Our Home Made Christmas Presents Given

In my previous blog I explained that my brother came up with the wonderful (kind of last minute) idea of making Christmas presents for each other this year because money was tight etc, if you didn’t read it here is a link to it.


http://honestlyitseasy.blogspot.com/2011/12/xmas-presents-2011.html

So Boxing Day came (we celebrate as a family on Boxing Day rather than Christmas Day, things get too complicated trying to arrange to see everyone on one day).
So for my mum I made a decorated mirror. I decorated it with fabric flowers that I cut out of material and clipped together with a brad and then attached to the mirror. Here is the final article;

My mum and dad camp a lot in their caravan, and dad likes to refer to the van on site in a pub fashion ‘George and the Dragon’. My dad had kept a drawing board that he had made for a project when he was at school many moons ago, so I recycled it and made it into the sign for him;

Nothing like a bit of recycling! For my brother and his girlfriend I created two sets of colourful plant pots with herbs in. One set was for inside the hose at this time of year and the other was suitable for outside. Katie (my brothers girlfriend) makes incredible soap – more about that in our next blog post. O some of the herbs will come in handy for her. Inside ones were Coriander, parsley and aloe vera, and outside were wild garlic, Bay, Chocolate Mint, Apple mint, and Silver Thyme. I put the names if the herbs on metal spoons rather than the plastic labels that never last very long.

I also made some hand warmers for everyone, simple to do, basically 2 squares of felt sewn together and filled with ceramic beans. Place in microwave for 2 minutes and you have hand warmers!

So that was what we made for everyone’s presents, stay tuned to our next post later on to see what we got in return.

All the best!

Claire
xxx

Twitter:
@CropredyChicken
@Honestlyitseasy
@steelsyrockitup

NGS Gardens Open For Charity

So today Mel and I (accompanied by her mum and two young sons) went and had a look at the NGS (National Gardens Scheme) Gardens in the village of Preston Capes and Little Preston. And I have to say I was pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable it was! I’m very much of the opinion that I want to be able to eat anything and everything I grow, but seeing these beautiful gardens in full spring bloom I have to admit is starting to change my mind!

Beautiful roses, honeysuckles, Alliums, Large Poppy styled flows and Lupins, the list cold go on and on, it was a real pleasure and privilege to be able to go and visit some of these gardens. What with these gardens and all the watching of the Chelsea Flower show I did flowers are around the corner for our garden for sure! I will be researching edible flowers thoroughly as well!! SO look out for future posts on the subject and in the meantime if you have any suggestions for beautiful edible flowers please let me know!

And if you want to know what NGS gardens are open in your area or want more information on the charity visit their website www.ngs.org.uk. They are committed to helping a whole range of charities, Macmillan Cancer Relief, Marie Curie Cancer Care, The Nurses Welfare Service as well as many more!

I didn’t manage to get everything in the garden done as hoped in my previous post – but I’m hoping to catch up during the week, will obviously depend on the weather a lot though!

Had a good look around Mel’s garden as well (its been a few weeks since I last went over) and what a transformation!!! She’s filled you in on her blog posts from last week – but actually seeing it was brilliant, there’s grass and vegetables growing and potatoes and the raspberry bushes are coming along nicely! It’s fantastic – such a different view from a few weeks back when everything looked pretty brown!! Whats even better is I came away with cabbage, cauliflower, tomato, cucumber and sprout seedlings! Brilliant!!

Toodle pip for now!

All the Best!

Claire
Xx

Twitter:
@CropredyChicken
@Honestlyitseasy
@steelsyrockitup