My Make Do and Mend Year 2012

Now I know My Make Do and Mend Year only started in September, so I can’t really do a review of the year, and I recently did a recap of the best bits after the first 3 months, so I can’t do that. I started doing to do a run-down of all the Makes and Mends so far, but although I was finding it quite interesting, I fear no-one else would have…

SO here are the top 3 Makes, Mends, Make Dos and ThrIfty Finds from My Make Do and Mend Year so far…

MAKES

1. The Great Slipper Make

2. The Monopoly clock we (hubby) made for the Gift Exchange with our new friends at A year without supermarkets

3. All our Christmas decorations, including the now famous (well it did get a mention on Radio 2…) Egg Box Tree!

MENDS

1. Learning to patch BigSmalls trousers, then having to mend the mend, and then having to re-patch it when another hole appeared…!

2. Learning how to mend pulled threads on woolly jumpers-this has proved invaluable, as I seem to have a habit of walking too close to doorframes and catching my jumpers on the door handle catchy things-v.annoying

3. A cross between a mend and a make-my watch strap broke, so I made a new one for it, but in doing so, fixed the watch..!

MAKE DO’S

1. I am sure you are all thoroughly sick by now of the (ongoing) Great Boot Pursuit. I am still searching for that elusive pair, but for now I am Making Do with my charity shop find, that I dyed a more ‘normal’ colour

2. My first ever #Pinaddicts Challenge, that turned into an epic three poster, here, here, and here, trying to work out what to use for lolly moulds…

3. I haven’t blogged about this one, but did post it on the Facebook page and Twitter (you can follow me @makeandmendyear)-SmallSmall needed a winter gro-bag. We had one in the right size that used to be BigSmalls, but it had been nailed by early morning bananas, and various other stains (!). It is clean, but it looks pretty awful, but it is perfectly functional, so we made do!

Pretty grim, but clean!!

THRIFTY FINDS

1. We found both of these on E-bay for my cricket obsessed brother for Christmas, and I just love them. If we hadn’t been doing My Make Do and Mend Year, we would have just bought him something from his list, or the latest cricket autobiography, but we scratched our heads, and came up with something much better (or at least, we think so!)

A copy of the Cricketer magazine from the month and year he was born, and a biography of Les Ames-the only wicket keeper to ever have scored 100 first class 100s..!

2. Not particularly thrifty, but definitley one of our best secondhand buys, is BigSmall’s ‘new’ pedal bike-he LOVES it, and zooms around like a mini Bradley Wiggins…

3. My newfound love of charity shop chic! My wardrobe has never looked so good, and I stepped out of my ‘comfort zone’ and worn things like dresses, that I wouldn’t normally have bought

Me with Gina of The Vintage Fair fame

It’s been a blast. I have honestly loved (nearly) every minute!

Hubby gleefully informed me that he thought we were “over the worst” now that Christmas is done, but I think there’s lots more fun still to come-stay tuned, and don’t forget to sing up for e-mail updates to make sure you don’t miss a moment!!

Thankyou all for reading and following my adventure so far. Please keep on leaving comments-it’s nice to know someone is reading, and I love to hear your thoughts.

What have you enjoyed reading about most so far? What would you like more of-tutorials, day to day musings, rants…?!