Making a rag heart.

Hello! How's your new year going so far?

We love Christmas but I have to admit I get enormous satisfaction from the post Christmas/New Year clear up, when the tired looking tree gets hauled outside, the needles get hoovered up, the decorations get put back in the loft and I get stuck into a jolly good clean up and reorganisation around the home. Even before the Dr Who Christmas special comes on, I feel myself getting fidgety, looking around the house and start planning in my mind little changes I'll be making in the near future.

Although our Christmas holiday was fairly quiet, we did have guests drop in occasionally from Australia, Italy around town for some hot chocolate and cake. Though our guests were well behaved, the kids were a little bit less so and Hubby and I found things a bit claustrophobic. We have a separate room downstairs which for the past two years has been 'the study' - a place for the kids to do homework, me to do my tutoring and Hubby to work when he is at home. Hubby agreed with me that it might be a good idea to turn this room into a dining room and therefore make our living room larger. Bless him. We spent a whole day rearranging the furniture and other stuff to do this and didn't argue once! I don't know why we didn't think of this sooner. The extra space in the living room has made things more relaxed and we use 'the study' far more now. I have done one tutoring lesson in there since we made the change and the bigger table came in really useful. However we now want to make this room look more homely and less like a classroom. So I got busy this evening making a rag heart to go on the wall next to our wedding photo. It was very easy to make and cost nothing!
First of all I gathered together some scraps of material, including an old pink cot sheet and a blue top that Honor has grown out of and hardly ever wore. Then I cut them into short strips, some thick and some thin.

Hubby shaped an old, wire coat hanger into the shape of a heart and I tied the fabric strips on. (I often see craft projects which involve old, wire coat hangers but I'm not sure where you get them from these days. All of ours are wood or plastic, but my Mum had one going spare.)
After about two and a half hours, it was finished. I was very pleased with it and what was really nice was that as I was sat down one end of the room making it, the kids and Daddy were watching Die Another Day but looked up every now and then to say "wow, that looks really pretty". Well, the colours I have chosen are very much to my personal taste, but I bet it would look great made up in some modern, vibrant colours and fabrics like satin or velvet for a more modern twist. In fact, not only did Hubby and I start creating a dining room this holiday, but we also redecorated Honor's bedroom in a more modern, grown-up style. I may post some pics soon. Laura Ashley have a good sale on right now and I got some beautiful wallpaper for her room. I think we'll have to do one of these hearts for it next.
Earlier on today Honor went to a birthday party, so we too the other two children for a walk at Wildwood. Here is Hope trying out her new wellie boots. She did really well walking around the wildlife park.