May 2017 – Our Creative Haven

That Light Bulb Moment!

Published on May 26, 2017May 5, 2017 by ourcreativehavenLeave a comment

According to a sneaky little Google search, 2,500,000,000 light bulbs are sold each year. 20,000 of which are on the Eiffel tower alone! The average life of a light bulb is around 2000 hours (83 days). But what if there was a way to extend their lives even longer and recycle them!

Here is a little (slightly messy) tutorial on how to make this lovely light bulb vase. This was another spy on Pinterest that took me quite a while to work out how to make!!

First up is to dismantle your light bulb. This can be messy and potentially dangerous as your dealing with small shards of glass. I recommend putting the light bulb in a box to collect all the shards, and wearing goggles and washing up gloves to protect your eyes and hands.

I used a pair of side cutters to remove the initial pin.
Then using some pliers I gradually started to break the black glass. This is quite thick glass, and make sure you hold the metal top of the light bulb not the glass dome as it’s easy to accidentally squeeze too hard and to break the dome glass.
Next up you need to remove the glass that holds the filament in place. This again is quite thick. I used a screwdriver placing it on the thick glass and gently taping the end with a hammer. You have to be gentle but firm but watch out that when you free the filament, it doesn’t fall too quickly as it can smash the dome below! Remove enough of the glass so you have a smooth edge inside.
Then finally using your pliers gently remove the remaining filament and then you have your empty light bulb.

As you can see it’s a little messy!

I found these lush napkin holders in the Zara home sale for £6. I was searching in charity shops for them but I found they were actually more expensive as they were being labelled ‘vintage’. Anyways, place the light bulb on top of the napkin ring and decide on the angle at which you’d like your vase to be. Once happy, hold them upside down, and secure the ring in place using a glue gun.

And there you have it! A lovely little home accessory made from one of your old light bulbs!

All my love,

God Bless,

Mims

xXx

A Little Potty Experiment

Published on May 19, 2017April 29, 2017 by ourcreativehavenLeave a comment

Happy Friday everyone!

I don’t know about you but sometimes I’ll see something on Pinterest, have a go and It will turn out disastrously! Well I once saw some pictures of pots that had been decorated using nail varnish in water. And due to my previous Pinterest experimenting I naturally thought there is no way something so simple could create something that looks that good! But I was having a mooch in some charity shops recently (one of my favourite end of the month activities when you have no money), and found 2 plain white plant pots for 50p each. I ended up with a spare 30mins and I finally got round to giving it a go! I must say I‘m very impressed with the results! Even if it was a bit messy!

All you will need are some old pots/mugs or anything you want to decorate, some old nail varnish, nail varnish remover, thin sticky backed cork, and a bowl you don’t mind getting dirty/ruined!!

Once you’ve filled the bowl with water, start drizzling in your chosen nail varnishes. Try to cover the outer aspects of the water too as these are the areas that will end up in the visible surface of your pot.

Once you’re happy with your varnish, dip the pot in the water as far as you’d like. Once removed, turn the pots upside down to allow the excess water to dry off.

Now this is the messy part! Only nail varnish remover will remove the varnish but it will only remove some of it in that quantity! I was trying to remove all the varnish from the bowl hence my hands stayed like this for while!!

My advice would be to use a bowl that you don’t mind either keeping as scrap or to recycle it.

I love looking at all the pretty shapes and colours the varnish made. I also learnt the hard way that even when the pots are dry, due to the bases also being covered in varnish, they can still be slightly tacky even when dry! So I found some sticky backed cork that I had lying around and used it to stick to the bottom of the pots so that they don’t stick to any surfaces you put them on!!

They make perfect house plant decorations or gifts for friends!

All my love,

God Bless,

Mims

xXx

Mental Health Awareness Week

Published on May 12, 2017May 5, 2017 by ourcreativehavenLeave a comment

So this week is mental health awareness week. It’s a week that focuses on hope, sharing, breaking stigmas and raising awareness. 1 in 4 people per year in the UK alone are diagnosed with a mental health disorder (Mind, 2013). And yet mental health is still sadly widely considered a bit of a taboo subject, something people choose to not talk about and hideaway for many reasons. So in light of this, for this week’s blog I thought I’d try something a little different and share a story very close to my heart.

It all started around 8 years ago when I was visiting home from uni. I went to steal a glue stick out of my sister’s desk draw. As I picked it up, a notebook fell open and I couldn’t stop my eyes from scanning the open page. The page was filled with hate filled words of absolute loath and disgust, how she didn’t deserve to eat, how she’d vomit to punish herself. This was all written by my beautiful baby sister about herself. I sat on the floor and cried. I cried for her suffering, for not picking up on it, for not being there for her, for her not feeling like she could talk to me about it, for not being able to un-read what I saw. Right there and then I knew what it felt like to feel my heart break. The day after, I went back to uni and was there for a month – keeping this information to myself and not knowing what to do. When I came home again, I finally plucked up the courage to talk to her. I was so scared she would hate me for reading her diary, for snooping, that she wouldn’t let me in. But when I told her that I knew, she just cried and hugged me. She said she was so relieved she finally had someone to share this burden with.

For the next 2-3 years we struggled on. I knew that if I mentioned anything to anyone it would ruin our relationship and she would no longer trust me. She would ring me most days and tell me in detail what – if anything – she had eaten, how much exercise she had done and if she had been sick. For a while I naively thought she was starting to get better, but then in the spring/ early summer 2012 it all started to change. She stopped calling me as often and would no longer tell me what she was eating, her behaviour changed, became more angry, manipulative even malicious at times. I knew that this was her illness and not her, and I could feel her spiralling out of control and day by day as she became more unwell. Our parents started to suspect something was going on and her weight started to plummet. She was barely eating, dog walking for 3-4 hours a day for work, and then spending 2-3 hours in the gym in the evening. If I suggest that she was pushing herself too hard, that she needed to get help it was because I had to love her as I was her sister.

I remember praying to God to find a way to get through to her, because I knew that I was losing my sister, not just emotionally, her body was literally starting to shut down. To edit a long story short, that summer she joined a triathlon club and met a guy and they started dating. After many family rows, and her realising that someone who didn’t ‘have’ to care for her but did anyway, she finally began to see that she needed to get help.

She finally plucked up the courage to go to the GP and ask for help. However when she had her appointment she was told by the Doctor that “Boys don’t like skinny girls” so she should eat more. And that was that. At the time I was furious!! Now with hindsight it no longer makes my blood boil, but I was disappointed that this was so obviously a cry for help, and yet she was met with a stigma and prejudice from a senior health care professional. I now however realise we are all merely human. Fortunately she agreed to go back to a different GP if I went with her and didn’t use that previous consultation as confirmation and encouragement that there was nothing wrong with her! We went and saw an amazing doctor who recognised the severity of the situation straight away and referred my sister to a dietitian. Again to cut a long story short, she found a place for her at an eating disorder clinic as an out-patient, meaning that although clinically she qualified to be admitted as an inpatient, her GP took a risk in keeping her at home as she felt it was the right thing for my sister. Here she was diagnosed with anorexia with bulimic tendencies and at her lowest weighed 5 stone 8. Her GP having the foresight to keep my sister at home paid off incredibly well. Within weeks she was slowly starting to put weight on and within months she started to come back to life. I’ll never forget the day when I realised that I had my sister back, her smile was reaching her eyes again and her laugh was infectious and alive. You’d never have guessed that a few months earlier we nearly lost her. She is now a strong, healthy and passionate young woman, who will always have a daily battle with her mental health but now the difference is that SHE is in control. I have had the honour of running alongside her in mud runs over the last few years and I couldn’t be prouder of her success in her home and work life and in the physical strength she now has.

We were extremely blessed that she responded so well to cognitive behaviour therapy, and as a nurse I am all too aware of how this isn’t a story for a lot of people. For many this struggle continues for a very long time. But I wanted to share a story of hope with you today. And that’s what this journey has taught us; never give up, God answers our prayers (not always on our timescales) and there is always hope even in the darkest times.

Information:

http://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/

https://www.b-eat.co.uk/about-eating-disorders

Instant help:

http://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help-you/contact-us

https://www.b-eat.co.uk/support-services/helpline

Affordable Counselling:

http://www.emmauscounselling.org.uk/index.php

All my love,

God Bless,

Mims

xXx

Who Loves Scrabble?

Published on May 5, 2017April 29, 2017 by ourcreativehavenLeave a comment

Happy happy Friday!

In case you hadn’t noticed yet, I’m a lover of all things floral. Flowers are a lovely way to brighten up my home all year round. My sister has recently moved into a flat with a little garden out the back. It was very plain, a small garden with a lawn of grass. Well I say grass, mainly moss actually! But she has become a right little gardener .She loves it! Tiger have had a section devoted to gardening recently, so I brought her some gardening bits including some seeds and plain wooden plant markers so she wouldn’t forget what she’d planted where. I remember thinking they looked a bit boring! I was then sat looking at my craft scrabble letters and had a little light bulb moment and came up with these lovely little scrabble letter plant signs!

I had a rummage in my parents study and found these old craft lolly sticks. I then painted them green with some chalk paint.

Having already selected some words to create, I began sticking the scrabble letters to the sticks using my glue gun, making sure that I glued the side of the letters too.