How To Make A Springtime Table Runner

This easy-to-make springtime table runner will brighten up your table for Easter, or on any other Spring day for that matter. 

What you'll need:

Felt in various colours for the leaves and flowers

An oblong piece of felt in a pale colour for the runner

Embroidery thread in various colours
Buttons in various colours

A hot glue gun 

Step 1: Begin by drawing a leaf pattern on the green felt. Then cut out the leaves using a very sharp scissors to give them a neat edge. I used two shades of green.

Step 2: Using the green embroidery thread, sew a vein up the middle of each leaf, as shown in the photo below.

 Step 3: Draw petals on the coloured felt and cut them out. I used a star shaped cookie cutter as a template for the outer petals and the lid of a bottle as a template for the centre of the flower.

 Step 4: Assemble your flowers as shown in the photos below, placing a button in the centre of each. Sew each flower together using embroidery thread in a contrasting colour.

 Step 5: Lay the oblong strip of felt out flat and arrange the leaves and flowers on it in a pattern of your choice. You could bunch them all together in the centre, lay them in the form of a wreath or in a straight line down the centre of the runner. I chose to scatter mine about at random, leaving room to add dyed eggs as an additional decoration on Easter Sunday morning. 

Once you have decided on your arrangement, use a hot glue gun to fix the flowers in place. Alternatively, you can sew them into place. 

Then simply spread the runner along your dining table and admire your good work!

Homemade Christmas Food and Drink Gifts - Part One

So, the "in a few days" I wrote in my initial post on Christmas food has turned into eleven days and I am very sorry about that. Somehow the days just flew by in a blur and here I am with my photos and my half-editied vlog, desperately trying to get my recipes out to you before Christmas Eve.

You'll be glad to hear that I have a whole host of easy, tasty and quick-to-make edible gifts for you. Of course, you don't even have to give them away. You can keep them all for your own enjoyment. It is up to you.

So now to get down to the recipes. First up is my non-alcoholic punch. With so many friends and family members dropping in over the Christmas period, it is handy to have something a bit more festive than tea on hand to offer any non-drinkers or those driving. Click here for my delicious spiced punch with a rooibush tea base. You can bottle it and store it in the fridge for a few days, heating as necessary. 

Visitors like nibbles but mince pies or the same boring crackers with cheese everywhere you turn can get old fairly quickly. That's why I've made my own crispbreads this year. So easy and a great way to use up stale bread. I make my own bread, but you can use any loaf bread or baguette-style bread. I like to use my white, multi-seed bread.

Before the bread goes completely stale, slice it into very fine slices, almost wafer-thin. Lay the slices out on baking trays and brush lightly with olive oil. Sprinkle with sea salt and bake in a preheated oven at 150°C for 10-12 minutes. Leave to cool completely before stacking in tall, wide-neck air-tight jars. Tie with a ribbon and give as as present or keep in your own cupboard for nibbling with wine or port and cheese. 

For a sweet treat for yourself, your guests or to give as a gift, try making your own marzipan truffles. I flavour mine with walnut and orange, both Christmassy flavours, and coat them in cocoa. Click here for the full recipe. Pack the finished truffles into a jar or clear plastic gift bag and tie with a pretty ribbon to finish.

Jams, jellies, chutneys and relishes make excellent gifts at this time of year. If you are a jam-maker, you'll have a stock of jars at the back of a cupboard somewhere, bursting with all the flavours of late Summer and early Autumn. Some of the recipes I use are:

Green Cherry Tomato Relish 

Rosehip and Apple Jelly

Windfall Pear and Apple Chutney

Cherry Jam

I hope I've been able to provide you with a little bit of insiration here. A combination of the gifts listed above can make a gorgeous and inexpensive hamper for neighbours, teachers or friends. Why not give some of them a go to get you in the festive, generous spirit?

My Long-Awaited Kitchen Blackboard

Chalkboards are in, apparently.  I didn't really realise this. Since we moved into our house five years ago I have wanted to paint one on the kitchen wall. But The Bavarian wasn't so keen. I still bought the paint and I renovated two old blackboards, one for the kids and one to hang in the kitchen. But after all that, I still knew I really wanted a large space on the wall for shopping lists, etc. 

Did you figure out who is drawn here?
Darth Vader and Yoda

So I bought more paint and got to work on convincing The Bavarian. We recently removed the kitchen door and this exposed the awkward wallspace between the fridge and the doorframe. It was terribly marked from five years of life with small children. It needed a lick of paint, so why not use the blackboard paint?  He gave in, I got my brushes out. 

I'd been oogling 'kitchen chalkboards' on Pinterest and had a few ideas of what would suit our kitchen. (Blackboard seems to be the not so cool term these days but I can't get used to chalkboard, sorry). While a full-wall blackboard would look great around our doorframe, it would darken the kitchen too much.

Folge Fionnualas Pinnwand „A Blackboard Wall“ auf Pinterest.

In the end I settled on painting the wall from the skirting board up to the height of the fridge. The plan is to trick around a bit and add a slogan or banner with a chalk marker at the top, but I have yet to decide on it. For the moment, The Bavarian and the boys have been attacking my blackboard and leaving me little space for my own notes. But since the kitchen is the heart of our home, I'll let them away with it. For now. 

Usually I am very tempted to skip preparation and get straight to the painting, but after waiting for so long to get this project started , I wanted it to turn out well. Here is what I did:

1. I washed the wall with warm water to remove any dirt or greasy marks.

2. Using the spirit level and a pencil, I marked the size and shape of the blackboard onto the wall.

3. I used masking tape along the pencil lines as well as along the door frame and skirting board to ensure clear edges and unharmed woodwork.

4. There were a few small dents in the wall, so I filled these up with wall filler and a spatula and left it to dry overnight. 

5. The following day I applied the first coat of paint around lunchtime and a second coat just before going to bed. 

6. Getting up the next morning I was so excited about pulling off the tape and seeing the lovely clean lines of my blackboard. 

7. I read somewhere, while doing all my research, that before using a freshly-painted 'chalkboard', you should colour in the whole board lightly with white chalk and then take one of those magic eraser sponges (dry) and wipe the chalk off again to give it that chalky look. It is so much nicer than the stark black of the paint. I did it and it turned out really well. The poor Bavarian got a giving out to from me when he washed the whole board with water while I was out later that morning and put his own message on it.

Craft Myths, Busted

People sometimes tell me that I am talented*, art and crafts-wise, and ask where I get the time to do the crafts I do. I usually shug, say something along the lines of "Eh thanks, mmm I dunno".

Recently I took a bit of time to ask myself where I get the time. So, I'm going to let you, and those people, if they are reading, how things work round here, craft-wise and bust a few craft myths while I am at it.

Myth: Craft projects take a lot of time

For very many crafts, you do not need a lot of time. For those projects that do need a lot of time, you do not generally need all that time in one block. Blocks of 5 or 10 minutes or even a half hour can often be squeezed in between other activities. Just keep your materials near at hand.

Myth: Craft projects need a lot of space

You do not need a lot of space for most projects. A kitchen table can be commandeered between meals or in the evening to use as a work space. Your work in progress can be stored on top of a wardrobe, in the guest bedroom or inside a cupboard. 

In the photo below you can see my current crochet project, accompanied by an unfinished Easter project (check back here in Spring for the tutorial), housed in a small basket that lives under the coffee table. It gets taken out when I sit down to watch television, usually once a week. When I am finished, I fold it back up and pop it back into the basket. It is easy to manage, keeps the children from attacking it and is always in the right place at the right time.

Myth: You have to be creative

Natural creativity is great, but good copying skills will suffice. I believe we are all creative somewhere inside. It can just be hard to tap into it. 

If you feel that you are not creative but you want to get crafty with the kids, then borrow some craft books from the library with projects that suit your level of skill or enthusiasm. Browse them, pick a project and have a go. Don't look on Pinterest and get depressed. 

Myth: Craft materials cost a lot of money

Yes, craft materials can cost a lot of money but it very much depends on what you are making and the level of professionalism you are aiming for. Here you really do need to cut your cloth according to your means.
When buying materials for a particular project, bear in mind that you can use the leftovers in other projects. I have some tubes of acrylic paint that I bought several years ago. They seem to be bottomless, I have used them so often but they are still not empty, nor have they dried out. My scraps of fabric get used up in patchwork or sewing machine embroidery projects.

A lot of what you can use for craft projects, especially for crafting with children, can be collected from around the house or bought in a €1 shop or in Aldi, like paper straws, glue, packs of coloured paper or childrens' scissors. 
Natural materials collected from the garden, woods or parks make great crafting material, are free and educational for the children too.

Assign a collection box somewhere in the house and whenever you see something that could be useful, put it in there. I often keep the following:

 - buttons from clothes that are being dumped

 - old shirts that have frayed cuffs and collars. There is a good amount of fabric in them.

 - ribbons and strings from chocolate boxes, gifts, or those loops of ribbon inside clothes that keep them from sliding off the hangers.

 - cardboard toilet roll inserts

 - pieces of plain card like the type that come with folded shirts or in packs of tights

A drawer in our kitchen, for spontaneous crafting sessions

Myth: You need to be skilled with lots of tools and methods

I am living proof that you do not need a whole lot of skill to realise pretty projects. You can learn as you go. You can watch video tutorials and you can ask your local DIY shop, hardware shop or craft shop for advice if you have a project in mind. 

Myth: It takes too long to master one craft

Yes, it can take a long time to master a particular craft. But the beauty of creative crafting for amateurs like us is that you do not need to master any particular crafts. 

But you do need to want to give it a go. I am not saying that you have to be incredibly passionate about, say, knitting. But if you have no interest at all in the end product, it is not going to go well. And just because you can't knit, doesn't mean you shouldn't try crochet. Just because you can't dressmake, doesn't mean you can't sew a cushion. Start small and work your way up or start big and hope for the best. But start.

*While it is lovely to hear that one is talented, those giving the praise must have no idea of the amazingly talented people there are out there. I do my best with the time I have and hope things turn out to be presentable.