Things To See And Do - Arundel

A while back Chris and I started a habit of making sure we went on weekly dates. Each week we had to base the date on a letter of the alphabet. You can see our alphabet dates here. Unfortunately, we only got to D before we gave up. It turns out that theming dates on letters is actually quite tricky!  We did continue our weekly dates for a while without the letters to hold us back, but then life got in the way for a while.

But for the past month or so, we have been making a conscious effort to go out on weekly dates again. This time we have just decided to go and explore a town or village each time.  So far we have been to Winchester, Southsea, Bournemouth and The New Forest. I thought it might be nice to document the things we do and the places we see to unearth any hidden treasures, and give you some ideas if you want to visit.  Or, if you have been before and have any suggestions of places to go you can add to the conversation in the comments section!

So, on Wednesday we visited Arundel in West Sussex. Despite driving past Arundel Castle on my way to and from Sussex Uni many moons ago, I had never actually visited, so this was our first stop!

Arundel Castle has a variety of ticket choices, and so you can pick from paying £9 each for a bronze ticket, which only really includes the castle grounds and gardens, all the way up to gold for £18 which lets you get inside the whole castle including the bedrooms.  

We went for the silver ticket which meant we payed £12.10 each and could see the grounds, gardens and also inside the Castle Keep.  They also offer a Gift Aid scheme wherein if you pay a voluntary 10% gift aid then you get double that donation to spend each in the coffee shop.  We thought this was a great idea and it was nice to get an ice lolly and drink inside!

Since it was such a sunny day and we wanted to spend most of it outside, we probably could have just gone for a bronze ticket, and spent all our time looking at the beautiful gardens, and the castle from outside. But it was nice to get a glimpse inside the castle too.

My favourite bit was definitely the walled garden!  It was really pretty spectacular! It included loads of beautiful colourful flowers, and also had lots of wooden sculptures, fountains, and GOLD!

I think this fountain was the prettiest!

After we had finished wandering the grounds we popped into Arundel for a spot of lunch.  We found a nice little place called  Pappardelle Ristorante and Osteria (I think they must have had an update because the pictures on the website do not look like the same place inside). The decor was rustic and modern and I particularly liked their copper tables. I ordered a WooWoo!

The menu looked pretty delicious too, and in the end Chris and I both ordered the Duck Salad. It. Was. Yum.  

After eating we went for a look around the village. I really liked the look of their local Butchers!

We found some fantastic Antique shops. The one pictured below had some really unusual (and expensive) pieces inside. Can you see the Hippo in the window?

There were also more antique shops hidden behind this one, all selling pretty cool stuff. I liked this room pictured below in particular, it seemed to have an industrial chic theme mixed in with a bit of vintage school ware.

We also ventured in to another shop called Arundel Bridge Antiques Centre, again which had stalls from many different sellers.  My favourite was Arundel Photographica, which sold the biggest collection of vintage cameras I have ever seen!

Have you been to Arundel before? What was your favourite part?

I'm not sure where we are off to next week. Any suggestions for nice places along the South Coast?

 Laura xXx

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Easter Bank Holiday Happenings

Happy Easter chaps! I hope you are all having a great bank holiday weekend!

I've been having a lovely time, with family, friends and lots of crafting!  We had a couple of our friends over on Friday night for a dinner party, and they brought us the pretty tulips in the picture above.  We ate lots and had a fun time playing Cards Against Humanity!

On Saturday I started some craft projects. I recently bought a little loom from Tiger. I think it's really meant for children, but it only cost £7 and I have wanted to give some weaving a go for a while now. I'm not sure if I like how this one is turning out yet, but we'l see how we go!

I also tried my hand at some sculpting using air dry clay. If the project turns out well I'm sure I will post a little tutorial about it. 

We spent the rest of Saturday playing the new Resident Evil game and then watching films!

Yesterday I had a nice catch up and coffee with with a friend, before heading out to have lunch with the family.  My Mother-in-Law surprised us with a build your own Sundae competition, which was great! Really we all won because we got ice cream and lots of treats!

Today I am plotting the final touches to our lounge re-decoration. As I said in this post, I was on the hunt for some botanical style pictures to hang, and now, thanks to lots of help,  I am spoilt for choice!

My friend's Mum read that last blog post, and spotted a book while she was out and about which she very kindly bought for me! It's got lots of cute little illustrations of plants, animals and trees inside with the name of each written below it.  Lots of which include the colour yellow which will fit perfectly with the yellow and grey theme we've got going on!  I love the cover of the book too! I think I'll maybe pick 4 pages and arrange them together all in one frame.

Chris also found me a book whilst visiting an antique shop which had lots of botanical pictures inside. It only cost £1 so I snapped it up and got to work ripping it (neatly) to pieces! The pictures below are just some of them, but there are a few I think would work so I might make a little picture trio to go beside our shelves.

If you remember, I also wanted some sort of botanical wall hanging/chart, and I think we may have cracked this one too! While my Mum was out shopping the other day she came across some wrapping paper with butterflies on it.  Knowing that it was the sort of thing I was after she sent me the name of the company that made it. I looked it up online and unfortunately it was an American company, but then I found a UK ebay shop which sold loads of different papers made by this company, and they were all beautiful! In the end I managed to limit myself to just buying 4 (including the one I initially wanted).

I decided that I would buy these papers and then turn them into wall hangings myself.  Whilst I was researching how I could do this, I found the most wonderful tutorial, using the very same paper no less!  What a weird coincidence! Here is the what their finished product looked like, and you can find the tutorial on the Chris Loves Julia Blog.

So it looks like a trip to B&Q is in order!

What have you been up to over the bank holiday weekend?

Laura xXx

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Doughnut Pin Cushion Tutorial

Since I made my doughnut collar the other week, I have become slightly obsessed with doughnuts! And this led me to creating my very own doughnut pin cushion! It could actually be used for a number of things, not least just sitting there and looking pretty, but as I have now taking up dress making I have been in desperate need of somewhere to store my pins!

You will need;

• Felt - Brown an Pink (I chose to use 2 shades of brown)
• Matching embroidery threads
• Variety of coloured embroidery threads (for the sprinkles!)
• Stuffing
• My doughnut template which you can download here. Make sure you download it before you print it otherwise it will come out a different size.
• A needle
• Pins
• Scissors
• Beads (optional)

Print out my template and cut it out, then pin it to each piece of felt in turn, and cut out.

When finished you should have 3 doughnut shapes like this;

The pink is going to be the icing, so you need to trim this a little around the edges to make it look like the picture below;

Now pin the pink felt on to the darker brown felt, and start stitching them together with 2 strands of the pink embroidery thread, using blanket stitch. If you aren't quite sure how to do this you can see a tutorial here.

Then stitch around the edge of the brown felt using the matching thread and blanket stitch. Keep it even and as tight as it will go without puckering. You can see a tutorial on how to stitch blanket stitch on an edge here. I'll explain later why we are doing this.

Add your sprinkles! You can use whatever coloured embroidery thread you like here, and even beads if you fancy it! Make sure the fabric stays flat and doesn't pucker as you stitch. 

The next bit gets slightly complicated.  The way we are going to attach the lighter brown felt to make the bottom part of the doughnut, is by using blanket stitch again. But, remember how we stitched around the edge of the darker brown felt earlier? This was so that we would have something to stitch on to, so that we can join both pieces together.  So start with the inner circle and do your blanket stitch, hooking it into a stitch on the other piece of felt each time.  It's quite important that you try to keep the stitches as even as possible to make sure they match up.

Take a look at the picture below to see what I mean. I just used some scraps of fabric to illustrate the technique more clearly to you, the stitches are a lot bigger than you will sew them.

Next you need to stitch the outside circle together in the same way, but once you have done about a quarter of it you need to start stuffing it as you go, so that it is distributed evenly across the whole doughnut. It needs to be pretty densely packed, but make sure your seams don't pop open too far.  As long as your stitches were quite small this shouldn't be too much of a problem. Keep on sewing and stuffing, sewing and stuffing until you get back to the beginning, then tie off and you are done!

Here is what the finished product should hopefully look like;

I'm super happy with how it turned out, and I shall look forward to my sewing projects even more now!  I kind of want to make a whole box of doughnuts this way, but I don't think I have enough pins to necessitate it! Can you think of any other uses they could have?

I think this would make a great gift though, and they could be made in lots of different colours. What do you think?

Laura xXx

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Finding and Reviewing SLS Free Products

Today I want to talk about something a little bit different.

I once read a book called Cradle to Cradle, it was about how we could improve our future by basically finding a way to recycle everything we use. Its a great book and has some wonderful ideas, but what struck me most was some of the facts about the chemicals and toxins that are in our environment. I've read similar books since which support their ideas and honestly it got me a little concerned at what we are exposing ourselves to.  

It's not really something we are often made aware of, not like the media treat food anyway. Everyday we seem to hear some new piece of information about a type of food that is bad for us, but we aren't being given any information about what is bad for us to put on our skin or in our hair. Probably because the majority of it isn't very good for us I would imagine!

After I read the book I looked into the ingredients in some of my own beauty products, and found that a lot of them were just plain nasty. One that stuck out in particular was Sodium Laureth Sulphate (SLS).  In layman's terms its basically the ingredient used to make most products foam up, and it is used in nearly everything. Its also found in a number of industrial cleaning agents such as engine degreaser!

There have been links of use of Sodium Laureth Sulphate to Cancer, although nothing has been proved yet. But it is certainly an irritant, and will not help you at all if you have sensitive skin or eczema. It has been linked to hormone imbalance and poor eye development in children. I'd really recommend doing some research yourself into this as there is a lot of information out there on the subject, and it is definitely worth being aware.

Now I'm no expert, and I can't say for sure if there are any negative effects of using these products, but I have read a fair amount about the subject and personally, I'd definitely prefer to err on the side of caution! So I've decided to have a bit of an overhaul and try and remove as many chemicals from our house as possible.  I've started with shower products, deodorant and toothpaste since I use these everyday.  I did a little bit of research and found online that Green People were getting good reviews, so I thought I would give them a try. Their products are  made without SLS/SLES, parabens, methylisothiazolinone, methylchloroisothiazolinone, phthalates, alcohol (ethyl alcohol, ethanol), colourants and artificial fragrance, and the majority of their ingredients are organic!

I've been pleasantly surprised with the result, have a look at my reviews on each product below;

Moisturising Shower Gel - This is great, there are no down sides to using this as opposed to any normal shower gel, it works just as well.

Intensive Repair Shampoo -  I knew that the shampoo would be the hardest to find a replacement for. I had tried a natural shampoo a few years ago and my hair did not like it, it all ended up in one big greasy knot! However, I think Green people may have cracked it!  Their shampoo is a little more difficult to distribute throughout the hair than a normal shampoo, and it does take a little more time, but I find that applying the shampoo to 4 sections of my head does the trick. My hair feels clean and I definitely think it is worth the little bit extra time it takes.

Conditioner - I've had no problems with the conditioner. It seems to work well!

Natural Deodorant - I'm pretty happy with this. It is perhaps not quite as effective as an antiperspirant, but still does the job.  I will probably continue to use this as an everyday product and maybe occasionally use a normal antiperspirant for special occasions!

Natural Toothpaste - Again this is totally useable, but rather more watery than a normal toothpaste, I squeezed out far too much on the first go!  This toothpaste doesn't use fluoride, which I know is bad for you to ingest, but is good for your teeth. Since I don't really know enough about fluoride and how lack of it would effect my teeth, I've decided to use this fluoride free toothpaste for my nighttime brush, and stick with my normal toothpaste in the mornings. 

One thing that I have noticed, is that the eczema that was developing on my arms has definitely cleared up a lot! It is now just dry skin, and no itching yay!

The only downside of these products really is that they are rather expensive compared to normal products. However, I definitely think it is worth it and will keep using them!

I'd love to hear if there are any natural products that you like. It does seem pretty tricky to find them! What are your opinions on SLS?

Laura xXx

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My Handmade Aztec Pattern Cami Top

Okay, so I have now attempted my second hand made item of clothing (you can see the first one here), and it is pretty much a success!

This time I tried something a bit simpler, which was the 'Silk Cami Top' by Sew Over It (my new faves!)  

I was actually able to buy this pattern as a downloadable PDF, which was great because it meant no waiting for it to arrive!  It does mean that you have to piece together the pattern though, so you need to make sure you have some tape or glue and set aside some time to make sure you do it accurately, but it didn't take me too long, especially since it is only a small garment. I'm not sure I'd be keen to do this with a dress though, I think I'd prefer to pay the extra to buy the ready made design in that case!

What is most definitely a bonus with a printable PDF, is that if I want to make a different size top, I can print it out again, whereas, obviously with a ready made pattern once you've cut it out to a size, you can't make it bigger again very easily!

Once I had my pattern all I needed to do was to find a suitable fabric, so off to my local Fabric Land I went! I needed a very light material for this top, they suggested silk crepe de chine, rayon or crepe. I hunted high and low but I couldn't find a pattern I liked in the right sort of fabric. Then I spotted this sort of Aztec tribal number, and thought it would be perfect! It didn't have a label on it so I'm still not sure exactly what fabric it is, but it seemed to be the right sort of weight and feel.

It has a very bold pattern so I wanted to make sure that it was balanced well once the top was cut out. I'm glad I took the time to do this because I think it definitely made for a better top on the end. You can see the points of the triangles in the centre of the top, and had I cut it any other way it would have looked a little odd.

I found that I had to adjust the shoulder straps and shorten them to give me a better fit. I did the same thing with the dress I made, so perhaps I have unusually small shoulders!

I'm really pleased with the way it has turned out, I'm looking forward to some nice sunny weather so that I can actually wear it without a cardigan over the top. The top can be worn tucked in or out, but I think I'm preferring tucked in at the moment, especially with high waisted trousers (which these are clearly not!)

Now that I have the pattern I think I will try making this top again and hopefully make a few small improvements on the fit. What do you think? Would you try a downloadable PDF sewing pattern? Have you used Sew Over It patterns before and what was your experience?

Laura xXx

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Decorating The Lounge - An Update

Hi Guys! I'm just popping in quickly today to show you something I am very excited about!  We recently redecorated our lounge and I am just adding the finished touches now. I can't wait to show you the finished product in the next few weeks! I posted the 'before' pictures of the lounge back in November 2013, so it's taken us quite a while to get our bums in gear, but finally we are nearly there!

One of my favourite (and most extravagant) purchases, are some lovely hexagonal shelves. I bought them made to order from Etsy so that they would match our grey and yellow colour scheme, and they arrived last week! Eek! You can see one of them above but we have three all together. I can't wait to get them up on the wall!

Yesterday I had a day out with my Mum and Grandparents, and on our little shopping expedition I found the glass terrarium above for a barganous £14.99, so I had to snap it up so I could display it on the new shelves!

We're going for a kind of botanical theme to the room, and I'd love to get one of those school wall hangings, like the one below from MightyVintage, but they are rather pricey, so I'll have to keep thinking on that!

Have you spotted anything that might fit with my theme? I'm after an old botanical encyclopaedia as well so that I can hang some of the pages in kiko frames, so let me know if you see any of these on your travels!

So far, everything else we have bought has been from Next, H&M home, and Ikea, as well as a few things I have bought from the dump and spruced up!  Where are your 'go to' shops when choosing new furniture and decor?

Laura xXx

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DIY Felt Doughnut Collar Tutorial

The other day I bought a massive bundle of felt, and ever since I have been having crazy ideas of creations I could make with it. So here is my first crazy creation! (no doubt there will be many more to come)

Doughnuts are pretty good right? I mean, they taste good, but they also have the potential to look rather lovely too! Whilst mulling over felty ideas, the thought of a doughnut collar popped in to my mind. I envisioned a bite having been taken out of said doughnut, which would form the front of the collar. Luckily I had the perfect coloured felt to start putting my idea into action, there's nothing better than a pink doughnut, I'm sure you will agree!

I thought it would be nice to take you through a step by step tutorial, so if you like it, you can make your very own!

You will need;

• 1 sheet of pink felt and 2 sheets of brown felt (A4 size). You can use one lighter and one darker brown if you prefer to give the top a baked golden brown look!
• Embroidery threads to match the pink and darkest brown felt.
• My doughnut template which you can download here (you will need to download this to computer first and then print it to make sure it is the correct size.
• Scissors
• Pins
• Your choice of coloured embroidery threads (to make the hundreds and thousands) 
• Beads (optional) 
• A button

First of all print out the template, cut it out, and check that it will fit your neck. If it is too big/small, now is the time to alter it! Once you think it is a good fit, simply pin the template to each piece of felt in turn, and cut out.  So eventually you will have one pink and 2 brown doughnut shapes (as shown in the 'supplies' picture).  The pink one is going to be the icing, so you now want to cut this out in a slightly more wiggly fashion, as shown in the picture above. Leave one piece of the brown fabric aside (the lighter one if using 2 shades), as we won't need to use that for a while, it will essentially just be a backing.  

Pin the pink felt onto the darker brown felt, and then, using 2 strands of the matching pink embroidery thread, we are going to stitch it on using blanket stitch. If you haven't used this stitch before you can find a tutorial here. Try and keep it as even and near as you can. If you haven't done it before it might be best to practice on some scrap felt first.

Felt tends to warp a bit when working with it, so once you have finished this stage you may want to trim the edges of the felt to make sure they both match up.

Now for the really fun bit, the sprinkles!  You can use whatever colours you want for this but in the end I decided I wanted to stick with just white sprinkles. Embroider these evenly but randomly across the pink felt,  making sure that the fabric is not puckering in any places as you go.

I found some little blue beads in my craft stash and I decided to embellish the collar with some of these as well.  I used one single blue embroidery thread to attach these. At this stage, it doesn't matter that the back of your brown felt is getting a bit messy with stitches, as this will be covered later with the lighter brown felt.

Once you are happy that your doughnut is perfectly embellished with sprinkles, it is time to make a fastening.  Now you might want to try your own method of fastening, since mine was a bit trial and error, but it seems to work pretty well, I'm just not sure how durable it will be in the long run.

I started off by picking a button from my extensive button collection. It was a tough decision but in the end I went for a simple little while one.  Then I tied a knot in some thick embroidery thread, making a loop around the button. I tied it so that the button could just about squeeze though.

Next I stitched my loop onto the collar, underneath the pink felt, so that it would not be seen from the outside. The button will be stitched on right at the end of the process.

Now we just need to finish it up by taking our lighter piece of brown felt, and pinning it to the back, then trim the edges if needed to make sure they all line up, and again we are going to blanket stitch around the entire edge of the collar. This is slightly different than before because we are sewing 2/3 pieces of fabric together, rather than sewing one on to another, but it is the same principle. Use the brown thread on the edge with the brown felt, and the pink thread on the inside edge and at the bottom.   

Now all you need to do is sew on your button and you are done!

Here is what it should look like when you have finished...

I am super pleased with how it turned out, what do you think?

I really enjoyed sewing this and it has given me lots of ideas for other felty embroidery projects. Have you ever made anything from felt?

Laura xXx

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