Polaroid Fridge Magnets

I have been planning to make these Polaroid Fridge Magnets for ages but just have never got round to it. Well, last weekend with all the rugby on I finally sat down to make these Polaroid fridge magnets.

What you need:

• Get yourself a Polaroid template on Google
• Pictures printed onto the template, your chosen size
• Sticky magnets
• Paint brush
• Mod Podge

What to do: (its very simple)

1. Cut out your pictures and stick one of the sticky magnets onto the centre back. 
2. Carefully paint a thin layer of mod podge over the pictures, be careful not to smear the ink. 
3. Continue to paint layers of mod podge over the Polaroids until they are sufficiently covered. 
4. Let them dry and your done! Easy. 

A nifty little meal planner...

So as we all know now, I am moving! Which means that I am now crafting for my flat. So here is a quick meal planner, which took me no time at all.

What you need:

• a frame
• a piece of decorative paper

What to do:

1. On your computer create a word doccument with the days of the week on it. (The picture is of my laptop when I did it, the background is purple becuase it helps with my dyslexia).
2. Now print it off onto your decorative craft paper (using your best printer setting).
3. Pop the piece of paper into the frame and you are done!

Now all you have to do is write on it with dry wipe board pens and you can write what you will be eating that week on it!

Moving on...

So as mentioned in a previous blog, I have got a job! Which also means that I am moving away from the sunny delights of Norfolk and heading to one of my favourite places on this earth... Bath. Well, OK, I am not exactly moving to Bath as it is really expensive, but I am going to be moving near it (which is good enough really). So over the next few weeks I will be busy preparing to move, buying all the bits and bobs which I will need in my new home and getting ready for my first day at school!

Home is the comfiest place to be... Winnie-the-pooh

So I have moved a lot in the last five years, going to university, changing from halls to student housing (a couple of times), moving from my childhood home into rented, having my own flat and moving back to my parents new (old) house in Norfolk. It can be difficult to tell where home is throughout all of these changes, but to me home is where my family is, where my teapot is and where I can just be. And so I made this, a picture of where I feel home is to me. Starting from my childhood home, London (as although I may not have ever really lived there, I feel so at home and at peace in St Martin in the Fields), Leicester (my university home) and Norfolk, my family home.


The Norfolk part of this 'home' is actually quite an strange story, my family have been wanting to set up a B&B for about ten years now. But to make it happen, we had to wait until timings fell into place: me and my brother leaving for university, enough money and my mums job relocating somewhere which would be touristy enough to set up a B&B, and of course all of these actions take time to fall into place. But finally my mum got a new job in the East of England, yet that's a big place. We finally settled on North Norfolk, a beautiful area we have never really explored. We looked at a few properties and they finally found the perfect one, which my mum was ready to put in an offer as soon as she saw it, but apparently they needed her husband to see it before any offer was excepted. So we bought an old bakery in the middle of nowhere. After contracts had been exchanged, my uncle (who has been researching our family history) said that he recognised the name of the village we were moving to and once he checked his records it was correct that we had family from this village back in the 1800's. Well, we were all shocked, I only thought that my family came from London and Sussex, but it appears that before living in London we came from Norfolk, and not just any part of Norfolk, the ten miles around our village. This of course was very exciting and as I loved history I decided to research the history of our house as when we moved in we were given a large box of deeds. After much research and cross-checking it with my uncle we are quite sure that not only did our relatives lived next door, but they married into the family which made our house a bakery and built the windmill in the next garden! So I can now finally say that this is our family home, our family may have left it for 100 years but they have come back home again.

Anyway so here is my home, made from the maps of everywhere I call home. Rather than spend £185 on a similar idea from notonthehighstreet.com I made my own version for just over a tenner. Cut out the letters from white card, choose the size of the letter by what fits best on your maps. Stick the card letters to the maps and cut out the maps. Now elevated them in the frame by sticking five or six bits of card together as pillars. Now stick it all down to the backing piece of card on frame and hang it! If you buy the maps from a charity shop (like I did) and buy the frame from IKEA (ERIKSLUND frame), this should cost you just over a tenner.

There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.
Jane Austen

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Santa Claus is Coming to Town...

So whilst I was at the craft fair I busied myself with making some Christmas stockings.
For the last month I have been collecting different ribbons, this has now sparked a new love affair between me and ribbons and I plan to use more soon. Anyway so I made these traditional Christmas stockings with my family's names on it for that personal touch! They are very simple to do;

• Cut our two stocking shapes by drawing your desired pattern on an old newspaper and depending on your preference either embroider the names on first of last.
  
• Now turn over the top of the stocking to create a neat edge and sew it into place. Do this on both pieces of the stockings.
• Sew the ribbons on using a similar colour thread, don't worry about the ends, they will be neatened up when you sew they two stocking sides together.
  
• Now sew the two sides together and add a loop of ribbon so you can hang it on your bedpost/mantle piece.

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October

Well, I apologise for not writing a blog for AGES, there is no excuse as I have only been slightly busy. Anyway so here is a blog about the flower arrangements I have been making for my parents Bed and Breakfast. Another idea from Martha Stewart I recently found was a pumpkin vase...









So here is how to do it...

1. This time I decided to use squashes however I do warn against this as squashes are very hard to carve. Use pumpkins, so much easier and the effect is the same. So, carve the top off your pumpkin and scoop out the seeds and flesh (use the flesh to make pumpkin soup).

2. Put either a small pot in the pumpkin or I used a freezer bag in the centre and fill it up with water.

3. Now start arranging your flowers. Make sure you hide the tub or freezer bag by arranging flowers over them.

And finally here is our family carved pumpkins, left is my aunt Jane's, middle left is my bothers, middle right my dads and right is mine... Happy Halloween.

Also, thank you to everyone who has been visiting my blog from Ikea Hackers.

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A childhood memory...

I grew up in a beautiful village in Sussex, we lived in a basic end of terrace house yet this house was set in the beautiful wield. Our garden stopped short of an area of outstanding natural beauty and even though our house wasn't beautiful, a year before we moved from it I decided to make a knitted doorstop to have at university.

So here is my slightly quirky knitted doorstop and pictures of my old home to show you how similar (or not) they are.

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