October Plan // DIY Projects

Last day of September today, so I thought I get better organised for the coming month! It will be a busy month....finishing off house renovation, attend antenatal classes and a lot of other things that have been on my 'to do list' for months now!

But I've set two goals I want to achieve by the end of the month:

DIY Project 1 

I've been thinking about a large canvas painting to hang on our bedroom wall for about a year, but couldn't make up my mind on the subject. I knew I wanted to use acrylics to do it, as I wanted it to be big and narrow, and I didn't feel very confident in using watercolours for doing big washes. So inspiration stroke a few days ago while flipping through The Watercolour Expert, from the Royal Watercolour Society in London (a gift I received from my colleagues when I left my previous job). I came across a painting from David Whitaker called Sunrise - Sunset and I felt in love.

Sunrise - Sunset, Watercolours (49 x 97 cm)

The painting look simple, it's just a set of stripes with colours ranging from blues/purples to oranges/yellows. But if you look close enough, each stripe actually has most of the colours in it, so it's not just a matter of painting each of them using only one colour as I thought at first!

Anyway, I've decided that I'll give it a go...it will be my art project for this month. Got a big size canvas (40 x 120 cm) half price from Surbiton Arts, acrylic paints and a roll of narrow paper tape.

I hope that this is all I need!

Forgot to mention that I have never used acrylics before....maybe some tests before starting would be a good idea!

DIY Project 2

For the second project I got inspired by one of the books I got from the library a while ago (post here). It's a felted bowl, an orange one for our living room to start with, which I will probably use as a keys or jewellery bowl. If it goes down well I'm planning to do a few more as Christmas presents. 

It's quite easy to knit (instructions to follow soon), but still not sure if I can do it without a circular needle just stitching the ends together before felting! I will give it a go as it is, and see what results I get!

Pencil shades....& relaxation technique

Came back from the exam this afternoon quite tired and still feeling a bit as I had been pushed under a lorry! I think it went well, but will have to wait until the end of November to know the results :)

G asked me to help him out with some pencil effects for some work is doing at the moment, so I drew some squares on scrap pieces of watercolour paper and started to pencil them in. I had so forgotten how relaxing it is when your mind get lost in doing something so repetitive and, if you think about it, a bit boring! I sat on the couch for at least half an hour just thinking about nothing else but filling the blank squares...soooo relaxing!

Will have to remember to do some more in the future if I need to take my mind off things; I could actually make some art work using this technique, maybe using coloured pencils......will put it down in my 'to do list ideas'!

Back to uni?

I've been studying for the past two days now to get ready for my interview for chartership tomorrow afternoon. All the feelings I had at uni before an exam are coming back to life and I don't like it. Will I be good enough? Will I be able to answer to all their questions? 

Can't wait 'till it's over really!

Wholemeal bread

        

We got used to eat amazing bread while we were in Italy, and now that we are back in the UK we can't really get adjusted to the local one. So we are baking our own. I must say, we had a breadmaker for over three years now, but never really liked the results; it's useful to do mixing, but the cooking bit is disappointing. So I started to use the oven instead, but with a little trick.....pizza stone! 

And it works magic!

No excuses for not eating fresh bread everyday now :)

Goodbye Summer // Welcome Autumn

Summer memories 2011

It's the first day of fall today and it made me think about the long summer we had this year.....we spent over two months in Italy. We had a great time; lots of good homegrown food, swimming, sunshine, walks on the mountains, laughters and a lot of family. There have been not so great times too, but when you think about the past, your mind somehow remember all the good things and forget the bad ones!

Autumn is here

But now autumn is here, and I'm trying to think positively about the new season ahead. This year it will be different, in a very good way, but I want to be prepared. Our house will be changing to embrace the season, tones and colours will be matching the surrounding nature, the food will be warm and comfy and our lifestyle will slow down (just a bit!) so that we'll still have enough energy to go through the winter.

At the library

Could not get around the fact that yesterday the public library was closed (on Wednesdays!) so I spent the day thinking about all the books I was going to look for today.

I only spent about 1 hour there, sitting on a comfy couch, in silence, flicking through about 15 books, looking for ideas and inspiration.

Came back home with only four, as more would have been too heavy to carry. Moving from top left clockwise:

• baby knits for beginners, by Debbie Bliss
• Knit, Purl, Save the World - knit and crochet projects fro eco-friendly stitchers, by Vickie Howell & Adrienne Armstrong
• One skein - 30 quick projects to knit and crochet, by Leigh Radford
• The Knitter's Year - 52 simple seasonal knits, by Debbie Bliss

The projects look gorgeous and simple...let's see what I can make out of them!

Countdown to Christmas

So it starts! and this year will be more special with a little someone joining us just before the holidays. That means my countdown is even shorter.....only 76 days to go :)

Summer memories

I love collecting memorabilia from the beach over the summer months. I remember  collecting all sorts of pebbles, wood sticks, roots, shells and whatever I could find on the seaside when I was young. But really never got to use any of these things, they used to end up in the bin as soon as we were back home from the holidays.

This year I decided I would make something to remember the summer days we spent in Italy. I collected some halved cane sticks from our favourite beach in Roccelletta (Calabria, Southern Italy). I cleaned them from all the sand and cut them to the same length leaving some rough edges.  I had already bought one of those deep frames from Ikea from the bargain corner a while ago, which hadn't found any use, so far. I glued the sticks to a cut-to-size 300g cream paper which G brought me from paper source and used a 2B pencil to write some text at the bottom.

I haven't found a place on the wall for it yet, but I already like the idea of looking at it during the next winter months and remember the sunny days we spent relaxing on the beach.

Carrot cake

Got a fantastic carrot cake's recipe from my mum's cousin....she actually baked one for me to taste before giving away all the secrets! it was so good....

I'm not good at baking cakes, but I'm planning on getting better at it, so I've decided I will start recording all my attempts, bad and good ones, to see if I can improve a bit. 

I might start a baking project once we come back home from the summer holidays, maybe one baking attempt every week, if I can keep up with it!

Here's the recipe: