Lovely things I spotted recently...

Hannah made this sweet leaving book full of polaroids for her friends who were moving away from London..

I loved this tutorial on design sponge last week on how to make dip-dyed feather pens!

Gerdien now has a shop front for all her vintage goodies!

There's a new competition on the Fox is Black to capture an image of your town in a photograph - the winner gets a Sprocket Rocket camera!

Things and People is that simple; portraits of people next to things that mean a lot to them, and their stories about that object.

Camping in the Welsh Wilderness

For the August bank holiday me, Tom and 7 friends took off to a camp site on the Welsh coast. On our arrival the heavens truly opened.. putting up a tent in the rain is never much fun! But despite the bad weather we had lots of fun, eating marshmallows and (slightly burnt) potatoes round the camp fire, listening to owls hooting at night and walking up Welsh mountains to skim stones on the Blue Lake.

Getting spooky in the Convent...

The other day I thought it would be fun to try out some long exposures on my camera to see what kind of spooky effects we could achieve with just a lantern for light.

I set the exposure to 30 seconds and Tom and I took it in turns to pose with the lantern, switching it on for a few seconds then off again, moving to a new position and so on. Here are the results, pretty magical (who needs Photoshop to achieve special effects?!). Although it was funny when some other residents appeared wanting to use the corridor and we were there taking strange photos in the dark!

Film Friday: Girls Just Want to have Fun

Well, this may just be the most 80's film I've ever watched! (Just look at the poster!) Girls Just Want to Have Fun stars a young Sarah Jessica Parker and Helen Hunt as school friends whose dream is to get on 'Dance TV' - the plotline is fairly standard but the dance moves in the film are most definitely a must-see!

Food Diary Continued...

More lovely meals cooked recently...

Mixed Pepper Risotto

and Mushroom & Brie Pasta, both quick and easy meals to make at the end of the day. (Although I do lack patience with risotto - tom made that one!)

Ideas on how to plan a fun night in!

For some reason lately I've found myself wanting to spend more evenings inside than going out, (maybe the grey summer weather hasn't helped much!) so I thought it'd be good to share some recent ideas on cheap nights in that we've enjoyed doing recently.



1 Hold a board games night
Board games don't have to be boring! Last week we invited some friends over for a game of Win Lose or Draw (in case you don't remember, it was an oh-so 90s gameshow with Danny Baker as host!) which was a really fun evening, improved further by everyone bringing along wine and cheese!



If you want to try playing Win Lose or Draw too here are the rules..

What You'll Need:

A whiteboard & marker (more eco than using paper)
Some pictionary cards (Or if you don't have this get your friends to each write down a film/person on paper and put them all into a bowl to pick at random!)
Snacks & drinks!

Divide your group into two teams (girls v boys?). Each person then takes turns to pick cards and try and draw as many of the items for their team mates to guess as possible in under a minute. Some of the drawings inevitably go a bit squiffy but that's all the funnier!



No Electricity Nights
I have to admit that me and tom haven't had one for a few weeks now, but we really need another this week!

What You'll Need:

Candles
Crafty items/ projects to work on
Sketchbooks
Whatever your heart desires

It's really nice to turn off the laptop/phones for an evening, as i wrote about in this earlier post.


Film Evenings
Another fun night to plan with friends is a simple regular film night. Just pick an actor you love and put their films on high priority on your Lovefilm and you're good to go! Good actors we've chosen in the past include John Cusack, Johnny Depp and Paul Rudd. Any other suggestions welcome! It's also nice taking it in turns to cook for friends as you get lots of ideas on new recipes to try along the way.


Dressing Up Nights
The other week we had loads of fun when our friends popped round with their fancy dress box! Who says dressing up in silly outfits is just for children?!

Do you have any other suggestions on cheap but fun nights in?

Books made into art

I just stumbled across these beautiful books hand made by Isobelle. Apparently each takes about 30 hours to do! See more pictures on here blog.

Film Friday: I love you, man

At first I dismissed this film after watching the trailer and thinking it looked rather bad, but upon watching it I can confirm that it's way better than it first appears! Plus Paul Rudd is always rather ace.

Travelling Journal - We Love the City

Thanks to everyone who is taking part in the 'Cities' travelling journal project! I've finished my pages all about Nottingham, it was lots of fun getting my typewriter out and taking lots of mini photos around my favourite spots!

The order it will travel in now is as follows:

1 Rhianne, Leeds UK

2 Siobhan, London UK

3 Miss Smith, London UK

4 Adeline, Norway

5 Sofie, Sweden

6 Bianca, Australia

7 Cerebral E, Australia

8 Brodie, New York USA

9 Andrea, Spain

I'll post it out to the first person this weekend! Can't wait to send it on its travels and see what you guys can add to it!

New Travelling Journal - help wanted!

Last year I sent a travelling journal around the world to some creative bloggers who filled in its pages with drawings about what they did that day. After completing their pages they then posted it on to the next person. After 6 months' travelling it returned to me safe and sound (see here for the results!).

This year I want to send out a second journal, this time asking people to write about their home towns, and why they love them.

After recent events in places such as Norway and London I thought it would be great to ask participants to write about the positive aspects of their cities and focus on why they are great places to live.

If you would like to take part, just drop me an email to miss millward at gmail dot com, saying which country you live in, or leave a comment below with your email address so i can get back to you - I now have enough people, thank you to those who got in touch!

I'd love to send the journal to as many different countries as possible. I'd also love it to include instant photos if possible. A lot of my favourite bloggers (rhianne, adeline, bianca, siobhan to name a few!) take amazing instant photos and this weekend I took my fuji instax mini on a tour of Nottingham to capture my favourite places for the first pages of the journal! But this is by no means essential! Your pages could contain postcards, drawings, any bits and bobs about what makes the town you live in great- even mundane facts would be interesting to me!

It'd be lovely if by the time the journal got back to me I'd have a mini guide to places all around the world! I'll keep you posted on its progress! x Laura

Miss Croissant

A picture I drew of Adeline aka Lady Croissant. That lady has some style.

Film Friday: Swingers

Last weekend I watched Swingers for the first time. It's a mid 90s film starring (a very young and suave looking) Vince Vaughn, Ron Livingston (one of my favourites!) and Jon Favreau. The film was also written by Favreau and is based on his experiences of leaving behind his girlfriend and moving to LA to try and make it as an actor. It was a very enjoyable film (the phone message scene will make you cringe!) and there's apparently a follow up film made a few years on which isn't quite a sequel but may be worth checking out anyway.

Last night was quite a scary time to be in Nottingham, as well as a lot of other cities in the UK. The riots meant there was a very scary atmosphere walking through town and our flat was surrounded by police helicopters for most of the night but I'm hoping it will have died down a bit today. [Image via here]

A tip for the distracted

By Miranda July. I could use this sometimes, when the modern world gets a bit much!

Playing with Glitter..

Tom has his first music performance in September with his band, Nordenfelt, and he thought it'd be good to include some kind of glitter explosion during the gig.. so we bought some at the weekend to try out!

Weekend in pictures

This weekend kicked off with a visit to the Riverside fest, an annual weekend of funky music, fairground attractions & fireworks held by the River Trent. We had a dance to some Irish folk music followed by a good whizz round on the dodgems. Good times!

Spin spin!

This weekend we went to Riverside festival.. it was lots of fun but watching the rides spin round made me feel slightly queasy!

Happy Birthday Dad!

This post is dedicated to my dear dad whose birthday is today. (This picture was taken on my fisheye camera on a snowy walk through the woods in Derbyshire at the beginning of the year.)

I owe him my love for Jonathan Richman and Joni Mitchell (as well as an irrational dislike of Elton John! ha).. happy birthday to you Dad!

Film Friday: Return to Oz

I didn't actually watch a film this week so instead I thought I'd mention one of my favourite childhood films, Return to Oz. If you haven't seen it let me explain a few things.. firstly it's made by Disney which may imply that it's an innocent fairy tale version of Oz -quite the opposite! The film used to scare me as a child as it begins with Dorothy visiting a mental hospital for electro-shock treatment after she keeps having nightmares about Oz. Later we have the Wheelers, evil characters who really terrified me as a child! And Mombi, a witch who has a collection of different heads she's stolen from other pretty girls. It's pretty dark but still remains one of my childhood favourites and stars Fairuza Balk as Dorothy, who later starred in the Craft.

Indietracks steam-pop-fun!

Yesterday I boarded a steam train in Derbyshire to a little festival called Indietracks. It was a lovely sunny day spent drinking cider, bumping into old friends and exploring the surrounding countryside. If you haven't been I'd certainly recommend going next year, the atmosphere is lovely!

I also bumped into a fellow blogger there, sweet Theodora who was every bit as lovely in person!