How to Make a Vintage Fabric Pin Board...

This is a pretty, and disgustingly easy, DIY vintage fabric covered pin board that I made this afternoon...

You will need...

A cork board, fabric, scissors, hammer and drawing pins.

The pin board is from Wilkinson's and cost £2, it's a good one for this project as it has no frame to get in the way.

Step 1.  Cut out your fabric to an inch or so bigger than your cork board.

Step 2.  One side at a time, pull the fabric tight and pin it in place.  Fold the fabric at each corner as if you were wrapping a parcel, then pin in place.  The hammer is for making the pins cooperate.  I also found making a guide hole with a nail helpful to get the pins in (the MDF round the back of the pin board was quite hard - small nails or a staple gun might have been a better choice, but I have neither of those and in the interests of being green and thrifty I decided to use what I had to hand.)

Step 3.  Put it up on your wall.  I snipped a hole in the fabric on both sides to uncover the slot for the nail to slip in, before I put it up.

Ta-dah!

The main purpose of creating this was so I'd have somewhere to keep my McFly tickets safe until I go to see them in September!

Spring Blossom...

Even though it's pretty much summer now, here are some photos of spring-y blossom from a couple of weeks ago...

It was soo pretty!

The View From My Window...Spring 2013...

This is what I've been treated to over the last few months...

You can see my winter photos here.

Busy, Buzzy Bees...

Some bees have set up home in a bird box at Mum's house...  

Only problem is that the box is on a south facing wall, and gets extremely hot on sunny days.  So the bees take it in turns to go and sit by the hole and fan cool air in with their wings.  I really love them.  As it gets hotter and hotter more and more bees come out to help with fanning duty.  (I stole the next two photos of mums facebook, they're taken with her phone, but give you an idea of the busyness!)

They are very loud!  After some internet research we think they are tree bumblebees.

Do you have any interesting summer visitors in your garden?

Yarn Bomb...

Look, someone yarn bombed on the clock in our town square!! Lots of lovely pom-poms!  I just had to take a photo!

Charity Shop Treasure...Embroidery, Piggy Bank and Plant Pots...

Here are my finds from the past couple of weeks...

This piggy bank was 50p from the charity shop! 

See how nice he looks with my other piggy banks!

This is my new favourite...I this little house embroidery on the shelf and wavered a bit about buying it, but when I picked it up I saw the sweet message on the back and had to have it.  £2 from the charity shop.  I am very curious about Candy and Lola, I have googled them but nothing came up.

The yellow plant pot was 75p from the charity shop, it looks like it was something someone handmade in a pottery class.  I finally managed to get myself out of bed on a Sunday morning, in time for the car boot sale today.  I have no excuse really as it's a 5 minute walk from my flat.  This vintage owl mug was 50p and I bought it this morning.

This retro plant pot matches my other speckly/floral plant pots.  'Twas 50p in the charity shop.

Have you bought anything magical lately?

Linking up with Lakota's Ta-Dah Tuesday.

Easy Green Things to Do This Month...June 2013...

Here we are again...a lovely list of easy eco actions for June...

Send a message to your MP as part of Viva's campaign to stop the badger cull in the UK.

Greenpeace have a couple of new actions up, a petition to call for protection of seas and fishermen and a message to ask your MP to support clean energy.

Sign this petition to ask the Indonesian President to protect virgin forests from mining and palm oil companies - destroying habitat for endangered Orang-utans, Rhinos, Elephants and Tigers.

Friends of the Earth are putting a bill board up in David Cameron's home town, to remind him to take steps to help bees.  Add your name to the bill board here.

It's World Environment Day on the 5th June and World Oceans Day on 8th June.

Also wanted to share my new favourite blog with you, Naked Vegan Cooking.  What more could you want!

If you have any ideas to be added to this months list, then let me know in the comments section and if I like it, I'll add it!  And feel free to share any of this info (or the whole post) wherever and with whoever you like! 

Things I Loved This Month...May...

This month I've been loving...

* tidy flat * planting my little garden * planning and saving for a trip to Brazil * sunshine *   The Great Gatsby * vegan sausage and mash * hugs at work * vampire books * Radio 2 * gingerbread men * stripey towels * flying kites and magic shows * nice customers * Doctor Who (although no thanks to John Hurt!) * Doctor Who conversations with kids at work * tardis and darlek necklaces * lie ins * butterflies and bees * pink elephant watering can * watching Natalie Woods Biopic, Once Upon a Time, Big Bang Theory and Neighbours * bunny salt and pepper shakers * warm clothes off the radiator * dinosaur socks * balloon hat * sewing * ducklings * 

What have you loved?  Hope you've had a most excellent month!  

Garden Update...Pretty Flowers and Planting Out the Veggies...

I spent a couple of days playing in mums garden, getting my little veggie plot sorted out.

First, I appreciated the pretty flowers...

Then I planted my courgettes, sweet corn, broad beans and chickpeas.  I'll plant some spinach and herbs when I remember to take my seeds with me!  My bit of garden is the bit in between the brick path and the wooden path-thingy.  My wigwam is still there at the back and I've planted geraniums round the bottom of it again.

In the garden of our old house there was a patch of self-sown wild strawberries, I dug a few up and brought them to mums new garden.  As you can see they've spread out along the edge of the border, so I dug a few up and put them on the border of my veggie patch, I thought they'd look pretty and you can never have enough strawberries!

Just wanted to show you mums pea sticks, they're branches off the plum tree.  They had buds on when mum cut them off, which have blossomed even though they're no longer on the tree.  Don't they look pretty?

 Look, figs!

The first thing I've eaten from the garden this year, purple sprouting broccoli.  Yum.

More garden prettiness.  We dug that pond when we moved in, it's doing so well and has frogs in it and tadpoles too!

Hot!  (I took this photo at about 6pm, it had been much, much hotter in the daytime!)

My balcony is still pretty too!

How are your garden's doing?

Easy, Cheap Vegan Meals...

Here are some more of my easy, cheap vegan dinner ideas...

Pasta and garlic mushrooms - fry chopped mushrooms and garlic in a little oil, mix with cooked pasta.  This is one of my urgh-just-got-in-from-work-and-need-to-eat-carbs-and-sit-down-now meals.

My vegan version of a Sunday dinner - roast potato and red onion wedges (cook the potatoes whole in the microwave first, before cutting into wedges and roasting with the onions in a little oil and sea salt), whatever veg I have in the fridge and I have either stuffing balls or a vegan sausage (the stuffing balls are from a dry packet mix, not much nutritional value but they taste nice and I can get 4 servings out of a pack of Paxo).

Vegan sweetcorn fritter - this doesn't look very appetising in this photo, but let me promise you, a vegan sweetcorn fritter is very yummy.  I posted the recipe for these years ago, but I've slightly changed my method now - I leave out the egg replacer, and put in turmeric and spring onions.  Sometimes I make a couple of little ones, and sometimes they get stuck together in the pan and form a giant mono-fritter.  Both are good.  Also good to take in your lunchbox, they warm up well in a microwave or a toaster (if you're careful!).

What yummy vegan meals do you like making?