9th December - Glitter Pinecones

I'm not going to lie, this is a messy one but who doesn't love getting covered in glitter right?

We collected loads of pine cones from a friends garden a few months ago. I wasn't sure what to use them for at the time, but they kept well and feel very festive.

To try and control the mess I set up the craft by putting some blue tac on the end of a straw. We then stuck a pine cone to the straw and it helped to avoid getting super gluey fingers.

You can then easily dip the cone in glue then sprinkle with glitter. As Scarlett demonstrates below.

These look super cute and the girls really enjoyed this one.

8th December - Angel Hangers.

These Angel hangers are taken from an awesome Christmas Craft Book. I bought this book a couple of years ago and I can highly recommend it. We've done loads from the book and there's still so manage pages left to use for crafts it's brilliant. The prints are nice and colourful and the girls love the simplicity of them.

7th December - Christmas Tree Bunting

Thankfully we are back from hospital and Millie is on the mend WHOOP!!!!

Sitting down with them both to do this advent craft was lovely. 

For today's craft I had pre bought some felt tree bunting. Then let the girls add a sparkly star on top of each one. Nice and straight forward but looks really effective, and Scarlett really enjoys seeing this hanging up in the kitchen.

6th December - Mini Cardboard Tree

I used old Christmas cards to make our cardboard trees.

To make the tree's I did the following:

1. On the reverse of the card picture draw a tree template
2. Cut out the tree
3. Use the cut out as a template for 2 more trees and cut out.
4. Fold the cardboard pieces in half with the picture on the inside of the fold 
5. Add glue to the reverse side of the cards.
6. Stick together for a 3D stand up tree.
7. Hand over to the kids to decorate with stickers and anything sparkly. 

I didn't have a chance to take any photos of this craft as I'm still in hospital with Mills. Boo!

4th December- Snow Flakes

I precut snow flakes..here's a good site for design inspiration Snowflakes

I then let the girls colouring them in then hung them from the ceiling in their bedroom. I have to be honest, I like my Christmas decorations and some of the bits the girls do aren't exactly in keeping with my theme, so these are what I use to decorate their room. It makes for a lovely colourful display.

Tot Friendly Christmas Tree

Today is the 1st December so I can finally share with you all my Christmas crafts!

This year I needed to think outside the box when it comes to Christmas decorations as Millie is 16 months old. She's a walking and climbing whirlwind of destruction and chaos, which means your traditional tree is totally out of the question. It would be no time before she would have taken off all the decorations, and pulled the entire thing down on herself.

I'd seen these felt Christmas trees online and in hobby craft so I decided to have a go at my own. This was much cheaper than buying the premade ones. I bought the 2m x 1.5m roll of green felt off ebay for £5 delivered, and all the extra felt and lights from the local pound shop. Overall this has only cost me £17. Much cheaper than a tree anyway.

I cut out basic felt shapes for decorations and stuck them together with a hot glue gun. I then added Velcro dots to the back of the decorations and the Christmas tree cut out. This will allow the girls to take off the decorations and re arrange them as they please.

I then added some twinkly lights to the felt tree. I bought the battery operated copper wire lights which are safe enough (not plugged into the mains) and tiny enough to not add too much weight to the tree. I cut a little hold in the felt, hot glued the first bulb in place, then worked my way down the tree.

This is the back of the tree where you can see the light wire.

This is how the front looks.

I then hung the tree on the wall using blue tac and it seems to be sticking quite well. The girls are having fun with it already!

 And what have we done with our normal decorations?? I still wanted to show them off as they are so pretty. So I've done this around all of the windows too. A branch from outside, Hung the decs off the branch using different ribbons and wrap around with lights. WAY out of Millie's reach!

DIY Dolls House

This has been by far one of my favourite craft projects so far!

I have decided to make a dolls house for the girls as a joint Christmas present. Its not totally DIY as I did buy the basic shell. I bought this really large basic Dolls House from ToysRus. It's super cheap at £50 for a wooden house with accessories and figures. But it's plain and boring...hence the price.

Cute toilet before make over

So if you fancy giving it a go, this is how I did the girls one on a super tight budget.

Firstly I painted the house parts before assembling it. Its much easier to paint before screwing it together. I used a some left over matt paint for the exterior walls and added white gloss to the raised areas for definition. I painted the door in a slightly darker blue to the walls just so it stood out.

Secondly I managed to decorate the entire interior walls and floors for free...how?
I searched the internet for a few hours and ordered every free sample of wall papers I could. Most major shops do free samples with free shipping, next, john lewis, homebase ect, but lots of high end designers do them too. The living room wall paper would be over £100 per roll to buy, but I got a large A4 sample for free. You also get the free sample rolls in most DIY shops, I just visited one and took some free strips. I used wood effect wall paper to create wooden flooring in the dolls house too.

I had to wait a couple of weeks for them all to arrive but once they did I got cracking.

Lastly the finishing touches. I used a home catalogue and cut out pictures of photos in frames to sick on the walls, fire place photos, mirrors, lights, plants. Once they were all stuck on they added character to the rooms.

So here are the finished rooms.

This is the master bedroom. This is wall paper glued to the walls and floor. Note the added picture on the wall of a rose from a catalogue of home décor.
I also covered the bed with a scrap of material and made a new bedding set.



The kids bedroom .I used wall paper on the walls and floors again here. I also cut out some kids cartoon pictures from a kids magazine to show it as a kids room. I added coloured paper to the stairs to add extra colour.

This is the living room with the super expensive wall paper. I've use the wood effect paper in here to look a bit like wooden flooring also.

You can see some of the added details here with the photos hanging on the wall, the fireplace and the clock. These were all taken out of a home style magazine.

Next my favourite room. The toilet. But mostly because I managed to find this awesome wall paper. I think this was from a DIY shop, which I took from the free sample roll.







This is the kitchen, again this was an expensive wall paper which I love. I pained the kitchen appliances and put some silver wall paper onto the pretend fridge. I also added some pictures of kitchen house decor stuff like the chalk boards on the left and house rules on the right.

Lastly here's mum in the dinning room, with a drink. I tried to make this as realistic as possible after all. I used fabric on the floor here to create a carpet feel and another square of carpet for a rug


Overall this is now a fun, colourful and hopefully something they will have fun with and play with for a long time. Plus if /when anything gets inevitably damaged, it doesn't matter..we can just re decorate.

This is Halloween, everybody SCREAM!!

 ..In this town we call home

Everyone hail to the pumpkin song la,la,la

My attempt at corpse bride make up. 

3 times today Scarlett has made us watch the Jack skeleton (or skelington as she says it) film. She's watched is every day for the past week. So now I have the song on repeat in my head, especially when I'm trying to sleep at 2am.


Anyway I thought I'd share some of our Halloween crafts and decoration tips.


Firstly to decorating. I hate spending money on decorations for Halloween. Mainly because we have 7 family birthdays in October including Scarlett's so I'm usually skint by the time Halloween comes around. We go down the home made route usually and this year I prepared a few crafts to keep the kids quiet on the first day of school holidays and create some decorations too.

Skull Faces

This ones really simple. I pre cut out some skull faces from A4 white paper (the stuff you pinch from work). I then let the kids colour them in and hand them on the windows. These cast a great shadow on the windows during the day, then I leave a led candle on at night so you can see them back lit from the street. Super cheap and very effective.

Ghost Bunting

Again A4 white paper. Layer 4-5 sheets at a time, fold in half, cut out ghost shape and you have 8/10 ghosts. Then draw on simple silly faces for your kids to colour, or if they are older let them draw their own. String together with black wool. Done.

Hanging Bats

I cut out bat shapes from black card and let the girls cover them in glitter glue. I then suck them to the walls with blue tac and hung them from lights.

Scary Masks

These are great fun to make. Using card from a cereal packet or what ever you can get your hands on draw a shape of any Halloween character you want.
Then using free home furnishing catalogues, clothing catalogues or any other crap that get's put in your post box, cut out colour pieces for your mask.
I cut out brown triangle shapes from wooden flooring section for the wolf here. It looks a bit like fur from a distance and has lots of interesting shades.
I used green grass photos from a gardening magazine for the witch and cut into squares.
Glue all the pieces into place and cover with a layer for glue for durability. Once dry use a marker pen to add details. I also made purple hair for the witch out of some left over wool I had. These are great for parties as there's always someone (usually an adult) who turns up without a costume. The kids will make them wear these.

Lego KeyTidy

We don't really lose keys (well not too often) but I'm properly fed up with finding random piles of stuff, be it keys, change or whatever hubby empties out of his pockets. And although this hasn't totally resolved the issue it has made key storage a bit easier.

I made this Lego key tidy because hubby love Lego and I like tidy. Win, win!

I went for neutral colours here so it wouldn't look garish.

This cost me £8 delivered..all from ebay:

1. Letter stickers =  £1.99
2. Technic Lego (Part 3701) with holes used as keyring to stick to back board = £1.98
3.Grey flat tile bricks 4 = 20p
4. Large grey plate = £1.99
5. Smaller cream plates = £2.00

This is just stuck onto the wall with blue tac and stays up perfectly.

Sensory Board

This is a work-in-progress project here as I'm planning on giving this to the girls for Christmas.

I wanted to create a sensory board which would grow with the kids. So currently we have lots of fiddly bits on it, but later on I'll use it as a notice board and jewellery rack in their room.

I took a trip to a DIY and pound shop. I've spend about £20 altogether, so this is a super cheap craft with a lot of impact.

I bought the following.
1. MDF board. This was a cheap off cut from the bargain bin.
2. Along the top we have a metal rule which also acts as a magnet strip for the alphabet letters and light.
3. In the middle we have a mirror, door knobs, chalk board, photo frames, alphabet stickers, felt picture board and pink pencil case.

Firstly I arranged the bits on the board, finding out the best placement for everything.

Once I liked the positioning I raided the craft cupboards, stuck down the pieces and this is what we have. the circular photo frames are not finished, but they are hanging so you can lift them up and see underneath. I'm going to fill these with different textures and pictures.

Kids Artwork, Art Gallery

Scarlett always comes home with lots of artwork from preschool and although we put the odd one up, they easily get damaged by falling down off the wall and into the hands of littlest one, or misplaced in the odd pile of paperwork. So I decided to create the kids their own little gallery so they can show off their proud doodles.

I got a cheap £9 frame from Ikea (Norrlida if anyone's interested) 

Here's the before shot.

I then covered the back with some pretty paper, for when the frame isn't full.

I then carefully placed Scareltt's recent artwork. The a4 paper is a drawing of herself. We then have a lolly pop mummy and daddy with a love heart kite. Beautiful.

The finished result looks good. With her art on display, not getting damaged and we can easily change the bits over when she next brings something home. 

Fairies in the Garden

Spring has sprung and the tulips are in bloom so we decided to keep the flower fairies happy by creating a little home for them. The idea of a little home quickly turned in to a princess style tower under Scarlett's direction. So here we have it: Fairy Towers. 

Fairy Towers

To make the fairy home and garden we collected a pot tray to contain the whole thing, a plastic tube for the tower (this was an old tennis ball tube), pink fish tank pebbles, a sheet of craft foam, a handful of coloured lollypop sticks from the craft supplies, some sparkly bits to decorate, 2 plastic party cups and a marker pen. 

We then set about the garden to get some plants for the fairies. I took some rockery plants, a small thyme plant and ivy. I planted the ivy into the two party cups, cutting a hole in the bottom for water to drain. 

I then cut the end off the tube to become the roof.

Ready to add to the tower

I also made a window for the second plant to grow out of. I dropped the cups into place pulling the ivy out of the windows. I then wrapped the tube in the foam sheet, in hindsight I would have drawn the bricks onto the foam BEFORE sticking it to the tube, not after, it was annoying!

Please ignore the tape, this was put on whilst waiting for the glue to dry so we could carry on making the tower, who knew 3 year old's were so impatient! 

After adding a door outline with a different colour felt we added the tube to a plant try filled with soil. 

We built up the soil around the base of the tower to add support and depth to the small garden. We planted the thyme next to the tower to look like a small tree and planted the other plants around the mini garden. I made a picket fence with the coloured lollipop sticks and used the pink pebbles to create a path. We made a swing (to match Scarlett's one, on her request) out of lollipop sticks. Scarlett decorated the roof with sequins and glitter glue whilst I added on details with the marker pen. We made a right mess but we had fun. 

Almost completed.

We then very carefully carried the fairy house into the rockery corner of the garden ready to find a new inhabitant. It's nicely sheltered there so hopefully wont be too destroyed by the elements. I just need to add a bit of moss around the plants to bring it to life. 

A quiet little nook. 

After picking the rest of the pink pebbles out of the lawn we scattered them along the fairy path to lead to the house, nicely tucked away waiting to be discovered by fairies and children alike. 

Fancy Dress Clothes Rack..from a CD storage unit?

Scarlett loves her imaginary play which means her fancy dress collection is quite vast, taking over half of her wardrobe and numerous toy boxes. So as part of my on going plans to put both girls in the same bedroom and create a dressing room in the spare room I decided to have a go at making a dressing up clothes rack with built in bits and bobs storage.

The end result. 

I found an old CD shelving unit which we bought from Ikea about 8 years ago and set to work with a jig saw and screw driver to try and create something a bit more useful and pretty.

 The selves before. 

After taking apart one half of the selves I used the two longest lengths as my side pieces to the rack. I cut out a curved top to remove any sharp edges.

Tip: I cut both sides at the same time so both end pieces matched even if I went a bit wobbly with the jig saw.

The unit sides

I took apart the second half of the shelves and cut down two lengths to make the base sides and the backing card to the shelves became the bottom of the storage tray. I used these cut down pieces as a template to cut an old gardening hoe handle which is now the hanging pole. 

I screwed together the side pieces to the base sides.

I then screwed in the hanging pole and lastly tacked the backing card to the underside of the base to create the storage tray.

Lastly using over some left over paint from decorating the hallway and our bedroom I painted the unit. I kept the hanging rail free from paint as it would wear off after time anyway.

I did the last coat of paint this morning and it was finished. I've just ordered some wooden hangers which should make it look a bit more uniform and ordered.

Scarlett loves it as she can reach all her favourite dresses and change outfits as many times as she likes.

Mirror Revamp - Once Upon A Dream

After a good Friday spent repainting my hallway, stairway and landing I looked at my landing mirror this afternoon and realised it did not go with any of the new décor. So in true thrift style I spent about half an hour collecting bits of inspiration from around the house and decided to revamp the old mirror into something new.

This literally only took me a couple of hours using some left over wall paint, buttons, broken bits of jewellery and good old super glue.

I forgot to take a before shot but this gives you an idea on how it looked before.

The before shot (actually just the unpainted back)

Firstly I painted the frame in some left over wall paint. Then whilst that dried I got out my button box and old jewellery and started mapping out ideas.

Then after watching The Voice finals I put super glue to button and started sticking it all down

Tip: I used puppy training pads to protect the flooring. 

These are water proof and absorb any spillages.

I also found this pendant which I have attached to the bottom of the frame. I'm thinking I might use the holes from the chain to hang a little sign, if I find something that catches my eye. 

Lastly I spotted this "Once upon a dream" logo on the back of a birthday card I'd gotten from Anya. I thought it looked cute so I cut it out and stuck it in the top corner. 

And there we go it's done. The best bit is I remember all the bits of jewellery I used, and who gave them to me and when, All those bits that had too much sentiment to throw away, but now I get to see them all again and enjoy them in this new space. 

Looking much brighter than the old black frame. 

Love my new mirror frame...now I'm looking at the lamp shade and thinking how dull that looks. I might need to stock up on more super glue!