Week in My Life

I love this project that is the brainchid of Ali Edwards.  Here is link to all you need to know about her project.  I have taken part over the years and love the fact I have a week documented for July 2011, April 2012 and now October 2014.  It will be great to look back on all the minutiae of my daily life. 

I love that this year’s week was in the autumn.  Although that did prove difficult for photography with dark evenings and grey days! 

I decided that as I didn’t have a lot of spare time, I would do the album as I went along, rather than write notes to be transcribed later.  So I filled Project Life album pages with cards, and wrote on them each day.  I also chose which photos I would want to print for each day as I went along.  Voila!  One finished album with very little time spent!

Here’s a look at some of the pages:

 

Some highlights of the week:

Autumn and Christmas at the same time in my fireplace.  I have been making reindeer garlands after seeing them on Facebook:

Getting Jason, our gym instructor to take a photo of us while we are doing 1 minute of plank!  This is our Wednesday morning core exercise class.  That’s me in the front in the black.

View of my kitchen table/desk:

A day out in Chichester with Mum on Friday.  Goodness it was busy!  Well it was half-term week and a beautiful warm sunny day. Here’s a photo of the cathedral and a view out of the car on the way home after dropping Mum home.  Love that the moon is visible!

 

Scrapbook crop on Saturday.  We took out usual Christmas photo.  This year we wore purple and made crowns!

 

A great evening out for dinner with friends on Saturday evening.

Sunday morning walk:

Nicholas buying a new sofa for his flat! 

September Mini Adventures

I decided to do a ‘mini-adventure’ every day in September.  It’s a bit like Shimelle’s Learn Something New Every Day class, which she hosts every September and which I have participated in from time to time.  My aim was to do something a bit different and out of routine each day.  I also got inspiration from Psychologies magazine which ran an article about mini adventures in August.  They chose things like ‘go home from work a different way’ or ‘try a salsa class’.   So I drew up a list and included things like:

Try a new fruit – I tried fresh figs

Wear a different colour.  I painted my toenails this pretty pastel green

I picked a few crafty adventures too, such as Paint!  I copied a technique from Alisa Burke’s blog and used these pastel colours to stamp with a feather.

Walk in my neighbourhood.  This is a little twitten/alleyway where I used to walk the dog regularly.  I hadn’t been there for quite a while.

Some adventures were really simple and didn’t take much time, like take a selfie, others were more involved, such as take a bus ride, or take a train ride.

My reasons for doing this project was to take me out of my hundrum routine and take my mind off my health difficulties (I am now injecting insulin for my diabetes, as it looks like it is a late onset type 1 diabetes.  I am waiting to see the consultant to find out.  Meanwhile I am having to stab myself numerous times per day to test my blood glucose levels and watch how many carbs I eat!).  I also wanted to kick start my photography again, so included ‘photograph a flower’, and took my camera on my walks.  And including different crafts, such as painting, drawing and doodling I was hoping to rekindle my love of paper crafting.

Of course, I have documented my adventures!  I wrote everyday on Facebook, and shared them with non-crafty friends who don’t read my blog.  Some of my friends were really interested and commented every day!  I really liked that.  I also made a book.  I bought a ‘Junk Journal’ pack from Julie Kirk and used it to make a mini book.  I am really pleased with the result!

Julie’s kit included 2 covers which I painted and doodled.  I bought myself a new white Posca pen, which is fabulous! 

The kit also includes papers you can include as pages.  I added in some postcards I had bought from Charleston, an old pack of children’s playing cards, and a piece of junk mail from an estate agent which was perfect for documenting helping Nicholas with his new flat/apartment.

 

I am really happy with the way the project went.  I only missed 1 day, the 29th, right at the end!  I had 1 disaster when I tried to bake scones.  I don’t bake very often, and have a new oven, so I am afraid to say they went straight in the bin!  But as my friend Cynthia said, to have an adventure you have to take yourself out of your comfort zone!  I did try another scone recipe a few days later which was successful. 

Since the end of September I have repeated some of the adventures, such as try a new recipe and try a new fruit (I bought a pomegranate).  Maurice has had the last couple of weeks off work as holiday but we haven’t been away.  He is keen to  spend time at Nicholas’s flat decorating – so my routine has not been much different to normal.  To try and shake things up a bit for me, I have thought of small things we could do, based on my mini adventures like go out for breakfast, and go to the cinema (we went to see ‘Gone Girl’ – I definitely recommend it!)

To sum up – it’s the little things that make me happy!

September Month in Numbers

It has been a lovely warm sunny month, just about 30 days of sunshine and 0 inches of rain!  Plenty of opportunities to wear my newly made  shorts and walk along the beach.

Rather than do Shimelle’s ‘Learn Something New Everyday’ class again, I made up 30 mini adventures to do in September.  I missed only 1 day.  More about my mini adventures in another blog post, but I did write 4 letters….

… and switched my radio over to BBC Radio 3 from my usual BBC Radio 2

I finished up with my Scavenger Hunt photos with a photo of 18 bird houses (you liked it so much I am going to show you t again!)

We made 1 trip to London to go to a concert in Hyde Park, at which 8 acts played: Chrissie Hynde, Bellowhead, Gregory Porter, Kacey Musgraves, Paloma Faith, Billy Ocean, Blondie and Jeff Lynne’s ELO:

It was a great day, Jeff Lynne played a fabulous set including all the classic ELO songs.  This was the first time he had played live for 26 years!

We made 1 trip to Birmingham to see some of my mum’s family; 2 uncles and 3 cousins plus their families.  There were 12 of us for lunch:

Nicholas got the keys to his apartment this month.  It needs lots of work, so we stripped the wallpaper in 4 rooms:

Finally, I know you have seen it before, but I finished the last of my 100 crotchet squares to make my lovely colourful, cosy blanket:

 

I am linking up with Julie for Month in Numbers.  Pop over and see what everyone else has done numerically in September.

Ta-dah!

Remember this wool:

 

Well, this is what it has turned into, ta-dah!

 

During the course of this year Burnice, Tash and I have crotcheted our way through this book.

 

We chose squares to crotchet each month.  So most evenings this year you could find me crotcheting in front of the tv!  A great way to spend an evening.  We have ended up with 100 squares, all different (well actually there are 2 that are the same, can you spot them?).  Because they are all different they ended up slightly different sizes, so the finished blanket is a bit lumpy.   I crotcheted mine together with cream wool, and did a simple double crotchet border in cream and then green.  My idea was to have green as the dominant colour and to make it look like a garden.   I am so happy with this colourful blanket and am looking forward to the cooler weather so I can snuggle under it.  It is very warm!

Scavenger Hunt–Final edition

Rinda’s Scavenger Hunt finishes in a few days, so it’s time to wrap up with my final photos:

A Painted Bus.  Here’s one of our local ‘Pulse’ buses.

A Sign welcoming you to my town.  The signs on the edge of town are really boring, so I thought I’d give you this which is near the town centre.

A Lamp post.  Love all the flowers on it!

Me wearing something that represents the season.  I give you 2 photos, one with toenails painted, a summer activity, one of me wearing shorts, sunglasses and sun hat,and one of me in my motorbike jacket.  This is definately something I only wear in the summer!

I was unable to find a juggler, so I give you bird houses!  Found these at the Sussex Prairie Gardens that I visited with Mum this week.

Dressmaking

I’ve been pretty busy sewing over the past few weeks.  When it was too hot outside, I came in and sewed!  I did a little photo shoot in the back garden with Maurice as my photographer.  Here are some of the things I have made:

First off, Prefontaine Shorts from Made by Moxie.  I got the pattern in the Perfect Pattern Parcel.  This is the second make out of that PPP.  I made these in gorgeous red and yellow quilting cotton, with yellow pockets and binding.

This blouse is from a free pattern with the magazine Love Sewing.  The pattern is by Simple Sew.   I must admit I needed some help with this one! The instructions weren’t very good!  I go to a dressmaking ‘drop-in’ on a Tuesday morning at More Sewing. I love this fabric!  The photo doesn’t really show it off to it’s best.  It was a remnant from  C&H Fabrics in Brighton.  With it’s 3/4 length sleeves, I think this will get a lot of wear in the autumn.

This blouse is probably the best thing I have ever made!  The pattern is New Look 6104.  It did need a little altering across the back, which Laura at More Sewing helped me with.  The fabric is an off white broderie anglais from Fabricland.  It will go with lots of things in my wardrobe so will get a lot of wear.

Finally – a kimono!  This is a free pattern from Sew Caroline.  I do love a free pattern!  I find patterns very expensive, and if you add the cost of the fabric, it is often not a lot cheaper to make clothes these days!  This kimono was made from a remnant from C&H fabrics which cost about £7, and the trim was about £3, which makes a total of £10, not bad!  I had to make the kimono about 1” shorter in the length and the sleeves as I did not have quite enough fabric!  But I think it looks OK.

My next project is the Lilou dress from Tillie’s book, Love at First Stitch.  I have it cut our ready to begin sewing.  After that I’ll be looking for some ideas for autumn/winter sewing.