Saturday 31 March 2012

Up In The Loft: Part 2

So, don't believe me when I say that my sewing genuis appeared at a young age?? Look what was lurking in the suitcases full of all my primary school stuff... Yes, PRIMARY!!
 Turns out I was quite the little crafter, eh? :)
I have no idea what 'Detective Street' was all about... who remembers that film 'Harriet The Spy'?? Think it was something to do with that!
My grandma and I also had to sift through loads of framed photographs, of various people: baby photos of me and my brother, dogs we've had over the years, weddings, special occasions, birthdays... we took all the photos out and made up a box full of frames, and along with those and other things, we're taking them to a bootsale next week! SO EXCITED!! There was one frame and picture that couldn't be separated though, and has come home with me...
Awww, bubba!! :) I love my mummy!
BB xx

Oh, modern technology...

Another by-product of helping to clear out my parent's house is the millions of CD's and DVD's that they had there but will never, ever again listen to. I came home with two big shopping bags of them, and I've already got loads myself that I never listen to. I'm very picky about those things; 'Shutter Island' was the last DVD I bought, because I went and saw it at the cinema 3 times, so I figured it was a good'un enough to purchase it. Same with CD's, although the majority of the time, people buy them for me as presents now. The last one was a Michelle Branch one that Tom got me.
So what to do with them all - I could charity shop them, but there are just SO MANY! Ebay seems pointless, I'd get barely anything for them, and plus listing them all is a pain in the bottom.
This is shameless, free advertising, and no one's paying me to do so, but I have just put through about 122 CD's and DVD's on Music Magpie, and made myself £60! Ok, so I had to type in 122 barcodes, but with a cup of tea and the Corrie omnibus on in the background, it was done nice and quick. And, because I listed over 50 items, I get a free courier service to come and pick them up from my house!! Amazing!
Don't judge me: the 'This Is Folk' triple-disc box was a badly judged gift!
I really recommend it, as now I've got some extra cash for our savings, and that makes me feel all the better what with tomorrow being the start of our 2nd £2-a day venture.
Have a nice weekend!
BB xx

Friday 30 March 2012

Up In The Loft: Part 1

My parents moved out of our family home last year to take on a pub on a lease, and now finally my grandparents - who lived at the top of our railway garden in a chalet - are moving out too into their new home in Tring, but in the meantime they're practically camping out in our old house, and packing up what they don't need. Heroically, my granddad moved all of our possessions out of the loft and down into my brother's old bedroom, and now begins the task of sorting through it all and deciding what goes where.

The obvious solution for a large chunk of it is to bin it - amazingly, my mum and dad have kept every single piece of work, every single notebook, workbook, certificate... since my brother and I began nursery! And I would LOVE to keep it all, but I simply have nowhere to store it now, and neither do my parents anymore. So I selected a few things to keep, and the rest is now in a dump site in Hemel. Really sad day, I was pretty cut up whilst doing all that. We had to do the same with many photographs too, but I made sure all the old ones of my family that look like they were taken by a polaroid camera were kept, and I think I have a project in mind for another time. 
We took photos out of frames, and all of those will be bootsaled, as well as two tennis raquets, an Ab-Machine, 3 room fans, Chelsea FC memorabilia, DVD's, a whole box of old vinyls, old vintage books, a nearly complete collection of Beatrix Potter books, and other things.
And so to my best find: A Kenwood Slow-Cooker...
My Dad has been threatening to buy me one for years, and now - just at the time I've started thinking how nice it would be to have one, especially with our 2nd £2-a day challenge coming up - I have one! Free of charge!
I estimate there'll be a few more parts to this subject, as I found many an interesting treasure... Watch this space!

What's up in your loft?
BB xx

Thursday 29 March 2012

"Yellow Army!!"

Back in the day, my Dad was a professional football player. He played for Barnet FC and had a trial with Chelsea FC at one point also. Even with this heritage, he's NEVER taken me to a football match...
So Tom took me. To see Watford play Ipswich... And it was literally brilliant!!

The weather was perfect! I dressed in suitable Watford colour as you can see in the above picture (H&M red polkadot skirt, £3 charity shop find in Tring - get in!) 



And made sure I did all the traditional things: I had a horrible, horrible sausage roll, cheered obscenities, and became a football expert when I shouted at our team: "Omg, what are y'doing?! PASS IT!!" Muahaha...

 I thought Harry the Hornet was especially funny, and bless his enthuiasm throughout the game. 





The funniest thing though was this: 1st half, Ipswich were 1-0 up, and Watford were playing abysmally. This is what we heard behind us in the crowd:

Fan #1: "Pay £30 to get in and this is what they give us."
Fan #2: "What an f***ing joke, total waste of time."
...etc.
But during half time, the manager obviously gave them all a big kick up the bottom, and we went on to win 2-1:
Fan #1: "I love them! I love those boys!!"
Fan #2: "Always knew they would win, I always said they would!!"
Hilarious!
 Have you been to a football match?? Who did you see play?? Was it a good'un??
BB xx

Find a Happy Place

The weather has been absolutely glorious of late, I'm dreading the day I wake up and look outside and I'm not greeted by sunshine!! On my day off on Tuesday I sat outside from 10am until 5pm basking in the rays... admittedly without decent protection though, and I burned my shoulders and nose somewhere (Lesson to be learned there, children). I'm making full use of our garden space this year - we share the garden with our landlord, and we have our own patio area that my parents bought me a table and two chairs for last year. I've been adding little laterns and mobiles to it, and now in the sunny daytime, and in the warm evenings we're being treated to at the moment, we have our happy place at home:
 It's perfect because the sun hits it from first thing in the morning and gradually goes around 4.30pm.
Blue lantern: present from Tom's sister
Seashell mobile: made by moi from shells from Brighton beach.
Jar tealight: made by moi from an old coffee jar and black lace (oooo naughty). All those lanterns and tea lights look gorgeous in the evenings - Tom and I have taken to playing 'shithead' (card game, with a rather distasteful name, sadly!) out there and it's really calming.
Additionally, happy places can be places you weren't expecting, and you can in fact BUY a little piece of happiness to go with you. I present: Mr Simm's Sweet Shop! New to Berkhamsted:
...AND LOOK:
We didn't buy any though, because they're imported and so therefore £10 a box!!!! But we DID buy a packet of chocolate and peanut butter M&M's, and a Tootsie Roll, which was actually a little disappointing, but it doesn't matter, because it's from a HAPPY PLACE!!!

Where's YOUR happy place??
BB xx

Tuesday 20 March 2012

I Heart Kirstie Allsop...

Don't all us crafters LOVE this woman???
Aaaah... Kirstie.
I mean, thanks to her, last Christmas I rediscovered my passion for this kind of thing, and she managed to get the majority of us searching out our needles and squeezing our creative juices. She almost single-handedly responsible for the sharp rise in knitting, crafts and tools sales both on our highstreets and on the internet. We've stopped heading straight for a shop-made shallow token and instead we try new projects that can then be given away as thoughtful gifts, and personal touches to our own homes. A seriously brilliant mascot!!
Tom's mum very kindly bought me her homemade craft book for Christmas, and I've now assembled enough of the stuff to start a few of the projects. Tonight I made this!! LOOK! IT'S SO CUTE:
Literally took me about 45 minutes to make, and it's so pretty! I've seen them in shops for a long time now, but they cost to buy, obviously. In fact, this was so simple, I'm going to take the same bits with me to work tomorrow so my client can make her own. I've found a good home for mine, but I've decided it looks a little lonesome on it's own, so I will post a photo once EVERY SINGLE KNOB has one!
Enjoy!!
BBxx

Monday 19 March 2012

Sunny sewing

I bought this dress in a charity shop before Christmas, but even when I wore it on Christmas Day, I knew it wouldn't survive in it's current form because it was too tight around my arms and irritated the heck out of my skin! Today on yet another gorgeous afternoon, I took the scissors to it:



And made it into a skirt!

Much better!
BBx

Hen Weekend Crafts!

My friend Lauren gets married 2 months today!! This weekend gone was her epic hen weekend. The festivities included:
  • Cupcake making at Herts College
  • Belly Dancing session
  • Lovely dinner at The Pepper Hut, Old Town, Hemel (check it out, it's AMAZING.)
  • Glass painting at Horizons
  • More scrummy dinner at Chianmai Tai Cottage, Old Town again.
We had an amazing time!
First off we made batches of cinnamon cupcakes and decorated them with white chocolate buttercream icing... If you have never had the pleasure of trying this stuff, you have not LIVED! It was incredible!! We made toooonnes of the stuff! We also got a mini masterclass on sugar paste decorations - extremely fiddly and extremely time consuming, but look at the effects we got...
Bride-to-be Lauren having a go!
As well as those, we also produced two pretty stunning lemon cakes, one plain sandwich and one Bundt style, again, laddened down with lemon juice icing.
Thankfully the maid of honor had planned a session to make us all feel better about consuming so much sugar in two hours... Belly dancing! It's probably best to just show you the video. I'm on the far right, Lauren is 2nd from the left:
 If you've never tried it, you SHOULD! Bellies are an advantage!!! Trust me!
The following morning everyone reassembled with hangovers and feeling very tired... so we painted 75 glass jars to cheer ourselves up!
 Glass painting has evolved since the days I used to do it as a child. Now you can buy ready designed stickers that act as the black lead outliner pen you used to use, and so your designs look far more delicate and complex, and instead of runny, messy paints, you now have glaze pens, which is a paint-pen, that behaves like a ball-point gel pen. The actual act is therefore incredibly easy, mess-free, smudge-free, and the results are stunning:


 I am going to order my own pens and stencils when pay day comes around, because I think in doing that activity I realligned all my chakras, cleansed my soul, and found inner peace. It was seriously theraputic!
That's all for now! What did you lot get up to at the weekend?
BBxx

Thursday 15 March 2012

Button Brown goes European!

My French friend I go to sign language is going to Geneva tomorrow to see her friend's new baby girl, named Lilou - how cute is that? Exasperated, Aly called me on Tuesday morning asking if I could make her a pillow in time for today, as she was unable to find any decent, meaningful baby gifts in the highstreet.
I came up with this:
 It's not the best photo, but it's a hot pink pillow, and I've gone to town on the details.
I've used the flying butterflies before, but thought it might work with little birds too, and it turns out they're very easy to add embroidered detail to.

I think it'll make a lovely personalised baby gift, what do you guys think?

BB xxx

Sunday 11 March 2012

Something rude and something shrewd...

Seriously, the weather has been amazing all day today, and I think the sunshine went to my head a bit...!!
I made a rather rude cushion. SO RUDE, that I daren't post it yet... This blog is just not ready for such smut, but I think I'm on to a winner design...

So, that's the something rude - let your imaginations run wild!!!
Something shrewd: Tom's friend - also named Tom, confusingly - has recently set up a pretty brilliant music promotion company called Lemur Promotions, and is now organising his 4th gig with bands mainly based in the Brighton area. If you're in a band and are interested in gigging under this name, go to www.facebook.com/lemur.promotions - Tom's a really good bloke, and even provides your beer and snacks for you! What a top banana!
I'm so sure of his success that I have made a little something for him that I believe will one day adorn a vintage arm chair in his smart office, that wannabe-bands will see when they come to sign a contract and they'll 'Oooh' and 'Ahh!' at it's magnificence...
Ladies and gents, I give you:
The 'Lemur Promotions' promotional cushion!!!!
Hope you like, Tom!! :)
What have all of you lot been up to today in this gorgeous sunshine? Happy days!!
BB xx

Wedding Favours

What lovely Sunday morning weather to be creative in!
So far I've cleared out and totally rearranged my sewing basket - everything now has it's absolute place, including sandwich bags for my patches for my patchwork quilt project - keeps them nice and flat - a bag of hessian, a box for all beas, buttons and ribbons, and so forth. Love it!
Before I did that though, I worked on my project for my friend's upcoming wedding. Her hen night is next weekend, and part of the festivities is a glass-painting session. A year ago, said-friend and I were talking about wedding ideas, and we got straight on to notonthehighstreet.com as they have so many unique, beautiful and bespoke wedding gifts and accessories on there. We found a maker of glass jars with penny sweets in and you could personalize them with your names on, the wedding date etc. Lovely, but expensive per jar. There and then we decided we'd do it ourselves, and over the last year we've collected over 100 jars of varying sizes, with their lids, and all has been made easier by asking others to collect jars for us too. 
Next week we'll be painting them in a specially supervised class with a tutor, and we are planning to fill them, seal them and write tags for each jar.
I found 100 stringed mainlla labels on ebay for £5 (that's including the p&p) and they arrived yesterday - speedy!! This has been my early morning project:
Buttons, manilla tags and glue...

Will make lots and lots of...

...These!!!
I think they look gorgeous! I just used glue to stick the buttons on, all in the same corner, and altogether they look stunning!! These will have gold and silver writing on them, probably with their names and the date, and the person who's seat they'll belong to at the dinner tables.
Such a cool effect when they're all laid down together!
Have you ever made part of your wedding yourself? Be it the invites, the cake, the dress??

Love BB xxx

Thursday 8 March 2012

Jeremy Kyle and bananas...

This Tuesday we had new carpet laid down throughout our flat and I am still high on those good new carpet fumes!! It has totally transformed the flat, and seeing as we had to haul the furniture out, when we put it all back we took the opportunity to rearrange a bit and now everything looks new and fresh and lovely! Happy times :)
With the house to myself this morning, I've hoovered, polished and cleaned up, and have been streaming episodes of Jeremy Kyle on to my laptop (I love that man.)
Grrr... love it when he's angry!!
I've also been doing some baking - Tom's bunch of bananas are on the turn so I originally thought 'Banana bread!'; but then realised banana's aren't very low G.I.-wise. I went online and found a nice recipe for a low G.I. version from 'These Precious Things' blog which is here!
I added a spoonful of sugar-free raspberry jam to it because it was in the fridge and wanted a little something extra to taste.
Bon appetit...

Perfect pre-work treat!
 Just to remind you as of the 1st April I will be embarking on my 2nd "£2-a-day" adventure, and relying once again on food donations, Asda's own brand crisps and staying in! Make sure you keep track and hopefully you'll find a tip or two on how to save some pennies!

BBxx

Monday 5 March 2012

Turning the Bland to Buttontastic!


So I've officially got the sewing bug back, and this weekend I was driven to turn it on to my existing wardrobe and brighten up a few items. First under the pressafoot: black, flared jumper from H&M.
It's a flattering item, it's plain black and it's fitted nicely around the bust and arms, and then flares out flatteringly as it goes down your torso.
The picture above is of a top with the button design down the back of the top, and I love it, and I wish all my tops looked like this!! So here's what I did to the jumper:
1) I cut (bravely) up the centre of the back of the top, and then pinned it back together so the seams overlapped, as if like a cardigan.
2) I used the sewing machine to sew down the seam leaving a 1cm gap.
3) I picked up about 12-14 buttons that were of a similar size but contrasting/complimenting colours to put on.
4) Sewed on the buttons...
And I was left with this:




How do you edit/update your old gladrags??
BBxx