and yet more . . . . .

I haven’t been well for the last few weeks and have been on light duties – this soon leads to mischief as I run out of “light”things to do!

I am a collector of “blue & white” Dutch china (along with a lot of other things) and in my kitchen I have a huge “dresser”, designed by me using units from a certain Swedish flat pack furniture store and built by DH.

I loved the result that we had achieved but hated the supplied handles.  I recently had a brain wave – s0 noteworthy that I thought I should blog it (especially as they don’t happen very often!!).

I found some blue & white clog keyrings in a local store and bought enough so that I could use them as handles.  DH patiently drilled holes in them and I fitted them.

Before

After

Sweet huh?

Another project

I like to visit the second hand shops here – as they say “one man’s rubbish is another man’s treasure”.

On a recent trip to the kringloop (community second hand shop) I found two coal scuttles. Both were covered in grime but I liked their shapes and the fact that they had blue & white china handles (although one was missing off the bigger scuttle).  I also had the sneaking suspicion that underneath all the dirt that they were made from copper.  So I took a chance and bought them and a “believed to be” copper kettle (just for the handle) and got my self some copper polish and set to.

   

Crafting for the garden

DH came across this beauty (on that well known auction site).  It is a “Paper Pot Maker”.  He decided to get it for me as he thought I would find it useful for all my seedlings in the new greenhouse.

    

                  

Such a simple idea and the results are fantastic! You wrap newspaper around the body (height according to the line), tuck the ends under then you put it on the base and twist a couple of times and voilà, you have a paper pot!!

Mother’s Day

Made especially for my MIL – I had to use the boy with the tulips stamp (‘cos we live in the land of tulips!).  The daffodils are made using my new flower punch and the centres are made from paper rolled around a cocktail stick. MIL loved it (phew!)

Football Fan

A friend of ours recently celebrated his birthday. I decided on a football themed card as he is a keen football fan! 

Dream catcher

I have always wanted to have a go a making a dream catcher.  As I hadn’t a clue as to how to begin, I found a (cheap) kit and tried my hand.

Where to begin?

Well, here we are in April and I haven’t blogged since January – naughty, naughty!

There is no excuse for my lack of blog posts (a big sorry to all my readers) but I have been busy with major re-design work in our garden and a number of other projects along the way.

I am a keen gardener and like nothing more than sitting in my garden, with a glass of wine and a good book (weather permitting, of course!), but I can only do this if the garden is in good order.

For many years, I have grown all my plants from seed in a tiny walk-in, plastic greenhouse.  Over time, I have had to patch & repair the cover and this year I discovered it could be repaired no more.

After much searching of the shops, we found the perfect greenhouse for me, a polycarbonate, sturdy one.  DH was kind enough to take me to collect it and left the rest to me.

Just as I had planned to start work on the foundations for the greenhouse, the snow arrived.  I could be seen, daily, attempting to dig the frozen clay soil.

After 3 weeks of hard digging, much cussing and questioning my own sanity my beautiful greenhouse was completed!

It is now full of lovely seedlings . . . . . .