I have finished a door!! (yes just the one so far!) but I am so pleased with it :)

It came out from under the heavy books looking great ... I trimmed the edges and sanded it all down ...


the sanding made it so lovely and smooth, I just wanted to stroke it ;)
I did use wire wool too, but actually don't think I need to for the others, sand paper is enough.


There were a few small gaps between some of the squares, so I filled them in and sanded again


I didn't want a high gloss finish so found some lovely silk varnish and applied 3 coats


I am sooooo pleased how its worked out and can't wait to start on the others :)


Once they are all done and back up attached to their cupboards I will post a photo to show you :)

Steve and I bought our first bit of furniture together the other week, (sorry about the photos not being great, they were taken on his phone) ...


It is a lovely old Andy-Pandy bench that would be great to sit on, have as a coffee table or use as a foot rest!!

It needs to be sanded down and I am not sure if I am going to paint some of it or not.

It was only £10 and I love it :D


Please pop over to MissieLizzie's blog to see more great bargains and links to other MagpieMonday's.

take an old kitchen cupboard door ... a lovely orange one that has seen better days ...

to give our kitchen units a facelift till we can replace the kitchen I had a bit of a brain wave ... or so I thought ... rather than just paint them and cos I love wood, I bought some sample assorted packs of veneer wood from eBay ...


I cut them into 10cm x 10cm squares ...


... until I had a nice assortment of woods ...


my plan was to have a patchwork of woods on the doors ... after showing Steve though, decided it was too busy and having too many different wood colours looked too much, so I have been more selective with the woods I have used.

you can see how delightful the orange doors are in this photo ;)
(photo taken on my phone, so not great!)


I cleaned the doors with white spirit (smells gross but works wonders!) and then spray painted all around the edge of the doors where they had yellowed with age and sprayed the black rim handle.

I then measured out 10cm x 10cm squares on the door front.


and using my more subtle colour pallet, had fun arranging my wooden squares in a random pattern :)


I love the oak burr, but only have a few squares of that so need to use sparingly!


once I got them looking random, and using masking tape, I taped them together to make a sheet.


using a contact adhesive I covered both the door and the back of the patchwork sheet in glue and left for 10 minutes till it went all clear ...

... and carefully, with the help of an extra pair of hands, put the two sticky sides together and laid my beautiful patchwork onto the door ...


... some of the wooden squares really wrinkled with the glue but once laid onto the door and with the iron on VERY low heat they soon flattened out again :) Once stuck down, I peeled off all the masking tape and admired how lovely it looked!!


The glue really needs about 24 hours to stick properly, so I laid some very flat wooden boards on the door and piled heavy books and a box full of craft magazines on it ...


I now have to wait till tomorrow evening before I can have a look and see how it looks! I then need to sand it all down and trim the edges then seal and varnish it! ......... and then hopefully, if it looks as lovely as I think it will ... do it again on a load more doors!!

.... 'in love' with my new bread bin ... and wouldn't you be?!

as soon as I saw it I knew that no other bread bin would do ... it is lovely matt cream china with a wooden lid.

I found the bread bin as I was originally searching for a utensil pot and found this one ... I was very excited when I found the whole range :)

sadly though they were out of the coffee jar that matched ... although I went on line last night and saw they were back in stock!! ... typical ... ahh well as its mostly tea we drink I figured we would survive without a coffee jar!

Then I found the lovely round set ... there are 3 size jars ... please don't ask how much they all cost ... as I will lie and say they were a bargain ... but they are my treat to myself and they will look gorgeous in my new kitchen :)
when these gorgeous storage jars arrived last night I thought they would make a great tea, coffee and sugar set ... the little one is perfect to turn into a sugar bowl just by taking the lid off! As I said before we drink a lot of tea and a huge favourite of mine is apple and pear and I drink it as much as regular tea, the square tea jar will do for that and this set can have the regular tea.

I can't stop touching them, they are so silky and match my cream china that I inherited from my mum perfectly ... I am one happy 'in love' girl ;)

I met the newest member of our family yesterday, my beautiful little niece, Juliette ... it was lovely having baby cuddles and kisses and puzzles and reading with her big sister, Natasha :)


Natasha has been learning how to be a big sister and look after baby :)







such cuties x

another drive around Wales yesterday, first a quick look at Llandrindod Wells and the dragon in the lake ... it was incredibly misty but it was still lovely and magical!



We wanted to head to Rhayader and watch the Red Kites being fed, but that wasn't till 2pm, so after a cup of tea and slice of cake we headed through, what is quickly becoming one of my favourite places, Elan Valley. The mist was not going anywhere, and was like a blanket all around us.







After another cup of tea, we watched all the Red Kites come out of nowhere and the trees around to feed ... it was so beautiful to watch them swooping down to pick up their lunch! They never landed on the ground but after flying around they would suddenly drop and gracefully swoop. The crows were the first to show up though and the last to leave ... they wanted their lunch too!





Hope you had a lovely weekend x