Things to do when you are staying at home

Since so many of us are staying at home at the moment, self-isolating and following the guidelines on social distancing, I thought it would be a good idea to put together a list with ideas for things you can do at home. I've grouped ideas into different categories, so whether you are looking after your children at home, missing going out visiting places or looking for a little distraction in these anxious times there should be something for you to do on the list! I will keep it updated if I spot new ideas and if you have any suggestions please do let me know in the comments.
Stay safe and stay healthy everyone x

Visit a Museum Online

You might not be able to leave your house at the moment but that doesn't mean you can't explore museums or art galleries! Google's Arts and Culture website allows you to explore the collections of hundreds of galleries and musuems from around the world, including:
The Natural History Museum, London
The Rijksmusuem, Amsterdam
The British Musuem, London
The Victoria and Albert Museum, London
The National Gallery, London
The Science Musuem, London

Explore prehistoric cave paintings in a virtual visit to The Chauvet-Pont d'Arc Cave

Music
- Listen to some of your favourite music.
- Make a playlist for a friend.
- Practise playing an instrument and learn new pieces by searching for sheet music online.

Enjoy Nature
We are fortunate in the UK that we are heading into spring and the weather (so far!) has been improving. Whilst a lot of life feels like it has been put on pause, nature is still carrying on as normal. Go outside in your garden or if you don't have a garden, what can you see or hear from your window? Listen for the birds singing and see the flowers blossoming and trees becoming greener.

I will be spending as much time as possible in my garden over the coming weeks. I expect a lot of people will have tidier gardens than normal! I plan to sow vegetable and flower seeds, but if you don't have a garden you can still experience the joy of watching a plant grow. Herbs can be grown on a kitchen windowsill. Did you know that there are lots of vegetables that can be regrown too? If you don't have a pot of compost for growing a plant inside you can grow carrot tops, celery and onions in a saucer of water.

Exercise
Get (or keep) fit! Even in a very small amount of space there are still exercises you can do. Sometimes if I'm feeling a bit anxious or stressed I like to remind myself how exercise releases endorphins and will make me feel better.

Joe Wicks has lots of free workout videos on his Youtube channel The Body Coach TV - including a daily PE lesson for children.

Dance - this combines listening to music to make you feel good and some exercise! I've been learning a routine to 'Come Alive' from The Greatest Showman via this video from Beginner Dance Tutorials on Youtube. I'm not very coordinated when it comes to dancing, but this video is easy to follow and fun!

Practise Yoga - Yoga With Adriene has lots of great videos to follow, ranging from short to long sessions and routines to help you relax or burn off a few calories.

Get Creative
Lots of designers are being generous right now and sharing free printables. I have designed some colouring pages, including the butterflies design shown below, which are free for you to download via this page. 

Here are some others I found which you might like:
- Angie Spurgeon has shared a weekly planner and Dahlia, Rose & Agapanthus colour-in sheet.
- Cara Rowlands has been creating lots of free colouring pages which you can see on her Instagram page Carabaradesigns
- Spoonflower have created a printable colouring book for you to download, featuring designs to colour by 10 different artists.

Have you seen rainbows popping up in the windows of your neighbourhood? I spotted lots on my one trip out to the supermarket. A think the trend started in Italy, but has spread around the world. It's a lovely thing to do to spread a little hope and raise a smile for your neighbours. People are sharing their rainbows online with #letsallbewell.

Start (or finish) a craft project. Did you start knitting a jumper or sewing a dress ages ago but never finished it? Now's the perfect time to do it! I've been looking through my stack of sewing patterns trying to decide what to make next. I've also been meaning to sew some oven gloves for ages but keep getting scared by the wadding which I've never used before, so maybe I'll do those first!

There are plenty of craft tutorials online too. You can see all the ones from my blog here.

Learn a new skill
There are thousands of classes to explore on Skillshare and if you sign up via this link you can get 2 months of Premium membership for free!

Make Art That Sells is currently offering their MBA (Money BadAss) online course for free (instead of the usual £178). The course is about making money from doing what you love and building a successful business - find out more on their website.

Affinity is currently offering a 90 day free trial of their suite of software; Publisher, Photo and Designer and a 50% discount if you want to buy and keep them. I love their software - it's what I use for creating my designs!

Read a book

We are lucky to have lots of books in our house, so it would take a very long time for us to run out of things to read! However, if you don't have many books at home there are lots of eBooks you can access online for free.
Oxford Owl have books for 3-11 year olds
Local libraries may be shut for now, but if you look up your library's website you can borrow e-books, audio books and e-magazines.

Other Ideas:
- Play a board game with a friend via a video call. You might not be able to meet face to face but you can still play a game together! Some games, like cards probably won't work but plenty of board games could be played from a distance for example battleships, chess, draughts, monopoly or snakes and ladders.
- Do a quiz with a friend online.
- If you are really desperate and have done everything else you could always clean your house and do some of those house jobs you never normally have time for!!

Stop Worrying About What Could Go Wrong...

I thought it was time I did another 'Positive Thinking' post (the last was back in February - how time flies!).

If you're like me you'll easily come up with a million things that could go wrong; "but what if....".  It might happen, or it might not.  Worrying doesn't really help but it can sometimes be hard to stop.  I try to remind myself of these words, and focus on something more positive.

Stop worrying about what could go wrong and focus on what could go right.

Find What Feels Good

Yoga With Adriene and 'Find What Feels Good' are the inspiration for this post, which is part of my new series on positive thinking.  I love these words as they not only encourage you to do things that make you feel good, but also to look for the good in a situation that maybe doesn't seem good at first.  Not that I am able to do this all the time, but it is something to aspire to.  I had fun playing with watercolours writing these words in my sketchbook too. :)

This week I completed Yoga Camp with Yoga With Adriene (an online series of yoga videos).  I managed to keep up with it everyday for 30 days and even completed the longer 40-50 minute sessions!  I say this with a sense of achievement because although I did her 30 days of yoga last year it took me longer than 30 days and I have struggled to keep up with some of the longer sessions before.  I'm not a sporty person, but after discovering Yoga With Adriene I have found a form of exercise that I actually enjoy and want to do!  I can follow the online videos at my own pace, in the comfort of my home.

Adriene encourages you to 'Find What Feels Good' and this is what I love about her videos!  I enjoy her humour and positive approach to teaching.  She guides you through the yoga poses and suggests alternatives if you're finding something difficult, encourages you to keep trying and it's not about being able to make the perfect pose - it's all about the process, how you feel.  Since doing yoga I have noticed that I am getting more flexible and stronger, I notice that certain poses are not so hard as they used to be, and it does feel good!  I still have plenty to practise and work on (which is good too); pigeon, side plank, seated forward fold and crow are some of the things I would like to improve.

30 days of Yoga Camp was also about using positive mantras, each day had a different mantra and I found these to be really beneficial too.  Yoga isn't just about getting yourself physically fit, but taking care of your mind too.  I do find that yoga can help with anxiety; the exercise, moving with my breath, practising the different breathing techniques and positive mantras - these are all things I can take and use off the yoga mat as well.

I liked how setting myself the challenge of Yoga Camp kept me motivated with doing yoga everyday and I want to keep that up.  I've been doing some of the videos from Adriene's Post Yoga Camp Playlist and I think I will do the original 30 Days of Yoga (from last year) again.

Do you do yoga?  What are your experiences of it?  If you're interested in having a go I can definitely recommend Yoga With Adriene! 

Namaste!

Positive Thinking

The subject of this post is something which I have been thinking about for some time, but it has taken me a while to find the right words and work out exactly what I want to say.  I started this blog mainly for my work; to share things I have designed and made, so I wasn't sure if I wanted to write about other things and mention something that I've not talked about with many people in 'real life' let alone online. But I want to try, because I read other people's blogs and find it helpful finding people with similar experiences and I don't want it to be a big secret, something to feel ashamed of.

I suffer from anxiety.  Some days it's not too bad and others it can affect me a lot.  Everyone experiences anxious thoughts at some time, but if you have experience of anxiety and panic attacks you will understand what I mean, how unpleasant it is and how much it can affect your life; the things you do.

Maybe it seems silly, that it's taken me such a long time, and a fair bit of worrying, to actually not say very much.

I wanted to mention it though, because it was the motivation for an idea of a new series I want to do on positive thinking.  Whether you have trouble with negative thoughts or not, positive words and phrases can be really beneficial.  So I'm starting a new series of hand drawn, positive words, phrases and quotes as a way to both help myself and as a way of sharing positivity with you.  It will also be an opportunity for me to practise my hand lettering.

I already have some ideas of words and phrases I would like to illustrate, but I would also love to hear what positive words, quotes etc you like.  Leave a comment below and I might illustrate them in the coming weeks.

P.S.  I couldn't help having the Morecambe and Wise song 'Positive Thinking' in my head while I drew this :)

April Review

April has flown by!  I've not been very good at keeping up with my target of one post a week on the blog, but on the up side I have been getting ahead and preparing new blog posts for the next few weeks.  Here’s a look back at what I did in April…

New designs / illustrations…

It has been a busy month for new designs and I have been listing lots of new printables in my Etsy shop.  I have been filling in some of the gaps in some of my existing collections as well as working on new themes.

I already had printable party collections listed in my shop, which contain a combination of customised and non-customised items (invitation, cupcake toppers and wrappers, thank you cards, name place cards, straw flags, bunting, water bottle labels and welcome sign).  I decided to start making ‘small’ party sets too which are available as instant download – so they’re great if you don’t need customised designs and want to be able to print them straight away.  Each ‘small’ party set contains; bunting, cupcake toppers, name place cards, water bottle labels and straw flags.

I added a small party set to the Ball Games range as well as designing a new collage sheet…

The Hot Air Balloons party collection has been filled out with new water bottle labels, bunting, straw flags and name place cards…

 One of the new themes I have been working on is the Safari Animals collection, which so far includes an invitation, bunting, cupcake toppers, name place cards, water bottle labels and straw flags…

I also made an invitation and set of cupcake toppers with just the lion, which I think would be really cute for baby showers or a first birthday party…

And finally I thought I would show you a couple of new invitation designs which coordinate with the papers I shared on Monday – I’ve made these as samples for a 21st and 30th birthday, but they could be used for other occasions too like bridal showers or weddings.  The one on the left matches with my ‘Abigail’ papers and the right one with the ‘Martha’ set…

I have been enjoying drawing flowers recently  and playing around with new ideas.  Larger flowers with lots of petals (like dahlias) can be tricky to draw but it has been good to practise my drawing.  As well as the floral pattern I used for the invitations above (and in my entry to Spoonflower’s Bee themed contest) I have been working on a larger flower border design for Spoonflower’s Flower’s for Mom border design contest.

Garden…

It’s a busy time for the garden, trying to get the borders and vegetable patch tidy and prepared for all the plants I will be growing this year.  I have been sowing flower and vegetable seeds in pots and more of them are starting to sprout.  I sowed some sweet pepper seeds early in the year but nothing came up so I tried some new seeds from a pepper we had eaten.  They were up quickly (within a few weeks) and I now have far more than I need!  So if you’re planning to grow peppers I would definitely recommend using fresh seeds!

It’s exciting to see my flower seedlings appearing too – these are zinnias, I’m looking forward to seeing them bloom as they were lovely on my doorstep last year…


Other things…

Last month I mentioned that I was looking for a new phone, well I eventually made my mind up and chose the Motorola Moto E (2nd generation) and not the Microsoft Lumia 435 which I was looking at.  The Moto E came out on top in a lot of the reviews I read so it looked like a good choice, even though it cost more than the Lumia 435.  I did manage to get a discount using a voucher code I had in an email – so my indecisiveness paid off in the end!  It’s my first smartphone and I’m still learning how it all works but so far I’m really impressed with it.  Now I’ll have to add a new project to my craft ‘to do’ list and make a case for it!

I will leave you with this photo of my birthday cake which my sister and Mum made me at the start of the month…

March Review

I have noticed a few of the blogs I read doing reviews looking back at their week, month or year and I thought it would be an interesting thing to try myself.  So I decided to take a look back over the last month – reminding myself about some of the things I did in March and sharing bits which I haven’t blogged about already…

New designs / illustrations...

I was quite productive with new designs and illustrations in March, although I still can’t share the Christmas ones I worked on and submitted to Phoenix Trading.  You’ll have to wait until I know if they are interested in publishing any of them!  My Horses card design was released at the start of the month though.

In March I created 3 new designs which I entered into Spoonflower contests; Coral, Mint, Black and White, Beagles and Southwest Baby Bedding.

I finished changing over all my non-customised digital items to Instant Download.  It was quite a time consuming process changing over all the old listings, but should save me time in the long run.  I designed some new printables to add to the Easter range in my shop; some ‘Happy Easter’ bunting, Easter egg digi stamps and a set of pastel bunnies scrapbooking papers.  They’re all available as instant downloads, so there’s still time to use them this Easter weekend as they can be downloaded within minutes of buying!

Sewing...

I ordered a print of my Dragon Cut and Sew Plushie design on Silky Faille fabric from Spoonflower and tested out the design to check it all worked ok.  It did!  So I was able to make it available to buy from my Spoonflower shop.  I’ll be sharing more photos of that soon, with the instructions on how to make it.

I also stitched 2 projects which came with the Mollie Makes magazine I buy – a needlebook and bear embroidery.  I didn’t like the colour of the yellow felt which came in the kit to make the needle book so decided to use some of my own felt instead.  I loved making the little hexies though and trying English Paper Piecing for the first time.

Another sewing project I am part way through is sewing a dress in jersey fabric – my first attempt at sewing stretch fabric!  I’ll share some pictures from that once I've done a bit more.

Baking...

I baked some cheese muffins with my sister using this recipe which I blogged about back in 2013.

Garden...

Spring arrived and it’s lovely to see the blossom and flowers appearing.  I wish I could somehow bottle the scent from this tree covered in blossom as it is going all too fast.

 I started planning what to grow this year, so far we have sown herbs, tomatoes, peppers and aubergine seeds.  I had a herb growing kit for Christmas, but waited until last month to sow the seeds – the basil and chives have come up and I’m hoping the others will start growing soon.

 

Other things…

On Pinterest I have been pinning ideas to my Easter board – including lots of lovely baking ideas, although I probably shouldn't try making them as I have been trying to be healthier after watching a documentary on how much sugar is in our food!

Follow Hazel's Easter board on Pinterest.

I’ve been looking for a new phone but there is so much choice, I can’t decide which is the best to get.  My first and only mobile is getting on for being nearly 10 years old and the battery doesn’t last so long now so I thought it might be time for a new one!  My mp3 player also died so I would like a phone to listen to music on too but I don’t use my mobile a lot so don’t want to spend too much.  I’ve been trying to narrow down my choices by looking at budget smartphone reviews – the Microsoft Lumia 435 looks like a possibility but I’m not sure.  Do you have any suggestions?

I mentioned at the top of this post about reading other people’s blogs – I like using Bloglovin’ to keep up with new posts from my favourite bloggers and still use the reading list in Blogger too.  How do you like to keep up with your favourite blogs?
These are some of the blogs I have been reading recently:
Wonder Forest
Messyla - a lifestyle blog by La.
A Beautiful Mess
Scientific Culture

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