Crafts for the grown-ups

I'm hoping that eventually I'll get some time to do some more crafting... I pin all these lovely ideas, but I rarely get time to make anything!

I did make some gold spotty Sharpie mugs at Christmas time last year, but they didn't really work out as well as I had hoped. I guess that's the problem with Pinterest... for each beautiful handmade item, there's probably a 'Pinterest fail' to go along with it!

Here are some of the things on Pinterest that have caught my eye...

Handmade Coasters

Glittery Wooden Spoon

Paper Star

Spray painted ceramics

DIY Stencil Cushion

Crafting - Washi Tape Inspiration

I am absolutely loving Washi tape. The first tape that I bought wasn't very adhesive, but I've had better success with the mt brand. There is such a huge selection available and I'm struggling not to buy all of them!! I've been using my tape to display my Violet + Percy word garlands, decorate my FiloFax and make envelopes pretty. It did get me thinking though... what else could the tape be used for? So of course I took to Pinterest to find out!

{Mini Bunting}

How cute are these mini bunting! These would be ideal for party invites or even to decorate a wee dolls house.

{House}

I just love everything about this photograph. The colours, the Washi tape, the star...

{Patterned Wall}

I love the polka dot stickers that you can get, but this is just another way of easily decorating a wall.

{Dipped Legs}

This is a great way to inject some colour and try a new trend without having to fully commit.

{Frame Accent}

Such a good idea to add a pop of colour, and then when your scheme changes you can very easily change the tape!

{Hanging Trees} 

I thought this would make good decorations for any holiday... for example hanging little hearts for Valentine's Day or Easter bunnies

Are you a fan of Washi tape, and what do you use it for?

Food - Shrove Tuesday

I just logged into Pinterest on my computer to find that I've got over 5K pins... wow!!

Anyway, I thought I'd share with you a few ideas for pancakes seeing as it's Shrove Tuesday tomorrow (Pancake Day).

I'm getting better and better at Scotch Pancakes the more I make them. My son even said that my pancakes were better than TriBeCa...now that's saying something! (For those of you not in Glasgow, TriBeCa is an American diner that serves up amazing pancakes and waffles amongst other things!). When I was growing up, Pancake Day was all about crepes with sugar and lemon, but when I tried making crepes the kids weren't impressed. They prefer the smaller, fatter pancakes.

The recipe I've been using is Nigella's American Breakfast Pancakes and we serve ours warm with butter, jam and sometimes Nutella if I have any.

But do take a look at all these lovely ideas I've pinned...it's making me so hungry!!

{Strawberry Lemon Poppyseed Pancakes}

{Banana Bread Pancakes}

{Glazed Doughnut Pancakes}

{Blueberries and syrup}

Will you be making pancakes tomorrow?

Interiors - A Woodland Inspired Master Bedroom

Unfortunately it looks like I'm going to have to redecorate my master bedroom. Thankfully I've not really done anything with this room since moving in, but it looks like there's water getting in (from the chimney) and it's made the wallpaper wet, stained and I've got mould growing now. Just what I need!! First up is to obviously resolve the chimney issue, and once that's done the plan will be to strip the wallpaper and get the room itself sorted. I haven't budgeted for this and it's come at a bad time with Christmas around the corner, but I'll do what I can to get everything ship-shape!

In the meantime, I've been planning in my head what I'd like the room to look like when it's all finished. I can dream right?! I thought I'd share with you here my ideas...

I have a thing for foxes, so I thought I would make plans for a woodland-inspired master bedroom that would allow me to include a few foxy items!

Colour-scheme wise I thought I'd go for grey (because my bed is grey), maybe a bit of slate blue and a pop of orange.

Orange Accents

I have already updated my bed linen and managed to find a reasonably priced bedding set from Matalan that is grey with a leaf design (I can't find it on their website, so I don't have a link to share with you - sorry). This sort of ties in with my forest theme. I had ideally wanted trees or bark image on my duvet but it was proving to be too expensive.

My thoughts were that I'd get a fox print for the wall as well as a few forest or orange-coloured prints or paintings...here are my initial finds:

Fox print from Etsy

Birch Forest Oil Painting from Etsy (DLaurasArt)

And then buy a couple of fox cushions and orange throw cushions for the bed.

Fox pillow from Etsy

Throw cushion inspiration

Watch this space to see how I get on!

Getting Festive - Christmas Wreath

I used to have a Christmas wreath that went on my front door... note the tense here :( It was a gorgeous wreath from Marks & Spencer and unfortunately it got ruined in the horrendous weather that we experienced last December (some metal parts from the apex of the roof of my house came off in the wind too!).

I'm not going to make that mistake again! Instead, my thoughts were that I could have a wreath on an internal door!! 

Of course I went straight to Pinterest for some inspiration, and here's what I found:

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You can see that I'm drawn to metallics, natural textures, leaves and green foliage.

I'd love to make my own, but I literally do not have the time.

Instead, if I am going to have a wreath, it will be a shop bought one, and with that in mind - here are some of my favourites:

Pre-lit Green Foliage Christmas Wreath from M&S, £39.50

John Lewis Snowy Twig Wreath, £20

Birch Bark Christmas Wreath (comes in white, natural or neon!), £28 from Paper Posies

Metallic Berry Foliage Christmas Wreath from M&S, £25.00

Tesco Gold Ball Wreath, £25

Interiors - My New Coffee Table

I've been on the hunt for a coffee table for my 'grown-up' living room and had been pinning loads and loads of inspiring photos but hadn't actually managed to source one that would work for me and the space available. My living room is medium sized, but with all the furniture that I already have in the room there isn't much available floor space left (goodness knows how I'm going to manage to squeeze in a Christmas tree too!). When I've had friends round we've had to have drinks and nibbles on the floor or on one of the kids stools, so I definitely needed a table of some sort!

This was the style that I was after and my plan was to then store Moroccan poufs or knitted stools under the table as additional seating for when we had guests over.

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I quite liked the idea of a more industrial concrete coffee table, something along the lines of this one:

Petra Coffee Table at my-deco-shop.com, £151

The littlest and I popped along to Sterling Furniture on London Road the other week to have a browse. It was definitely worth a visit and we picked up a few new Christmas decorations. Anyway, whilst I was there we had a browse at the coffee tables. There were a few that fitted the bill...

Halo Harlequin Coffee Table at Sterling Furniture, £499.99

But the more I thought about it, the more I thought that a glass coffee table would help give the impression of more space.

Paloma Coffee Table Set at Sterling Furniture, £199.99

In the end I've gone for a more economical option from Ikea. I had spotted this table on gh0stparties vlog and it's perfect for my living room too! I'm hoping that I'll still be able to get a pouf of some sort under there!

Vittsjo nest of tables, £45 at Ikea

I've been busy styling the table for Christmas, and picked up a gorgeous mirrored tray from Debenhams the other day as I would quite like to recreate something along the lines of this...

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Or this:

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Here's the tray I've bought:

Mirrored Cosmetics Tray by Julien Macdonald at Debenhams, £13.50

Once I've got the space more organised I'll take some photos and let you see the end result.

{Hair & Beauty: Growing out my fringe}

Since my last visit to the hairdressers (Ellen Conlin in Giffnock if you're interested!) which was in the middle of August, I've been growing out my fringe. I was able initially to wear it down, but it's now been 6 weeks and I have to do something with it as it's totally in my eyes :-/

At the hairdresser

The two hairstyles that I've been wearing are these...

Fringe pinned up with a side ponytail

Fringe pinned up with my hair down

but I've been scouring Pinterest for some inspiration for other styles to try as I'm starting to get bored!!

Thin hairband

Vintage style

Twist, twirl and pin

Middle parting

Twisted crown

{Ideas for the Activities with the Kinder}

The title says it all really! The kids and I have loads of fun painting, drawing, playing with Lego, Play Doh, gardening, jumping on the trampoline, baking cakes etc., but sometimes it's handy to have a few activities up your sleeve that don't take much organising and that will pass the time for half an hour or so whilst dinner cooks or whatever.

Here are some of the suggestions that I've come up with, lots others can be found on my Ideas board on Pinterest. Do come and say Hello and check out my other boards whilst you're there :)

Start with a magazine or newspaper clipping and let the child expand the picture. Genius! From artmommie.blogspot.com

We love Cheerios and we love the birds that visit our garden. What better idea than these Cheerio bird feeders from happyhooligans

Marble races with a pool noodle or you could construct a track out of toilet & kitchen rolls. This idea is from myhomespunthreads.blogspot.com

And whilst you're out with the marbles, why not try and spot of marble painting? theschoolsupplyaddict.com

Make colourful salt dough ornaments, from two-daloo.com

I've got a number of heart decorations hanging here and there in the house, and it would be nice to replace these with some homemade ones :)

Trace your outline and decorate. Looks great! From passionatehomemaking.com

You'll also find some other ideas over on an older post of mine, here.

What are your go-to activities for entertaining little ones?