the green gal

Lovely links

This week's favourite blog posts are all on a DIY theme, after all, you can't eat chocolate for ALL of the long Easter weekend, can you?!

I love this cute and stylish DIY animal jar by Torie Jayne, it's an update on a previous tutorial using pastel shades.

I've never had cherry limeade so I figured I may as well start with this grown-up version by Blacksburg Belle! I also think it might make me feel summery while it's still freezing cold outside.

I've read several egg decorating blog posts this week but I like this one from How About Orange particularly because of the use of decals.

And to keep those pretty eggs warm how about a tutorial for making little egg cosies from Patchwork Harmony?

Finally, a lovely post about starting off sweet peas by Yvestown, I'm finding it hard to believe it'll ever be warm enough to grow flowers and veggies but I live in hope! And I'd love to see sweet peas brightening up my garden.

Happy Easter, everyone, see you next week!

Love food hate waste

baked apple crisp

One of my favourite websites for meal inspiration is LoveFoodHateWaste.com. I'm a big fan of the Great British Bake Off and numerous TV chefs but when you have random bits of food, or fresh food that's on its way out, and you've no idea what do with them this is THE site to turn to. You can select which ingredient you need to base a meal around and it will suggest several recipes. I've found great recipes that I've purposely made just from browsing the site! (Or at least told head chef hubbie about them.) Top tip: frozen bananas whizzed up make great fake banana ice cream.

roast dinner soup

Did you know that in the UK the average family household chucks away £50 worth of food and drink a month? Astonishing, isn't it? And when you think of the environmental resources that went into rearing, feeding, growing, harvesting, slaughtering, making, packaging and transporting that food and drink it's a bit of a shocker that so much of it ends up in the bin. LoveFoodHateWaste.com says that if we stop wasting food that could be eaten the benefit to the planet would be the equivalent of taking one in five cars off the road! (If you're a stats fan check out this page for lots more.)

crispy pork fajitas

As well as providing ideas on how to use up food the site has lots of tips on how to shop, cook and store food more wisely so that it ends up in your tummy and not the bin. Many councils now offer a food waste collection which is great, as it means your leftovers are being composted rather than landfilled. But it doesn't help the £50 a month you're wasting or make up for the impact made on the environment to get the food to your home in the first place.

spring vegetable risotto

So, take a look at LoveFoodHateWaste.com and I hope you find it useful. You can pick which region in the UK you live in, although I can't see an obvious difference between the pages. By the way, I don't have any affiliation to the website or WRAP, the organisaion behind it, I just think it's great! 

Drawing a day: 18 August

After a very hot day I relaxed this evening with a cold beer in the garden…

Make your own elderflower cordial

I posted a recipe for elderflower cordial a couple of years ago but I thought I'd give you an updated version rather than send you to the depths of my blog!

So, it's really easy to make, all you need are about ten elderflower heads, 600ml water, 800g caster sugar, one lemon, grated and juiced, and 45g citric acid (buy it from a chemist). 

Dissolve the sugar in the boiling water and leave to cool for ten minutes. Add the lemon peel and juice, the citric acid and the elderflower heads (having checked they're free of bugs first!). Give it a good stir and then cover and leave overnight.

Pour the elderflower mixure through a sieve and then fill up your sterilised bottles (to sterilise I put them in the oven at 100 degrees C for ten minutes). This recipe makes about one litre of cordial and it's really quite strong so a little goes a long way. Keep the cordial in the fridge and you should be able to enjoy it for a month.

First attempt at a green smoothie

Having read about the Green Smoothie Challenge on one of my favourite blogs, A Beautiful Mess, I thought I'd have a go at making one myself. So, using no smoothie recipe or knowledge whatsoever, I chucked two handfuls of strawberries (already in season in the UK, yay!), a Cox apple (also grown in the UK), a banana (not British but Fairtrade at least), a big handful of watercress leaves (grown in the next village) and a generous slosh of orange juice (from a carton, sorry) into the blender. These quantities made four glasses.

The result isn't a pretty colour but it's very tasty indeed! I think I might have used too many different fruits as they're all fighting for attention in the glass, and I'm amazed that you can actually taste each fruit but NOT the watercress, phew. Next time I might change the apple for some other berries and add water to thin out the consistency a little. More berries might improve the colour too. And I fancy trying a smoothie with milk rather than juice for the liquid… hmm… Any smoothie recipe suggestions gladly welcome!

Past post: DIY flower vases

I stumbled across a DIY post I wrote nearly two years ago and decided it was high time I shared it with you again. 

It's a v simple tutorial showing you how to turn fabric scraps, like shirt cuffs, and jam jars into gorgeous new vases ready to fill with fresh Spring flowers. You can find the original DIY post here. I really enjoyed making this little collection and if you didn't catch it first time, I hope you find it useful now. 

Tutorial: How to make a bookmark

It's been a little while since I shared a tutorial and this one is a speedy little number! In just a few steps you can make a lovely stitched paper bookmark so you'll never lose your place in your chosen read again.

1. All you need is a piece of A5 paper (I used handmade paper made from recycled cotton rag so it has a lovely texture and an uneven edge), a piece of leftover ribbon, and either a needle and thread or a sewing machine.

2. Fold your piece of A5 paper in half lengthways and sew all the way around the edge in a contrasting coloured thread, to sew the two sides together. I did this on a sewing machine as it's super speedy but you can just as easily sew it by hand. Punch a hole at one end of your bookmark.

3. Thread a piece of ribbon through the hole and knot it. Voila! You have a pretty little bookmark! You could further embellish the bookmark by embroidering or stamping or whatever you like to make it your own.

I hope you found this tutorial useful!

PS In case you missed it, check out the desktop wallpaper designs to download from Thursday's palette pingpong post :)

The joys of just doing stuff

It's been a little bit all work and no play around these parts recently so I decided today I would take a few hours out from making to do some nice stuff instead.

So, off I went and bought some pretty flowering bulbs and cut flowers. I've repotted the plants in various 'containers' I have around the house, I don't suppose tea pots and gravy boats are what Gardener's World would recommend but I think they look good!

(Have you spotted my fab new phone behind the primroses? I finally got my hands on a reproduction 1950s telephone with rotary dial and everything! So retro I love it.)

I've seen pics of fresh Spring flowers on several of my favourite blogs so decided I need to cheer up my home with bunches of tulips and narcissi too. And yes, that is a vintage thermos flask the narcissi are sitting in. 

Following my spot of gardening I had the urge to bake! So knocked up these cookies in just a jiffy. Think I need to watch my portion control, my dollops of cookie mixture were so big they merged into each other – I wouldn't have scored highly on the Great British Bake Off. 

So, along with the other not so interesting domestic activities, I've had a rather nice day. Back to the grind this evening though, at least I have pretty posies too look at while I work. Hope you've had a fab weekend too.

The crochet hour

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So, I'm thinking about crocheting a blanket. I'll need to find a 25th hour in my day as, quite frankly, I don't have the time, but I rather fancy giving it a go anyway. 

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As you know, I run my own busines, the green gables. It takes up most waking hours, and the odd sleeping one, and I really love it. I get to be enormously creative in my work but there's a little part of me that thinks it might be a good idea if I did something creative for the fun of it, and in the evenings, to help me relax and switch off before bed. 

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I seem to be incapable of devoting my full attention to most TV shows but rather than spend every evening on the laptop I think crocheting could be a good alternative occasionally. I'm not in a great hurry to complete a project (don't think I need to give myself any more deadlines), I just like the idea of crocheting of an evening, and eventually ending up with a pretty, cosy, useful blanket.

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Have you crocheted a blanket? Do you have any tips or advice for me regarding pattern, yarn or timescale? I've dabbled in crochet but I'm not very experienced so any thoughts you have I would love to hear! Or read!

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Tutorial: How to make an envelope

I've been meaning to post a tutorial on how to make a paper envelope for a while but a comment from a twitter friend this week gave me the push I needed! When you've gone to the trouble of making a card for someone special it's so much nicer to present it to them in a handmade envelope too. So, here's how you do it…

1. To make an envelope that will fit an A6, postcard-size card you will need: an A4 or US legal size sheet or a piece of paper measuring 21cmx21cm, ruler, pencil, scissors and double-sided sticky tape.

2. The piece of paper you're going to use needs to be square and measure 21cm each side. With the sheet best side down, the easiest thing to do is fold one corner of an A4 sheet over to the opposite edge and then cut off the excess strip to leave you with the square.

The only drawback is that you'll have a crease showing on your finished envelope.

3. Turn your square so you have a corner pointing down. Measure 9cm up from the bottom corner and mark the point. Measure 7cm in from each side corner and mark these points. You are going to fold the corners in at these points so to make it easier you can draw a line across each mark so you can see exactly where to fold. 

4. Fold the three corners in along your fold lines.

5. With the side flaps folded in, add double-sided sticky tape to their bottom edges so that the bottom flap can stick to them. You only need a thin strip so cut a piece of sticky tape down the middle lengthways before sticking onto the edges. Fold the bottom flap up so it sticks to the side flaps and you now have something that looks a lot more like an envelope. I like to tuck in the little point you have sticking up from the bottom flap but you can cut it off if you'd rather. 

6. On each side edge of your envelope, measure up 11.5cm and make a small mark. Using the ruler to make a sharp crease, fold the top flap over. In creating the top flap you've folded over the top corners of the side flaps and so the envelope looks a little 'unprofessional' with this little bit of excess folded paper. So you can just snip it off to leave clean edges.

7. And there you have it, your finished envelope! You can seal it with regular sticky tape or double-sided tape, or a sticker or glue, or whatever takes your fancy :)

I used a plain sheet of white recycled paper for this tutorial but you can use any paper or thin card you like. How about an old map or a magazine page? The options are endless!

I hope you liked this tutorial and found it useful. I'm very happy for you to share this tutorial but please name this blog as the source and post a link back to this post rather than give the full instructions. 

I plan to make tutorials a bit more of a regular feature so I'd love to hear what you think of this one. And if you want to share pics of envelopes you make do leave links in the comments box so I can take a peek!