Puttery Treats For Today

* Frame your favorite love letters and hang them above your bed or display on a tiny easel on your dressing table..

* Fold tiny strips of vintage ephemera (wallpaper, pages from old books, origami paper,etc) around the tops of cocktail sticks and stash them in a little egg-cup or two ready for flagging summer food at garden BBQ’s and country picnics.

* Cover a shoe-box in pretty vintage fabric and label it receipts while simultaneously resolving never to lose an important receipt again. Essential if you are a serial taker-backer…

* Choose a vintage recipe card box and fill it with cards documenting special events, outings, parties and holidays in your families life. Note dates, places, addresses, people, menu’s and tiny little photos of each event for something that will eventually become a treasured record of some of the teeny tiny details we all too often forget.

* Gift each child in the house a potted plant of their choice for their bedroom and teach them the gentle art of nurture and responsibility…

* Arrange a little collection of teaspoons in a vintage milk jug.

* Stitch tea-dipped doillies on to white bathroom towels aka Sweet Paul…

* Stretch vertical lengths of pretty ribbon across a fabric covered canvas and use teeny tiny pegs (curtain pegs are often decorative and look a little bit fabulous!) to display little notes of decorative inspiration, words of wisdom or essential reminders. Perfect in the kitchen if you use a vintage tea-towel to cover the canvas…

* Transform a pretty table runner into a dress for your little girls favorite doll.

* Add pretty french inspired labels to the edges of your linen closet. Never again will you mistake a fitted sheet for a flat one.

* Use straw shopping baskets in the base of your wardrobe to store scarves, pashminas, shawls, belts, gloves, hats and winter jumpers.

* Use long tall pasta jars to keep knitting needles away from little hands all to willing to use them as Star Wars light sabers. Display with glass jars full of leftover yarn for impromptu knitting projects and gorgeous displays of texture and colour…

* Start a little book of favorite quotes and keep it in your reading basket (Remember? Spectacles, notebook, bookplates, pens, cosy blanket, secret little bar of special chocolate, file for magazine tear sheets, books pending your attention, etc..)

* Spend a day transfering your music collection online and sell old Cd’s on MusicMagpie.co.uk or thecdexchange.com

* Find an old photograph of you and your Grandmother and add it to your Comfort Drawer. No-one and nothing offers comfort like a Nana can. don’t forget to press a little kiss upon her nose.

* Start a secret stash of “things to do” to help you survive the forthcoming school holidays. Seek out the books of your childhood to be read aloud under the shade of a tree, print out craft ideas from the oodles available on the internet. Gather tissue paper for paper flowers to be strung along the washing line, collect drawing books, new pencils, recipes for kids, a trophy for the winner of whatever, stitch beanbags and cut out fabric dollies ready to be sewn together, add balls and garden croquet, and a small collection of never seen before DVD’s for the disaster that is Summer holiday rainy days…

* Attach a single framed picture to each door in the house. I have often thought doors are much under used as little galleries. If you use the same frames on each door, it’s content, even if it varies wildly, will add a little whimsy to a long corridor…

* Amass a collection of vintage linen in the crisp colours of Summer ready and available to wrap Summer birthday gifts…