THE CUTER BOOK

I've probably mentioned this before, but when I lived in Glasgow, I used to go to a sewing class on Tuesday afternoons called Say It Ain't Sew led by the wonderful Iona Barker. It's a beginner's class open to anyone, and every week you tackle a little sewing project. And when we visited Scotland last Easter, I managed to squeeze in a little Say It Ain't Sew time! As it was Easter, the project of the day was of course to sew little bunnies, and Iona brought this book, The Cuter Book from Aranzi Aronzo. I made the Haha Bunny and added some googly eyes, and I also got a chance to look through the rest of the book though, and pretty much had to have it. And voila! It is now in my craft book collection.

It's crammed full of super cute little felt animals to sew, and I have so many ideas of things I want to make out of the patterns in this book. I have a few friends who are expecting babies soon, and how cute would a mobile made out of the Birdies or the Munkys be? Or as an applique detail on a dress for my niece? I've been meaning to make her one out of the leftover fabric from when I made this dress (and how cute will we be when we're matching haha). Or, even better, blowing up the patterns and making actual sized teddy bears? Have you guys acquired any good craft books recently?

SEPTEMBER IN INSTAGRAMS

Woosh, September is gone! How did that happen? And crap, it's less than two weeks til Graeme's birthday and I have no idea what to get him yet. Suggestions!?

September highlights include the opening of Nuart Festival 2015, celebrating our first month of marriage, and a lovely weekend at my parents cabin at the South of Norway, where we visited Farsund and had some ice cream in the sunshine. We also bought a New car this month, and obviously had to mark that occasion with some ice cream too. I don't think I ate enough ice cream this summer, so I'm clearly making up for it this autumn.

Plans for October include harvesting the apples and the plums in the garden, cooking lots of roasts like this and this, baking these (need to test out that creme brûlée burner we got for our wedding!), starting my Christmas present making and a weekend trip to Prague! Travel tips are very welcome!

DIANA F+ / BLACK & WHITE

I love black and white film. There's just something so classic about them. Graeme got me some rolls of black and white film for Christmas last year, and I recently got a couple of them developed. These were all taken with my trusty Diana F+, on Kodak Professional Black and White 120 film. Some were taken in Stavanger on a sunny day this spring, and some were taken in our closest dog park in winter, right after it had snowed. You'll notice Bo's wearing her GoPro harness in one of them, as it's from the time we made this film.

The quality isn't the best though, as I had to scan them myself after a bit of an argument at the photo developer's. After nine weeks in the lab (and me calling several times to find out what was happening with my photos), they let me know that scanning my photos and putting them on a disc was too much extra labor to them due to the format and the fact that I'd used a toy camera. So I ended up taking the prints and scanning them myself at home. I really need to find a photo developer that still handles analog film and not just digital. I currently have several exposed films in the fridge that I'm a bit hesitant to go get developed!

AUTUMN KNITTING

Autumn arrived bang on September 1st this year. Today has been a particularly autumn-y day, the kind that's grey and rainy and you can only get through with the help of a cozy jumper and some comfort food. I'm currently curled up under a blanket with the dog, with a cup of tea and my current knitting project. A friend of mine is expecting a baby boy in December, so I'm making him a baby blanket. The pattern is from Pickles and is called Little Star Baby Blanket, the same one I made for my sister's baby last year. The knitting stitch is so pretty and I like how it's pretty quick to make since you use such big needles. I'm using a super soft wool from Drops: Baby Merino in petrol. I love the color and the yarn works really well with the pattern. Hopefully it'll help the little one stay warm over the winter months!

HOW WE SET UP OUR DIY PHOTO BOOTH

I have a really difficult time walking past a photo booth without jumping in and making whoever I'm with take a photo with me. And after seeing one at a wedding fair in Glasgow years ago, it was pretty high up on the dream wedding list. But renting one is pretty expensive, especially if you want one of the cute vintage ones that make photo strips. So we thought about DIYing it, and had grand plans of setting up one of our SLRs on a tripod. It wasn't until we were in a photo booth in Glastonbury that was basically just an iPad with a booth built around it, I realized how easily we could actually do this. 

So this is how we set ours up—super simple and budget friendly (given that you already have an iPad). We already had the tripod and the iPad, so all we needed to get was the app, an iPad mount, and any potential props. For our props, we used a combination of these printable photo booth props, and a couple extra ones our friend Langy designed for us. All we did was print, cut and glue them to some wooden BBQ skewers. We also threw in some temporary tattoos, which were a big hit. Langy designed these too, and we just printed them out on temporary tattoo paper and roughly cut them out. As for the app, we ended up going for an app called DIY wedding, as we really liked the functions and the aesthetic. It's a really easy app to use, where all your photos get saved in a folder (or can be sent directly to a printer if you have wifi), you can lock the iPad from the app to restrict access, and you can customize the border of the photo strips. Graeme designed our borders with our anchor (which was heavily featured in our wedding), the date and the name of our venue.

I’m not entirely sure if I’ll be sticking these in a photo book or displaying them on our walls yet, but as we have all the images stored we can obviously print out however many we like, whenever we like. One thing we are for sure doing though is sending them to our guests. Obviously not everyone used the photo booth, but the ones who did will be receiving their photo strip along with our thank you cards. I mean, who doesn't love a good photo strip?