Going a bit potty!

Pots.

I have lots of them.

I recently got some lovely ceramic ones from a lovely lady. And they have been siting in my garden. I was waiting for some inspiration.

Then I went on pinterest. Ah, pinterest.

I wanted to make something for our new house.

So this is what I did.

Get 2 pots.

Wash them.

Paint them. (I used outdoor paint!)

Add dots. I used the end of a pencil rubber.

Paint on petals.

Print out your house number in a very large, nice font.

Cut out to leave a stencil.

Paint on numbers. Please no-one point out to me that my first 8 is upside down :) I found out afterwards.

I will put them on our front garden outside the door :)

Craft Jars

Another little tutorial.

You will need:

Jars
Glue (PVA)
Decoupage paper
Alphabet Stickets

Take some old jars.

Wash them out.

Cover the jars with glue.

Tear the decoupage paper into pieces and mould the pieces onto the jars, covering the entire outside of the jar. (You WILL get sticky fingers. Gaaah!)

Leave to dry.

Add letters to label each jar.

And there you go. Craft jars. I am going to use them in the kiddies craft corner :)

Fun times in Warwick!

So me being the money-savvy mummy that I am, I was well chuffed when I found the Warwick Castle deal in the Sun newspaper. Collect tokens and get in free! Oh yes!

So today we ventured out to the lovely town of Warwick. Only to find out the date on our ticket said 18th SEPTEMBER. Not July. My bad. But they let us in anyway. Yay!

Lizzie got to dress up as a knight. Should I be concerned when my 3 yr old says to me when suitably attired 'Mummy I want to kill things!' ?? I just smiled and ignored her. Ignorance is bliss.

We tried to save even more money by taking our own picnic. This was great apart from my fabulous idea to freeze all our drinks. Suprisingly they still did not melt. So we were thirsty. Oh, so thirsty.

I kept resorting to opening a new 'Funky monkey' every few minutes to slurp the tiny bit of melted juice at the bottom of each carton. This resulted in us carrying numerous part-opened blocks of ice round the grounds. Licking furiously at them willing them to melt. Sad times.

We liked Warwick Castle. Hoorah!

Craft table Tutorial

A very simple tutorial.

Materials needed;

Table

Oilcloth

Spray glue/glue gun

Stapler

Paint

Take one old table (freecycle find!)

A piece of oilcloth cut to the size of your table (don't forget to leave about 3 inches extra around the sides)

Place the oilcloth face down and spray glue the sides of the table.

Fold over the oilcloth tightly to fit the table. Staple into place. Hubby is a pro with the staple gun!

Sand down and paint the table legs. Really you should do this before you attach the oilcloth but I get a bit carried away with the pretty bits!

And voila. A wipe-clean, pretty craft table for the kids!

Cost: If you get a free table, just the oilcloth and a bit of paint.
Preparation time: 30 mins (plus drying time for the paint).

Summertime.

Ah, sunshine. Sun creamed faces, hot and overtired babies, and freezers full of ice cream.

So in this gorgeous heatwave whilst my son has not been sleeping, we been living in the back garden with our beloved swimming pool. I am SO glad our water is not metered!

Whilst the kids play havoc in the swimming pool, I have set up my craft corner in the shade. Happy days.

Here are my creations;

I am seriously going to start saving up things like bottle lids and ice cream sticks (plenty of those around!) I just used super glue to stick these various junk items to an old cd and spray painted the lids. And we have some cute owls for the garden :)

On my car booting trip Saturday I found this old box which I thought would be fab for my new craft dresser.

A bit of paint and modge podge and it looked all pretty again :)

I also had some old cork boards lying around so decided to get all organised and make a cleaning rota and menu planner. i just spray glued some old scrapbooking paper and used some alphabet stickers. Pretty self-explanatory.

 My OCD likes this :)

My weekend also consisted of a LOT of rocking a hot and fed up teething baby to sleep. Here is that glorious happy moment where he actually did fall asleep. I had my feet up with a cold drink within 5 minutes! Every mum knows you have to steal the moment!

My thrifty life.

Those of you who know me will know that I like to save money; ie not spend it. If anything is going free, I will have it. Even if it's ugly. I find spending money stressful. Especially as we currently barely have any. But even when we do I like to save it for all the important things we want in life. Like our own house and travelling. I also am teaching our kids to save :)

You will hardly ever see me at the high street. The last few times I have been I came home empty-handed. I just cannot justify the prices. Not when you have freecycle, car boots and charity shops.

I didn't used to be like this. I was a bit of a shopaholic. I would spend all my spare time (before kids!) in the shops. Our bank balance was not too great. Then we lost our house, and all our savings in the recession. I started to realise the value of money. It is not everything in life -far from it. But we need a certain amount to get on in life. And it's nice to save for our dreams. My current dream is to have a VW campervan in our back garden. We will one day....

So, I thought I would share with you some of my tips. Some of you I'm sure will already do many of these things. But for those of you that spend like I used to they might come in handy ;)

1) Spring clean your finances. Go through all your standing orders, and look over what you spend in a month. Ask yourself if it is all necessary. Little things add up.

2) Add up your monthly income and your monthly outgoings (ie just the basics.) Then give yourself a monthly 'spending budget' and stick to it. I get it out in cash in weekly amounts and then when it's gone, it's gone.

3)Visit your local charity shops and car boots. Seriously. They will change your life. You will not believe some of the things you can get.

4) Join freecycle and local free pages (there are many on facebook.) I cannot even list the amount of stuff we have got for free over the last year since I started using these sites. House furniture, kids clothes, electrical appliances, garden furniture...the list is endless.

We got last year a whole bedroom set in Indian wood - it is massive and so well built it will probably outlive me. (Excuse the mid-packing messy rooms!)

I also needed a couple of dressers for our new house so got them off freecycle.

One ugly dresser;

Painted, and voila! It will be my craft dresser!

We got a highchair;

A trampoline;

And Lizzie's beloved playhouse.

Plus about a hundred other things. Of course I also offer stuff on freecycle myself - I am a firm believer in recycling and if there are things we do not need, I offer it to others.

5) Set up a savings account. If you can afford to save a certain amount monthly, set up a direct debit for that amount. Unfortunately for us, Ryan's income varies so much we have to just put away what we can each month (if we can.) I am scared not to save now.

6) STOP SPENDING! It sounds obvious. But you can seriously have fun at home, or out without spending much at all. We recently collected vouchers from the Sun newspaper so we can go to Warwick Castle for free next week. When the weather is this good too there is no need to spend money on expensive days out. The park is just as much fun.

I hope one day when we are rich (ha ha!) we will still live like this. Any more ideas people?

Trampolines and boxes.

Packing.

I hate it.

Living out of boxes.

The endless arguments over where things are when you need them.

The rolls of duct tape and labelling. Oh, the labelling.

My poor husband, he came home one day to find all his belongings packed (pretty much.) The man who likes all his lovely possessions spread out in front of him. Even the things he never uses. Just incase he should need it. He gets so very stressed when someone touches his things. Mwa ha ha.

I got so carried away the other day, I packed the kids.

....Or rather they packed themselves. I'm not complaining. This could be a quite convenient arrangement.

So with the heat wave on it's way I decided today we should have a break from boxes and get out the trampoline. Did you know you can do lots of things on a trampoline?

You can of course bounce on it..

Bounce on it with a baby..(but not for too long, in case the social services find you out! There was a moment were Sam was airbourne!)

You can eat breakfast on a trampoline...

Or pretend 'breakfast' on a trampoline...

Or (mum's favourite) you can get all your blankets and have a snooze on a trampoline.

I recommend trampolines!!!