My weekly sketch ...Daydreaming

My weekly sketch, of things I love, this week is...Daydreaming. I love to have a little time to myself to have a little daydream. I think about what life will be like when my little boy is older. I dream of owning a small tea rooms, with a craft shop attached, in North Yorkshire. More than all of this though, I truly believe that you need to daydream and take a little time to recharge your mind. We live in a world full of technology to entertain us, which is wonderful, but it can come at a cost of our sanity. We appear to be living in a more stressed society than our grandparents, which bearing mind they lived through two World Wars and a depression, seems a ridiculous notion. When we do have a spare moment, we check our emails or texts or Twitter or Facebook or Pinterest etc or we watch telly or surf the net. This week I have made a conscientious effort to dedicate time to my imagination and creativity or just to simply sitting doing nothing and its been reinvigorating. I asked my husband to give me an hour of craft on Wednesday night and I sat with no music or TV just  melodious silence. I implore you to give your mind a well earned reprise from the hectic life of 2013.

My weekly sketch...Sewing

My weekly sketch, of things I love, this week is...Sewing. There is nothing so satisfying in life as creating something. I love the feeling of having made a gift with my own fair hands. For my wedding, I made hand embroidered stockings for the guests staying in the hotel and filled them with treats. My brother got a cushion one year for his birthday and my sister-in-law a tote bag. To be honest, I do not know who gets the most pleasure out of these things. (Well in the case of my brother I have never seen the cushion again...) When I first got my sewing machine as a gift from my parents one birthday, it was my sister who saw her opportunity to utilise this and redecorate her home. We made blinds (unfortunately they didn't fit the window - note to self do not let sister use a tape measure!), curtains and pillowcases all in the first weekend. My initial fervour dwindled and sewing is a more sporadic hobby these days. I really want to take to the sewing machine once more and get creative.

I love starting a new sewing project, and sometimes I finish them. I have a huge collection of abandoned projects. I have three half-finished patchwork quilts alone. I am going to try and finish some of these. My husband rolls his eyes when I come home with fabric, as he feels, as I've got three huge boxes of it that I may already have enough. He is wrong! Who knows when you might need to make something in a hurry? Or when inspiration will strike? Or some other form of fabric emergency?! Okay so he may have a point, but we wont let him know that. I think it is time to start using that material. 

What are your favourite sewing projects?

My weekly sketch ...Photography

My weekly sketch of things I love this week is.....Photography. This is a very recent passion, spurred on in the large part by a desire to document my little family. My sister has always had a keen eye for photography, and takes some really beautiful pictures. She owns the food blog Bilberry Tart, and as you can see the photography on the site is stunning. (The recipes are pretty yummy too!) My husband bought me a Canon SLR camera for my birthday, and my sister has been introducing me to a world of ISO and apertures (well I took some of it in). My husband and I have always had little photography competitions when we go out, so I'm hoping with my new camera to be reigning champion. 

For my birthday, I also received The Digital Photography Book by Scott Kelby, which I'm really enjoying reading. He delivers his expertise in a chatty and humorous fashion. Some of the advice is more technical than I'm willing to go and more money than I'm willing to spend, but he also has really simple tips. One of my favourite tips is sure to stop one thing I am always guilty of on photos; having my eyes closed. He says when you are taking group shots ask the people you are photographing to close their eyes and to open them on the count of three. You then take the photo a second after you say three and everyone should have their eyes open. 

I'm also starting to drive all my family mad with instagram and what's app. They are getting a constant barrage of pictures of my baby boy. Sometimes I take so many that it becomes a flicker book of his every move. I was intending to learn how to manually alter images in an instagram type fashion on my computer using GIMP, but then I found the free to download program Perfect Effects 4. This has many of the masks that you can get on instagram, plus some excellent retouching features to smooth out wrinkles and imperfections. (Post to follow on free and easy ways to improve your pics in post production.)

If you enjoy taking pictures please take a look at the Yorkshire Bloggers Photography Competition. More importantly don't forget to SMILE!

My weekly sketch...Baking

My weekly sketch of things I love this week is.....Baking. Nothing makes me happier than the smell of cake batter. During pregnancy, the lack of alcohol never fazed me, but the idea that I couldn't lick the spoon whilst baking a cake was simply mortifying. Some of my earliest memories are baking with my Mum or Grandma. To this day, the smell of cocoa powder reminds me of my late Grandmother. I have never been able to replicate her amazing chocolate cakes, but not for lack of trying.

One of my husband's most inspired gifts was my kitchen aid. I am not usually one for exercise, so anything to save effort on my part is greatly appreciated. However, I now have plans to get fit and healthy, so I suppose if I am going to be decadent and bake a cake, the least I could do is exert some effort whisking.

Later this month, I am very much looking forward to attending Forge in Sheffield on 23rd June. It is an art, design and craft fair that has been put on by Hallam Roses W.I to raise money for Roundabout and the W.I. I hear their baking is legendary and urge anyone in the area to join them. You will find me resident at the cake stall eyeing up the tasty treats! More details found here.

My weekly sketch...Tea

I really enjoy creating pieces of art, but with a newborn baby boy, I don't think I'll really get the chance to do anything too time consuming. Simple ink sketches are an ideal outlet for my creative cravings. Here's my first quick attempt at one. To give this an almost chalkboard feel, I simply inverted the colours on GIMP. 

I decided that the theme of my sketches should be things that I love. Tea is definitely one of the things I love. I do not function without it. My husband and I often have silly bets to determine who has to make all the cups of tea in a week. When you drink as much tea as we do, these are high stakes. Whilst in University, my friend Fiona and I would drink copious amounts of tea accompanied by chocolate, whilst reading showbiz gossip magazines, with a romcom on the telly. Heaven!