Simply a magical moment

After the comments on my "hello monday" post I figured that quite a few of you were intrigued by the Harry Potter module I am taking. It is a module that is part of the education course at Durham and it really is all about Harry Potter and the key themes within the books. I think at some point it refers to education systems and illusion in childhood but mostly it is about immersing ourselves in the world of Potter!

If i'm honest it feels totally bizarre to be studying Harry Potter as part of my degree. On the other hand in a city like Durham it is easy to think you are walking around Hogwarts.

The first lecture is always the sorting so I thought I would use this as my "moment"- albeit a very unique one- this month. Hope that's ok Alexa!

Simply a moment:

We walk through town in our gowns and get some odd looks from the tourists. Gowns are worn to most formal dinners each week so students wearing them isn't too unusual a sight but I guess at three o clock on a Friday afternoon, we do look slightly strange.

My friend and I flap along to our destination. We are headed for one of the collages, University college, affectionately known as Castle owing to its placement- in the castle itself.

We are greeted at the door by a "prefect" who checks our campus cards and ticks our names off on a list.  We are in. We move through the gateway and into the courtyard. It is definitely one of the most impressive colleges. It really does feel like we are in Hogwarts now, especially with the red and white bunting still left from Freshers week.

We are moved into the Great Hall and we can already hear the music from the films being piped into the room. The atmosphere is amazing, there is a buzz of excited chatter, shrill giggles, wide grins.

We are seated on tables at the back of the hall. The lamps shine brightly and at the front of the hall is a table raised on a dais, a sorting hat, a stuffed owl and the gleaming house cup. The four house tables are in front of this, each covered in their respective colour. Blue for Ravenclaw, Yellow for Hufflepuff, Red for Gryffindor and Green for Slytherin.

I sit down at the back. How silly that I am feeling nervous. It's all just a game, just a piece of drama. But still, here in this hall it feels strangely real and important. Our lecturer makes the way to the front in his red gown. A hush falls over the hall as he welcomes us to our sorting.

The music has stopped, you could hear a penny drop. Another "prefect" comes forward holding the list of names. Slowly she reads the first name and the student walks in the silence up to our lecturer who places his hand in a velvet bag and pulls out a coloured marble. It's Blue and he calls the name of the house, "Ravenclaw" as we applaud.

I know that I am soon. It is in alphabetical order after all. This is so surreal and ridiculous in many ways but I am excited and nervous as I stand up when I hear my name. The walk to the front is long. There are many many eyes turned towards me. The hand reaches into the bag and pulls out a yellow marble. I'm a hufflepuff.
A sigh of relief and I fall into the chair at the hufflepuff table.

For a moment there, it was easy to believe that I was being sorted into the school of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Today I am joining in with Alexa's beautiful meme, "Simply a Moment." Do stop by her blog to read both Alexa's words and other bloggers as they record their moments. 

Saying hello

It's monday and it's the first time I have joined in with this meme.
I'm saying...

Hello to horrible cold drizzly weather.
Hello to lovely walks with friends along the river bank and up the cobbled street

Hello notepads and fineliners and piles of books.
Hello to starting a Harry Potter module and getting sorted. I'm a Hufflepuff!

Hello to scary moving shelves in the library which seem to have been put in over the summer just to frighten me.
Hello cooking. Toad in the hole is on the menu tonight.
Hello to indulging in creamy hot chocolate.

Hello to term one and the feeling of constantly catching up.
Hello little blog. I will be back soon I promise!

In the top of the house

So far I am really really enjoying living in our sweet little terraced house at the edge of Durham. 

It is slowly but surely becoming a lovely cosy home. 

The pot plant is in the window, the fridge is full of fresh vegetables (I live with all girls), the bunting is up and and tv is now working. 

I didn't think I would enjoy living out this much. I enjoy coming home to our house after a lecture. Of having space to flop on the sofa as well as my own room to be quiet in. 

I love having my closest friends around me, of cooking for them, of laughing as we wash up and just chilling in the lounge with our work and big cups of tea. 

One of my favourite parts of our lovely little home is my room in the top of the house. Each morning the early sun shines through the skylight and as I open the window I can hear the city waking up. 

At night as the cold starts to creep in I lie in the dark with a quilt wrapped around my numb feet and listen to the city shut down for the night. As my eyes close I always listen for the late night freight train that thunders over the viaduct, rumbling right through to my bed. I know for some this would be annoying but it is something that makes me smile, imagining who has lived here before and has been lulled to sleep by the passing trains. 

This little house that is becoming home. I can't wait to record more memories and stories of this place because from what I can gather from your lovely comments, we don't really forget our first home. 

the student makes- how to make quilting cheap

If you follow my blog you know that I like quilting. You will also know that I am a student.

Those two things don't tend to go well together. Material is pretty expensive and a quilt uses a lot of it. 

But there are ways to make it cheap or at least cheaper...

1. Be sure of what you are buying. 

Fat quarters look lovely, come in beautiful designs and are pre cut. Win, win? Maybe, but the fact that they are pre-cut into that nice square size means that they are often more expensive. 

Have a careful look before you commit to making a quilt out of fat quarters. Over here fat quarters retail at around £4.00. That would make a metre of fabric £16.00. Have a look around and do your maths, is there a metre of fabric straight off the bolt that could be less? Buying straight off the bolt and asking for a quarter of a metre, or half will often prove cheaper than buying a pre cut. 

When making quilts I will often choose several bolts of fabric and then as a treat throw in a few fat quarters. 

(This isn't a hard and fast rule that fat quarters are more expensive but if you do your maths they tend to be quite pricey. I suggest going into a dedicated fabric shop and looking at what they have on the bolts first.)

2. Pick up fabric as and when you find it. 

In other words make a stash! 

I went to France this summer and whilst looking around one of the lovely markets came across a fabric stall. The fabric was a lot cheaper than the UK so I picked up a few pretty looking pieces. 

I didn't have a project in mind but went with fabrics that I know always appeal to me, neutrals, spots and stripes. 

3. Do the maths! 

More maths I know but if you are keen to save money, working out what size blocks you want to cut out of your fabric is really important. Try and use as much of the fabric you have bought as possible. That often means having to measure each piece and working out how many squares/triangles of a certain size you can get out of it. 

It may seem frugal but you will waste far less if you take time to do the measuring first. It also pays (pun!) to be accurate with your cutting. I am useless at this and it is something I am still learning!

4. Quilt as you go

A quilt is made up of a sandwich of layers. The patchwork quilt top, a layer of batting/wadding and then the backing fabric. 

There are many ways to secure these three layers together. I personally choose the quilt as you go option. 

This means I make my patchwork top in sections. Each bit is about 12 x 12". I then cut a piece of batting slightly bigger than this and sew the two layers together. 

The quilt therefore develops as a series of quilted squares which are then put in order and stitched together. 

A really good tutorial can be found here. 

This saves you money simply because you can use scraps. There is no need to buy a large piece of batting/wadding and cut it to size. You can use what you have as you are only working with a small bit at a time.

5. Think outside the box

For my most recent quilt I had a collection of patterned material that I was keen to use. I knew though that simply using this would not create a big enough quilt.

I therefore decided to pair each coloured square with a neutral one. This required a large amount of plain fabric and to keep costs down I visited a large branch of a supermarket. There I found cheap bed sheets for around £10 in a huge variety of colours. For this quilt I used a double sheet made of beautifully soft brushed cotton.
Sheets provide a huge amount of material for very little cost. I

n this instance I cut up the sheet and used it as squares for the quilt top but in the past have used sheets for the backing fabric too.

Don't think that just because you are making a quilt you have to buy quilting fabric! I have used old curtains before as a backing fabric and cut up old shirts to use as patchwork squares.

Quilting really doesn't have to cost the earth. Build a stash, collect fabric as you go, find cheaper sources of fabric and do the maths!
At the end of the day making something beautiful is worth far more than the supplies it cost to get there.

What do you do to keep crafting cheap? 

Storytelling Sunday- the perfume bottle

This little dust covered bottle sits on my dressing table at home. 

There is a tiny drop of scent left in the bottom. 

I don't know if I will ever finish it. 

It was my sixteenth birthday and we were a new couple, learning each others quirks. 

That September was my birthday. I can't think what it must have been like to have to come up with a present for a girl he was getting to know, but he did good.

There was a pink box wrapped in ribbon. 

Inside was a collection of hand cream, body butter and then nestled in the corner a little pink bottle of scent. 

It meant a lot. It was the first bottle of perfume I had for myself. 

I wore it a lot those next few months and he always realised when I did. 

It became part of our story, "Cassis Rose, Eau de toilette''. 

I sniff that bottle now and that first year with him comes flying back. Memories of walking along the river, secret kisses in the dark and hand holding in the cinema. 

Memories of catching his eye across a french classroom, lifts home with his family and a New Year at the farm. 

We have exchanged many presents over the last few years and they too are precious. None though can bring back such a flood of memories as one sniff of this little perfume bottle can. 

Some day soon I will wear it again and see if we can add some new memories to the bank of ones that are already evoked by its scent. 

Today I am joining in with the lovely Sian and her Storytelling Sunday- pick your precious. Do pop over to visit other bloggers and read about their precious things.

Project Life week 39 and a free download

Thank you for all your kind words on my last project life post. I really do love creating these pages. There is so much inspiration out in the blog world and each week I write down a list of new techniques I want to try! 

So in the spirit of catching up here is week 39...

Photos: 

It was my birthday week so I had lots of photos and quite a few taken with my lovely new lens. I love weeks when the photos are abundant, the pages seem to come together easier although the pages I love most are the ones where I have had to search around for the pictures. 

I also wanted to include photos of moving into our lovely new student house. 

Journalling: 

I copied the text from my blog post on my birthday straight into that yellow journalling card. I like including blog posts in PL, especially when I am behind and am struggling for the right words. Going back to the blog posts can really help. 

I also included some sad journalling about the loss of our second cat who was hit by a car. It was really hard news to receive last week and it was hard to get that journalling down. 

PL is about keeping it real though and just because it was sad I didn't want to leave it out. Life is yuck sometimes and I think it's important to recognise that. 

Techniques: 

I played around with those two photos of me on the right hand spread. I wanted lots of white space on the journalling cards and just a simple line of text. 

I also created a new journalling card, "you make me laugh every single day". I love how it turned out and so have put it at the bottom of this post as a free download (for personal use only). 

Anything else: 

I can't get enough of that Laura Ingalls Wilder quote, "home is the nicest place there is". I used it on the spread I made when I came home for the summer and liked the circularity of using it again to document coming back to Durham. 

I'm all caught up now and boy does it feel good! 

The 3 x 4 card can be downloaded here. Enjoy! 

Project Life week 38

So I am playing catch up with Project Life. I hate being behind with this project but sometimes life gets in the way and it just happens. Before I know it we are at Saturday and I haven't touched the photos from last week.

But I had some lovely pockets of time this week and managed to catch up. I also haven't posted PL much on the blog recently so today and tomorrow I'm going to share my latest pages starting with week 38:

Photos: 
This was the week the boy took me to London for a pre birthday treat. We ate at my favourite American chain, five guys which has just opened in London. I wanted to include the photos of that as well as photos from a weekend babysitting three little girls.
That feet and arrow one is a current favourite so I knew it had to be big.

On the weeks when I am catching up I just try to keep it simple. In this case photos blown across several spaces and that simple Instagram template.

Journalling: 
I wanted to record thoughts on seeing Matilda the Musical (totally recommend by the way!). I also wanted to include that quote from the boy which I stuck on the bottom of the photo in five guys.

The hard thing with catching up is that writing about the week is very difficult so the journalling here is more fact based than what it normally is. I did though include a journalling card about upgrading to ios7. PL for me is about every aspect of life and upgrading my phone is as much a part of that. It will also be fascinating to look back on!

Techniques: 
Again, in the spirit of keeping it simple, I used those techniques which I know work. A simple quote card, a quick homemade graphic and a filler card. I also extracted the colour of that arrow and used it as a paint effect on the quote card- the joys of photoshop!

Anything else:
The further I get behind the more overwhelming it can be. I'm learning though, getting it down is the main point. The thought of a full book at the end of it is another motivation too!