packing

Ben and I are moving on Friday - hooray!

As a result I spent most of the weekend indoors packing, which I quite enjoyed. It's nice to rediscover things you haven't seen for a while and take stock of what you've got.

Here are some things that I was pleased to see again... 

Clockwise from top left: Ben makes lovely cards // the naked bike ride 2009 // wonky pigeon // miscellaneous

things I like this February...

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Some more favourite from Pinterest. 

Green and blue and bears and mountains.

Black bear

Some drawing practice from the weekend.

I like bears.

B is for...

We're not hugely into Valentine's day around these parts, but it's nice to do a little something for the one you love, so this year I decided to make some personalised handkerchiefs for Ben.



I got the idea after I borrowed some his other handkerchiefs and misplaced/ruined a couple of them with leaky pens and such, and wanted to replace them with something nice.

This time I'll keep my hands off!

The monograms turned out ok I think - especially as I was free-styling a bit. I like that the hearts are quite wonky. I haven't done much hand embroidery before (can you tell?) but I'd definitely like to try out some more on projects like this.



I hope you all had a nice weekend, whether you were celebrating Valentine's day or not.

We had a pretty quiet one, and went out for a huge roast at the Basketmakers on Sunday. It was delicious!

Paintwork by Ben

As it's Valentine's day I thought I'd share this lovely photo series taken by Ben last Sunday, on a seafront stroll we took along to Hove lagoon. In his words, "Some of the beach huts could do with a lick of paint."

I think they're great! I'm in love with all the colours and textures - especially when you see them together as a set. So pleasing.

You can find Ben on instagram as @benbenbenbenbenbenbenbenben 

watercolour

Here's a shoal of watercolour fish I painted the other day.

I've decided I need to make a determined effort to make some more time for drawing and image-making, and as a start I have signed up to the 'Birds of Prey' wildlife drawing session in Brighton next month.

I'm pretty excited about meeting some falcons and hawks.

potted plants

Remember the avocado seeds we started nurturing way back in the summer?

Well, we finally got round to potting them over the weekend. We probably should have done it a lot sooner, but it's pretty amazing how big these things managed to grow with just some water and the nutrients packed into the seed.



They're pretty bizarre looking really, and weirdly totally different. My one on the left grew very tall and thin - too tall to fit in the photo! - and Ben's is short and thick with little fat leaves. We were wondering if they might be two different kinds of avocado?

I hope they continue to thrive now they're in soil - fingers crossed their leaves keep growing and they start looking a bit less odd.

Here they are all planted, and ready to go back indoors...



Ben's pot was too shallow to cover the seed, so it still looks pretty bonkers. Oh well, it's that kind of gardening experiment I think.