feedahappylife Loves: September
>> Tuesday, 1 September 2009
A selection of all the things getting feedahappylife excited...updated every month!
This month I will be mostly............
- Picking berries and creating jams and fruit liqueurs for Christmas
- Furthering my craftiness
So 'feedahappylife loves' is less shopping focused than usual and more doing focused! The challenge this month is to find the time and not the pennies to indulge!
Picking Berries...
Following the move to 'the county', I now have access to lots of wild berries and a yearning to create jams and chutneys. On route to mastering this skill, I've found a few rather special websites that are worth perusing if you share a similar desire to play at living 'The Good Life'.
Burgon and Ball are primarily a manufacture of gardening tools but have some really, really nice bits and bobs to further your jam making excellence! I'm partial, and will be purchasing, the following:
The jars and £2.25 each and the label set is £3.95. I'm intending to make enough to give away for presents, but it depends how successful my attempts are!
If you're a fan of growing your own, they also have a good blog about their growing exploits.
You might also need some recipe inspiration if you fancy a change from standard strawberry. I've been getting mine from:
Getting Crafty...
My friend Chloe has a really good blog called http://www.lovemakingit.com/. She's naturally talented at all things crafty, but has lots of easy ways for the less creative amongst us to get crafty too.
My favourite ideas of hers are:
My first big project is going to be making my own table runner and matching placemats (I can't find the right ones anywhere). I'll be buying my fabric from the VandA, who have just reinstated some gorgeous vintage prints in honour of their Quilting exhibition and taking my instruction from lovehome.co.uk. I also want to make some bunting for my dressing room too, but one thing at a time!
I'm also getting lots and lots of crafty inspiration from the book Table Style. Decor8 has done a great review of it, so you can get a sneak peak without purchasing! They have some really good simple ideas for making cute napkin rings and tablemats, some of which are really quick to do!
That should keep me busy enough this month anyway - if anyone has any good chutney or jam recipes, please let me now at feedahappylife@yahoo.co.uk
Helen x Read more...
