A Floral Gazebo

Towards the end of last year, I was asked to cover a gazebo in floral fabric, which I thought sounded very fun! The only downside was where to do it. Normally I do any larger work in our garden (much to the amusement of our neighbours) as our garden is larger than our house!

However as this is England, it was raining so that was no good! Luckily I have friend who live nearby, who have a very large house! So I went there, and put up the gazebo, and when I started to hang the fabric on it, their cats thought it was the most amazing play tent ever!!!

Here are some photos....

 

Handmade Kites!

As it's turned blustery and autumnal already, I was excited to see my patchwork kites in the latest Mini Boden catalogue. I made them back in the summer when it was lovely and warm; here are some photos...

Milford on Sea

I LOVE the seaside. As soon as I smell the sea, I turn into a small child and get excited by everything. I also have to run into it at my first opportunity, despite the weather, as I just love it.

I have excitedly been to a few lovely English seaside towns this year, with the most frequently visited one being Milford on Sea. Milford is a very small, quiet and unspoiled place, near the New Forest, overlooking the Isle of Wight - I only heard about it as a friend of my auntie owns a flat there, and very kindly lent it to us a few years ago to stay in.

Milford has beautiful pebbly beaches, dotted with picture perfect multicoloured painted beach huts, and is just so quiet!!

I went at the beginning of July this year, with my boyfriends family, and we had whole chunks of the beach to ourselves. The sea was deliciously warm then, and quite rough so it was great fun to jump around in the waves and all act like small children. 

There are walks all along the coast, to Hurst Spit, where you can catch a small ferry back to Keyhaven (and maybe spot a seal in the harbour), as well as the other way towards Barton on Sea. 

I'd assumed it was so quiet as we were outside of school holidays, but I went back last week, with my Mum and Auntie, and it was still so peaceful. 

The sea sadly this time was freezing. Like ice. No wonder no one else was in the sea (although we still went in multiple times a day - yes we are nutters)

It is the perfect holiday location though. Beautiful, quiet, and loads to do. Oh and AMAZING fish & chips at Mr Pinks in the centre. 

Walking out on Hurst Spit, with the Isle of Wight in the background. We saw a great firework display there one night, with beautiful views out over the sea. 

Some early morning beach yoga, in my pyjamas. This was 7am though so I am not too surprised that we had the beach to ourselves at this hour!!

Sharing the sunset with quite a few seagulls but not many other souls! We had such a lovely time in Milford, I am sure I will be back there soon!

Nearest Train: New Milton (about 1 hour 45 mins from London)

The Art of the Brick

My auntie and I, at the recommendation of my cousin and his girlfriend, went to the Lego exhibition in Brick Lane (appropriate) yesterday and it was AMAZING!!

I had high expectations before arriving on how impressive everything would be but I just had no idea quite how incredible all of the artworks would be.

Every room we walked in to was greeted by a who host of 'WOW's' which just helped to build up the excitement as we went round, and before we left we had to walk back through all of the pieces again because it was just too goo to leave!

Here are some of my favourite images and go and visit it!!

I was expecting 3D sculptures in Lego but I could not get over how incredible all of the 2D artworks were, and I was not expecting anything like this!!

I would love a Lego globe....maybe when my nephew is older we will have to have a play...

The staging of the exhibition was perfect!

'I bleed Lego'

So moving!

'Incomplete'

My new pet? So exciting that I happened to be wearing the right jumper!

Bob Dylan

http://artofthebrick.co.uk/

Baking Boden Biscuits

Baking Boden Biscuits - I used to love when we had to write stories using alliteration at school, and this title is incredibly satisfying to say!

So as usual, I've been off making some things for Boden photoshoots - only this time I have been baking instead of my usual sorts of crafting. On a random 3am trip to Tesco one night whilst at university, I picked up these fun alphabet biscuit cutters for the grand price of 10p!! How could I not!!

This resulted in some delightful messages being baked for me and my housemates, but then they've pretty much been in a drawer since then!

Then, as part of an Autumn Mini Girls shoot, there was talk of baking 'Boden' as biscuits for a shoot, so I dug out my cutters and got busy creating. It's very exciting to now see them in quite a few pages in the catalogue, and here they are:

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside.

I love the seaside. I miss it, and especially as it's (supposed to be) getting in to summer, I really really miss the sea. Not that I ever really properly lived by the sea. I lived in Portsmouth for 3 years whilst at uni, and managed to go to the beach almost every day, even though it wasn't a proper beach, or amazingly nice, I just love the sea air, and the feel of sand or pebbles beneath my feet.

So as soon as my niece was old enough to stand and walk, I took her to the local parks to play in the sand, as I feel it is very important. I spent most of my childhood holidays outside or on the beach somewhere licking pebbles and eating sand, which is why I believe that I'm so healthy as an adult, I got all the germs in there when I was younger so my body got on and dealt with them, and now I'm thankfully very lucky to have a good strong immune system.

I love my niece, and I know she's only little, but she can be a little bit prissy about things and doesn't like getting her hands dirty (one of her favourite games used to be 'wash hands' - weird child). So i feel it is my duty to teach her to do more outdoory things instead of her more favourite watching tv. Luckily, there's always a Nana (or 2 in this picture) around when I'm home to come and entertain the little one with me, and so when I was home for Easter, we took her to the park to teach her how to make sandcastles.  

Although Nana is possibly getting a little more into it than my niece is, she did love it. So we taught her the important art of building sand castles, and then I taught her the even more important art of jumping on them!! I've heard so many stories of mums nowadays not encouraging their kids to share with others that I feel this was important lesson to learn - have fun with it while it's there, but then there will be plenty more things to play with after, so there's no need to get attached to just one thing. 

On saying this though, I did have to keep swapping spades with the little one when making the sand castles, as she kept insisting that mine was the better spade and she wanted it....I will learn one day!!