My faith is restored! We ventured out this weekend to the local car boot, and came back with box fulls of stuff (hardly any of which we had gone to get, but hey).

It was cold and drizzling, and the clock’s had just gone back, and the Smalls had decided to come too, so my hope weren’t high, BUT this is what we found:

• 3 big boxes full of children’s books from the ’70s and ’80s for £6.50! There are too many to show you all of them, suffice it to say it was a bit like Christmas when we got back home and had a good old root through. Here are some of my favourites

I love books like this! going to have a look through and find some bits to make with the Smalls

A load of ladybird books

Enid Blyton’s Faraway Tree

Hands up who remembers Jamie and The Magic Torch!

Smurfs Annual

• 

  Paddington Bear

And finally, The Wombles!

• a melamine Lightning McQueen bowl-SmallSmall keeps dropping our melamine bowls on the tiled kitchen floor, and we were down to our last one
• this fantastic coat for £12.

I love it. I had seen loads and loads of fur and fur type coats at the Vintage Fair the previous day, but returned without one, so I was delighted to find this, and it fitted! And it’s not real fur, so I don’t need to feel guilty! Hubby has warned against wearing this whilst carrying SmallSmall around though, for fears the shoulders will end up a little matted (with snot. Nice.)

• A big ‘Red’ the fire engine from Lightning McQueen, which has been secreted away for Christmas
• A Bertie from Thomas the Tank Engine-BigSmall had been very patient trailing around after me, so I said he could pick a car. He spied this tucked away in the corner of a box under a table, and it was just 10p! Smiles all round!
• A bed pan for £2.50-I want to plant this up with succulents or something to have in the garden. We stopped off at my mother in laws later in the day, and she likes to clean things, so she took it off me, but did then report some ‘questionable’ stains inside (well, I suppose it was a  bedpan..)
• Some wellies for BigSMall. This is kind of what we went to look for. These are too big, but I figured that they can go up in the loft until his feet grow, and given the difficulty we are currently having with finding wellies, it seemed wise to snap them up for the future.

So there we go. A lot of stuff we didn’t know we wanted, and not much of the stuff we did want, but I’m happy!

This weekend was a busy one, and saw me celebrate my 30 something birthday!

I wasn’t really sure what to expect, as with the greatest respect to my lovely hubby, I am generally the ‘maker’. He is most excellent at fixing, and making do, but doesn’t very often venture in to making. But I needn’t have worried!

He came up trumps with my early present of my amazing day learning to make bread at River Cottage (I bang on about it endlessly here). He really could have just left it there. It was such a fab pressie. He had clubbed together with my parents and his mum to pay for it, so I wasn’t really expecting much else. But it turned into more a birthday weekend, and here is what we did:

On the Saturday, I managed to escape for a few hours on good behaviour and had a lovely mooch around The Bristol Vintage Fair,

you can read all about here if you are so inclined.

Then we had THE BEST ever fish and chips from The Scallop Shell, at Beckington Farm Shop (rumour has it, the Beckhams have eaten here…). You know when you really fancy fish and chips, but it’s always a bit disappointing? Well this wasn’t at all. Divine!

Then we headed off to the extravaganza that is Warminster Carnival.

More to follow on this..!

After we got the Smalls in bed, the very lovely hubby announced that he had made chocolate truffles! He did then ruin the effect somewhat when he dumped two in front of me with the immortal words “sorry, my balls might be a bit sweaty”…

I know these might look like little balls of poo, but they are actually HOMEMADE peanut butter chocolate truffles-yum!

On Sunday morning I was greeted bright and early by the Smalls and denied the beneift of the extra hour in bed from the clock’s changing, but we had had an unbroken night’s sleep for the first time in a while, so thankyou SmallSmall!

BigSmall and hubby had made me a lovely card, featuring a map of our recent excursion to Scotland, complete with pictures. It is so lovely, and I’m going to put it in a frame to go on the wall.

Then hubby was very pleased to announce that he had made me a present “just using stuff he had found in the garage”…

This is what he had made

It is a ‘prototype’ of a fork handle key hook thing, and is indeed made entirely out of things he found in the garage-well done hubby!

Then we went for a wander around the car boot, and scored some bargains (simple pleasures!). Post to follow! Followed by lunch out and then back to my mother in laws for tea and Chocolate and Earl Grey birthday cake…

I am a VERY lucky lady to have such an amazing hubby and gorgeous family. Such a lot of time and effort and thought went into it all. So much nicer than an internet purchased expensive present.

Happy days.

The lovely people at The Vintage Fair very kindly asked me to do some guest posts for them on My Make Do and Mend Year on their blog, so when I heard that the Fair would be in Bristol, I couldn’t really resist the urge to go and check it out! I was most excited,and contemplated having a stall there to sell some of my Upcycled goodies from Shouty Cat Makes, but then the lovely hubby announced he was going to have to work the morning, so that kind of scuppered my plans. I was most down heartened at the prospect of not being able to even go and have a look around, when ny mother in law came up trumps and offerred to look after the Smalls for a couple of hours, so that Cinderella could go to the ball!

So on Saturday, the SatNav and I braved the wilds of Bristol, and finally managed to negotiate our way to The Passenger Shed, next to Temple Meads station. This is The Vintage Fair’s largest venue to date, and they certainly filled it!

There was still a queue to get in when I arrived at 1pm…

The hall was crammed with stalls selling Vintage clothes and homewares, here are some of my favourite bits

Vintage DIY magazines-probably should have bought these!

Great range of vintage jewellery-I love these brooches

Check out this awesome hairdryer!

Shoes, and other retro bits

I wanted this clock, but had no idea where I would put it, so I very sensibly (boringly) left it there

The Vintage Hair Lounge were doing ’40s inspired make overs

There was an old fashioned sweet stall (available to hire out for your wedding-SO wish I’d known about this when we got married)

Mrs Stokes was there with her Secret Tea Party

and there was even a Rock and Roll band, The Roadhouse Roosters, who had some brave souls up on their feet and jiving

I also met the lovely Gina from The Vintage Fair-she is the one who gently ‘prompts’ me when they need their monthly update. So nice to be able to put a name to a face, and doesn’t she look amazing, all vintaged up (she is the far more stylish one on the left of the picture!)

I wasn’t really feeling in the ‘zone’ at first, and was almost a little over-awed at the vast array of vintage loveliness (does anyone else find this? If I go to somewhere like John Lewis, I get kind of paralysed by the sheer amount of stuff on offer, and become incapable of making any kind of decisions, especially regarding home furnishings..), but worry not, I eased myself in with a couple of small £1 purchases: a book called Glorious Things to Do-not really very ‘vintage’ but I am a bit of a sucker for books like this with things to make in; and some sewing needles in a gorgeously kitsch heart shaped case.

Then I kind of found my mojo a bit, and ended up with 2 snuggly jumpers,

and a fab ’80’s style coat.

The coat needs a new zip, so I managed to haggle them down to £5. Now I just need to learn how to put a new zip in….

A fab day out. Would thoroughly recommend it to anyone with a soft spot for a bit of vintage. The Vintage Fair is doing so well, that they seem to be announcing new venues and dates every week, so keep your eyes peeled, and check out their website, they could be coming to a town near you!

I put a picture of these on Twitter recently (you can follow me, @makeandmendyear for more such tantalising nuggets…) and was asked for the recipe, so I thought that this was as good a place as any to share it.

It is from The Hairy Bikers’ Family Cookbook, Mums know best, and is really pretty easy (as are most of the recipes I attempt)

This is what you need for the biscuits:

• 170g self-raising flour
• 85g softened butter
• 55g caster sugar
• 1 egg yolk or 1 very small egg
• 1 large tsp liquid coffee, or dissolve 1 tsp instant coffee in 1 tsp boiling water, or I used 1tsp instant espresso powder

This is what you do:

• Pre-heat the oven to 180C/gas mark5
• Mix the flour, butter and sugar until it looks a bit like breadcrumbs
• Add the egg and coffee and mix again to make a firm dough
• Take teaspoons of the mix and roll into small balls with your hands
• Place on greased or lined baking sheets. I then flattened them with a fork although the recipe doesn’t say this
• Bake for 15mins, then leave to cool for 5mins before removing to a wire rack to cool

For the icing you need:

• 55g very soft butter
• 120g icing sugar, more if needed
• few drops of vanilla extract

This is what you do for the icing

• beat together the soft butter and the icing sugar, then add the vanilla extract (I also added a tbsp or so of milk as the icing was very stiff)

Then when the biscuits are completely cool, sandwich them together with icing, and devour

The recipe says it makes 24, but it is unclear whether this is 24 individual biscuits, making 12 sandwiches, or 24 sandwiched together biscuits. I made about 10 sandwiched together biscuits, and they were all gone within about 5 hours…

This weekend sees my brother and his lovely wife celebrate their very first wedding anniversary!

Tradition dictates that this is the ‘Paper’ wedding anniversary, so I put my thinking cap on and consulted the kind people of Facebook land, and sent out a tweet for help.

There were some fab ideas, including framing wedding/honeymoon pictures, paper flowers, and handmade paper, which I have stashed away for another day. But this being me, and it being very last minute, I needed quick and simple. So this is what I came up with:

A card decorated with 2 hearts cut from a vintage book (they are both big readers), sewn in place with a button. (Apologies for the shadowy photo, it was late, I was tired, I couldn’t possibly wait until morning to take a better photo…)

And this is what I put inside:

I found an old monopoly set in a charity shop, and snapped it up as I have seen loads of cool things to make with all the bits on Pinterest (where else?!) so I thought that some monopoly money might make them smile. And they could always frame it (the card or the money!) if they want to afterwards.

So I know it’s not really a present, but I hope that it’s the thought that counts, and I certainly put more thought and time into this, than I might otherwise have done if I’d ordered something online.

Happy Anniversary Big Bro!

I thought I would share with you this present that I ‘made’ for a friend this week. It is quick and easy but I hopefully something that would be appreciated a bit more than a token box of chocolates or similar…

My friend likes to bake, and I had recently pinned these to My Make Do and Mend Presents board on Pinterest. They are from Bakerella and look far more professional than my attempt, as you will see!

I didn’t have all the ingredients needed to follow the instructions on the Bakerella site, and as I was typically doing it last minute, didn’t have time to go and get the necessary bits. So I decided to improvise.

I have a great recipe for Smarties cookies from the BBC Good Food 101 Cakes and Bakes book, and I had all the dry ingredients that it would require. Here is a link to a post I did on my other blog Shouty Cat Makes, with the full recipe. The method involves creaming the butter and sugar and then adding the other bits sequentially, but obviously once all the dry ingredients are in the jar in pretty layers, you can’t really take out just the bits you want, so I had to experiment with doing them as an ‘all-in-one’. (Tough job as it meant we had to eat homemade smartie biscuits…) It worked!

So then I went on the hunt for a jar. We have lots of old jam jars stashed away, but some of them have been used for chutneys, and so smell a bit vinegary, so I steered clear of those! It is harder than you would think to find the right size jar. I found one that I thought would be ok, and put in the flour, and some of the sugar, before realising it was going to be too small. Grrrrrr. On the second attempt it was about right. But by that point my flour and sugar weren’t quite as clearly demarcated as I would have liked. Never mind.

Anyway, into the jar I put:

• 150g self raising flour
• 100g light brown soft sugar
• 1 tube of smarties

You have to pack each layer down well, and I think it would work better it you did it as in the picture above, and had flour and sugar separated by things like oats and raisins-it would look prettier and the layers would stay separate better.

I then made some sticky labels for the top and the side of the jar, and printed off some instructions to stick onto a luggage tag to tie around the top.

Here are the instructions on the tag, and I covered the other side with some old sheet music as my friend is quite musical.

In case you can’t read it, it says: Add 100g softened butter and 1 tbsp golden syrup to contents of jar and blitz in mixer. Spoon tablespoons of dough onto lined baking sheets and bake for 8-12mins at 180C until golden brown. Makes approx 15

And here is the result.

Not quite as pretty as I was hoping for, and the making the labels was a bit time consuming for someone as computer illiterate as me, but I hope it will be appreciated!

After a couple of crappy days and an inadvertent fail (see here), I ventured forth with renewed vigour (?!) yesterday, and straight into the nearest charity shops (a girl has to find a bit of retail therapy somewhere, right?).

I went in looking for a winter coat for me, and some PJs for the Smalls.

This is what I came out with…

A pair of virtually unworn Caterpillar boots

A funky AA satchel

As you will all know (!) I had been on a Great Boot Pursuit, and found some not quite ideal one’s on E-bay. Well, these ones just go to show that all good things come to those who wait. Just I shame I couldn’t wait (I am one of the most impatient people I have ever met). So now I have 2 pairs of boots! Obviously the sensible thing to do would be to wait until the current boots wear out, and then bring these ones into circulation. Equally obviously I am not going to do this. They are sturdier than the current boots and being ankle height rather than knee height makes them vastly different, so I will be wearing them this winter (probably tomorrow!)

I had seen the satchel on a previous foray into the shop and had been eyeing it up. I just think it’s kind of retro and funky, and then when I saw the AA badge, I had to have it (lovely hubby is a car buff). Lovely hubby just came and asked me what it was for. Surely everyone knows that bags don’t have to have specific purpose…

So anyway, no coat, no PJs, but a second pair of boots and a bag for which I have no purpose-go me! (Kind of reiterates my previous post about charity shop shopping-at least I am consistent..)

I have to start with the confession. I have had my first ‘fail’. Forgive me, for I have bought new. And the thing that is making me most cross, is that I didn’t even mean to!

Maybe I should give you some background, in my quest for forgiveness…

I was having a bad day yesterday. Trying to do too much and entertain 2 Small people at the same time, one of whom is brewing a cold, and ended up feeling fraught and frazzled with 2 unhappy Smalls.

And then just when I wanted to collapse in a heap on the sofa with a glass of wine, I remembered that I was supposed to be attending a Baby and Child First Aid Course at BigSmall’s pre-school. As I am the Chair of the committee, I didn’t really feel that I could cry off, so I heaved myself out of the door, running late.

The course was excellent, and I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone with Small people. It was run by a lady called Philippa Thain, who was brilliant, and it covered the basics of what to do if your baby/child is unconscious/not breathing/choking/drowning. As you can imagine it was a little harrowing having to think about what you would do if your child was in that situation, and my head is quite busy at the moment dealing with some family stuff, so in my defence my brain wasn’t really working at full power, and certainly wasn’t focussed on My Make Do and Mend Year.

So then it happened…. At the end of the session, Philippa showed everyone a good First Aid book aimed at Small people First Aid, and had some copies with her for people to buy to take home. I had come rushing out without a purse (or a brain) so wasn’t going to get one anyway, and then someone who was writing a cheque said they could pay for me, and I could pay them back…. So I bought a book. A new book. And I didn’t even compute that I had failed until I got home and it was greeted with surprise by the lovely hubby.

The evidence

Pants. Very frustrating. I think it’s probably because I wasn’t in a normal ‘shopping environment’ or buying online, and I was pre-occupied with other stuff.

Must remember to take my brain with me wherever I go, and to keep it switched on.

If any of you have been following on Facebook or Twitter , you will know I have been banging on endlessly about making some slippers for some time now. I have even created a Slippers board on Pinterest, and run a poll on Facebook to help me decide which ones to make…

I never imagined myself to be the sort of person who would end up making their own slippers (after all, I’m so hip and cutting edge…) but here I am, sat proudly wearing my very own pair of homemade slippers. How life changes…

So, of the various options I found trawling Pinterest and Instructables (both awesome sites for inspiration and tutorials on just about anything you may ever want to make or mend), I went with these beauties for me from Homemade Holiday Gifts

primarily because they looked the easiest, and promised they could be done in an evening! And I think they look pretty cool too.

The tutorial I followed is in the link above, and is great, but I thought I would cobble together my own version, in a slightly more noddy like format.

Supplies needed:

• a wool jumper-has to be at least 80% wool, and keep an eye out for a handwash only symbol on the label. You will be (intentionally) shrinking it, so the last thing you want is something that has been treated to make it safe to machine wash)
• some A4 paper and a pen
• a ruler/tape measure
• a marker pen
• some scissors
• a big needle
• some wool-ideally in colour that match /complement your jumper
• patches of suede or similar if you want to ‘non-slip’ the bottom-mine were from a charity shop suede skirt that I picked up for less than £5, and that will hopefully provide enough patches for all of our slippers

I had previously scoured the charity shops/car boots for suitable supplies. You may be surprised at how hard it is to find 100% wool jumpers. I was. Most jumpers nowadays are made for modern day living and machine washing, and consequently not suitable. Make sure you check out the men’s section, as there are often some nice big woolly jumpers there. Alternatively, if you have inadvertently shrunk a cherished jumper in the wash, then this is as ideal project to re-love it.

First, you need to felt your jumpers. This essentially means shrinking them. My understanding is that this is so that all the wool sticks together and won’t unravel when you cut it. Put your jumper into the washing machine on a hot wash. It helps if you put a pair of jeans or 2 in with it, as this bashes it about a bit more, and makes it felt better. I think I did 2 jumpers at the same time, with a pair of jeans, at 60C, with a normal speed spin etc. Then I laid them out flat to dry.

Then you need to make your pattern pieces. This sounds quite hardcore, but basically involves drawing around your own feet. Even I can manage this…

For the sole pieces:

Draw around your foot!

Then draw a kind of oval shape around your foot template going about 1cm wider around the sides and just a couple of mm above and below-hopefully the picture below will explain this better than I can

Does this make it any clearer??!

For the upper pieces:

Draw around your foot again on a new piece of paper. Then draw a smooth curved line about 0.5-1cm above your toes-when you get to your little toe and your big toe continue the curve around and then draw a straight line vertically down to the bottom of the paper.

You then need to cut out a rectangle (this is where your foot will ’emerge’ from the slipper)-mark about 3-3.5cm in from the edge of your straight lines at the bottom on either side. Then about 2/3 of the way up your foot shape, mark about 2.5cm in on wither side, and then join these points up to make a rectangle-again the picture below should help:

Now you are ready to cut out your fabric pieces!

Place your sole pattern piece on the wrong side of your felted jumper, draw around it with a marker pen, then flip the pattern piece over and repeat (to get a left and a right sole piece with the ‘pretty’ bit of your jumper showing on the outside)

Then place your upper pattern piece on the right side of you jumper and repeat the steps above so that you have a right and a left upper piece, with the nice pattern of your jumper (if it is patterned) showing on the upper side.

I wanted grippy bits in my sole pieces, as I was worried about skating around our tiled kitchen floor, and thought it would be a bit more hard wearing, so I cut 2 pieces out of suede skirt that were about 1cm smaller all around than my sole pattern piece.

I only thought of this after I had made my slippers, so I sewed these pieces on after they were made, but it would have been easier to do this BEFORE sewing the slipper together, which is why I am telling you now!

You then need a BIG needle, with a big eye hole, and some matching or contrasting wool.

Due to my lack of foresight, I neglected to place anything alongside the needle to give you any idea of scale, but this really is a big needle!

Blanket stitch around the edge of the suede piece. If you never blanket stitched before, or even heard of the term blanket stitching, there is a You Tube video here (by Gulf Coast Cottage) which I think shows you far better than I could try and explain it!    I didn’t tie a knot in the end of my wool as I thought this might be uncomfortable to walk on, I just did a ‘normal’ stitch at the beginning and went over it about 3 times.

It is quite tough to go through all the layers at once with your needle, so if you are struggling, pull your needle all the way through the suede bit before trying to go into the wooly bit (does that make sense?)

Once you have done this for both soles and have 2 lined sole bits, basically pin the 2 left foot bits together (place your pins parallel to the join, not perpendicular), wrong sides together. On one of mine for some reason, I needed to stretch it slightly to get the side bits to meet at the back. So place a couple of pins at the toes and then see if your bits will meet at the back. If they won’t, then don’t panic, just stretch the wool slightly as you are pinning around and the 2 side bits should meet just fine. If on the other hand, you have too much fabric at the back after pinning, then you can simply cut a bit off each side so that they can be pinned without any overlap.

Repeat for the right foot.

You should end up with something like this, and then you can try it on for good measure:

On this one, I had a slight overlap at the back, as you can see. I simply trimmed the overlapping bits, and pinned it again

Then you need to blanket stitch the two bits together. I am probably just being a bit dim, but I get very confused by blanket stitching, and have ended up with one slipper done with the parallel bits of the stitches on the upper piece (which is what we are aiming for I think) and one with them on the sole-DOH. They are both perfectly functional, but would not stand up to inspection by the W.I.

At the beginning,I just did 2 or stitches on top of each other, but you could tie a knot, and then when you start just sew one stitch through only the top layer and then your knot would be buried in between the two layers of fabric (genius-wish I had thought of this earlier…)

If you are clever than me, you can probably work out a way to incorporate the stitching up of the back piece into the rest of your sewing up, but I couldn’t, so I blanket stitched the sole and the upper piece together all the way around, and then returned to the back piece and did 2-3  x shaped stitches up the back:

Apologies for the slightly blurry photo-hopefully you get the idea

Then you need to make trim bit for around the top of your slippers. Measure around the opening of your slippers. From the wastiaband bit of your jumper (the ribby bit a the bottom) OR from the buttony bit if you are using a cardi, cut 2 strips that are  about 2-3cm shorter than you just measured, and about 3-4cm wide. (If you are a more exact sewer than me, then you should have 2 slippers that are identical in size. I do not. So I measured both of them seperately and cut the trim pieces appropriately)  Then pin the trim piece to your upper piece right sides together, and sew together with matching wool, using a back stitch (You Tube video here from Expert Village). You have to really stretch out the trim piece as you are sewing to make it fit around and this then ensures that your foot hole is nice and snug and your slipper stays on. Then you just basically fold the trim bit upwards, et voila!

I didn’t have enough waistband to do both slippers, so did the second one with just a normal strip of jumper. This didn’t work as well and is a bit floppy, possibly it needs the finished edge of the bottom bit of jumper to get it to hold it’s shape better. If you too don’t have enough wasitband, then maybe try the neck bit?

You can embellish your trim bit with buttons if you like, or just be lazy like me and leave it plain.

Then pop them on, and admire!!

Can you see my ‘floppy’ trim on the right slipper, and my rustic sewing, and my lack of matching thread…?? Other than that, they’re ok. Not the prettiest, and nowhere near as lovely as those in the original tutorial, but not bad for a first attempt and perfectly functional, and very toastyl!

Not our garden, but my parents. In a bizarre turnaround to the normal run of things (basically, my parents doing everything for us in our garden, bar mowing the lawn..) we went to help my parents out with their garden and allotment this weekend, as my mum has not been well.

It was my type of gardening, maximum results for minimal input, and involved a lot of hacking things to bits pruning.

In full on Make Do and Mend mode, we managed to ‘harvest’:

-some lavender, which I am going to put in the airing cupboard to dry out and then use in various Christmas pressies;

-some bits of some kind of aggressively prickly bush, that is still flowering, and I thought looked pretty and would brighten up our lounge, as I think we have decided that buying flowers is not within the rules;

-and some horseradish. This is entirely our fault. We bought my Dad some roots one year for Christmas, and I don’t think any of us were quite aware how ‘virulent’ they were, and they have spread like wildfire and are apparently “a bugger to dig up”. So my poor Dad has been desperately trying to eradicate it, and has decreed that we should make some horseradish sauce…

This is only about 1/8th of it…

-this big bunch of thyme

I am going to try and dry some of it to use over the winter-anyone ever done this? I’m not sure how is best to do it, any advice would be most gratefully received!

And we have been kindly donated some green tomatoes, so will be adding these to our own bountiful harvest, and attempting some green tomato chutney.

It’s all getting a little bit like The Good Life here, which isn’t really a bad thing 🙂