GUEST POST: Last Minute Gift Ideas by Daria from Kittenhood

Hi there! This is Daria of Kittenhood and I’m here to celebrate Dani’s birthday with you! I’ve got two last minute gift ideas to share, and the best part is that you can make them yourselves. A gift becomes way more personal if you put some effort into it!

Let’s begin with an idea for the crafty ones: a birthday cross-stitch. You can download a pattern below, which reads “Fancy some birthday wishes?” It’s 10 x 7 cm in size and it can easily be fitted into a wooden frame afterwards. Another option is to glue it to some thick paper and turn it into a birthday card. Besides the actual letters, you can stitch decorative motifs, flowers or hearts, whatever the receiver likes. I’ve made one for a friend, it took about two hours, and she loved it a lot! You can write your own customized message and use specialized software to get a pattern (e.g. PC Stitch, HobbyWare, Stoick)

As for the less crafty of you, here’s a gift idea: a photo book. I’ve made one for my boyfriend a couple of years ago, using his photography only. That was quite suitable, since he’s a photographer! Because I wanted to make it look like a real book, I wrote his biography on the front page, descriptions under the pictures and used a neutral tone. I printed everything on glossy paper, at a print shop, and had it bound. However, if you don’t want to spend money at the print shop, you can glue the pictures into a notebook or album. You can make it more affectionate by inserting text messages or extracts from letters and emails; you can also use notes, tickets, receipts or anything else that’s related to you two, and glue them into the scrapbook. Another version implies using magazine cutouts on a certain theme (say the person loves cats or beer or whatever), to make a customized card or album. Have fun!
  Thanks Daria! What brilliant ideas :) Be sure to head over to her beautiful blog Kittenhood for more great posts and a treasure trove of lovely outfit posts!

Jewelry Boxes

I have some lovely jewelry boxes that I have been given over the years, but none of them are big enough to house all my jewelry, and certainly when I fill them to the brim its impossible to find anything quickly and without tangling everything together! Aside from all of that, I’m a person who needs to be able see what I have or else I forget what I own and end up wearing the same things every day. It’s a problem I had for years until I found the perfect solution.I’ll be honest. I can’t take credit for this idea, it was actually my mum who did this originally and passed her wisdom down to me.

Except for my nicest and most sentimental pieces (which I keep in my proper jewelry box), I store all of my jewelry in plastic hardware boxes normally used for nuts and bolts and drill bits. They are perfect for keeping jewelry pieces separate and neat. I have boxes for each type of piece (ie; rings, necklaces, bracelets, larger pieces) and because the boxes are clear I can easily see at a glance what I have without digging through everything to find something. All the boxes are the same size so they stack on top of each other perfectly and for about $8 a pop, when one fills up its easy to pop down to the hardware store and pick up another one!
I’ll tell you now, my jewelry is the most organised stuff in my house! If only I could get big giant versions for my clothes and shoes….

DIY Cartography Heart Set

OMG. My first DIY! I wanted to get the happy couple something special for their wedding gift as they are pretty important to me. They have lived together for a while now, so they certainly didn’t need any toasters or punch bowls, so I was on the hunt for something original. I had seen similar cartography sets around online, but most of them were selling for more than I wanted to spend. Then it dawned on me how easy it would be to make one myself, and how much more it would mean being handmade…

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Terrarium Attempt #1

So, on Saturday I went on an epic adventure to find a plant nursery. One of the problems with being new to a big city is I don’t know where anything is. That doesn’t stop me, but seeing as Google directions are almost always wrong at some point along the way, it makes for wild adventures in driving. I was so close to the place I needed to go for about an hour but kept getting turned around due to traffic and streets I didn’t know very well. Once I finally got there I may have gotten a little excited and bough a big box of plants! Oops!
I love this guy with the huge leaves, I almost bought a BIG version of him, but decided for half the price, the little one was way better.
The original reason I was actually looking for plants was that I decided I wanted to build a terrarium for the first time. I decided I wanted one with succulents to put on my desk at work. I bought a teeny glass fishbowl and some little animal toys with the plan of making a tiny jungle. The animals where WAY too big, so I had to make do without them. Apart from that it was pretty simple process; rocks for drainage, moss, topsoil, plants = Terrarium! I even added my little glass deer I got from the Christmas Markets in Paris, but she’s a little lonely. I’ll have to find her a friend…
I have to admit, upon arriving at the nursery, I got a little carried away. I found so many awesome plants I wanted them all! I decided to make boyfriend one as well. His didn’t turn out so well…. like, not at all. He has this little wooden Japanese garden toy set I bought for him and was going to use as a centerpiece of his terrarium. He also LOVES Cacti, so I figured why not  put the two together?
Because it looks stupid, that’s why.It actually wasn’t a total disaster. After trying in vain to make him something I was happy with, I used part of the set, the cacti and the bonsai tree I bought him to make 2 little pots of cuteness that I actually like more than my terrarium!

There was so much love put into those pots. Do you know how hard it is (and how much it hurts) to re-pot a cactus?! And I did it repeatedly! lol That’s true love. Do you ever do that? Start one project and accidentally end up making something else that’s actually kind of better than  your original idea?