From the monthly archives: July 2012
Morning! This week sees the launch of Moodboard Monday, a collaboration between myself and the fabulous interior design blogger Jen over at Love Chic Living.
As explained last week I will be featuring Jen’s boards over here at Lish Concepts and she will be featuring mine over at Love Chic Living.
This week’s theme was – School’s out for Summer! Take it away Jen…
Jen’s moodboard for “School’s out for the summer!”
So what does that mean to me? Well, it makes me think of holidays, of time spent on the beach, relaxing, laughing and spending time together with family and friends. My Moodboard, I hope, reflects this. When I was thinking of what my design would be the words that came to mind were: calm, holidays, relaxation, family, and space. These images are mine, from past holidays when we’ve found amazing coastline and beaches and let the children explore and have fun. I love the scenery and colours; natural, beautiful and calm. It struck me, after I’d put the Moodboard together that I’ve used colours like this in my home and I guess I’m subconsciously drawn to them because of what the remind of, and of what they represent for me. Here’s hoping for lots more sunshine and time spent on the beach this summer.
I love the natural palette Jen has created from these beach images. It is so soft and soothing. I am a huge fan of the beach for the wild nature, the sea air and the way it seems to have the power to relax everyone. If you are thinking of a beach inspired interior it could be wonderful to use a colour palette such as this with natural materials such as pebbles, wood and seaglass for a refreshing take on beach living.
Please hop over to Love Chic Living to take a look at my moodboard. I was inspired by long, hot summer days filled with fun, colour, energy and light. You will see we took 2 entirely different approaches when looking at the theme and that is the beauty of moodboards they take you on your own creative journey. Nothing is right or wrong!
This weeks new theme is one of my favourite things to do! ‘Alfresco dining’
Moodboard Monday is a fortnightly feature where we create a moodboard inspired by a certain theme. I will be featuring Jen’s moodboards on Lish Concepts and she will be featuring mine over at Love Chic Living! But that’s not all…. Moodboard Monday is also open to you! So if you are feeling inspired by this weeks offerings why not check out the theme for next week and play along. You can create your Moodboard any way you like, with an actual magazine collage scanned in or photographed or using the computer ie. photoshop, picmonkey, olioboard or Polyvore. You may want to focus on interiors one week and fashion the next, you may want to use your own photography – anything goes, feel free! If you would like some ideas about how to create your moodboards check out my tutorial on How to create the perfect moodboard. The only rule is you need to use the week’s theme as a guideline (but as you see they can often be interpreted very differently!) and pop back the following Monday, grab the button from over in the sidebar and link up your creation via the comments!
We’ve spent the entire week outside in this glorious sunshine and I’ve been reminded just what a joy it is to be able to play outside with Littlelish. I’m sure I am not alone when I say that my little one doesn’t need much to entertain her when she is out in the garden, give her some water, a tea set and a play tent and she is sweet for hours. Recently I was introduced to the fabulous Win Green. If you haven’t heard of Win Green I definitely recommend you take a look at their website where you will find beautifully, lovingly handmade playhouses and accessories for children.
“At Win Green, we believe that children should be encouraged from an early age to explore their own imaginations through play, allowing them to use their own creativity to develop their playing and learning skills”. Our enchanting collection of hand woven cottages and tents, floor quilts, beanbags and accessories capture the traditional charm that we have endeavoured to create. Their ‘old fashioned’ appearance sparks childhood memories in parents wishing to recreate the innocence of their youth for their own children. The bright colours and beautiful detail instantly captures the imagination of children alike – looking to explore!”
What a great philosophy. I love that they understand that many people (including us!) are looking to move away from mass produced plastic toys and bring back the qualities of the old fashioned toy, where detail is the key ingredient. All their products are designed in the UK and manufactured in India, using traditional Indian weaving and dying skills. Each design is embroidered and appliquéd by hand and takes 15 sewing hours to complete, wow!! There is a great section on their website about how they have changed the lives of their female workers in rural India empowering them to gain financial freedom and be able support their families. Fantastic!
Win Green have generously offered us a beautiful fairy house for Littlelish’s fairy party in a few weeks time which will just be the icing on the cake! Thank you Win Green. It is a surprise for her and I cannot wait to see the look on her face. I thought I would give you a sneaky peek…
Isn’t it just adorable? The picture perfect cottage for a sweet little girl. I absolutely love the old fashioned charm of this house. If I think back to my childhood, my greatest memories are spent in the garden, more often than not in and out of play tents and wendy houses. I remember the magical feeling of creating your own shady space, too small for any adult to get into, your own private little place to play in peace. As Win Green so rightly captured in their philosophy I cannot wait to recreate this with Littlelish…
I also have a treat to share with you my lovely readers as Win Green have also offered a beautiful fairy floor quilt to one lucky reader. The Fairy Floor Quilt is also 100% cotton, beautifully appliquéd and embroidered. It is lightly padded and makes a great rug or play mat.
Do you believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden…? At Lish Concepts and Win Green we do!!
Make a wish…. and enter via the Rafflecopter ;)
The lovely team at Learning Resources heard that Littlelish was learning to read and kindly sent us the Hot Dots Jolly Phonics set to try out.
Hot Dots is a clever educational concept where learning becomes interactive with a self correcting electronic pen. Children select an answer on the multiple choice cards by touching the pen to the corresponding dot for an audio/visual response which motivates the children to work through the cards. With ten different key areas of learning (maths, vocabulary, spelling etc) there are Hots Dot sets for just about every area of early learning.
The set we received is created in combination with Jolly Phonics (who we are big fans of!) especially with young readers in mind. Littelish just loved the fact that the pen was shaped like a cat, made a noise and lit up! She was very curious as to how it worked and started trying it on all the furniture just to see what it said. Hilariously she initially thought it was some kind of oracle pen that knew the answer to everything! She asked me “Can we ask the pen if animals get blisters??” Huh? Have you met my quirky daughter?
Once she got over the miracle pen she checked out the cards with the pen and quickly got the hang of finding the right answer. Hot Dots is not a game for children to play on their own, although Littlelish did love playing with it just to see what happened with the pen. The child has to be quite accurate to hit the hot dot so a little guidance might be needed for younger ones. To get the full educational value out of the product your child will need to work with you as you do need to read the question at the top of the card. These change as you progress through the cards so explanation is necessary. Ie which sound is at the beginning of the word? or which sound is at the end of the word?
Littlelish really enjoyed working through them and it was great to introduce her to the extra phonic sounds (other than the A-Z sounds she knows) like oi, ar, er, th, ch, sh, etc. This for me was the biggest plus point as often phonics games often only use the A-Z phonics and this set from Jolly Phonics uses all 42 phonetic sounds. It got us talking about the words, listening to the sounds at the ends of them and breaking them down. I also definitely think this educational tool is reaching its goal in motivating children to learn as the pen element makes it fun and the cards are well thought out and clear which eliminates any confusion. I’m sure you will recognise it when I say Littlelish will NOT learn through anything other than play or fun but we had lots of giggles with this one (as you will see)!
This time I thought it would be fun to make a video of her trying out the Hot Dots. She is not even 3 yet (in about 2 weeks time) so needed a little bit more guidance than older children might but this video will show you how we looked at the words, broke them down and found the right answer. Towards the end she starts to get silly (which is rather funny) a clear sign we needed to stop and move on to play something else! Remember never make learning a chore for children :)
Is your little one learning to read too? What resources are you using? Have you used Jolly Phonics or Hot Dots? Would you like to give them a try? I have one set of Jolly Phonics Hot Dot cards and special Hot dot self correcting pen to giveaway from Learning Resources to one lucky reader! All you have to do is have a look at the range of Hot Dot cards on the Learning Resources Website and leave me a comment answering the following question “If you could create a Hot dot set especially for your child what would it be?”
While you are there why not check out the other amazing educational toys and learning tools they have for children of all ages. I am a big fan and we are already building a little wishlist of things Littlelish would like for her up and coming birthday! Not only do they sell to parents like you and me looking for toys and games with a bit of a difference they also supply into the classroom and have a section of products for special needs learning.
For extra entries you can follow the rafflecopter below. Sorry UK residents only. Good luck everyone!
If you are a regular reader you might have guessed by now that I rather like moodboards. They are a fab tool to inspire, give structure and refer to when on a creative journey of any kind. Whether you are creating a new interior, organising an event or a stylist working on the look and feel of just about anything! So when the fabulous interior design blogger Jen over at Love Chic Living and I decided we really should put our creative brains together (what’s that saying… 2 heads are better than 1!) Moodboard Monday was born.
Moodboard Monday will be a fortnightly feature where we create a moodboard inspired by a certain theme. I will be featuring Jen’s moodboards on Lish Concepts and she will be featuring mine over at Love Chic Living! She will be focusing on her main area interior design and I will be featuring fashion, interior and general moodboards which could be applied to anything (similar to my colourlish boards) – I’ll see what inspires me that week!
The fun part is Moodboard Monday is open to anyone else who would like to join in! Jen and I know it will probably be just us for a few weeks until you get into the mood haha! If you fancy having a go just check in on a Monday to find out what the theme is for the following week then pop back the following Monday, grab the button from over in the sidebar and link up your creation!
The moodboards can be created in anyway you like, with an actual magazine collage scanned in or photographed or using the computer ie. photoshop, picmonkey or olioboard. You may want to focus on interiors one week and fashion the next, you may want to use your own photography – anything goes, feel free! If you would like some ideas about how to create your moodboards check out my tutorial on How to create the perfect moodboard. Feeling inspired by the summer sun? Great! So are we….
This weeks theme is an appropriate
‘Schools out for the summer!’
It is party planning time! There is only one theme Littlelish wants for her birthday party and that is fairies… so fairies it is! First step in the party planning was to make an invitation. Every birthday I have designed my own invite for her, last year I made a very lovely collage invitation with all Littlelish’s favourite things at the time (dandelions, rabbits, the beach, shells) which we have now framed. So this year I wanted to create my own fairy inspired invite.
Image taken from Blackie’s Children’s Annual
I have a vintage children’s book (picked up from a charity shop) with the most lovely illustration in, a girl playing with fairies who are throwing blossom at her from the tree. I’ve long admired it and done nothing with it because I cannot bear to rip it out of the book. I scanned it in and changed the colours from black and white to something a little more girly. I don’t really want to have an entirely pink party so we are having a rainbow coloured theme with a good helping of pink for my Littlelish. I cleaned up the image as it was vintage and a little ‘scratchy’, changed the blossom to rainbow colours and added some rainbow stripes to the back of the invite with all the details on (you can see a sliver of it at the side).
So now all the little fairy friends have been invited and I have the party colours and theme to go forward with the party planning. Fun!
What do you think of my invite? Would you like me to make an original invite for your little ones birthday party or even for your own? Drop me an email and we can discuss creative ideas!
I’m planning a party, a very special party for a gorgeous little girl who is going to be 3. The theme of the party is fairies which means mummy gets to spend hours trawling through pinterest and other fabulous sources of inspiration. I’m not complaining! Look what I just stumbled across… the most beautiful rose paper lights ever. Incredibly girly and romantic but who doesn’t love just a smidgen of romance to brighten up our day? I guess there is no way I can talk myself into needing these lights for a daytime kids party but I think they would even look pretty switched off! How gorgeous would they be for a wedding? They come in pink, cream, mauve, burgundy and red! For sale by Victoria Rose £44.50.
Much more fairy party fun and inspiration to follow these next few weeks!
For this weeks Green Dream we are featuring the fantastic Little Green Radicals who make beautiful organic childrens clothing at a really reasonable price. As you may have guessed we are passionate about all that is green/eco/organic in our household but we love it even more when it is also absolutely gorgeous! We were sent this lovely dress for Littlelish and I cannot begin to tell you how soft this organic cotton is… it is beautiful, so super soft that I could snuggle up in it!
Why Organic Cotton? The organic cotton we use means the farmers and their families don’t run the risk of bring poisoned by nasty pesticides and our customers get clothes that won’t irritate the skin of their little ones! In addition, the water used for dying our garments is treated and recycled and the dyes are azo, formaldehyde and chlorine free!
A classic nautical dress with a funky twist, I adore the little details like the button hole at the back of the dress and the addition of the blue panel at the top and the frill at the bottom. A loose fitting, comfy outfit which is perfect for little girls on the move. It is very versatile and is easy to wear with a variety of colours, Littlelish combined hers with white leggings (not sure why she always feels the need to roll them up!) as it was not such a warm day despite the sunshine.
What I love about this dress apart from the fact it is so soft (did I mention that?) is that it is beautifully made, a real quality item of clothing that you can tell will last a long, long time. Littelish is wearing a 2-3 year olds dress (she is very nearly 3) and she has plenty of growing room in it. I also like that it is a great mix of being comfy, loose enough to play and run about in but still very girly. With a price tag of £14.40 I think I would even go as far to say that it is an absolute steal!
I definitely recommend a visit to the website as they have some really lovely, lovely things especially for babies AND a summer sale on with up to 50% off. What are you waiting for? Byeeeeeeee!
Disclaimer: We received the dress in exchange for the review but all opinions and thoughts are entirely honest and very much mine!
Still laughing…
Just because I don’t really have anything to do apart from; search for a job, work on my freelance projects, arrange a 3 year old Birthday party, write for my blog, carve into bark for my Etsy shop, volunteer AND think of lots of games and activities for Littlelish every day because it is summer holidays! The universe conspired against me and also wondered if I’d like to furnish our entire house in Holland for a new family moving in mid August! This has called for serious shopping, unfortunately not the leisurely snuffling through charity shops that I so love. This is hardcore bargain hunting, scouring the internet for key pieces of furniture, you know like sofas, beds etc. Aaaargh…
Remembering back to the days when we furnished our house the first time around, both my husband and I were full time employed and there was no Littlelish, so we never really had any budgeting issues. Right now our financial situation isn’t looking as rosy as it used to so the budget is incredibly tight and we didn’t really plan to rent our house furnished so it came a little unexpected. This means we have to be extremely selective about what we choose because we also don’t want to just fill the house with old tat. Sure it would be easy but if we are going to do this we are going to do it properly, I don’t do anything by halves!
We took the decision to buy the larger items of furniture in Holland as it would cost far too much to ship everything over. In Holland there is a website called Marktplaats where you can buy second hand furniture from individual sellers. I guess a little like Ebay or the facebook selling groups although I actually find it easier to shop on perhaps because there isn’t so much rubbish to sift through. Don’t have time for rubbish!
We’ve decided to go with a look and feel that is sturdy and robust, natural with a good mix of contemporary and old/vintage. I’m hoping its going to look classically cool and with a funky edge and that it will have general appeal. I’m trying not to make it too much to my taste because I can have rather quirky taste that isn’t everyone’s cup of tea!
So first up on our long list of must haves is a double bed and we have managed to pick up this absolute beauty made of Belgium oak for around 60 pounds excluding mattress of course (all these will be new)! Photo taken is not in our room or even in our house. These will follow when we have the grand task of putting everything together!
Then we found this funky dining room table with 3 real leather chairs and a bench for 170 pounds, I can really imagine this working as a family table in the right setting – our house!
It took us quite a while to find a good sofa that didn’t cost the earth but then we stumbled across these two fantastic and more importantly nearly new, brown designer sofas. First one we can have for 125 pounds the second for 170. All they need is some beautiful cushions, a snuggly throw and bob’s your uncle (I hope!) Which one do you think we should go for? Leave me a comment and let me know!
Isn’t it quite amazing what you can pick up second hand when you are on a budget? Makes me think back to all that money we spent first time round… gulp.
Stay tuned for the next installment! xxx
Linking up to Magpie Monday over at me and my shadow :)
Pottering around on a Saturday morning…
Littlelish: Mummy please can I pour this cream (sun cream) into this bottle as a pretend drink for my turtle?
Mummy: No darling, that is a waste. Mummy had to pay money for the cream and we don’t just want to waste it.
(Runs off for a minute, returns more »
Pottering around on a Saturday morning…
Littlelish: Mummy please can I pour this cream (sun cream) into this bottle as a pretend drink for my turtle?
Mummy: No darling, that is a waste. Mummy had to pay money for the cream and we don’t just want to waste it.
(Runs off for a minute, returns with another cream which I received as a free sample)
Littlelish: Mummy, did you pay money for this cream?
I smile knowing where this is going…
Mummy: No darling I didn’t.
Littlelish: Great! So can I use this one then?
I’m a freelancer in creative marketing with a background in design and styling but when I'm not working I'm doing the most important job in the world, being mummy to my beautiful little girl! I love to create and craft and have a passion for colour and beautiful detail. This blog is all about my life, my amazing daughter, my inspirations and creations!
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