Remembrance Day

I know that I'm a little bit late really with this post but better late than never I guess.

This one isn't really one of my crafty things - this one comes courtesy of my hubby!

He decided that he was fed up of buying at least 3-4 paper poppies each year as they would inevitably either break or get lost etc. Instead, he would like to donate his £3-5 to the poppy appeal but make his own poppy that may last for the full 2 weeks that he wanted to wear it.

He took it upon himself to make a couple of poppies for me and him based on the paper poppy that we had already bought.

He raided my sewing box to find what he wanted to use to make them - black and red felt, some random black buttons off an old coat, and cotton to sew it all together.

The poppy shape was cut out in both red and black felt (the black only slightly bigger than the red) and these were sewn together with a visible black running stitch around the edge.

A button in the middle made the centre of the poppy.

And at the same time also attached the pin to the back so that the poppies could be worn.

Adam made two of these to start with (one for each of us) but his went down so well at work - there were a number of blokes who said that they liked it as it was much more substantial than the paper ones and not girly like some of the knitted or crocheted poppies that you see people wearing.

He offered to make a few people at work them for a small donation to the British Legion, which was ok to start with when it was only two or three. He made these first ones in one night but the more he made for people, the more people that saw them and the more people that wanted them.

A few nights it got a bit daft as there were a lot to make so I was roped in as his assistant.

We got a production line going and got through a few more between us.

They are all slightly different depending on the buttons that we had to put on each one. There were also a couple of slightly smaller ones made towards the end with some leftover felt that we had after cutting out the full size ones.

When they went into work for people to buy the poppies. Adam had typed up the poem "For the fallen" which contains the words of the eulogy and presented the poppies in bags with the card inside.

Each poppy was sold for between £3 and £5 - depending on people's chosen donation and all funds received were donated to the British Legion.

He raised £50 in total for the poppy appeal which the volunteers were very impressed and pleased with when he took this in to make his donation.

I think there will be more made for next year - when I've replaced the felt and buttons that have vanished from my sewing box!

If anyone would like to place their order early then please let me know by email on happyhenlowcrafts@gmail.com

Catch up of knitted squares

On Monday I wasn't too well. I was up most of the night being poorly so didn't go to work in the morning.

That was pretty horrible but let's just brush past that part shall we?

Once I was starting to feel slightly better and had made it downstairs to the sofa I actually ended up having quite a nice day.

I sat and watched all of the remaining episodes of the original Cold Feet that I have on DVD and did a bit of a catch up of the knitting project that I started my Mum L and shared with you in my last blog.

I finished off my second round of each colour so I now have 2 squares of each colour.

I think that this means that I am one ahead of Mum L now!! Although she's probably done more since I saw her a couple of weeks ago but at least this makes us just about even.

As I went through and added more colours to our completed pile, I started to think about what patterns they might be able to make so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to dedicate a double page spread in by BuJo to working it all out.

So far I have included the scrap of paper that was used on our girly day together to work out the pattern that we would each follow to get the same size squares at the dimensions that we thought would look nicest within the finished blanket.

Mum L has started knitting all of her colours in a pattern which does make sense to ensure that we get an even number of each so I think we will stick with this.

I have started to come up with a few combinations of what order we could put the squares in at the bottom of this page but until we get a few more to have a look at I find it hard to tell what it will look like. I have saved the whole page on the right so that we can fill all of the little squares with the colours of all of the squares that we have made once we decide that we have enough for a blanket.

This way we will really see what it is going to look like before it is all sewn together.

Hope you're all having a good week. Please check out my previous blog about the start of this project  if you haven't already read it as I think I forgot to share this one on social media. It may make what you have just read a lot more understandable!

I am feeling a lot better now. I hope you are all well.

Catch up with you again soon.

Knitted squares

I have been struggling a little lately to keep up with the knitted squares that I started with Mum L on the girly day that we had together and that I told you about here.

I was made to feel a little bad at the weekend when we saw them as I was handed a bag full of squares - 11 in all!

I am really pleased with the way they look - the colours are really nice and look really good together as well.

I felt I needed to play catch up a little so I managed one more square last night bringing my total to 6 so not too far behind. They don't take too long to knit up so I'll get there soon.

I like the pattern that Mum L has knitted hers in. I know that we were going to go for a random pattern but that often ends up being more difficult than just creating a pattern and following that.

I think that we should go with this as the order of our squares and maybe just alternate between mine and hers. Perhaps something a little like this...

I think that this could work.

We'll see what they look like a bit more again when there are more squares to see it in full. I'm excited to see how it turns out.

I got my new BuJo

Hope you are all having a good week.

This post is a little bit overdue but I am still excited about the new journal that I got about 6 weeks ago.

I treated myself to the Leuchtturm 1917 which is one of the ones recommended by lots of other BuJo-ers and is a notebook with an index in the front and space to jot down all of the ideas afterwards.

I chose the dotted notebook as I felt that lines or squares could be too restrictive if I ever got into making my BuJo pretty but I knew that I would struggle writing without any direction so I couldn't cope with a blank notebook.

It's too pretty that I almost daren't start to write in it.

It has this little pouch in the back to add in anything that won't quite fit in the journal itself.

Being so brave as I am. I quickly came to decide that this was the easiest option for the first way to include the first thing in my new journal.

Only a couple of days earlier we had received this letter in the post...

Handwritten envelopes never come through our door so either someone has got my husbands birthday really badly wrong...or he's ordered something off the internet.

It was a lovely letter from the company that we are currently ordering our food boxes from. It has a photo of the guy who handwrite the letter inside as well holding our envelope before it went into the post.

Argh! The first mark in my new book - it had to be my name inside the front cover.

After this I bottled out again for a little while and started instead to stamp and colour onto some plain cream coloured paper that I could then decorate my pages with as I went along. Postponing the actual writing in the nice new book again I guess.

I started off by stamping a few little images that I thought I could use to decorate

 Coloured them in

 And eventually got up the courage to stick them into my book to form a part of my Key dates page for this year

Here is the page completed

I'm pretty pleased with the way that it turned out. Even though this was the first page that I did in my BuJo I think that this is still one of the best ones.

I'll update you again soon with some of the other things that I have been doing and with a few newer pages in my BuJo.

My frog lizard friend came back!

It's been a little while since I posted and updated you on what was going on so I thought I would just drop you a quick update tonight.

I've been away on holiday and have had a couple of pretty bad weeks either side as well so I've struggling with the blogging thing recently.

Here's for the good stuff though!

I got my little frog lizard friend back last week from being fired and here he is!!

I'm really quite pleased with him. He's anything but perfect but I like the way that he came out.

I think it can safely be said that I didn't mix up the orange and the yellow paints in between coats too as the legs came out the right colours.

The stars also worked as well as I had hoped as well. Not too much runny paint.

The only thing that I do wish that I had done slightly differently was to be a little bit more careful in trying to join up the colours from the legs to the body a little bit better. There are a couple of white gaps that I wish I had avoided.

I will try to catch up with you a little bit more as soon as I can with some of the other things that I have been up to. I am really really happy with him though.

I think he will end up with some glossy black eyes if my hubby gets his hands on him.

Maybe time for me now to find a little sneaky hiding place for him tucked safely out of the way. I think he may go into my crafty room.

Have a good night. Sleep well.

Bullet Journal

I have recently seen the idea on Pinterest and other social media for creating what's called a bullet journal. I have always loved all kinds of stationary and notebooks etc. (sad I know!) but this has given me a great idea and purpose for one of the many books I have. It's also going to be a fantastic excuse to use colouring crayons, coloured pens, stickers and all sorts.

I have seen that lots of people create all kinds of colourful and elaborate pages in theirs and I know that mine probably won't be as pretty but I have decided to start out with the basic principle to begin with.

I tried out the idea of a year planner as one of the first pages as this is what I've seen in lots of people's journals. As you can see I got as far as updating this for July. I did this when I first started the journal but haven't got any further than this. I don't think a full year planner will be something that I will bother with really going forward. The whole point of the bullet journal and using a notebook to record your ideas and plans instead of a regular diary is that it's completely adaptable to what you want to make it.

I have started off using this notebook for now to see what works for me and what I will and won't use. I have already decided that this is probably one of the things that will go out of the window when I transfer to my shiny new notebook. That's the joys of the whole concept.

From the start of my notebook I have also added a number of other pages. the next is this:

A goals page for the year. I do like the idea of creating this kind of thing at the beginning of a year so that I can track my progress throughout the year and see how I am getting on. I did cheat a little by starting this half way through the year but all of this is still to be achieved.

I wasn't sure how I was going to plan out my notebook to start with and spent a couple of weeks researching ideas for pages that could be added. There were a lot of really good ones that I would like to try or have tried within my notebook but one of the things that I found hardest to work out was the order that everything should be added. I couldn't find too many tips on this kind of thing online which I was really confused by as lots of other people seem to used notebooks that have fixed pages and not rings.

I have tried to start with to go with the yearly stuff at the beginning - so the couple of pages that you have already seen - then monthly things, weekly things and collections towards the back. I had to add extra tabs already to my notebook to work this out and found it very difficult to try to calculate how many pages I might need for each thing.

I have worked out I think that people probably must split their notes into two really. All of the time related stuff at the beginning of their notebooks and the collections and unlimited time stuff towards the back. This is what I am going to go with in my new notebook I think. I did re-arrange my pages a little from the first couple of weeks that I started and brought forward some of the weekly pages.

The next page that I have added to my notebook is a revision plan. I have another exam to sit in September and as this covers a couple of month, I could justify this as being the next page.

I have split the page into the days that I plan to do some college work and to revise and tried to plan out which chapters I should be working on and the questions to practice once I have worked on specific chapters. Fingers crossed all goes to plan and I pass the exam! I started to write this post a little while ago and have since failed to stick to the plan in its entirety here but I have been able to adapt as I go along - I am still on track to complete everything as I would like to in the next couple of weeks.

My book then goes onto monthly pages. This is a page that I created for July - as you can see I only started half way through the month but i had added it to include my favourite thing that I have done each day or just a positive moment. The best thing about each day basically. I have missed out a few days at the end of the week but I hope to continue this idea into August. I think it's a really positive thing to keep me on track and getting better.

I forgot to set this page up for August as I got carried away with my weekly pages and missed it out but I have still added it into the notebook at the end of the first week. This is why it's so important to plan and to get everything in the right order first time around and why I'm really pleased that I'm not using a good notebook for everything yet.

This is my weekly spread from a few weeks ago which I found someone else had done online so I did use a lot of their ideas to create this. There is a small section for each day to try to keep me organised and on track with what needs doing each evening after work. I have found that this has been really useful actually. I like the idea of keeping a record of what clothes I wear each day. I'm not really sure why or what I'll use it for but I guess I will at least see patterns emerging for what I wear a lot, particularly at work. I know that sometimes I think I should have more smarter days than I actually manage so this could be a good way of keeping track. I also particularly like the colours and details found from the daily activities section and it is really interesting to see in a graph the impact that the amount of sleep that I get impacts on my mood.

I found that I didn't use the weather record on this weekly page and have found it much easier to use the monthly page to record the temperatures to use for my weather crochet project. If you want to see more about this, you can read it on this post here. I will just record this on my monthly pages going forward.

I made the below review of July's pages. I have noticed from reading it back that I have made a few similar comments in here and contradicted myself a couple of times but I managed to get most things sorted as I wanted them as I have continued with August.

Here is the first week that I set up for August - I laid out the days of the week at the top so I can add notes specific to each day in these. I wanted to try and fit everything that I liked from the previous couple of weeks onto the one page but I wasn't sure how this would work so what I ended up with for this week were the days along the top, task activities, shopping list, notes etc on the bottoms of the first page and I have cut a section out of the top so that I can also have a mood log page at the bottom whilst still showing the day's details at the top.

Towards the back of my notebook I have also added a few collections pages.

I have added some notes for places that I would like to visit, places to go and things to do when we go up to Yorkshire each year, places that we would like to visit when we go to Normandy in September. I have also added the below couple of pages. One for TV series that we are watching:

 One with ideas of places that we could go for days out not too far from home:

This one is for stage shows that I would like to see. I particularly like the way that this one has come out. My handwriting isn't normally something that I particularly think about or dislike but this is something that I am starting to think more since starting this book. I have tried writing in a black pen (I normally always use blue for everything) and also making my font be in capitals for this whole page. I think it looks a lot neater than any of the other pages I have done.

I also quite like the little pen drawing at the top of this page. I don't think that I will be massively decorating any of my pages - not like some of the painting and fantastic drawings that some people do but the odd thing like this I think I could manage. This has also given me the idea to use some of the stamps that I have for my card making. I think I would be able to stamp the image and colour them in on a separate sheet of paper/card and add them to some of my pages for decoration. I think I would really enjoy this too as I used to enjoy this part of the card making. I have some lovely colouring pens that I can use.

The last page that I have added recently and one possibly the one that I am most happy with so far is my page for "Do what makes you feel good". This is page of all of the things that I can do when I am feeling a little bit rubbish and want to pick myself up. I have always known that there are a lot of options of things that I enjoy doing and can do during these times but somehow when these kinds of moods come to me, a lot of the nice things that I can do to overcome them often can escape me.

I think that I will find this page really helpful for me.

My notebook at the minute just has a plain black cover which isn't the best for me. I am going to decorate it but again this is something that I think needs perfect planning. The one other thing that I have as suggested by a number of people who create bullet journals is wash tape. I know that people use this to decorate their pages so I think I may try to add some soon.

As well as the stamps coloured in I also like the idea of using wash tape and stickers on my pages. I have added stickers so far with the feet on the Walking Dead - series' watching pages and I like the way that this one has turned out. I will definitely make this prettier as I go through and will also master the layouts that I like best. Since starting to write this, I have received my new pretty notepad to start but I do think that having the planning notepad to use until I start working in the one is a good way of working on layouts and ideas that I wouldn't want to try in a new pad and risk messing it up. I know what I'm like, as soon as I messed something up I would think that the whole thing was ruined and get disheartened with it. At least this way I can rip out a couple of pages if I mess anything up.

Please follow me on histogram if you like my blog posts katelewis88 and I keep you updated with any new blog posts that I make. You can also sign up for the newsletter on this blog to be emailed each time a new post is uploaded.

I will shortly be writing a "part 2" to this blog post as, since starting to write this I have got the new notebook that I wanted and have started to make some entries into there. I'm not working in it fully yet but I will post an update for you soon.

A girly mum-in-law, daughter-in-law day

Yesterday I had a lovely mother-in-law, daughter-in-law day. The men were both out watching cricket so it left us both together to have a girly day. We weren't too sure what we were going to do for the whole day on our own but were sure that we would find some nice things to get up to.

My hubby had come up with a good idea that we could start to knit a blanket/throw together. if we both knit one square each week for about a year or so then we would have enough squares to sew together to make a lovely blanket/throw.

With this in mind, our first stop yesterday morning, after we'd eaten our breakfast, was Hobbycraft. We had a look around for quite a while - it was nice not to have any men with us huffing and puffing around while we were wandering. I think we looked down pretty much every single isle. It was great to just look at everything - some things we decided were really weird and we really didn't understand, while other things we could really imagine ourselves doing.

The only thing that we came out with though (other than a stamp from the bargain bin for me) was the yarn we would need to make our blanket. We chose 6 different colours - all fairly neutral on the theory that maybe one day this would become a blanket to be used in a babies room if/when me and the hubby decide that a family is something that we would like.

We took it in turns to pick the colours and went for these 6 different ones to give a nice variety (& they were on 3 for 2 so 6 each seemed to make sense!)

Once we had chosen the yarn that we were going to use we needed some thinking time so we went out for a lovely lunch. We shared some tear and share garlic bread to start - which we were mercilessly mocked for later in the day when the blokes got back in as we apparently really stank of garlic! it was amazing at the time! Then we both had a prawn and pea risotto, with sea bass and scallops on for our main. It was lovely but really really filling. I knew after id finished that I probably shouldn't have eaten all of mine but it was too nice to leave any.

We decided against pudding at the pub as we were both stuffed but that didn't mean that we wouldn't be hungry again a bit later. It seemed like the perfect excuse to go back to the house and do some baking after a little dog walk.

I am normally not too good with dogs but am getting better and find it a lot easier to be around them when they are a little less active than they could be. The easiest way to help with this was to wear him out. I therefore aided in this by helping him to get his stick and new prized possession all the way home!

I'm not sure how popular I was when we got back to pavements and he was still carrying it but hey - I thought it was funny! Between us we managed to not scratch or scrape any cars.

It was baking time when we got back. We made my favourite cake ever - Mum L's banana cake! I had donated some rather over-ripe bananas to the cause but the making was a joint effort.

While they baked - this gave us the perfect opportunity to have a look at patterns for ideas for our blanket. I had a look through Ravelry and found a few ideas for squares that we could do. As always I tended to like the plainer patterns and so I wasn't hugely interested in some of the highly intricate designs on offer.

The nicest that I found were a couple of variations on a moss stitch (knit 1, purl 1) so we both tried a sample square. Mum L tried a double moss stitch to start with however we thought that our blanket would be nicest with fairly small squares and therefore it didn't quite look right on this scale.

We have decided on a standard moss stitch for our squares. We needed an odd number of stitches on our needle - we worked out that 19 stitches will make our squares approx 3.5in each which seems a nice size.

This is the beginning of my first square

I like the way that the pattern is starting to form in this square and the size of it too (compared to my thigh!)

This is the way that our first 2 squares are looking

Fairly even - pretty much the same size. Hopefully this will work out well. We have both chosen a different colour this time and I think we will speak about what colour each of us is doing each week but it's not really a problem if we end up with a couple of the same colours together. We will have to decide what pattern we are going to sew them together in too before we can really see how this will turn out. I don't think it should matter if we end up with 2 squares that are the same colour next to each other. I think it will be nice anyway.

The final girly activity of the day was to paint our nails. I did Mum L's first in a nice coral colour. She usually wears red if any so I persuaded her to try something a little bit different. I went for a yellow that I have had for ages but never really worn as I wasn't sure how it would come out when it was on. I thought being such a light colour it would take loads of coats to make it look anything like it does in the bottle. We actually only did 2 coats and it covered pretty well. We both have pretty nails!

I hope you guys all had a lovely chilled out weekend as well and got to enjoy some time to do just what you want to do. Have a good week all and I'll see you again soon.

A bit of a daft day

It has been a bit of a daft day really but one that I have really really enjoyed. I think I was in need of this kind of lovely fun craziness.

I was woken this morning by the smell of bacon crisping and came downstairs to pretty much my favourite ever breakfast. Pancakes, maple syrup, and bacon. It was awesome! The pancakes even had raisins in. Yum!

Henlow joined us for breakfast and added fantastic comedy value by trying to a few minutes to walk under this radiator pipe. He has some fantastically smart ideas at times!

We then had to pop out for some shopping. I had seen something online the other day about making some toffee vodka so we treated ourselves to a bottle of vodka and a packet of Werther's Originals. Here is the website that I found the recipe on.

Basically all you have to do is open a full packet of Werther's sweets. Pour them into a sterilised mason jar and add vodka.

This is a full packet of Werther's

Topped up with an entire bottle of vodka

And as soon as we started to shake it, the toffee's started to dissolve into the vodka.

It doesn't look the prettiest after the first shake up but we can only hope that it turns a lovely toffee colour in time. The recipe says to leave the sweets to dissolve for 2 whole days in order for them to completely disappear so we are hoping that the colour will change in this time too.

While we were out I had been saying that I wanted to do something a bit active today - I wasn't sure what but just something a little bit daft playing about in the garden or something. Adam had the idea of playing some ball sports in the garden. I know that he really wanted to try to teach me to play cricket a little bit so we needed a softer ball to play with than a real cricket ball. We got a slightly softer plastic-y version when we went to a toy shop.

While we were there I also found something that I thought could be fun. A skateboard! I had been wanting to do something a bit daft and active so when we saw these in the shop I thought that this would be the perfect thing for me to try. I wasn't sure where I was going to be able to practice but Adam pointed out that we live in a quiet little cut de sac so the road should be fine.

I had a really good time practicing - we even spoke to a bunch of teenagers who came past - they were lovely. They laughed at me a little bit when Adam said that I am nearly 30 and wanted to try to skateboard for the first time but then they had a go and tried to show me what to do. It was nice.

Here is a little video of one of my first attempts. I will need a lot more practice but I don't think it's too bad for a first attempt!

This afternoon I went out again for a bit more practice and was getting a bit better at pushing myself along and keeping the board moving. So much so that I think I got a little bit cocky. I ended up hitting a little pot hole in the road and went absolutely flying. I landed on both hands, my right elbow and right hip. The pads broke my fall a little and protected my hands from some good grazes, the elbow pads helped a little but I still have a little graze on my right elbow. I haven't had a graze since I was little. I have to admit, I'm a little bit proud of my first skateboarding injury!

The vodka has been shaken a fair few times today in between playing some cricket and french cricket (which was actually a lot more fun that proper cricket!) and skateboarding. I know it says in the recipe to wait for 2 days for it to be ready but it also says that it's done when all of the sweets have melted. I don't know if it's because we used 1l of vodka instead of the 70cl that it says in the recipe or what but I'm fairly sure that it has to be ready.

It has changed colour a little bit more and become a nicer honey kind of colour

And decanted back into it's original bottle it still looks nice too. It's such a shame that the sweets had made it so that there was ever so slightly too much for the liquid to fit back in here. We might just have to try a little shot before bed.

Cheers and happy weekend!

The following is the final photo for today and I think that this one pretty much sums up most of our day. A good one has been had by all here. The cider and nachos were a mid afternoon snack and accompaniment to tonights dinner of homemade chilli.

I hope that you have had just as lovely a day on your Sunday. Have a good week and I'll speak to you soon.