Making £5 go a very long way.

 Hi everyone,

I've had a really busy few days getting ready for the new term and I'm glad of five weeks away from school as I can complete all of my planning in that time............just. I'll keep checking in here each day to update what I do but I'm also getting ready for a busy summer working on my house. As well as the house renovations which range from monumental to mediocre, I have lots of craft projects to finish. I thought I'd share my car boot sale finds and what I'm going to do with them. The retro material was a delight to find for £1. I'll probably recover the dining room chairs with this and use it as a colour idea for the room, which I intend to paint mustard. I may use the material for something else entirely. It's cotton and I think it would make fabulous aprons to make as gifts for friends and family.

 My star find of today was my print of the two Tamar bridges side by side. The artist is a local man from Plymouth called Brian Pollard and his work is mass reproduced and often over priced. I bought this little framed poster for £1.50 and I think it's charming.

I then found a pretty polka dot jug and I recently bought a butter dish with the same design and they'll go well together in my kitchen. I love the serving plate with the glass dome that I found. I often bake a sponge cake for Dearly Beloved and just leave it on a plate on the side with a tea towel over it to keep the dust and the cat off it. This is not only practical but I thought it was really striking looking. The jug was 50p and the cake plate was £2.

Dearly Beloved is down stairs causing havoc in the utility room and kitchen as our son is coming home on his holiday to spend a week refurbishing with us. He's bought everything for us with trade discounts and he's doing the work for nothing. We've also got trade invoicing so what ever is invoiced to us on the 1/8/2011 has 90 days to be paid, which effectively allows us 4 months to budget for the work before we have to settle for materials. I'll photograph it when it's all done and I've finished painting it. It all might seem rather extravagant to renovate a house just before selling it, but I'm determined to get the very very best price for it, so my downsized home has as small a mortgage as I can possibly arrange and would be even better if there was no mortgage.

I'm off now to do some more lesson planning for September.

Until tomorrow,

Love Froogs