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Taking Time to Live Well
Give your houseplants a makeover with this colour block terrracotta pot DIY from Lovely Indeed.
We have a lot of time for a touch of gold in the house, especially when pared with simple matte white to tone it down. Make like blogger Chelsea and hang your new plant pots from the ceiling with twine to show them off properly. Lovely, indeed!
Competition time! We've got 5 copies of Josie Jeffery's Seedswap to give away.
In her Seedswap guide, Josie introduces the exciting new global seed swapping movement, looks at why plant heritage is so important and gives us plenty of advice on how to go about getting involve!
We've got 5 shiny new copies to give away! Click over to our competition homepage to enter.
P.S. If you're already embracing the seed swapping spirit, this year's
will be taking place on Saturday 20 October at Wakehurst. Pop over to the
for more info!
We loved chatting to our favourite city gardener, Isabelle Palmer, for our interview in issue 1 of The Simple Things, so we were mega-excited when we heard she was designing exclusive seed packets for her shop.
These b-e-a-utiful limited edition seed packets come in edible flower garden, butterfly garden, wildflower garden and scented garden varieties. Which is your favourite?
P.S. Keep an eye out in next month's The Simple Things for a sneaky appearance from Isabelle's gorge designs ...
We’d all love to have acres of space outside our back doors – giant lawns where we can sit out for breakfast, embark on elaborate landscaping projects and perhaps host a small football match.
Sadly, as our city-dwelling readers will know, this isn't always a possibility. Which is why we love Fern Richardson so much. Her blog (and book), Life on the Balcony, is a haven of tricks and tips for those of us who only have a small space to work with but still want to get a little mud under our fingernails.
One of her most genius ideas is this vertical pallet planter DIY. It ticks all the boxes of a good small-scale gardening project - easy to do, looks great and takes up barely more ground space than a plant pot. If you make like Fern and hunt out a second hand pallet, it’s dirt cheap too!
Do any of our readers have useful ideas for making the most of small gardening spaces that they’d like to share? We’re always on the hunt for inspiration!
Remember making mud pies as a kid? The inner child inside of us is clapping their hands and hopping about in excitement about this mud pie kitchen idea from Ginny for Rhythm of the Home.
Old packing crates are turned into kitchen cabinets, a line of bricks in a sunny spot make the perfect mud pie oven, and old metal pots and pans are stacked up ready for the baking to begin!
What an unexpected and sweet idea from Magnolia Electric. Dainty glass bottles filled with posies of flowers and strung up from tree branches.
Everything about this arrangement is a little off-kilter, but somehow it works really well. We think this would be a beautiful decoration idea for an outdoor wedding. What do you think?
This week we have another simple eco-friendly gardening idea for you. Apartment Therapy has collated a list of seven kitchen leftovers to use in your garden.
They’re things which we all throw away on a regular basis (from coffee grounds to citrus fruit peel) so this will make our bins lighter and our gardens happier all in one go. We love it when that happens.
Do any readers have any other nifty gardening tips for using things we'd usually throw away? We'd love for you to share them with us.
We always assumed that fruit trees were one of the things which were off limits for people without massive lawns. Herbs? Yes. Flowers? No probs. But fruit trees? Er, really?
Apparently, we were mistaken. Colby Eierman's Fruit Trees in Small Spaces explains that with the right pruning and training, even those with a mini-sized outdoor space can enjoy home-grown fruit. We're more than happy to be proven wrong.
As hobbies go, gardening is pretty eco-friendly, but the little trick of starting seeds in eggshells is even more impressively so. Once you're done, plants go into the soil, egg box goes into the recycling and eggshells go for compost. Chances are, you won't have to buy anything special to get started, either!
This technique is ideal if you only have a little space to work with, because it'll tuck neatly onto your windowsill. Pop over to gardening blog Garden Betty to find out exactly how it's done, plus tricks and tips on what to grow.
Not content with producing beautiful stationery and writing a beautiful lifestyle blog, Amanda of Wit & Whistle has come up with a lovely idea to make our gardens more beautiful, too.
Following a bad experience with a vegetable patch (it's reassuring to know that even our favourite bloggers have these kinds of disasters, isn't it?) Amanda decided to take a different tack this year, and is planting her own butterfly garden.
Pop over to the Wit & Whistle blog for advice on caterpillar-friendly plants and how to get started creating a butterfly garden. And keep you fingers crossed for Amanda that she has more luck than she did with her vegetable patch!
Today, we've got a proper garden project for you to get stuck into. When blogger Annalea from Hope and Honey moved house, she inherited an unruly rose bush along with it. After struggling to find a trellis that was strong enough, the right size and didn't cost the earth, Annalea went about making her own.
Annalea's rose trellis DIY uses cedar framing and mesh fencing, and lets you build a sturdy structure that fits wherever you want it to. Top marks to her for showing some true Simple Things spirit!
Getting into gardening can be a daunting prospect. Etsy seller Sarah Rainwater Design has come up with a fab starter pack for anyone wanting to get a little more green fingered.
Her heirloom seed kit contains six packs of veggie and herb seeds, plus everything you need to grow them on your windowsill. Even better, each of the plant varieties has been chosen because it's mega-easy to grow. We'll be gifting these to all our novice gardener friends, in the hopes that we might be able to convert them!
The latest DIY project to make our weekend to-do lists is this bench planter that we discovered on the DiggersList blog. It's made from a repurposed ceiling beam, giving it a vintage charm that has been given a dose of modern cool with neon orange rollers.
This would be fab just as a bench, ready to be rolled out for unexpected guests, but we're planning on getting handy with a chisel and turning ours into a planter as well. Check out the DiggersList blog to see how it's done.
Is there no end to things you can do with a Mason jar? We've already expressed our love for Mason jar chandeliers, now we're thinking of going green and upcycling them into a wall planter, à la Not Just a Housewife.
Blogger Stacy had a brainwave in the midst of a peach-canning spree, and knocked up this quirky Mason jar wall planter using leftover jars, some wood and clamps.
If you're worried about drainage (admittedly, it might be a bit of an issue), fill your jars with water, add some pretty flowers and you'll have your very own floral wall display!
With a little luck, your window boxes should be exploding with fresh herbs any day now.
We’re expecting to be inundated with more herbs than we know what to do with (best to start the summer with a positive outlook), so this year, we’re going to dry our extras to make them last through the colder months.
If you’re wondering how to dry fresh herbs, pop over to Design Mom, where Lindsay of Café Johnsonia has guest posted a great guide. When the weather turns chilly, we’ll be following her example and harvesting our leftover herbs, hanging them out to dry in our kitchens and then tucking them away into our store cupboards ready for the winter.
We love peas. Just as good from frozen as they are fresh, no chopping required and they cook in no time at all. What’s not to like?
Well, apparently, not everyone is such a fan of the tiniest of the vegetables. In a bid to change this, we’ve hunted around for the most exciting pea recipes (bear with us) to share with you.
First of all, peas and pasta. Everyone knows that peas go with carbonara but have you ever tried pea pesto? Nah, thought not. Recipe pro Deb from Smitten Kitchen has come up with a pea pesto recipe which looks super-simple and totally gorgeous. Pop over to her blog for a peek.
We can’t help but be intrigued by Beyond [the Plate]’s pea and ricotta spread. Blogger Danielle’s recipe combines creamy ricotta and sweet peas with roasted garlic to give an ‘earthy, aromatic kick’. We’ll be following her example and serving this on toasted bread for a light lunch with a difference.
There’s definitely something about peas that says Springtime. What do we like most about Spring food? Salads. And so, we present this lentil and shell pea salad recipe from La Buena Vida. This salad had been ramped up a notch with feta for creamyness, pistachios for crunch and mint to keep it fresh, and we cannot wait to try it out.
Have we converted you yet?
Click to see the rest of our vegetable of the month series!
The Slug and the Squirrel have done something magical to the humble terrarium.
In their unique designs, wild mosses, locally grown plants, sand and earth find their home in vintage and found bottles and jars of all kinds, to create whimsical designs inspired by far-away landscapes.
Pop over to The Slug and the Squirrel's beautiful website to see their unique range of terrariums for yourself.
If you fancy making one of your own, pop over to crafty blog The Little Red House for a terrarium how to. We love the way blogger Sheena has chosen straight-edged jars, and used her terrariums as quirky book ends.
Living in a small space is no excuse for not exercising those keen green fingers. These adorable bike planters are so super cute and are the perfect way to jazz up your ride whilst giving back some much needed CO2. The little plant pots from Etsy shop Wearable Planter not only come fit for your bike but can be worn as funky necklaces and brooches.
Colleen says "why keep your plants at home?" and we agree, why not!
Vegetable of the month? Rhubarb? Yep. We haven’t cheated, rhubarb is technically a vegetable.
We were going to blog about asparagus (also in season, also fabulous), but for some reason we kept finding ourselves swayed back towards those bright pink rhubarb stems.
There are plenty of options for this lovely veggie other than rhubarb and strawberry crumble (although that is a classic for a reason – that’s our favourite recipe we’ve linked up). To prove it we’ve lined up a whole day’s worth of rhubarb recipes.
Kicking off bright and early in the morning, we want toast but oh, we’re bored of marmite or marmalade. Fear not, the aptly named Lovely Morning has come to the rescue with her rhubarb jam recipe. Munch it on toast, pop it on some natural yoghurt or wrap a jar up as a gift for a friend, its as versatile as you like.
Next we have a casual garden lunch with friends, which we’ll conclude with a cheeky rhubarb crumb bar from White on Rice Couple. Stomachs were rumbling all round when this recipe popped up on our screens, is it having the same effect on you?
Finally, to round off our tiring rhubarb-filled day, we’ll be knocking up an ice-cold fresh rhubarb cocktail courtesy of Sugarlaws. Phew, we told you we could do it. And not a crumble in sight!
We’re struggling a little to know what to eat for breakfast at the moment. Our diaries say May, the never ending drizzle outside disagrees. Surely it’s too late in the year for porridge?
Green Kitchen Stories has come up with the answer in this fruity yoghurt granola recipe in their guest post over at My New Roots . A bit fruity, a bit creamy, and oaty enough to prepare us for the drizzle outside.
Don’t be dismayed by the somewhat extensive recipe on the blog – with the best will in the world, no-one has the energy for that much measuring in one morning! We’ll be swapping in whatever fruit’s in season and raiding the corners of our store cupboards for nuts and seeds for the granola. Yum.
We celebrate slowing down, enjoying what you have, making the most of where you live, enjoying the company of of friends and family, and feeding them well. We like to grow some of our own vegetables, visit local markets, rummage for vintage finds, and decorate our home with the plunder. We love being outdoors and enjoy the satisfaction that comes with a job well done.