Dear Santa

I've been reasonably good this year, so can I please, please, please have a Katie sofa for Christmas? It's as if they were made for me! 

Even the names are beautiful... amethyst, grass, red, boysenberry, mushroom, peacock, lavender, gold, seaspray and putty *swoon*

Thank you. 

Katie xxx <-- Special Christmas kisses

P.S. Santa- they're even on sale! You'd practically be saving money!

Festive Craft Time

For some reason, I am feeling particularly excited about Christmas this year; so I've decided to embrace the opportunity for some extra-glittery crafts and a dedicated Christmas board on Pinterest. I spent my weekend pinning, stitching and stabbing myself repeatedly in the thumb to make our very own fabric advent calendar. 

I decided to be thrifty with my choice of fabrics, and use leftover scraps from my fabric cupboard - so I'd have more money left to spend on the treats to put in the pockets! The only truly festive fabric I could find was left over from my patchwork quilt, so for the rest of the pockets I used a mixture of printed cotton and old clothes. Pocket 8 is part of a rather hilarious pair of pants (never worn because they were a bit too frilly), and 16 is part of a pair of trousers from my punk days (too big for me now. Hurrah!)

I was hoping to sew the pockets onto a green felt background, but I only had a weeny bit left in my stash, and unfortunately the Patchwork Dog (my local magical cavern of haberdashery and beautiful fabric) had already sold out. Clearly my neighbourhood crafters start their Christmas planning in October! Instead, I bought some green and red tartan brushed cotton, and then managed to fashion a felt Christmas tree shape from the "leaves" of my Poison Ivy 23rd Birthday costume (although the photo of my friend Dan and I below makes it look like we went as Popeye and Olive Oil!)

I'm really pleased with how it's come out. It's bigger than I was expecting about 1.5 x .75m but I wanted to make reasonably large pockets so I can fill them with goodies :)

I backed it with part of a faux-patchwork blanket I picked up from a charity last year for a bargainous £2.50. I thought the muted shades worked well with the colours I've used on the front, and it's given an additional home-made feel without having to spend more time at my sewing machine. 

This is my favourite pocket- I love the tape measure ribbon

I sewed the bias binding onto all the pockets at the same time- it looked like Christmas Bunting; I was a little sad to chop it up!

Using one of my beautiful stag buttons from Fran :)

These are from a box of letter-printed beads I used to make friendship bracelets from during the 90s. This is basically a nostalgia blanket.

It's a bit wonky and certainly very home-made looking- but that was totally the point! (Honest!) I'm really looking forward to 1st December when I can start filling this up with festive treats, and I hope this is something I can pass down to future generations*. 

Katie xxx

* As long as it doesn't fall to pieces from the weight of all the chocolate!

P.S. I'm linking this up with the lovely Lakota's Ta Dah Tuesday

Little things

Hello lovelies! 

How is it not Friday yet? Has somebody stolen Friday? Seriously- with the amount of work I've done already this week there's no way it isn't Friday by now! 

I've been getting myself through a rather stressful week with a few little treats (and one big treat- whoops!), and I feel so lucky to have the disposable income to cheer myself up with something frivolous and material every now and again. I'd like to think I'm not completely materialistic (some of it is edible- you need calories to live, right?) - and I basically just gave a lot of money to charity* which must cancel out my object-lust a bit...

I had to work much later than normal today, so I decided to nip out at what should have been home time and buy myself a little Christmas-flavoured goodness (with added caffeine) to get me through the last few hours of the day... 

On my way home I popped into Tesco to pick up the ingredients for dinner, and spotted these little guys reduced to a bargainous 25p! 6.25p for a pastry-covered piece of festive cheer can't be a bad thing!

puff pastry mince pies om nom nom

I came home to find a very well-swaddled package waiting for me (unwrapping it was like playing pass-the-parcel, on my own, for about 5 minutes...) which turned out to be the plastic animals I won on ebay on Monday (I love "winning" things on ebay- it's the same word for coming first in a marathon, yet all I've achieved is typing "0.99" into a box). The very lovely lady had also popped in a few extra animals she found after the listing was finished. 

I've got a craft project in mind for these, so expect some "before" and "after" photos to pop up on here soon :)

And, finally, I bought a display cabinet for our dining room from our local charity furniture shop. This is the same place I bought my dresser from, which is now sitting pretty in the dining room painted bright blue :) 

I've also got big plans for this cabinet- I'm hoping to attack it this weekend, if I can get a few other craft projects out of the way first. In the meantime, I'm lusting after pictures of beautifully organised cabinets on Pinterest... 

How's your week going?

Katie xxx

* Ok; they did give me a cabinet in return.... *ahem*

Adventuring in the Big Smoke

I spent today exploring London with my Mum and my Aunt, getting confused by tube maps and talking lots of photos like a total tourist- and I loved every minute!

We spent our morning in the Tate Britain having a look around the pre-Raphaelite exhibition. The tickets were quite expensive, but because we went into London Town by train I managed to find a 2-for-1 offer through National Rail. I printed off two vouchers and we offered one to a little old lady who was in the queue behind us so we managed to get all 3 tickets for half price! Thrifty :)

Pre- pre-Raphaelites fuel; cultural exposure burns calories, right?

There were several pieces that really stood out at me in the exhibition, and my Aunt very sweetly bought me a print of one of the pieces and postcards of two of the others from the gallery shop as a surprise! These pieces were some of my favourites;

Lady Lilith by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

The Doom Fulfilled, by Edward Burne Jones. Kudos to the man wrestling the snake- it must have been impossible to concentrate properly on killing it- just LOOK at that girl's BUM! 

After we'd finished at the Tate, my Aunt took us to an INCREDIBLE place for lunch- the Whole Foods Market on Kensington High Street. The first floor contains a restaurant with dedicated areas for different foods from around the world- all cooked from scratch, and most of the meals give you the chance to choose your own combination of ingredients. To be honest, I felt overwhelmed with choice at first (and I was really hungry!) so I opted for a monster plate of approximately seventy billion kinds of salad, for a pretty reasonable £5.90. I'm not talking your average Pizza Hut salad bar here- there was roasted veg, unusual grains, and raspberry and sweet basil salad dressing! Needless to say, I piled that plate as high as I could get it without my arms giving out from the weight!

NOM.

Whilst we ate I had the chance to properly take in all of the options available and, delicious as the salad was, I felt like I'd failed at food- because I could see people eating some sort of curry out of BOWLS MADE OF POPPADOMS. I made a pact with myself then and there that I will return to that restaurant and order whatever it was they were serving in those crispy and edible bowls of wonder. 

THEN my Aunt informed us that the ground floor and basement were filled with fresh produce, a cheese room (that's right my friends - a whole room! Just for cheese!) and some of the fanciest cakes she had ever seen. Needless to say, the remains of our salads were wolfed down faster than you can say "A CHEESE ROOM?!" and we set off to have a good snoop around. I'm sure everyone thought I was a right weirdo taking pictures of barrels of grain and bowls of curry powder, but I thought they were just beautiful. And don't get me started on the cakes!! My Aunt bought Tom and I a cupcake each :) Tom wasn't with us, but I couldn't have gushed about cupcakes to him for half an hour without presenting him with accompanying sugary goodness now could I?

Gourdgeous (sorry- I couldn't help it!)

Fancy bean/pulse/grain dispensers

Prettiest cupcakes I ever did see

And just LOOK at their freakin' festive window display!!!

After feasting our eyes (and bellies!) on the wonders offered by the Whole Food Market we (st)rolled up to Portobello Road, having a good snoop at some of the fancy-pantsiest houses Kensington has to offer along the way. My Mum and I hadn't been to Portobello before, and were very excited to see what it had to offer. When we first arrived, my Mum was a little disappointed in how few stalls there were; but I think that was mainly because we'd come in at the "wrong" end, didn't turn up until 3pm, and Dick Van Dyke was nowhere to be seen. We did, however, see these things during the day;

From far away, the front of these houses looked like a row of candy canes! 

A concrete zoo facade on an ex-supermarket near Victoria Station

Underground mural

Still, I managed to find a lovely woollen picnic rug to double-up as a booster for the broken seat of our old-but-loved living room armchair (and my lovely Mum even put some money towards it!). The blanket was already in the sale, but I decided to try asking for an additional cheeky discount. The salesman wasn't having any of it, but did offer to let me pretend the Rod Stewart song that had just started on the shop radio was a private serenade just for me! Haha :p 

The day ended in the same way that all my London adventures seem to end- legging it through Victoria station trying to make our train, and (normally) leaping aboard with seconds to spare. Unfortunately, this time we missed our train (due to ordering a round of for-the-road hot chocolates with 30 seconds to spare. Doh!). However, we managed to catch one a few minutes later and not get found out (we'd pre-booked bargain tickets with the train line for a specific time). Us - 1, System - 0. Sadly, my Crazy Train RunTM butchered the turkey cupcake* my Aunt had bought for Tom; it was inside a special plastic box, but the end result still resembled a gore-filled horror movie scene set on a turkey farm. Oops! 

Katie xxx

P.S In case you hadn't noticed, I'm feeling a little hyperactive this evening. Probably because I just devoured one of these(!)-

I'm pretty sure my blood has now turned into rainbow-coloured syrup

* Iced to look like a turkey, not turkey flavoured- that would be weird!

Three Things Tuesday

Evening m'dears 

Hope your week is going well so far! Here are three things I've discovered recently that have made me smile:

1. Maggie Thatcher basically invented Mr Whippy icecream! That is definitely my new weird fact (thanks, Heston!), replacing "Did you know tigers have striped skin as well as striped fur?". Although I still like that one because it means someone was brave enough to shave a tiger! Haha

2. Whittards sell EIGHTEEN different flavours of hot chocolate. EIGHTEEN. *cough* stocking filler *cough*

[image source]

3. I wore my new jumper to work today and got a lot of compliments about brightening up a horrible wintery day. And it's super cosy :)

Pictured here with my lovely hello DODO tote bag

Have you discovered anything new this week which made you smile?

Katie xxx

Photo an hour

Earlier this week Fran did a "Photo an hour" post, and I really enjoyed having a nose at what she got up to during the day. I decided to do one too because I thought it might encourage me to get dressed before 2pm on a Sunday would be nice to look back through some photographs at the end of a busy weekend; especially because I never remember to take photos of my everyday life- only of fancy National Trust houses/dragonflies getting it on. 

8am: Sunday morning lie-in on my ridiculous, DIY-d Sweet Dreams pillowcase

9am: Making some wall art using children's playing cards from Tiger. I'm going to use the rest of the set as Christmas present tags. I used purple tissue paper for the background, to match the frame of my Circus cross-stitch which is on the opposite wall of the stairs. 

10am: Breakfast o'clock, with the H&M catalogue. Vanilla chai tea, OJ and a Waitrose pain au raisin bought last night for a bargainous 29p (reduced from £1.29!). Nom. 

11am: Heading out to buy veg from the market with my new pink jumper and the Batman tote bag I won in the hello DODO first birthday competition. Amazeballs, eh?

12pm: Washing out, kitchen cleaned, house vacuumed. Housework is far from my favourite thing to do on a Sunday, but it's free cardio that leaves the carpets clean. 

1pm: Hanging some of our new art up on the wall (Tom doing the hammering, me pointing and saying "left a bit")

A canvas print of one of Tom's photographs of Brighton Pavillion

My new circus cards join some of the embroidered art I made earlier this year. 

2pm: Tricolor fusilli, broad beans and peas with a ricotta and cream cheese sauce for lunch. 

3pm: Framing two of the hello DODO prints I chose as part of my four-part(!!) prize. Sorry about my shoddy photos- you can see better photos of the original prints here in the hello DODO shop

My new "Party Animal" print, in a suitably celebratory frame

I thought the stars on this fabric complimented the stripes of this awesome sea-sidey print 

4pm: Chai Latte and Glee

5-6pm: Writing blog post and editing photos.

I don't have a photo of this because I was (ironically) too busy looking at photos. 

7pm: Mini cross-stitch project 

8pm: Mountain of home-made mezze for dinner

9pm: Cross-stitch finished

Slightly cuter than my last cross-stitch sampler...

10pm: Montezumas chocolate and a kick-ass movie (Red) to be followed by bed.

I hope you've enjoyed having a look at my day. If you've done one of these or decide to do one please send me a link- I'd love to see :)

Katie xxx