A new lease of craft

As I have mentioned, and any of you out there married / getting married will know, this planning-a-wedding-deal devours a lot of your time. It also acts like a rabid zombie and eats your brains while sapping all your creativity for items that are not wedding related, i.e. craft-hagging and blogging. And as horrid as this sounds, I’m at the stage where I’m looking forward to the far side of our wedding. Meaning, I can’t wait to get back to normal and plan normal stuff. In a good way.

Moving on {well, just a little I’m afraid}, after jumping from one honeymoon adventure idea to another, we have finally come to our ideal honeymoon destination. Without giving away too much, it was our first choice, but were briefly side-tracked by shinier options. The good news is our honeymoon has me daydreaming about crocheting and knitting a couple of new and unusual delights. So here’s to a burst of inspiration and hopeful blogging of knitted and crocheted items of all sorts!

Then, with impeccable timing, THIS arrived for me yesterday …

… I nearly shit a kitten when I saw the post man with it. How wonderful is this Cath Kidstonknitting bag‘? Pure craft win. Even the packaging was adora-balls. I’m really excited since I’m going on a road trip this weekend and I can’t wait to exit apartment with said knitting bag on arm and craft my brains out in the back seat with my newest project. Happy crafting everyone 🙂

Thrifty things – vintage vases

Yesterday I hit the charity shops in Dublin, and I hit them hard. I’ve been a bit depraved of thrifting since I’ve been busy with work and life. So I made up for lost time by visiting close to ten charity shops – an all time best. The first shop I went into I struck gold with these beautiful {and I completely admit, kitschy} pink vintage vases …
So awesome. I swiped these up for €10 for the set, from Age Action
The tall vases have found a lovely home on the shelf over our tv, but I’m not sure what to do with the smaller vase type thing. Alas, it will come in handy. I’m seriously considering incorporating these tall vases into our wedding. Overstuffed with flowers, maybe for the ceremony. We’ll see. 

Hopeful makeover – living room

I’ve been sick for the past week, and in an attempt to find the silver lining, all this time moping has given me time to mess around on Photoshop, yay!
I’ve wanted to revamp our living room for a while, and to get the ball rolling I did this little mock-up of the focal wall in our living room I want to tackle. At the moment it’s a massive blackboard wall, which is cool and all, but our apartment doesn’t get much light, and I’m really feeling it drag the room down. Considering I love dark colours, I think the addition of depressing Irish weather is encouraging me to brighten it up. So I tried my hand at an ‘after’ image of what I’d like it to look like, and I’m quite pleased with the result!

This is what I came up with, and I’m pretty stoked. A fresher look that’s a little brighter, more uplifting, a little more grown up, but still has the same major elements, and some existing items we already own – 

I kept a smidgen of the blackboard wall, offset from the white shelf, and coloured the rest of the wall to what we already have – Swan’s a Swimming. I’ve had a knot in my knickers to invest in an orchid, but that mother is going to need to be faux since I {unintentionally} murder every plant that enters my care. Spruced up with a Stockholm Rand rug, an unattainable Gun Lamp {a girl can dream}, some crates to balance the scales, and one musn’t forget a hydrangea. 
There are two elements I can’t change in our living room – the white IKEA shelf and TV stand. We’re tenants, and we don’t own these items. Yes, I paint a small amount of our apartment, but I would never have a problem re-painting before we leave. Another item that will remain but haven’t included in the second image is our massive regolit lamp, which is needed, but would stuff up the image. I’m pretty excited about getting started, and can’t wait to give our living room a little revamp! Happy Saturday, everyone 🙂