Freecycle strikes again

Tom was going to pick me up from work Tuesday to go and get the engagement ring resized, and as most times when I have him and the car at my disposal I had some furniture for us to collect...

Also we got some compost and plant pots, garden update coming soon as it's looking pretty good, especially in this beautiful weather :)

I said back in this post that I would like to get a multi purpose table for the office, something we could use as a desk but also to eat at. We do use the desk but only rarely (the printer could live anywhere as it's wireless and most of the stuff in the drawers and shelves of the desk could go somewhere else or go in the bin!) so we really do not need a proper desk just somewhere to sit with the laptop. I would love to have a dining table again as I'm sick of eating every meal on the sofa, don't get me wrong we will still do that sometimes but since we've lived here I've not done a proper Sunday roast as we have nowhere to eat it.

So I've been keeping an eye out for a very specific table - A smallish size rectangular table, large enough for 2 people to eat at, seating 4 would be a bonus. It needed to also have room underneath to store the printer and desk things when we are not using them, so couldn't have a large pedestal or be too narrow.

I didn't see anything that fit the bill in my price range (low haha) and after casually looking for a few months thought I'd put out a wanted ad on freecycle, and I got one!

This is the photo of it set up from the catalogue

Also see the catalogue here, rrp £199 reduced to £99, and we got it for free! The lovely lady who emailed me said they had bought it for extra seating at Christmas and now don't need it any more.

I'm going to sort out and dismantle the desk this weekend and hopefully get this table up in time for roast dinner Sunday :)

April showers bring May flowers...

Well we had enough showers didn't we? The weather finally seems to have caught onto the fact that it's summer now!

This is the monthly flowers post, I actually thought this would peter out after a month but we seem to be sticking to it!

I got these white tulips reduced for £1 a bunch at Sainsburys, they had a bit of life left but only lasted a few days really (although for £2 I wasn't that worried)

When they were dying off Tom brought home these lovely mulitcoloured tulips to replace them I think also from Sainsburys (Or Asda it was with food shopping any way!).

He's a keeper :)

Anyway then there's these 3 which although they're plants not flowers I'm going to include

We have loads of cards around, my birthday and engagement at the same time we can't find a place for all of them!

This one was a thank you from my manager for orgnanising our open day on the 27th of April

Then Tom's mum got me this one for my birthday as a coincidence, it's quite nice having the 2 matching plants in different colours! They both come in bright little pots as well

My friend Sam then got me these roses for my birthday, we need to get some more pots for the garden as we need to move some plants to larger pots so I'm hoping to get one for these and put them in the garden

I also bought 2 bunches of these for our engagement party table decorations and ended up not needing all of them so some went in a vase in the kitchen. In the rush of making the decorations in time for the party I threw away the packaging before I made a note but I think they were £2.50 a bunch and I think they're carnations?

My mum and Simon also got us this engagement present, from the supermarket in Holland they were in when I rang to tell them we were engaged. It looks lovely on our little garden table and is easy to move when we want to eat on there (Or I'm actually writing this post on Saturday evening sat there with a glass of wine)

All in all a pretty floral month! the garden is also growing nicely and some more flowers will hopefully be out soon, I'll share photos once they are.

DIY Table Decorations

We had our engagement party last weekend at a local pub, it was pretty last minute although as I knew I was going to be away on my birthday I had already planned an informal meal/drinks on the Sunday already with a few people. We just made it more of an 'event' and invited lots of Toms family and friends as well.

I spent most of last week sorting out who was coming, booking the room and sorting menu choice but on Saturday managed to whip up some last minute table decorations.

I have a collection of jars that I keep for things like this (Tom was amazed I finally used them as I've had them ages!) so I thought I'd make 2 types of decoration, one for flowers and one for candles. I went into town on the Friday and picked up my materials

The stuff on the left is all from various pound shops, some organza, ribbon, balloons, mini pegs, paint (I also later got some table confetti and banners). The candles are all from Wilko, the small ones were £1 each, the large ones were £1.70 and the packs of 3 were £1.75.

I started with the painted jars, squeezing the paint into the inside of the jar and moving it around with a foam brush. I had hoped to get them all a light blue colour by mixing the blue and white paint but the first one came out marbled and I liked that better!

I left them all drying upside down to let any excess paint drip out (note: because of the paint being quite thick they take forever to dry and were actually still wet on Sunday when we were using them, so if you're trying similar do them further in advance!) then moved onto the candle decorations. My plan was to wrap the jars in the organza fabric add the ribbon and voilà! The first one I tried sticking down the organza to the jar but it didn't stick very well and I discovered wasn't really needed

These first 2 I also added in another sheet of organza but the finished article was a bit too fussy for my liking and since there were going to candles inside and the material kept going over the top (Fire Hazard!) I kept the rest of them a bit more simple!

I just wrapped the jars in the organza and tied the ribbon around the top and the bottom to secure it and add decoration

At this point I actually wasn't too keen on these bit I figured once they had candles lit and were glowing softly they would look prettier.

I had some ribbon left over so glued some around the top of the painted jars

And here they are in action

My mum very kindly got us the balloon bouquet

I ended up not using most of the candles, only using the small ones from the packs of 3 to put in the jars, as I felt we had enough and there were a lot of people eating so didn't want to crowd the table too much.

I really like the painted jars and have kept them, I added in a plastic cup to each one to put the flowers in. 

The decorations in total including the balloons and banners only cost £23.60 as it was mostly from pound shops!

We had a lovely party, with a meal and then a game of skittles as we had hired the back room with the skittle alley in and an evening of (far to much) drinking! 

I will probably not talk too much about weddings etc on here (we don't even have a date set yet or anything although looking at next year) although any projects like this that could translate to a non-wedding/engagement event or home décor (I'm going to find a home for some of those painted jars in our home) I will share. I'm sure there will be a lot of projects to do for the wedding and some of them will be of interest.