Rose wreath in the shop

Hey everyone, how are you enjoying the weather?  I love snow for like a day and then I am all "ok, had enough of this now,"  (I know so fickle!)  
I decided to list my rose wreath in my Etsy Shop.  I made it for Christmas initially but I think it would work well for lots of other celebrations throughout the year, particularly Valentine's Day which is fast approaching.
I enjoyed making the wreath so much that I am pretty sure I will want to make another one next year.  I don't have room to store a wreath from every Christmas so thought selling it would be a perfect solution to the problem of little storage and and insatiable urge to create!

It's for sale at £23.63 (US $35.00) plus postage and could be hanging prettily from your own door or wall in 3 working days!

Hope you are all well, life is pretty slow with me, Orren is doing well and not far off 1 year old!  Can't believe where the year has gone.  He is crawling now and trying so hard to stand.  He is filling my life with so much joy and contentment he is just such a delight, I really can't imagine not having him around.  Of course there are downs as well as ups, life can be hard work at times and I get sick of the mundanity and repetition sometimes but the goods far outweigh the bads.
Any other crafting mums out there?  How do you manage to find time for creating?  I was thinking of changing the name of this blog to "things I made while the baby was sleeping".
Hope you are all having a wonderful weekend and if you are in the UK then hope you are enjoying the snow.
Hels
x

Zesty Beetroot Chutney

We often end up with a glut of vegetables in our fruit boxes (which is one of the reasons we aren't getting it any more) and a few weeks ago we had one too many beetroot, along with a growing collection of empty jars I was inspired to make some chutney.  I find that beetroot can be a bit muddy tasting sometimes, even when fresh, and don't even get me started on the picked variety, yuck!  So I was pleasantly surprised to find that this recipe transformed the beetroot into delicious fruity chutney that goes perfectly with cheese on toast. 

You can find the full recipe here,

1 1/2kg beetroot trimmed and peeled and chopped,

3 onions chopped,

3 eating apples peeled and cored and chopped,

Zest and juice of 3 oranges,

2 tbsp white or yellow mustard seeds, 

1 tbsp coriander seeds,

1 tbsp ground cloves,

1 tbsp ground cinnamon,

700ml red wine vinegar,

700g granulated sugar.

Mix ingredients together in a pan and cook until the beetroot is tender and the mixture parts when you run and spoon along the base of the pan,

Sterilise jars then put the chutney into the jars.

Eat! (It gets better with age.)

Made a play mat

Finally got round to making a play mat for my bubba, I bought the fabric before he was even born!!  I decided on Monday that if I didn't make it that day it wouldn't get made and he would end up too big for one so I worked on it that whole day and a bit of Tuesday.  Here is the finished result, sorry this photo isn't very good, I took it on my phone. 

And here he is enjoying it! 

It was easy to make, simple sew some shapes of fabric together then make a sort of pillow case with them, I then stuffed it with a piece of 1 inch thick wadding.  

Hope you have all had a fab week, have a great weekend!

New item in the shop - Mini book!!

I have seen a few mini books floating around on the Etsy market and with my stash of vintage paper building up in my spare room to quite ridiculous proportions I thought I would give one a go to try to reduce my stash, and expand my little online business in the process. I loved making it and am definitely going to make more, I have loads of ideas for making a travel version with all my vintage maps, and a Christmas version.  I have put this one in the shop but have also made another for myself so I will be posting my own finished version in a few days (check back soon!) complete with photos and journalling.  I called it the "English Country" mini book because I included little things like doilies, pages from an old Enid Blyton book and floral Cath Kidston style paper which I felt gave it a feeling of eating cream teas in a pretty rose garden.  Let me know what you think:

Front:

Back:

All the pages:

Especially pretty pages:

Hope you are all having a great day x