Introducing...

Before I get anymore obsessed with this blog and start to lose track, I think I'd like to introduce my 'fresher friends' - the girls I'm going to be living with next year!

So from left to right - Sophie, Elena, Lizzie, Me, Becca. We live in a flat with 8 other people - third years actually! They're like our loving caring adopted parents. And we've been so lucky to have had them this year! They've showed us the ropes and helped us get used to Uni life. WE LOVE THEM! I'll introduce the third years in the next blog. But for now, this is just the freshers.

So, last night in celebration of starting my blog, Lizzie, Bez and I had a cheeky Baileys in various unmatched glasses:

Aren't we cool!

Moving on, I wanted to show you this really cute letter my step-mum Sally sent to me from home, when she sent up my parking permit in the post (£118 paid to Lancaster Uni by yours truly for that permit, OUCH!) Look at this bad boy:

It didn't say anything important, just a few things that were happening at home. It now has pride of place on my noticeboard and is even covering up a little bit of my world map. Woop woop!

So onward as ever, I wanted to show you the bunting I have in my room (infinitely superior to the bunting in Lizzie's room).

I doubt I'll get round to taking step by step pictures for bunting, but here's how to make it:

• You need material, string, scissors, card and a hole punch. 
• Cut out of the card a stencil for your bunting. Can be any reasonable shape, like hearts or triangles and blah blah blahhhh
• Use the stencil to cut out the shapes from the fabric. As many or as few as you want! 
• Hole punch the fabric - put two holes in the furthest points across the top so when you loop the string through you can pull the fabric straight. 
• Push the string through, straighten out the fabric and then cut the string from the ball when you know you have enough. 
• Put it up somewhere and VOILA! Mission Successful. 

Onwards and upwards with my other activities today - I made a 'very-useful-drawstring-bathroom-pouch' for my bathroom (I share my bathroom with Elena and Lizzie). We always have loads of stuff gathered at the bottom of the shower so its more of a battle to get in it than anything else - you know, avoiding razors, sponges, various shower gels and conditioners and all the other non-essentials we've collected. So now I have this super useful POUCH (yeah, I need to get out more...) to put everything in! 

I'll show you how I made it but first I want to show you what is commonly called 'My Baby'.

How beautiful is he! All shiny and lit up and whatnot.

So - this is how I made my pouch.



I used -

• Biggish piece of material, maybe 20"x30" (probably should have measured before I started but its not too important). 
• Pins
• A load of string
• Scissors
• My Baby!

So, first I folded over the long edges and neatened them up. Turns out later as I figured out what I was  doing that I probably didn't need to do this. But hey. Once I'd pointlessly neatened up the two long edges, I measured out a piece of string that was maybe a third bigger than I'd need in the end. So measure the two short sides and increase it by half to get the measure of string. (Just to be on the safe side so if you have any mishaps you're sorted).

It took me like 20 minutes to figure out how to do this without sewing over the wrong bit. I don't know if you're more logical than me and its obvious, but this is how I did it.

I took one of the short edges, and folded it over about an inch. I tucked under some of the string, so some was poking out one side but the majority came out of the other. I then pinned it down and sewed the seam, so the string was inside the seam but could still pretty much move around freely.

I then took the second short edge, folded it over and using the string, without pulling it out of the first seam, I tucked it under and sewed that down. So, once I'd sewn the seams on both short edges the string was threaded through both of them with the loose ends on the same side.

Then, folding the material in half with right side to right side, I sewed down the two vertical edges, but made sure I didn't sew over the top seams (if I had, the string would have been trapped in there so you couldn't draw the bag closed!)

Then I turned it right side out, knotted the two loose ends of the string together, put some stray bathroom items in the bag and pulled the strings!

I realise that wasn't a very comprehensive explanation of how to make the drawstring bag thing. Just trust me, it worked out somehow and I had a bag-like object when I was finished. If you don't know what I did just experiment. How wrong could it go? (Ha)