Jam jar lantern

I have bought a fabulous new book called 'Homemade' by Ros Badger and Elspeth Thompson full of ideas and inspiration for easy homemade projects.  I took this idea for their book and delighted with the outcome.

The completed blinds

After much wrestling with my Mum's old sewing machine I spent Sunday afternoon making my new kitchen blinds and here they are - I am so pleased with them!

The kitchen mission

The house I live in is not beautiful by any stretch of the imagination but over the years I have created it into a beautiful home.  I have filled it with beautiful items I have made and or inexpensively bought over time.  With a little imagination you can make an area lacking in any visual attraction beautiful.  I believe our home is an area where you can express yourself even when its not your own and this is certainly what I love to do.  I am of course lucky the man does not have any desire for interior decorating at all - I am free to go as shabby chic crazy as I like!

Over the last few weeks I have turned my focus to my horrible kitchen in desperate attempt to make it just a little pretty.  Its an ugly space with orange lino flooring that would look better placed on a less glamourous version of 'That 70s Show', cupboards with absolutely zero personality at all and one blue and 1 grey pipe running along the edge of the cupboards on the floor so that we can have a dishwasher - the man's ever practicality...

My mission - to turn this space into an area I actually like and maybe love.  I love baking and cooking so this area needs to be practical as well as pretty.  I have already added some new tea towels and oven gloves and one or two kitchen trinkets but today I am going to attempt to make 2 blinds or valances.  I have never made curtains and have much fear that going anywhere near this activity will automatically turn me into my mother.   So with the memories of my mother sewing all the curtains in my childhood home, measurements in hand and shopping list stored on the 'notes app' I shall bravely attempt this task gripping firmly onto my twenties at the same time.

Creative does not have to mean perfect

Despite coming from a very creative family I have never considered myself as a 'creative'.  I thought 'creative' meant making beautiful, perfect items with lines straight and neat. As I have experimented with sewing, quilting, card making and homemade cookery, things that I enjoy doing, I have discovered that 'creative' does not have to be perfect.  And that all this 'making' and 'crafting', despite the rough edges, unstraight stitching and borderline scruffy icing is actually creative.  I have found this to be so freeing.  And I actually love the fact that my creations are not perfect - because its me and of course I am not perfect.  I think once you realise this you end up creating much more beautiful items because they come from your heart.