HOUSE: Jewellery table make over ...

I absolutely love jewellery and make up  and as a result I have a lot of clutter on my jewellery table so now we have settled into the new house and sorted the big things out its time to have a jewellery table make over.

This was my jewellery table when I first bought it, since then I have replaced the little plastic handles with nice silver metal ones and when we moved I painted the three draw fronts in a warm white. Now its time to step up my make over.

After having a bit of a blog trawl and Pinterest search I have decided to swap the shelves on the left with another drawer unit. I found this really cute 6 drawer Alex unit from Ikea in white that would be perfect to store all my lotions and potions in. Once I get some space on the top I am going to add this add on Alex drawer unit from the same Ikea range and then its time to make with the jewellery and trinket boxes. At the minute most of mine are ones I have acquired over the years and they are looking a bit sad so I'm going to swap them for some nice new acrylic and glass ones. Here is my current inspiration slash wish list.

The two white drawer units are from the IKEA Alex range, the acrylic drawers are MUJI and the white pots on the left are actually IKEA plant pots but I am planning on repurposing them. The two little pots at the top are examples of trinket pots I found on the Dunelm Mill website but I have seen similar in other shops so I am just going to pick them up when I see them. I also really want to get some nice glass jewellery boxes with some sort of detailling on them. BHS had some in before xmas but they appear to be sold out now so I will keep having a look about. Cant wait to show you guys the finished article. It might take me a while as I save up and buy bits but I am really looking forward to getting started. 

What do you think? What does your jewellery table look like? Do you have any good storage ideas to pass on? 

The year in review ... 2014!

2014

New year is a time for reflection so I have been having a think about my 2014 experience. It has been an amazing year and will be a pretty hard one to top to be fair. 

January

We kickstarted the new year as we meant go on by attending our good friends wedding at Durham Castle, it was a wonderful day and the bride was simply stunning. January was also quite special for me as I reconnected with a good friend … life is too short to loose good friends.

February & March

February was quite quiet, we were continuing with the wedding planning and hitting the gym hard! March was pretty much the same as February, there was a lot of time at the gym as we hit 6 weeks to the wedding. I went for my wedding hair trial with my cousin … only took 102 hair grips hehe mum was also well underway with the alterations to my dress.

Beast mode at the gym

102!!

Crafty Thank You cards ...

As you will have read I recently got married .. yey... and with a wedding come wedding gifts. When we sent out our invites we weren't really sure where we would be living or what we would be doing, it was very likely that we would still be renting and as we have lived together renting for 4 years now we have all of our stuff for the flat. So we decided that the best option for us was to ask for donations towards a house and honeymoon fund.

As it turns out we have actually bought a house and started the process before the wedding but we still have the majority of the stuff we need that could go on a gift list, only things we needed were larger expensive items a washing machine, dishwasher and lawn mower. Our friends and family were really generous and thanks to their kind gifts we have been able to afford to buy all of the above and more for our lovely new house (which we move into in 3 weeks).

We wanted to say a Thank You to all of our guests for joining us on the day and for their gifts so we decided to send them all thank you cards. We had a look online and looked around in shops but even small cards are so expensive then you have to think about postage. So in the end we decided to carry on our DIY theme from the wedding and I made our cards.

I bought the cards pre cut and folded with envelopes from a local haberdashery, wedding & craft supplier called Dainty Toys. I have used them for loads of crafty projects before and my mum uses them if she needs fabric for anything. A pack of 50 4x4inch square cards with envelopes cost £6.50 so I bought 2 packs. Then I had to decide what to put on and in the card. In the end I went for a simple black and white picture of me and the hubby from our day and a little thank you message inside. I decided to keep the picture small as I didn't want it to be too 'look at us' more of a memento from the day especially as this was to say thank you to our guests for celebrating with us.

Interiors and exteriors ready to cut! 

53 insides all cut and ready to be stuck!

The finished article. Added a little green as it was our colour. 

Making these up took a little bit of time but at the end of the day I know they are really personal to us and our day which is what I wanted. 

If your not overly crafty why not try writing personal thank you messages in store bought cards, there are loads of great ideas on what to say online. Plus if you have a gift list its easy to thank people individually for what they bought you. 

xXx

Bits and bobs, clothes and shoes!!

So this is another round up of some bits I have bought recently. I know it seems like I spend an absolute fortune but I honestly dont, a  lot of my stuff is from cheap shops like Primark or H&M. 

First is a really cute dress I bought like a month ago from TKMAXX for £14.99. So far the weather hasn't really been bright enough for me to wear it that much but I have managed to wear it once. I changed it up a bit due to the weather and swapped the blue under dress for a black one and black leggings, then put on the little blue van style shoes. 

I love the lace and the shape, its almost a skater skirt so really flattering. 

Next a little grey crop tank top from H&M that was £1.99, so far I have worn this a few times. For work I paired it with high waisted trousers and a tube top as the sides are low cut. Also worn it out with shorts and with a maxi skirt. 

Here it is with the my pink maxi skirt. I like that this one is loose and not too cropped, only just shows the midriff.


 I love this top, its from Primark think it was about £4. I have worn it soo much since I bought it. I love how bright and colourful it is, also its a really nice shape on, not too tight or billowy.

So far my favourite look for this top was this one with my emerald green jersey pencil skirt. Got this from top shop last year, I really like it but like I've said my office isn't very smart so haven't worn it to work. Most of the time I wore this skirt with a bright yellow floaty top but then I saw a pic on Pinterest where a girl had a normal grunge T on with a pencil skirt and chunky cardy so thought I would try that.

That pic is also the reason I bought this next T shirt. It was like £2.50 from primark mens wear, I bought it in an xs and have taken the collar off. Think I am going to take a little more off the collar not sure need to take another look at it.

I like the colour and the pattern pocket, its a bit blown out in the pic but actually its a dark maroon. I know its mens wear but sometimes I like to customise stuff. 

Here are the shoes I mentioned above, also bought these from Primark £6. I love the colour, light blue denim effect. I would really like some real vans but at the minute our budget doesn't extend that far so I will settle for fake ones. 

These last two I bought from Primark in Guildford when we went though for a flying visit. I think I might have a look in the one up here for more of the plain vests, I really like the shape and length is nice for with leggings. Its almost short dress length which I like as it covers my bum hehe

extra long grey retro style vest

Love this pattern

I love the pattern on the black one, it was a fiver and the grey £2.50. The white pattern is raised and feels almost painted on, I am going to try wearing this like the sugar skull one with a pencil skirt not sure which one yet as I have a few coloured ones.

I also just bought this envelope style handbag from Peacocks, £7. I love this style of bag though it doesn't have a handle so I am thinking of buying some loops and clips to go on a gold handbag chain so I can put it on when I fancy it. Might also buy some extra loops for some other bags so I can use the one handle for a few bags.


As you can see I might buy quite a bit but its spread over a few weeks and with most of it under £20 doesn't exactly break the bank.

Let me know where you find good bargins and what you have picked up recently.

xXx

Three for the price of half one!

So the other day I was in town and saw these earrings in the New Look sale £3, I really liked them but thought they might be a bit big for day to day wear. The more I looked at them the more I decided that with a little fiddling they might work, so I bought them. When I got home I decided to take a look at exactly how they were put together to see where I could take them apart. 

In the end I have managed to come out with a pair of earrings, a long necklace and a bracelet. Here are the pics, top is the earrings as they were then the necklace, the new earrings and the bracelet. To make them I separated the two circles detached the gold feathers from both large circles at attached 1 to each earring. Then for the necklace I attached 2 of the silver feathers from one of the large circles to the other circle and used a cord off an old necklace with sections of gold beads. To make the bracelet I took another section of cord of the old necklace, cut it into three strands (to attach to the three loops) reattached the beads and plaited the chord. To finish I added a final section of beads and a clasp then used the remaining feather as detail. 

xXx

Making a house a home ...

 .... or in our case making a flat more cosy. Having discovered Pinterest with a vengeance I came across a post that fit very well and had me in giggles. 

You see I just love interior decorating, its what really makes your place feel like a home. So with that being said and after having a good look around on Pinterest I have recently been adding some items to our little nest. 

The first is a really cute little handing owl tea light holder I found in the coffee shop attached to fiancés pt training gym. They have some awesome owl pillows as well but they are a bit out of my price range at the minute. Here is is my new window owl. 

Isn't he just the most adorable thing in the world! I have moved our little silver heart that usually sits in the middle window across so this guy has prie of place. I love how adorable he is, there are some really cute owl motifs around at the minute and I would love a lot of the different items they are on, but at the same time lots of the stuff is fairly useless. So I will stick with my cute little window owl. 

Next up is my new picture wall!! Having seen this done loads of times on Pinterest I decided that I just couldn't wait till we moved to somewhere bigger I wanted one now. 

So we picked up a new frame from Poundstretcher to match our existing ones then I set about arranging pictures and frame placement. I think its looking really good at the minute. The big one and the single frame are new the other two we just moved them around. A couple of the pictures in the giant frame are just place holders until we get some new ones taken and printed out as we haven't been taking as many pictures recently. Hopefully with a wedding coming up we can get a nice pic with either the bride and groom and our other engaged friends or just the friends. You see the fiancé keeps telling me we have too many pictures of just us hehe but I like them because they are all different memories. Guess I will just have to invest in another photo album 

As you can see from the two chairs, this is behind our dinning table which runs parallel to the wall. We used to have the bottom right pic in the centre of this wall and top right on the right hand wall in the middle of the table. That wall is now looking a bit bare so we are going to get another one of those trilogy frames to hang in the same place this one was. This will mean three new landscape pictures to fill which I am sure we can do, but I have found a different idea on Pinterest. 

For valentines last year I made up a google map picture montage of key places in our history as a couple. Its a really cute idea, you take a shot of the google map image on different places that mean something to you, ie first met, first date etc So when I saw this on Pinterest I was intrigued.

I am totally going to do this to see how it looks. If I dont like the map images guess we will just have to find some cute pictures hehe 

xXx

Exciting times!!

So as I may have mentioned a few times on here I am currently planning my Wedding :D We booked the venue the other day and after that I may have gone into over drive hehe

I started by attacking the wedding guest list, it was brutal friends and relatives were cut from all sides so we now have 80 day time guests and 100 evening.

After that I decided to start playing with ideas for Save the Date cards, there are a lot of designs and styles out there and we wanted something that was very us so I ended up going custom. Luckily the Fiancé's dad works in printing so he is going to put the finishing touches on and print them up for us. Then I can add my ribbon accents :)

Then it was time to hit up Dainty Toys, my mum needed some bits and we wanted to look at things for my brooch bouquet. I decided I wanted to make one of these a while ago and have been scouring the internet for more ideas, on one such jaunt I found a cool idea where the girl had put the brooches inside singed fabric petals. So we decided to go have a look at the fake flowers, material and ideas for the inside. It was suggested online that I use oasis but Dainty didn't stock it so we were looking around and came across hollow polystyrene balls and cones. I also bought some 10cm sections of material to test out for making the flowers, I posted a pic the other day. Well after this my mum went online and ordered me some brooches. (they arrived yesterday!!)

Next on the list was booking a photographer who we found whilst at the wedding fair at Durham Cricket Club and booked yesterday after a meeting with him. Its all very exciting hehe expecialy when we went up to see the venue dec'd out for a showcase and the flower lady was there, she had a flyer with the room we are using all dressed in the colours we are using!!! It looks fabulous and I am soo happy we got to see a sneak peak because now I know it will look amazing.

Anyway the point of my post today was actually so show you what I had been up to at my mums. I took the Polystyrene base and flowers round so we could look at them together and work out the logistics of making the base shape. Well not only do the brooches look AMAZING!! but we sorted the base shape!!

Brooches set in the foam flowers

Other brooches waiting for flowers 

Base,  held in place with bamboo skewers 

Now all I have to do is wait for it to dry completely and move on to covering it, then its time to add the flowers and brooches!!! exciting times ahead!!

xXx