raise the roof' but the website doesn't seem to exist....I wonder if it's an old campaign....very strange...anyway it's pretty and lovely for my keys and I think Shelter do splendid work, (For about a month I worked as a 'chugger' for various charities (I didn't last long, I'm not a good sales person and I felt bad being paid to fund raise for charities) and Shelter was one of them...if you put on a red Shelter hoodie and stand in a town centre you would be absolutely amazed at how many vulnerable people come up to you to ask for help or tell you their tales of homelessness...I'll never, ever, ever forget some of the things I heard in those couple of weeks so I always give to Shelter or other homelessness charities when I can).

I'm very happy to have found it!  I love the little yellow dog! He's so cute! 

from here