Attic24

Summer Wreath Inspiration

Wreath making brings me a huge amount of creative joy, and over the years I've made five in total. The very first one I crocheted was the May Rose Wreath in 2012, and this was the start of a mild obsession with creating seasonal wreaths for my home. The May Rose wreath is smaller than my later ones - I used a 22cm full round ring and only half covered it with flowers as I fell in love with the colourful stripes and wanted them on show.

After the May Rose Wreath, I went on to make a slightly larger one for Christmas (blog post here) using a 35cm half-round polystyrene ring which became my preferred size. You can squeeze a surprising amount of yarny goodness onto a 35cm ring you know! 

The three wreaths above followed on from my Christmas extravaganza, from left to right ::

♥ Autmun ♥ Winter ♥ Spring ♥

So it won't come as any surprise if I tell you that last week I set off on a new yarny celebration of my favourite season.....

....Summer. Ahhh, I am such a summer-lover, and summer flowers are my very best favourite. Trouble is, there are absolutely loads of summer flowers that I love, and at the moment my visual ideas are all a bit jumbled and crowded. So I though it'd be a good idea to write this blog post as a way of emptying my mind a little and sharing the sort of images and flowers that are feeding my summer thoughts right now.

I had a quick sift back through my photo archives, which unsurprisingly have quite a number of flower images embedded in the Summer months. I am very very fond of summer annuals and usually have a splurge at our local nursery every May/June so that I can fill my back yard pots with instant, glorious colour. Marigolds, marguerites, pinks, African daisies, verbena, pelargoniums and lobelia.....I love the colours of these flowers very much.

When I think of Summer flowers, the first images that spring into my mind are of my own modest little back yard flowers.

The dinky little posies that I snip and gather each week to bring into the house are the very essence of Summer to me.....

....and I'm hoping I'll be able to capture something of this beautiful simplicity in yarn and crochet.

I'll definitely need to include some blousy roses.....

and without a doubt there must be sweet peas.

Marigolds, geraniums, nasturtiums and cosmos are also right up there on my list of floral Summer must-haves. So you can see, this summer wreath is probably going to be quite bold and bright - I'll have to try and keep it under control. Actually, scrap that. I don't think I'll bother with the control, I'll probably just go for the all-out exuberant over-the-top approach as per usual.

I was thinking about my Autumn and Winter wreaths, and how the little shots of red worked so well in each (the red toadstools in the Autumn wreath, and the bright red of the robin's breast in the Winter wreath). I was wondering and wondering what little non-floral red thing I could bring into my Summer wreath and suddenly it came to me - strawberries!! Of course!! Now I am soooooooooo excited about the idea of crocheting little strawberries for my wreath, I think they'll look really cute in amongst the flowers.

I'm also thinking I'd like to add in one or two critters too - maybe one of my little crochet bumble bees might buzz in, and I might possibly attempt to create a crochet butterfly or two.

This morning I went in search of some Summer wreath inspiration, it's always good to feed the Creative Mind when embarking on a new project....

Vintage inspired crochet wreath made by Jill Ruth

A soft Summer palette, very delicate and pretty.

A felted wreath

I can't tell you much about this as the website isn't in English, but I dearly love the little felt strawberries :)

Crochet wreath by Huckleberry Prairie

Pretty Summery colours....and more strawberries......

Silk flower wreath by Honey Bee Floral Design

I really love ranunculas, although they aren't flowers I ever have growing or in the house.

Felt and yarn wreath found on the Hative blog

There are lots of Summer wreath ideas on this blog, but this was my favourite.

Felt flowers by Rubyellen Bratcher

These pretty colours really sang out to me, although this is nothing like my own bright summer colour story. Too pretty not to share though.

Rainbow floral wreath by Agnes Blum

Now those are my colours! I love the bold rainbow brights, but also the teensy little accent flowers placed here and there.

Summer flowers by Botanical Brouhaha

Always good to look at the real thing for inspiration.

Rose wreath by Maison-des-Roses

I'm hoping to design a bigger version of my May Rose for my Summer wreath, with lots of layers of petals.

Felt leaf wreath by Curious Bloom

I know this isn't a summer wreath, but I came across it on Pinterest this morning and fell head over heels in love. Curious Bloom sells her creations via Etsy, oh they are sooooo lovely, do go and have a look. Beautiful colour inspiration.

And lastly, another non-summer wreath that's waaaaay too beautiful not to share, isn't it amazing???!! This is a living succulent wreath created by Jen Tao (@jennssuccs on Instagram), the subtle beauty of these colours absolutely knocked my socks off. If you've got a few minutes to spare, go and take a little look at Jen's instagram feed, and please don't blame me if you are suddenly struck by an overwhelming desire to fill your home with succulents. I am off to investigate these neat little growing things, I think my life needs succulents...........

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In the Studio

I called at the supermarket this morning after dropping Little B at school and found myself predictably flitting round the flowers like a helpless butterfly. There are many supermarket flowers that don't float my boat, but a simple bunch of tulips, oh they do it for me every time. At this time of year they are cheap to buy and I was powerless to resist their charm. 

I am constantly inspired and uplifted by fresh flowers, the colours and the natural beauty affects my heart and soul in a way that is so pleasurable, it becomes like a bit of an addiction. I always feel like I can't live without them.

These tulips have very delicately frilled edges to their petals and I am ridiculously excited to watch them open and show me what colours are hiding inside. The temperatures outside are still depressingly chilly for late April (currently 3 degrees celsius out there with a biting cold wind) but my studio is blissfully warm and cosy so I don't expect I'll have long to wait for my tulips to do their thing.

I'm kind of skittishly in between projects at the moment and it feels a bit strange as I can't seem to settle properly to any one thing. I'm working on some mandalas here and there when I feel like it, and last week I started crocheting some stripes to form a base for a Summer wreath. But I do really crave a new blanket project, I miss having some easy colourful rows to sink into in the evenings when I'm too tired to concentrate much on anything else.

Yesterday when I was in the studio I decided to make myself a bit of a washing line against the wall. I wanted to peg up my colour palette samples so that I can see in a glance how my colour journey has progressed in the six years since I made my original granny stripe blanket. It's amazing to look at these little collections of crochet squares, to recall the memories and feelings that inspired each blanket. I've pegged them up so that they sit in the order that I made them, from left to right...

Original {Granny Stripe made for my caravan, 2010}

Coast {Ripple inspired by the Dorset coast, 2014}

Cottage {Ripple inspired by my Mum's cottage garden, 2014}

Cosy {Cosy Stripe inspired by the Autumn season, 2014}

Harmony {Granny squares inspired by the Spring/Summer landscape, 2015}

Sunny {Log Cabin/granny stripe inspired by the Summer season, 2015}

Cupcake {Cosy stripe inspired by the colours of iced cupcakes, 2016}

So I am sat here wondering - what will be next?????! I have a few ideas buzzing around - I think I'd like to make a Winter inspired blanket later in the year using a similar palette of colours to my Winter Wreath. I've also got something of a nostalgic wisp of an idea surfacing inside my Creative Mind from way back in my childhood. It's very hard to pin down as it's just a rather vague, long ago memory, something to do with folksy floral motifs. I've been making a pinterest board to try and capture the essence of this memory that keeps coming back to me, and I think there might be something there that will inspire.

Isn't creativity a wonderful, wonderful thing?

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Spring Twigs

I loved decorating my mantel for Easter this year, and once all the little eggs and felt pretties were packed away again it all looked rather depressingly bare. I do usually have some sort of crochet goodness on these branches in between Easter and Christmas so this isn't a totally new idea (I've made hearts and blossom in previous years), but it was time for something fresh.....

I had an idea to make some little Spring Leaves, something quick and easy to satisfy my creative soul and add a happy dash of colour to my mantel twigs.

I like to use DK weight cotton yarn for this sort of thing - cotton yarn has a certain stiffness which lends itself to small decorative motifs. We really don't want wilting, droopy leaves now do we?! In my yarn bag I've got Stylecraft Classique Cotton DK (the new 50g balls) which worked really well for my leaf making. It's a lovely soft, matt cotton which is great to work with and non-splitty (hooooray for non-splitty yarn!) 

The leaves are worked in two quick rounds and are rather cute with a round bottom and pointy top end. Unlike other leaves that I've made in the past, these leaves are worked out of a central ring (as opposed to up and down the length of a short crochet chain), so are much easier to do. They are perfect for beginners who want to add some crochet leaves to twigs, wreaths, brooches or any other thing that needs a leafy finishing touch.

When I darned in my tail ends on the back of the leaf, I added a little loop so that I could simply slip the leaf neatly onto the end of a twig....

....it worked a treat and means that this display can easily be changed on a whim (I am often overcome by Creative Whims, so none of my twiggy decorations are permanently attached). Of course, you could glue these leaves in place if you wanted a more permanent solution.

I love the simplicity of this idea.....

.....and the way the mirror doubles up my creative efforts is a bonus too. Actually, I think I could do with making a few more leaves to really fill the twigs with colour - you know I always go for the more-is-more approach. Well it works for me.

This is such a lovely time of year, our days are lengthening and the extra hours of daylight are making me sooo happy. The house feels light and bright, laid back and relaxed. Springtime is sooooo good!

I wrote up the pattern for these leaves, just in case you feel a need to hook up a little bit of yarny Spring growth.

 {SPRING LEAVES PATTERN}

Happy Days xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 

 

Cupcake Stripe Blanket :: Ta-dah!

I've been so so so looking forward to sharing this post with you, I always do get a bit giddy when there is a ta-moment on the horizon but I am especially excited to share my Cupcake Stripe with you today. I confess that I've developed a bit of a crush on this blanket as I've been making and photographing it during the past few months, the colours have given me such a lift through the dull days of February and March when I wasn't feeling quite so good.

Do you remember the post I wrote back in early February, chatting about the way I plan my blankets? Well the Cupcake blanket wasn't inspired by nature or the seasons, it was down to one of my lovely Facebook followers (thank you Sheena!) who wrote to me and asked if I could create a cupcake-inspired colour palette for her. The idea was so appealing I was powerless to resist, and that's how I found myself in the middle of Winter playing with these pretty colours.

Before I actually start on any new blanket, I like to make myself a little colour sampler which helps me to get an overall impression of the colour palette I've chosen. Sometimes when I'm at this stage, I find one or two colours just don't play nicely with the rest and it gives me the opportunity to make changes. In this case, I ended up swapping out Sage Green and replacing it with the softer Pistachio shade. Don't the colours look sooooooo pretty stacked like this? Good enough to eat!

The fifteen colours of my Cupcake Blanket (made using Stylecraft Special DK) are as follows ::

Top row, left to right ::

Wisteria ♥ Cloud Blue ♥ Pistachio ♥ Mocha ♥ Fondant

Middle row, left to right ::

Parma Violet ♥  Duck Egg ♥ Spring Green ♥ Camel ♥ Apricot

Bottom row, left to right ::

Clematis ♥ Sherbet  ♥ Lemon ♥ Stone ♥ Cream 

Putting these fifteen balls of yarn into my bag gave me something of a wide-eyed surprise as they are quite different from my usual trade-mark brights. I admit it wasn't love at first sight, it was more of a slow, soft, creeping type of affection that began to set in.

Once I'd chosen the colours, I had a bit of a ponder over which pattern to use. I was very tempted to ripple these colours, I think they would look wonderful made up using the Neat Ripple pattern. In the end I decided to use my Cosy Stripe pattern which is the one I designed for my Autumn/Winter 2014 Crochet-A-Long. I thought it would be fun to make a Spring Sister for the Autumn-inspired original. 

Oh I LOVE starting a new blanket, I love it so much! I am quite addicted to it I'm sure. Here I am on the 8th February, hoping that this soft, pastel coloured yarn was going to give me the required dosage of pleasure and deliver my daily colour-fix. Out of the fifteen colours I chose for this blanket, there  were six that I'd never used before (Apricot, Cream, Lemon, Stone, Pistachio, Duck Egg). It was exciting to play with some new colours, even if it felt a little strange at first. Cream yarn?? Is this really me??

It was funny taking the Cupcake blanket out and about as it did tend to generate some surprised responses from my yarny friends. At first, nobody could believe their eyes, they were astounded to see me working with pastel colours.

I hope it's OK to confess that I did wobble a little bit at the start of this blanket, wondering whether I'd made a mistake. I think maybe this uncertainty was caused by the fact that I was using very Spring-like colours in the middle of Winter? Or maybe it was a response to everyone else's shock?! Or maybe it was just the unfamiliarity of the lemon/cream/apricot colours that made me doubt what I was doing for a bit.

But these colours are so charming, it's hard to doubt them for very long. They sing such a pretty song, they are seductive, gentle and very easy on the eye. The effect they had on me as I crocheted these stripes was, well.....it was like the visual equivalent of a lullaby, all soothing and calming and dreamy.........

...........oh, I nearly nodded off then.......where was I? Ahh yes, the gentle nature of these easy going stripes, I can confirm that they do grow on you beautifully. It took me five weeks to crochet ninety stripes (I had a lot of sofa-time through February and March remember), and then my usual dither as I contemplated The Edge. Actually, I had already formed an idea of what I wanted the edge to look like, so it was a case of choosing the right colours and having a jolly good play around until it all came together.

I absolutely love this edging and I know I will definitely use it again. I would love to try a very wide version of it one day, which I think would look amazing around a patchwork of granny squares.....can you see it? {edit - ooooo, look what I just found on Pinterest!! >> HERE} See? Fabulous idea eh?!

The Linen Stitch Edging is formed in five rounds - four rounds of linen stitch (also known as moss stitch) and a fifth round of simple scallops to finish. I've written up a full tutorial for making it, which you can find in my left hand side bar....

♥ LINEN STITCH EDGING ♥

I really loved finishing this blanket, it felt like such a joyous triumph, and something of a small relief too.

"Lucy Crochets with Pastel Colours and All Is Well!"

I had worried quietly to myself that I might end up feeling half hearted about this blanket once it was finished. And I know that I wouldn't be able to lie about my feelings here on my blog either. I would have to tell the truth, of course I would.

So I just want to tell you that as much as I fell for these beautiful pastel shades, my bright-colour-love has not altered one jot with the making of this blanket. I've not suddenly gone over to the Pastel Side. I can appreciate the gorgeousness of these sweet, pretty-pretty shades and they've been a refreshing change, but my heart still belongs in the the Bright Colour camp. And that's the truth.

Anyhow, would you like to see how it looks, this Cupcake Stripe blanket?

Want to see how darn pretty it all is?

OK................................

Stripes

coming

up.................................

 

Ta-dah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They are pretty yummy  - think fondant icing, creamy ice cream, love heart candy and iced gems all rolled into one sugary sweet blanket.

The blanket measures 120cm x 175cm which is roughly single bed size. But as with most of my blankets, I like to have them all to hand downstairs for sofa snuggling/den building. They are well used by the Little People I can tell you, which makes my heart happy :)

It's been lovely having this blanket around in the Attic24 household for a while, it does make me feel good to see it casually flung on the sofa, a constant reminder that Spring is on it's way.

Here are some useful links and information about the Cupcake Stripe Blanket ::

♥ CUPCAKE YARN PACK :: 15 x 100g balls of Special DK, which comes with a full colour printed pattern.

♥ CUPCAKE STRIPE PATTERN :: I wrote a separate page for this blanket pattern which gives lots of information about tension, size etc as well as the written Cosy Stripe pattern with the colour order for the Cupcake stripes.

♥ LINEN STITCH EDGING :: this is the new edging I designed especially for the Cupcake blanket.

As ever, I am thrilled to share patterns with you for free and I hope very much that you might feel inspired to make your own pretty-pretty snuggle blanket. Happy hooking my lovelies!

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Easy Like Sunday Morning

We woke to a really gorgeous, cold, sunny Sunday morning here in North Yorkshire with frost on the ground and a most brilliant bright blue sky up above. We managed to be out the house before nine (all five of us, even The Teen! Hear me exclaim!!!) to enjoy and savour this gift of a day.

An easy circular walk at Bolton Abbey, riverside, woodland, ancient buildings, pebble beaches. Strolling, chatting (the Little People have launched a can-we-get-a-dog campaign, and their persuasive reasoning is ferocious), running, jumping, pebble skimming (The Teen has a gifted right arm), treasure hunting, paddling. Home made oat cookies, chocolate, bright sun, cold air, fresh, fresh cold air.

At the end a leisurely rest at the bustling pavilion café, sitting outside in the sunshine for the first time this year. Ice cream, cloudy lemonade, frothy chocolate dusted cappuccino. Then home via the scenic route, a windy little country road where lambs leap about in the sunshine. A stop at the farm shop to pick up a beef and ale pie for our dinner, then home just in time for lunch.

So easy. So good. Sunday morning, you were totally wonderful xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Colour Me Happy

♥ Crocheting some Spring Leaves to adorn the jug of bare twigs on my mantel. I'm using Stylecraft Classique Cotton DK which is great for little decorative projects like this - I'll be sharing this leaf pattern on my blog next week.

♥ The most beautiful bunch of flowers arrived on my doorstep this week, a complete surprise from a lovely friend.

♥ Fresh flowers and bright colours are two of my Life Essentials, food for the heart and soul.

♥ Continuously inspired by the colours and patterns provided by Mother Nature. Just w-o-w.

♥ A humble bunch of daffodils on my table this week, so delicate and pretty.

♥ I wish you could put your face gently to your screen and inhale the scent of these flowers, they smell divine.

♥ I got over my fear of yarn-in-a-skein and hand wound this ball of sock yarn at the weekend. These colours have me dreaming of green fields and sea breezes.

♥ Sunny colours on my bed make me smile so many times a day. This log cabin blanket is one of my all time favourite makes.

♥ I'm busy writing up the tutorial for this lovely linen stitch border, and putting together a very pretty ta-dah post for my Cupcake Stripe blanket. All will be revealed on Monday morning, and I am sooooooooooooooooooooooooo excited to share it all with you!

Have a wonderful weekend my lovelies, I hope your days are filled with colours that make your heart and soul happy...

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Wild Garlic Pesto

So I made Wild Garlic Pesto today, I couldn't stop thinking about it after writing my woodsy post last night and drooling over all that lush green on my computer screen. I desperately wanted to taste the colour of my photos, I wanted to see what fresh Spring woodland tastes like.

I found a very simple recipe that was different to a classic pesto in that there was no parmesan cheese involved, just three ingredients seasoned with salt and pepper. All you require is wild garlic leaves, almonds and olive oil. I absolutely LOVE simple recipes like this, only three ingredients!! I think I was supposed to have flaked almonds but I could only find whole blanched almonds at the farm shop. I started out attempting to cut them into flakes, but after seven nuts I gave up and threw them all into my chopper for a quick blitz. Easy peasy.

The next stage is to toast the nuts gently in a dry frying pan (no oil) until they turn golden and smell divine - stir them all the time so that they don't catch and burn as they change colour very quickly.

And then it's just a simple case of whizzing it all up in the chopper, how easy is this? Oh, one other thing about the ingredients, I found I only had half the required amount of wild garlic, so I added in the same amount of baby spinach to make up the quantity.

Whizzing is a fun thing to do in the kitchen, I love the speed of it very much. I also really love my little chopper, it's a Bosch one (from Amazon UK) and is one of my most used kitchen gadgets (along with my digital scales). I was impressed how easily it demolished the almonds, don't think I've chopped nuts in it before. I couldn't really do the drizzling of the oil as instructed, so just had to add the oil a bit at a time, whizz, add more oil, whizz etc until I ended up with a smooth paste.

I dolloped the lush green mixture into a mini kilner jar, covering the pesto with oil as the recipe said. Apparently, this will keep for a few months in the fridge, that's if I don't eat garlic pesto pasta for lunch every day for a week which I'm seriously tempted to do.

Will you just feast your eyes on that colour!!! I haven't messed with this photo at all, wild garlic pesto really is this green in real life and the smell.....mmmmmmmmm, the smell is completely wonderful.

I had just enough dry tagliatelle pasta in the cupboard to rustle up a simple lunch for one. Pasta cooked al dente, tossed with a generous dollop of wild garlic pesto and a little finely grated cheese added at the end.

I would like to tell you that I took my time and savoured every fork full, but in truth I wolfed the lot in double quick time. I was a bit ashamed of my lack of savouring, but I just couldn't help myself. So yummy. Every mouthful tasted deliciously green and wonderfully garlicky, such a beautiful, simple Spring lunch. It was every bit as good as I hoped it would be.

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April Woodland

Oh April, you are such a fickle thing, you have one foot dancing in Spring and one foot still very firmly planted in Winter. I do wish you'd make up your mind and leap forth into Spring! We had snow again on Saturday, late afternoon and suddenly there were giant feathery white flakes falling steadily from the sky. On Sunday morning there was a whiff of gentle Spring warmth so we went out for a short walk. The sun shone brightly and the daffodils looked beautiful (they are late blooming this year), and yet the surrounding hills were white with snow.

We meandered slowly up the lane....

....and into the quiet, sun dappled woodland.

The banks of wild garlic are looking spectacular, so bright and utterly green....

.... it's hard to take your eyes away, this carpet of living green is so mesmerising.

We took the high path around the top of the woodland, it was seriously muddy in places and there were some comedy slip-slidey moments as we descended back down to the river. Isn't the sound of laughter on a quiet Sunday morning so, so good? Fresh woodland air, gentle sunshine, mud and laughter, just lovely.

I spotted a single bluebell, and the sight of it made my heart skip. 

On the spur of the moment, in a quiet patch of woodland with nobody else around, I picked some wild garlic to bring home. Beautiful, young, fresh little leaves with the most incredible scent. I always mean to do this every year and always procrastinate until it's too late - the wild garlic window is quite small, and now is the perfect time. I washed it and have it in the fridge now - tomorrow I'm planning on making a wild garlic pesto to stir into pasta, the flavour of April Woodland.

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Life Planning

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you will probably have gathered that I have a dreadful memory, and that I am also quite chaotic in the general way I go about things. If you were being kind, you might call me a Free Spirit, but really I am a prize procrastinator, I leave everything till the last minute, I constantly forget things, I am scatterbrained, disorganised, forgetful.  I go through periods where I try really hard to change my bad habits, try to pull myself together, organise myself, write lists, make plans, but I have never really found anything that worked for me long term.

Do you remember last Spring, I shared with you my 'Book of Days'? I managed to use this book successfully for about 5 months at the start of last year, and it really did help me to feel more organised. I used it as a diary/notebook hybrid, making notes and to-do-lists with daily, weekly and monthly reminders. It was very homespun - I made my own calendars and glued them in, stuck in post-it notes and scribbled my way through the pages with coloured pens. I found I really enjoyed doing it though, I used to look forward to sitting down at the start of each week and making little colourful lists to keep myself on track. I discovered the satisfaction of ticking things off a list too - oh yeah, feels good! I am in control, I can be organised, I can get things done!!

Sometime last Spring when I was in full organisational swing, I found myself searching online for stickers - I decided I'd like some colourful stickers to help me organise my lined notebook pages. I tried Amazon first but couldn't find anything other than coloured dots, so I hopped along to have a look on Etsy and suddenly a whole new and brightly coloured world opened up to me. Oh the stickers, pretty, beautiful, colourful stickers!!! But not only that, these stickers I found were functional too, designed for some such thing called a Life Planner. Intrigued, I went in search of more information and discovered that a Life Planner is a cross between a diary and a journal, something that can be functional but also an inspirational and creative way to record and remember pretty much anything and everything on a daily basis. There are many different types of planners made by different stationery companies, and many, many thousands of devoted Planner Addicts all over the world who use them and love them to distraction. There was one particular planner which kept cropping up and seemed to have a very large number of world wide fans, and that was the Erin Condren Life Planner.

Erin Condren is an American business specialising in personalised stationery products, although they are probably best know for their Life Planners.  The planners are fun and quirky with bright colours and an almost irresistible charm - there is something about them which makes you feel like your life is incomplete without one. If you've got three and a half minutes to spare and you've not ever heard of this product, here is a cute video which will give you a good idea of what it's all about {Erin Condren 2015/16 LifePlanner}.

Now the first thing to point out is that these planners are not cheap, in fact when you first clock the $50 price tag it's more than a little bit alarming. Then when you add on some hefty shipping costs (Erin Condren manufactures all planners in the USA), this becomes an expensive investment for us British peeps. I spent over two months deliberating my purchase, and during those two months I ummed and ahhed, watched an awful lot of YouTube videos (the Erin Condren Planning community is HUGE on YouTube), chatted to other UK planner girls online and tried to decide whether to commit my British Pounds. In the end, I did the maths....an eighteen month planner costs roughly $75 if you include shipping, which is approximately £53. Divide this by 18 months = less than £3 a month. Am I worth £3 a month? Well obviously, I really do believe I am!!

It takes about two weeks for planners to be printed, shipped and delivered to the UK.

It's a little bit painful doing the waiting.

But eventually you get a fella from FedEx rock up at the front door, presenting you with a pretty box.......

....and oh the excitement as you open that blue tissue paper is rather hard to describe - it really is exciting you know!

As you can see from the above picture, when I ordered my Erin Condren Life Planner I chose the 'create your own design' option which allows you to upload your own photos for the covers. I bloomin LOVE that you can do this, it was a huge thrill to see my cover for the first time and feel overwhelmingly smitten with it.

I chose my colourblock cushion for the front cover....

....and my Granny Stripe blanket for the back cover.

I've put both these photos onto Flickr, so please feel free to download the high-res images if you wish to use them for yourself.

I was surprised how big (and heavy) my Life Planner was when it arrived - it somehow seemed more substantial in real life than it looked on my computer screen.

And because I chose the 18 month option (much better value for money, being only $5 more than the 12 month version), you can see it's quite a chunky number, probably about an inch thick I'd say.

I'm not going to bore you by showing you the entire planner from front to back  - there is a tonne of this on YouTube if you want to go and search it out and see what exactly is inside one of these things.  The above spread shows the page layout that appears at the beginning of each month.....

....and this is what a week looks like with the vertical layout.

As you can see, over the past year I've built up my own little collection of planner stickers, oh my word, these things are sooooo addictive. You have been warned, my friends. If you are used to shopping on Etsy, you will know that it's a truly global marketplace - you can order stickers from the other side of the world and as if by magic they will arrive on your doormat in about a weeks time.

However, my very best discovery last year was a wonderfully talented UK Etsy seller who had recently started up her own small business designing and selling planner stickers on Etsy. When I first found EllieBethDesigns in March last year, Rachel's business was only one month old. I immediately realised I had found a fellow colour-lover, and her designs really appealed to me. But more importantly than the array of rainbow colours, I found that her stickers are useful and I had high hopes that they would help me in my quest to be more organised.

The stickers that Rachel designs for EllieBethDesigns fall into two categories - there are functional stickers and decorative stickers. I love the functional ones and use them a lot in my weekly planning - the check lists and little boxes get the most use, with weekend banners, menu-planning and laundry reminders also used every week.

The decorative stickers are hard to resist mind you - Rachel designs new sheets every month, some of which co-ordinate with the monthly colours in the Erin Condren Planner, and some which are seasonal. There is something so nostalgic and pleasing about sticking stickers into a book, it transports you back to childhood days whilst being a perfectly acceptable hobby for a forty-something busy Mum. It's a huge amount of fun, this planning lark. You get to stick stickers and use coloured pens, what's not to love?!

These are the other stickers I use regularly in my planner - which makes me laugh actually 'cos you can clearly see what my days are made of - yarn, coffee, shopping and home, oh I know how to live! Rachel made the yarn stickers especially for me back last year when her business was still growing and she had time to work on custom orders. These days, EllieBethDesigns is a thriving business with one very busy Mum-of-two at the helm, and custom orders are a thing of the past. However - one of the things that I most love about Rachel is her true passion for using planners, and the time she has for the planning community in general. Last year she established a Facebook group which has become a lovely community of like-minded ladies who really enjoy sharing their planners. And I think that's one of the great things about owning and using an Erin Condren Life Planner - you get a creative hobby to indulge in, but you also become part of a worldwide club which feels rather nice to be a part of.

Oooooooooo what do we have here, are these more yarn stickers???

Yes, they are indeed (and I love love love them) - these crochet stickers are brand new and I couldn't be more delighted. I promise you I didn't beg for these really I didn't. Rachel is building up a small collection of hobby stickers (some super-cute Gardening ones have just been released this week), and I know these are going to get a lot of use in my planner.

I can't really show you too much of my planner pages cos there is a fair bit of personal stuff that I jot down, and these things I prefer to keep private. But you can see the above pages are set up ready for next week when the Little People go back to school and I go back properly to work in my studio. I usually make a general weekly to-do list in the side bar, then each day will have it's reminders, appointments and to-do's added in. I menu-plan at the start of the week and write those in for each day (this is soooo useful) and optimistically jot down some vague housework tasks in the hope I might feel inspired to actually do them. 

I am what is known as a "functional planner" and usually end up with quite a bit of white space on my pages. I really need my planner to work for me, to help me remember things and organise my days, and on the whole it does a pretty good job. Others plan in a much more decorative way (with loads and loads and loads of stickers) and their planners become inspirational journals - there is a whole creative journalling community out there to tap into if that might be your thing.

The above planner belongs to my Little Lady, I asked her if I could show you and she said she didn't mind at all. I bought her this Personal Planner for Christmas after many months of her begging me, and in January she joined me as a little trainee Plannerette. She adores stationery, pens and stickers as much as I do (actually, I think she possibly loves them more)  and it's become a precious shared hobby. Sunday 6pm is officially our planner-time, I even let her share my stickers, I know, I am so kind. We both really look forward to it, and I know that she uses her planner most days to help her keep a track of her homework and school assessments, proudly ticking things off as she completes them. It's a good habit, and I hope truly that she will adpot it for life and not end up a scatty airhead like her mother.

I have a serious crush on these pens you know, I've been using them constantly for over a year now and they are brilliant for using in my planner. The box that they come in has a bit that folds back so that you can make it stand up on the desk - I love little things like that, don't you?

You can find these pens - Staedtler Triplus Fineliners online {Amazon UK : Amazon US}, I can highly recommend them.

I wonder how many of you use a Life Planner? I don't know anyone else in real life who does, which makes my online planner friends even more special cos they totally get the thrill of stickers and coloured pens. I am really, really enjoying the fun of weekly 'stickerating' but more importantly, using this planner is really helping me to feel less disorganised and a tad more on top of things.

Here are some links which might help/enable if you have an interest in planner and sticker type things :

EllieBethDesignsUK - hundreds of decorative and functional stickers. On the first Wednesday of every month (known as #WhatsNewWednesday), Rachel releases a whole heap of new designs. You can also find lots of her planner videos on YouTube.

EllieBethDesigns : Facebook group - this is a closed group so you will need to become a member. Here you will get news and previews of new releases, plus the opportunity to give feedback/suggestions to Rachel (she is soo good at listening to her customers), as well as lots of lovely general planner chatter from a super friendly group of ladies.

Erin Condren.com : if you are considering investing in a Life Planner, there is one release date a year which is always in June. You can choose an 18 month 2016/2017 planner which will start in July 2016, or you can go for a 12 month planner which won't actually start until January 2017. After the launch in June, planners can be ordered throughout the year.

Erin Condren : Facebook - news, blog updates, motivational quotes and creative ideas.

HAPPY LIFE PLANNING!!

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ps this is not a sponsored post, just me sharing my new hobby and my attempts to be more organised. Ever hopeful on the latter.  x

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dorset Spring 2016

We were away last week, our usual five day Easter jaunt down to the Dorset coast to spend time with my family. It's a holiday that I really, really look forward to each year, a lovely, gentle time away from home and a chance to touch base with my family who I only see three times a year. I occasionally question the fact that we do the exact same thing year after year after year (this will be the 9th year of my Dorset Spring blog posts), and very occasionally I think longing thoughts about heading to somewhere warm and European. But essentially, this is a time for me to see my folks and I enjoy being somewhere so beautifully familiar that holds a very special place in my heart. It's very much more than just a short trip away from home for me and I can't see us giving it up, well not any time soon.

As you can see from the above photo, our first morning at our favourite beach café was a wet one. In some ways this weather suited us as the whole place was near deserted (unlike last year when it was warm and sunny and heaving with people). Even though we usually love to sit outside on the decking, this café  has a large tent-like extension which allows you to still feel like you are connected to the outside whilst staying warm and dry. Our brunch was as delicious as ever (breakfast ciabattas all round, with a mug of especially good coffee) and by the time we'd finished scoffing, the rain had miraculously stopped falling. So off around the harbour we went....

....marvelling at the unexpected sunshine when just half an hour before it was absolutely tipping it down. The weather was very Jekyll and Hyde for the whole week, pouring rain one minute, bright sunshine the next, talk about unpredictable.

The Sunday morning when we were at West Bay, the tide was high and the wind was gusty so we took an exhilarating stroll along west pier with the waves literally splashing up over the sides. The air was full of salty sea spray, it landed on our faces and the taste of it instantly took me back to my childhood. The Little People thought it was great and took their chances walking right next to the wall in the hope of actually getting a soaking. Mad little things that they are.

The sea was very rough....

....and we could clearly see that a storm was rolling in fast from the West.

It came in at such a rate! We could literally see the rain sweeping along the coast towards us.....

....and we only just made it off the beach and back to the car as the heavens opened.

The stormy weather at the start of our holiday did give us an excuse to stay put in the warmth and comfort of the house, which in my honest opinion was no bad thing. The Little People seemed happy enough watching films, playing on their gadgets and stuffing chocolate into their faces, and I had my crochet bag with me full of colourful cotton yarn. Last Easter when we were down in Dorset I was crocheting my Harmony Blanket, the Easter before that it was my Coast Ripple, so it did feel a little strange to be blanketless this year. I made up for the lack of blanket with a very pleasurable mandala making sesh - I'm making some more large hula-hoop decorations for Yarndale (remember these ones I made in 2014?). I'm using a really lovely free pattern from Bella Crochet blog this time -I'll show you more very soon (currently on my third one, mandalas are sooooo addictive).

A day after the storm had passed (we found out that storm Katie was the cause of the wild weather), we woke to blue skies and sunshine and decided to make it a Lyme Regis Day. Oh joy! 

I found that my love affair with this pretty seaside town has not diminished, I love it so very much here.

Everything about it charms me, it's so pleasingly colourful and visual and guaranteed to set my heart fluttering.

In our stroll along the sea front we discovered a tiny new-to-us café here at the edge of the beach called Blue Sea Café, you can see it there in the above photo. I can't resist the lure of a coffee with a sea view, so I took charge and quickly shimmied the family to a table before they could think about denying me one of my favourite holiday pleasures.

I almost squealed when my coffee came to the table and I clapped eyes on the blue and white striped cup and saucer (little things like this please me so much), and the coffee was unbelievably good too.

The Little Peeps had ice cream of course, but I took the above photo to show you how my resident Nail Guru decides to decorate her nails for Easter. Pretty cool eh?

After our lovely mid morning coffee stop, we carried on strolling along the beach....

....and round to the harbour. We didn't really have an agenda, other than to pootle at leisure, which is something I adore doing. I am indeed a very, very accomplished and experienced pootler, I was born for it I'm sure.

It was lunch time now, so we decided to go up into the town in search of some fodder. Up through the gardens we went, with beautiful views out across the beach and harbour below.

Our lunch came from the delicious Cornish Bakery,  there is something very satisfying about eating a hot pasty straight from the paper bag whilst sitting beside the sea. We found a bench sheltered by the sea wall with stunning views out along the Jurrassic coast, it was a lovely al fresco lunch in more ways than one.

Sometimes when we are in Dorset we struggle trying to make plans that fit in with the various members of my family, especially when my brother is also visiting with his family in tow. We make a large group altogether (nine adults and five children) and so although I would much prefer to wing it and not make plans at all, I have to toe the line and behave. We managed two large, pre-organised family rendez-vous last week - a superb pub lunch on Easter Monday, and a lengthy morning coffee session a few days later. I absolutely love going out for coffee and am very very lucky that in my normal life I manage to do it most days (well my studio is above a café, which is more than a bit fab). For family coffee outings we usually head to The Hive Beach café at Burton, with fingers crossed for the weather so that the Little People can leap around on the beach whilst we sit and chat at length. It was great to catch up with my brother and his family, to find them well and happy and to watch cousins reacquaint after a few years worth of growth.

This is our new-best-favourite beach at West Bexington which we discovered last Easter, we were here in the middle of last week for an impromptu picnic lunch.

It's so amazingly unspoilt here, and aside from a small car park, some very handy 'facilities' and a quirky little café that is more often than not closed, there really is nothing else here except miles and miles of shingle beach.

After we'd eaten lunch, we sat a while on the beach....

....I get such a rush of happiness seeing my crochet blankets out and about doing their blankety thing! The colours are so bright and happy and absolutely sing out against the more muted colours of the seashore.

I had Little B chattering away to me for a while, then he went off with his big sister to throw pebbles into the sea, leaving me to sit and daydream....

....it was delicious spending time there, listening to the sounds of the sea with my thoughts and memories quietly drifting in and out of my mind. So peaceful.

The last day of our holidays was probably the best day weather-wise. It was still pretty cold but the sky was wearing a most beautiful shade of blue, accessorised with the most cutesome little fluffy white clouds.

As we weren't leaving until late afternoon, back to the sea we went for one final last walk around the harbour. I loved the 'sun pennies' sparkling in the water, it was hard to capture on camera as the light was so bright. Bright and beautiful - oh I love being by the sea so much :)

The Little People were on their scooters this morning, so it was quite a speedy jaunt around the harbour and out onto the pier. We sat a while in the sunshine, breathing it all in whilst the Little Peeps whizzed around us on their wheels. I find myself instinctively trying to capture the essence of that wonderful beside-the-sea feeling that I love so much, as I know I will crave it once I am back home.

Ahh, and here is lunch, so so so good! We bought lunch from one of the little kiosks beside the harbour and sat on the riverside wall to eat it hot and fresh. The Little People had sausage and chips, and J and I shared this pot of freshly cooked whitebait with chips. It was really delicious, simple seaside food eaten greedily with fingers.

And so another lovely Dorset holiday passed quickly and happily, and I am rather pleased to report that I haven't felt nearly so blue about being home again this time. I feel OK, I really do. Kind of a relief really!

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