Curiouser and Curiouser...

My sister has been doing an internship in a shop as part of her Fashion with Photography degree at Southampton Solent University. She has been working at a lovely little vintage shop near where I live called What Alice Found. As her internship is soon coming to an end, she messaged me asking if I could come up with something to give the owner as a thank-you for letting her work there. She wanted something with charms and blue ribbon but as she only told me about it today and she needs it for next week things were a little tight. I'd usually buy items from eBay but as its the bank holiday I didn't think the things I wanted would arrive in time for when she needed to give the gift and to give me enough time to make it, so I got my thinking cap on and came up with a pretty little frame.

I got the white frame from The Range for £5.99 and I used Word to create the blue background and the quote from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. I then found a picture of Alice and printed it onto some white hammer card I had in my craft stash. I used my large Dovecraft tag punch to create the tag shape and punched a hole in the top with my holepunch to thread some Alice in Wonderland coloured ribbon through. I also raided my jewellery collection and luckily had a necklace which had an Alice in Wonderland style key on it and attatched it to the ribbon using a jump ring.

This is the final product I created when all the bits and pieces came together - I just hope that my sister likes it and thinks its good enough to give to the shop owner. 

I'm quite proud of it seen as though it's put together pretty much out of recycled items!

What do you think?

a BIG Thank You to Victoria's Vintage!

I just wanted to say a HUGE thank-you to Victoria at Victoria's Vintage. She has been a huge inspiration to me by giving me hints and tips for entering competitions on Twitter and Facebook and she has been the inspiration behind this blog. I never would have got round to doing this (and sticking at it!) if it wasn't for her - so please take a look at her wonderful blog It's full of lovely posts ranging from fashion, to make-up, baking and crafting.

Make sure you clickity click on the button to the right on my sidebar or the link above to check out her blog!

Married in 2012!

Had to share this with everyone! Some of you may know that I got married in June this year, well my Mum gave me this postcard which I think is really cute!

It's definitely going in my keepsake box along with other items from our day :)

Getting crafty...

I finished my lemon drizzle cake this afternoon so decided to move onto my next craft project. I had some scrabble pieces my friend gave to me a few months back and i've only just got around to using them.

I picked up a white square box frame from The Range and took out the insides, then got some craft paper in the colour of my choice and cut it to size. This frame is 8x8in. Then I got the right letters to spell out my words and laid them out where I wanted them. I then used craft dots to stick the letters to the craft paper. Finally, I assembled the frame back together and voila my vintage frame was complete!

Am thinking about making more as gifts for family and friends at birthdays and christmas using different coloured papers.

Weekend Buys...

Popped into our local shopping centre Castlepoint this morning (before the crowds) to pick up a few bits and pieces for the lemon drizzle cake. As usual, I got sidetracked by pretty things. We went into Robert Dyas to see if I could get a sugar thermometer (as i'm going to attempt to make some fudge) and came out with this cute little mug and bake sign for the kitchen (i'm not sure how hubby feels about all these cute things appearing in the house in various places!)

Lemon Drizzle Cake...Mmmmm

Today hubby and I didn't have much to do so I thought I'd take to the kitchen. I've really started to go off chocolate recently so wanted to make something which didn't use that, so I decided on lemon drizzle cake. I got a recipe from the internet and set to work. I didn't realise how much I missed baking until now. Overall the cake took about 2 hours to make from getting the ingredients ready to baking it to decorating it, but I'm so pleased with the finished result! It look so good (and its really tasty too! ;))

What do you think?

I've also make a marbled cheesecake as well but its still in the tin, in the fridge at the moment. Will take some photos once its done.

The new girls!

Last Sunday hubby and I took our monthly trip to Pets at Home to stock up on supplies for the girls. When we go in we always check the rats section to see if they have any new babies and every single time we have gone in they have always had boys, which we can't have because of our girls...well this time they had girls so out we walked with two new little girls who are about 7 weeks old. We have named them Tilly and Milly.

We now have the difficult task of trying to integrate them with our other three. It's been quite difficult so far. Have tried a number of techniques but none seem to be working.

We gave Tilly and Milly their first bath today as they were getting a bit smelly. 

Here they are trying to clean themselves after - they definitely look like drowned rats! lol.

Welcome to my blog!

Hi everyone and welcome to my blog! I'm relatively new at blogging but I hope you'll be interested in what I like and post. My name is Holly , I'm 25 and I live on the South coast of England in a town called Bournemouth. I graduated with a degree in Geography in 2008 but now I work in a hospital. I love lots of different things but most of all I love butterflies. I love vintage items and searching for bargains. I also love photography (unfortunately I'm not good enough to do it professionally but I love snapping away with my compact camera) so expect lots of photos! I also love my pet rats - I have three (Honey, Ziggy and Marley).

I'm a firm believer in going after what you want hence impatience is a virtue!

I hope to meet lots of new people from across the world and I hope you can get to know me and the little world I live in!

Holly x

This is me!

These are my ratties!