Gift Taggs

This is a great idea for a baby shower, especially if the mother to be is expecting twins (or more babies). As green is the main colour in this theme it is gender neutral and easy to adapt.  

Invitations

  

Angela Sgro has a tutorial for invitations, based on a formal wedding invitation (complete with space for directions, maps and gift registry), if you are looking for a simpler invitation, see her Thank you cards. If you aren’t creative, Shower My Baby, has an amazing range of Sweet Pea products including Invitation and Thank you cards.

Decorations

Again Shower My Baby’s range includes most the things you would need for decorating your home, from balloons to banners, paper plates to lawn signs.  If you want to get more creative, you could try making a nappy pea in the pod centerpiece of the table (directions at Cutest Baby Shower Ideas). Or take inspiration from Julie Mulligan who made papier-mâché pods and used carnations as peas, I love her glass votives surrounded by fresh snow peas.  Alternatively to decorate a room why not hang massive peas from the ceiling like as seen on the  Everyday Celebrating site.   

Games and Entertainment

I found two great games for this themes, a pea in the pod crossword and pea pod brooch game.  

You can put a pea in a pod twist on some classic shower games, like the baby food tasting game by including some mushy peas. Or Pass the Produce get twenty different produce items, like a pea pod, a carrot, bananas or apples. Get all the guests to sit in a circle with their hands behind their backs and pass the produce around asking each guest to guess what the item is and write it down.  

Favours

For favours or prizes for the winners of the games, you can do something simple like mini potted sweet pea plants or sweet pea scented candles (see Just Candles). 

The Celebration Shoppe, has a tutorial for Pea in the Pod favours, you can buy face cloths for as little as 50p in Dunelm Mills or Primark, and Yankee Candles do several green candles, which can be purchased from Just Candles. Alternatively, you could use green bath bombs for the “peas.” Lush’s Avobath would be perfect for this. 

If you want edible favours, you can make cupcakes with green icing or pea pod cookies, (you can buy pea pod cookie cutters are CCC Shop) or you can try these Chocolate Peas in the Pod from Good to be a Girl are fabulous, you can use any round chocolates or sweets, and can buy green chocolate foil from the CCC Shop. 

Food and Drinks

Your guests might be unimpressed if all you served them was peas. Salads are a great idea, as the green will match the decor. When Infarrantly Creative hosted a Pea in the Pod shower, they put together an amazing menu, complete with “Pea”nuts, Lemon Pop”pea” seed Muffins and “Pea”nya Colada Punch.

Tags: baby showers, decorations, favours, food and drink ideas, games, invitations, party ideas, peas in a pod theme

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I have mentioned before how I think being organised is one of the key features of being a domestic goddess, there are several websites out there that can help, all of them have their own ideas and plans all different. One thing they all seem to have in common is your are not going to get organised over night! It starts by going a little bit every day. These are my top five websites (in no order) when looking for daily tasks to help be organised.

Flylady – Probably the largest website out there devoted to declutter and organising homes, giving you several options to get your daily advice (emails, a toolbar or via their website), Using humour and their own terms, the Flyladies starts with Babysteps to help build a routine, turn your home into 5 zones for you to tackle. Soon you will have put out all your hot-spots and climbed to the top of your Mount Washmore. 

I find the site can be very cluttered and hard to navigate, however daily mission are updated everyday, and displayed on the homepage along with the weekly pampering mission and the monthly task (this month a reminder to Shiny your sink). I also found doing everything in fifteen minutes didn’t suit me, once I have my washing gloves on I prefer to scrub until the room is done not just tackle one area at a time. I tend to use the “sneak peak” section to see all the daily tasks and on them all at once on a set day. 

Organized Home - Not so much a daily guide more a general organisation site. Organized Home encourage it’s readers to have to major deep cleans of their homes, one in the spring and one just before Christmas on their sister site, Organized Christmas.

The reason I love the site is the regular articles, covering everything from re-organising your wardrobe for the season, to handling household papers, and of course the guide to creating an your own Organizer for your home. 

Martha Stewart – For many this is the go to site when looking for inspiration, I love her Organizing Tip of the Day. each day she posts a creative project to help you organise your home, from charging stations for your electronic devices, to a case for embroidery thread, from labelling your pipes to  creating a gift wrapping station.

It is worth noting, the site also has some amazing checklists which also seem to cover everything. They are a little hard to find, but extremely handy as they are printable complete with a little tick box for you to check the items off.

Life Organizers - Putting together a little task everyday – sometimes based on cleaning, other times of planning a date night or family task, this site is great of a mini project everyday.  They also use American National Holidays to tie into the tasks, changing light bulbs on Edison’s birthday to having a laugh on April Fool’s day. The site also has various checklists for moving home, packing for a holiday or what to ask when looking for a new loan.

Tip Junkie - I love the Personal Assistant part of this site, at the beginning of the month, offers a reminder of everything you need to do, in order to be super organised that month, from checking your calender for upcoming birthdays to food storage ideas. If you are going to be a Home Executive you need your own P.A. and this site offers it. All the tasks link in with their sister site, Executive Homemaker.

Tags: organisation

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I think a lot of people feel bad giving gift certificates or money as a gift because they think it was an unimaginative present, however there are times we have to give vouchers. Last Christmas, I had to buy several presents at short notice with no real time to hunt around the shops, so I opted to get them gift vouchers from HMV.

Disappointed that I didn’t have a chance to be very creative and I experimented with clever wrapping. I brought some Popcorn Boxes, filled them with packets of microwavable popcorn and Maltesers and the gift vouchers. I then attached a little card saying.

“As the days are getting colder, use this vouchers to buy some DVDs or a computer game and have a night in on us!”

The gifts went down extremely well, so this year I had to do something equally amazing, I opted to get cinema vouchers (checking where the recipient local multiplex was first). I found these Jolee’s Boutique Movie embellishments, and made some booklets, listing some of the big blockbusters that released around Christmas. On the front page I wrote…

Last year, we told you to have a night in on us…
This year we want you to have a night out on us!

Tags: gift cards, gift wrapping, paper crafting

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Undoubtedly you have read all about the earthquake and aftermath in Haiti. What struck me this weekend is how many crafters around the world are using their skills to help raise funds and I wanted to send a little love to them for their generosity.

Numerous crafters are offering patterns for free or a small fee in exchange for you donating however much you can afford to one of the charities that are in Haiti. My favourite patterns, are Cindy from Skip to my Lou who posted a lovely cupcake recipe and template for cupcake wrapper and also the fabulous Lou and Emms from Loumms who have offered to donate a pound from any of their year in socks pattern (if downloaded via ravelry).

It often seems like we don’t have any spare money to donate, a few years ago I was introduced to Yarnharlot’s idea of Knitters Without Borders. I thought it was such a simple idea, just asking yourself do I need this before making any purchases and then donating the money to you don’t spend to MSF. I know like to do this once a year.

Last year, I also discovered paying for patterns by pennies per hour of pleasure (or p/hop), which is an extension of Knitters Without Borders. The idea is simple you knit one of the patterns from the site and then donate based on how much pleasure you got from making the project.

 Donating even a pound (or dollar) can make all the difference and if you need an extra reason to donate, check out the Hope for Haiti blog, donate some money and have a chance to win some amazing prizes (the prize fund is growing daily).

Finally, if you are in London, how about stopping by iKnit for one of there famous crafternoons, the event kicks off at 1pm and they are promising tea, cakes and games.

Tags: charity, hope for haiti

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I often joke that google is my recipe book, if I ever need a guide on how to make anything instead of hunting through all my books, I head to my computer and start searching. If it is a basic recipe or a video on a technique, I always seem to find the answer on the Internet. However, there is one major problem! I have translate the recipes from American to British.

Confused, let me explain… the majority of the recipes I find are from American websites, they measurements are very confusing.  At school we were taught all about pounds and ounces, I pride myself mentally being able to translate these to grams. However, I was stumped when it came to “cups” and “sticks.”

At first I thought a cup was any random teacup I found in the cupboard, then I learnt that cups are an actual measurement! Around 250 grams in U.K. terms. I didn’t have any issues with teaspoons and tablespoons as I had a set of “measuring spoons.”

When baking using butter has been my biggest obstacle, measurements are either spoon or sticks, have you every tried to use a teaspoon with chilled butter! After some research online (thank you google), I discovered this post. So now I know a stick is 113 grams and teaspoon is around the same as 20 grams.

Tags: cooking, measurements

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The next thing I want to talk about in organisation is an address book, I gave up keeping proper address book years ago as I got fed up with all the crosses out when people moved house or changed their email address or phone number… my pretty address book soon looked a mess! Instead I now use a page for each person in my Home Organiser Planner, if any data changes I can just rip the page out and start again. The advantage of using an A4 page is you can add extra information, instead of just Name, Address, Email, Phone Number, you can now add Mobile Numbers, Websites, Birthdays, Spouses or Children’s Names, and of course a Notes section to include information like allergies or favourite food for dinner parties or gifts.

All the guides I have read online encourage you to include more than just friends and family’s details, at first I thought it was a little odd including the number of the local restaurant or take away place, but when you stop to think how many times you look this up in the year it soon adds up, using a folder also means you can attach the menu – so you don’t have to hunt around for that too, When those menus and vouchers get posted through the door file them away in your address book. I have also started adding “notes” to these, listing our favourite dishes or things we hated – useful when recommending a restaurant.

I also keep a digital copy (in Outlook) of my friends and families addresses, the benefits of a digital copy are numerous, you can use mail merge for your Christmas cards (you will be amazed at how much time this can save), most people email change of address or phone numbers details so you can copy and paste the details over. With nearly everyone owning a Smartphone these days you can also sync computer based address book with your phone and suddenly you always have everyone’s details with you always – handy if you have to send a last minute card.

Further Reading:

• Flylady Control Journal - general tips on getting started with your address book.
• Organised Home – General tips and some great printables I love the Restaurant Directory and Emergency Information pages.
• Windows Address Book Template – download for an Access database, with some great features like the greeting card list.

Tags: address books, organisation

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One of my favourite things to read about online are real-life party, it is one of the best ways to see how creative other people have been as it involves a range for skills, card-making, decorating, cooking or baking.

Baby showers have been extremely popular in the United States for years, and are growing in popularity in the U.K. due to being featured on T.V. shows like Friends and Sex in the City.

Traditionally, a baby shower is meant to be a women-only however, it is becoming increasingly popular to have couples showers. The theme of the shower has moved far along from the simply pink for a girl and blue of a boy ideas. My hunts online have found some amazing, original themes, from “b is of baby” to “cirque du bebe” or “ready to pop!”

I would love to have a regular section in the blog devoted to real-life parties, and give tips advice to help throw an amazing shower. Have you recently thrown a baby shower, do you want to throw a unique themed shower but are having problems finding supplies? Let me know.

Further Reading

• Baby Shower 101 
• Baby World
• Shower my Baby

Tags: baby showers, introduction

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One of the key things to being a domestic goddess is organisation; after all there is no point if sending out an amazing handmade birthday card if it is a month late or a dinner party will be ruined if the main course is ready before the starter.

For a long while I have been a fan of the Organisation Folder system, I started with a Control Journal from Flylady but have since adapted it using ideas from Organised Home and other sites. The idea is simple in the workplace you will have your daily, weekly and monthly tasks, you use tools like Outlook to organised your calendar or address book why not use them in your home.

One of the simplest tools to use to get organised is a calendar. A quick glance of the calendar can remind you of an upcoming birthday, event or public holiday. It is a simple way to keep track of your family members – my husband works shift so when making plans during the week I constantly have to check his work patterns before confirming anything.

I brought this calendar from on of those pop-up calendar shops that are everywhere before Christmas, the his and her columns means we can both keep track of what the other one is doing and is extremely handy when planning meals for the week. I also have a moleskine diary that sits on my desk for more in-depth entries – times of appointments, notes for what I need to do that day.

Finally I use a computer based calendar, last year I discovered Google calendars, by using their shared calendars, first off I would suggest adding the UK public holidays subscription, then look for something relating to you interests, the upcoming cinema release dates, you favourite teams fixtures and finally add family members calendar.

For me the best thing about Google calendar is they synchronization – by installing the sync tool, the calendar can brought together with outlook for an offline copy and then in turn ismy synced to my iPhone so I always have a copy of my calendar on hand, the syncing means I can change an appointment on my phone and it will be updates on all three calendar once I connect my phone to the computer.

Further Reading

• Flylady Control Journal
• Organised Home Notebook
• Executive Homemaker

Useful Tool:

• Calendars from Windows
• Google calendar

Tags: calenders, organisation

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I can spend hours online browsing blogs, looking for recipes, reading about real-life parties or examining tutorials for new crafts. Always thinking I could do that! However, in reality living in the UK I seem to hit dead ends. It took me months to realise what “heavy cream” was, and I can’t pop to Wal-mart to buy supplies.

A few years ago I started a blog to show off my knitting projects, it started as a place for me to chat about my progress and very quickly it introduced my to numerous bloggers, online yarn stores, hundreds of websites for tutorials or new techniques. Most importantly it introduced me to a world of UK based crafters, knitters in my area, I could socialize with whilst enjoying my hobby, and yarn producers from all areas of the British Isles.

I am hoping this blog will serve as a similar device, introducing me to UK based bloggers, new stores and opening doors to a new community on my journey to becoming a domestic goddess.

Tags: admin, introduction

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