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A DIY Springtime Centrepiece

Joining our step into spring series today is the lovely Sheridan from Sheridan Anne, a home organisation, crafting, DIY and family centred blog. Sheridan has a “ready-made family”, is super knowledgeable on all things de-cluttering to sort out your life. She’s also pretty handy with a glue gun, a sewing machine or some pliers and loves scouting for a good bargain!

Step into spring with this easy do-it-yourself springtime centrepiece from Sheridan Anne, isn’t it just gorgeous!

A DIY Springtime Centrepiece

Thank you so much for having me Hope. I just love Spring. The “in-between” seasons are my favourite. I don’t know about you, but the warmer months bring a lot more entertaining, barbecues, and celebrations for my family. It seems to bring us all together.

This year I have been focusing on organising one area of my life and home at a time. I’ve been so successful at de-cluttering that I’m finally getting into the fun part; decorating around my house! I really wanted to make something different to decorate my outdoor table, something that no one else would have.

That’s how I decided to make this Springtime Centrepiece.

YOU’LL NEED:

Candle Mirror
Cake Stand Lid/Bell Jar
Floral Wire
Faux Flowers
Needle Nose Pliers

NOTE:

As an alternative to making your own wreath, you could purchase a crown of flowers from a cheap jewellery store to use instead. If you decide to go this route, you can pretty much skip to the seventh step, and it turns this 15 minute project into a 2 minute project!

TO MAKE:

1. Clip the ends of your flowers with the pliers so that they are separated from one another (not too short, you’ll want part of the stem to fix each flower into place).

2. Cut a bunch of 15cm lengths of floral wire with the pliers and put aside for when needed.

3. Begin arranging the flowers how you’d like them to display. I started by leaving some stems long and shaping them into a semi-circle then building on that basic structure.

4. Wrap other flowers around each other’s stems. If the wire in the stem of the flower isn’t strong enough to hold, this is where you will need to start twisting floral wire around the arrangement to hold it in place. Use your judgement on which areas need to be held by wire and which don’t need to be.

5. Continue this process until you make it all the way around the wreath. Once you are done, fill in any gaps with extra flowers. Wrap the structure in floral wire to secure all of the stems.

6. Wipe down your mirror and glass ware.

7. Place the wreath upside down into the bell jar or cake stand lid, followed by the mirror upside down.

8. Turn the whole thing the right way and place on the table.

Bonus points if you happen to have a cute little critter to join in on your centrepiece – I got this wire bird <<here>> from Kmart for $4!

| “And there you have it – a cute and unique Springtime Centrepiece that will brighten any table.”

I hope you enjoy this simple and effective project. If you’re inspired, why not put a little spring into your step and give this a go for your outdoor table. And don’t forget that to share with us your photos, tag Nanny Shecando and Sheridan Anne in your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Google+ photo. Share your step into spring tips with the hashtag #stepintospring! Thanks for having me Hope!

To see more #stepintospring posts from Sheridan Anne, <<click here>> to head over and check out her caddy of homemade cleaners to help you get ready for the big spring clean!

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Step into spring with this easy do-it-yourself springtime centrepiece from Sheridan Anne, isn’t it just gorgeous! Celebrating the arrival of spring all week on the blog. Featuring some great “step into spring” tips to ease you into the new season, with favourites from Money Mummy, Mums Take Five, Sheridan Anne, and Hunting For Lady Bugs.You’ll surely be inspired to put a little spring into your step! Join us, and tweet your favourite spring themed posts using #stepintospring.

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The Step Into Spring Series:

Welcome To Spring
5 Ways To Spring Clean Your Finances
Spring Crafts: Pipe Cleaner Flowers
5 Easy Ways To Sort Out Your Superannuation For Spring
Chickpea Zucchini & Mint Patties Recipe
Spring Cleaning: A Caddy Of Homemade Cleaners

Spring Crafts: Pipe Cleaner Flowers

To continue the Step Into Spring series, I’m excited to bring you super easy spring crafts to do with the kids. Many of us use the arrival of spring to clean up our lives; to re-gather and re-order. But I also see it as a great opportunity to revamp some old craft projects, to go about your day at home with the kids with renewed energy. This Pipe Cleaner Flower Craft from Mums Take Five is exactly the kind of step into spring crafts I’m after these days – pretty, creative, engaging, but also easy! And with the toddler almost ready to enjoy a few more craft activities, it’s also safe and relatively young toddler friendly.

Pipe Cleaner Spring Flowers

These are quick, fun and mess free! They’re also perfect for some easy kiddy entertainment – a big win in my books. Plus, you only need pipe cleaners!

YOU’LL NEED:

Pipe cleaners – really, that’s all you’ll need!

TO MAKE:

Petals | start my making the petals of the flowers by wrapping one pipe cleaner around your finger. Careful, not too tight!

Stamen | next you’ll want to make the centre Stamen part. For this, I use half a pipe cleaner. You can wrap it around your finger and it fits neatly in between the petals. Or you can wind it up like a snail. To attach the snail to the petals, leave the end unwound and feed it through the middle and tie on.

Leaves | make a stem and leaf by folding a loop into a green pipe cleaner 2/3 of the way down, and then tie onto the back of the flower.

| “Pop them into a little vase or glue them onto paper and you have some lovely spring flowers!”

step into spring, pipe cleaner flowers, mums take five

For more spring fun, Mums Take Five has a great spring Chick Pea Zucchini and Mint Pattie recipe over on their blog. #stepintospring

At Mums Take Five, they’re all about taking five minutes for themselves. Which as busy mums, this can be easier said than done. But if you’re looking for something to cook, a quick answer, a craft to do with the kids or somewhere to spend a few minutes with a cup of coffee, Mums Take Five is the place for inspiration!

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The Step Into Spring Series:

Welcome To Spring
5 Ways To Spring Clean Your Finances
5 Easy Ways To Sort Out Your Superannuation For Spring {Money Mummy}
Spring Crafts: Pipe Cleaner Flowers
Chick Pea Zucchini & Mint Fritters {Mums Take Five}

We’re celebrating the arrival of spring all week on the blog. Featuring some great “step into spring” articles to ease you into the new season, with favourites from Money Mummy, Mums Take Five, Sheridan Anne, and Hunting For Lady Bugs. You’ll surely be inspired to put a little spring into your step! Join us, and tweet your favourite spring themed posts using #stepintospring.

5 Ways To Spring Clean Your Finances

OK. I’ve got to be honest with you here. Finances are truly not my strong point. I can do the maths, I can allocate the money, and I surely love money! Don’t we all right? Well, for the 5 seconds we hold it in our bank accounts before it goes back out to bill payments anyways! But managing it, budgeting, financial forecasts, and organising my super? Well, it all just sounds a bit too much like gibberish to me. And if often gets puts aside in the too-hard basket. Sorry Shelley, I know you’re cringing at me right now! So to kick the Step Into Spring series off, today I’ve got the lovely Shelley from Money Mummy here to share 5 key tips for spring cleaning your finances. Money Mummy is our resident financial adviser, and once saw herself as a female “Gordon Gecko” working as a stock market analyst. Now Money Mummy prefers to help you make the most of your money, whilst playing with her kids and juggling the Financial Review.

5 WAYS TO SPRING CLEAN YOUR FINANCES

Spring has sprung!!! However, spring cleaning is not just about attacking those wardrobes over-flowing with clothes you just don’t wear, or the hall closet full of random things that you never touch. Your finances need some attention too, and spring is the perfect time. So here are 5 simple things you can do to spring clean your finances.

(1) Boost your income

There are lots of ways to boost your income, but one of my faves is making sure I am getting all my entitlements from the government. For this I use the Centrelink Payment Finder – it is fast and alerts me to payments that I might be eligible for. Also, I like to do an unclaimed money search. It takes all of 20 seconds and is completely free. Potentially it could find you any lost bank accounts, shares or life insurance policies that you might have forgotten about.

(2) Get your tax done

I know, I know, no-one likes to think about tax. Not even me! However, if you are not using a registered tax agent, then your tax for last financial year is due on the 31^st of October, 2014. I used the new site myGov to do mine. It has hardly any questions compared to e-tax and most things were prefilled – yippee!!! It was super fast, easy and convenient. To check if you can do your tax on myGov click here.

(3) Consolidate your super

Don’t feel bad if you have more than one super account, pretty much everyone does. Apparently there are roughly 3 superannuation accounts for every working Australian. So you’re not the only one! Consolidating is way easier than you think. Just go to the Australian Tax Offices SuperSeeker site and you will be able to consolidate your accounts online – no paper involved! So look into consolidating your accounts, it is easy, free, and it will save you on fees. That means more money for your retirement.

(4) Do a budget

Oh! I hear you groan. Don’t worry, I understand! But the truth is that a budget does not have to be a complicated scary beast. In fact, I used the MoneySmart website’s free budget planner and it was dead easy to get my budget done. If you want to check out the planner click here.

(5) Revisit your insurance

Revisit your policies: do you have enough insurance? Have your circumstances changed? Are you getting the best deal for you and your family? Insurance is not just a case of ‘set and forget’. Things change and when the worst happens and you really need it, you want to be sure that you are covered.

| “So when you are finished spring cleaning your cupboards, take these easy steps to give your finances a spring clean too!”

Thanks for having me Hope! It was fun hanging out with you all over at Nanny She Can Do. If you liked this post come on over and check me out at Money Mummy, where there are plenty more money tips. For more in the spring series, have a look at 5 Easy Ways To Sort Out Your Superannuation For Spring. See you soon!

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The Step Into Spring Series:

5 Easy Ways To Sort Out Your Superannuation For Spring {Money Mummy}
Step Into Spring: Praying For Rain

We’re celebrating the arrival of spring all week on the blog. We’ll be featuring some great “step into spring” posts to ease you into the new season, with favourites from Money Mummy, Mums Take Five, Sheridan Anne, and Fresh Home Cook. You’ll surely be inspired to put a little spring into your step! Join us this week if you like, and tweet us your favourite step into spring themed posts using #stepintospring.

Step Into Spring Series

Guess what! I wasn’t sure it would ever happen here on the blog, but it is. Heads up, I’m about to talk about the weather!

Spring is here and it’s time to awaken your senses from a long, cold winter. Then again, if you’re in Sydney at the moment, you might not be convinced it’s really spring just yet. I was lucky enough to escape to the country side this weekend. We ventured out of a cold and rainy Sydney on Friday morning to hit the roads en route to a family wedding in country NSW. And to mark the beginning of spring, we’ve enjoyed absolutely spectacular spring weather. Lovely warm sunny days, blue skies, and crisp evenings – just perfect really.

It was a lovely spring wedding, and so great for us city siders to embrace the country music and simpler living (I really could get used to the country hospitality and delightful manners). We were very lucky that the wet Sydney weather hadn’t followed us. Although, I don’t think anyone would have been too upset if it had!

So many farmers out here are desperate for rain. Desperate to be able to feed their animals, and to feed their family. We drove for hours along fields that are barren and crumbly, and saw many natural catchment lakes that have long since dried up. All too often we saw farmers throwing food off the truck to feed hungry stock. For some, they haven’t sewn a crop of wheat in over two years, not seen rain in parts for two years, and for some, it’s a hefty $20, 000 a week just to feed their stock to keep the value in tact. And they’re the fortunate ones, not everyone can hang in there and play the waiting game.

I pray that they get some much-needed rain very soon! Hopefully the arrival of spring will also bring some good fortune.

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STEP INTO SPRING

Spring is a wonderful time of year. There are new baby animals scrambling about after their mothers, birds chirping in the tress, flowers brightening up drab gardens and plant life pushing its way up through cold once frost-bitten soil. Spring is the time to makeover your garden, to clean up your finances, to re-set your bad habits and to cleanse the winter cobwebs. It’s also a great opportunity to engage the kids in some hands on outdoors activities. Why not step into spring and spring clean your kids routines, to embrace long drawn-out afternoons outdoors, to allocate some chores around the house, and try out a few spring themed craft DIYs.

On the blog this week, we’re celebrating the arrival of spring. We’ll be featuring some great “step into spring” posts to ease you into the new season, with favourites from Money Mummy, Mums Take Five, Sheridan Anne, and Fresh Home Cook. You’ll surely be inspired to put a little spring into your step!

Join us this week if you like, and tweet us your favourite “step into spring” themed posts using #stepintospring.

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What’s your favourite part about spring? Do you have any baby animals about to make an appearance?

Lilac And Gold New Season Kikki.K

Seeing as it’s been book week and all things literature based here on the blog (in my opinion truly one of the best times of the year), I’ve been thinking about how I can better organise my bookshelves. Namely with the lilac and gold new season Kikki.K range.

Our 2nd bedroom is currently being used as a makeshift music room, library, craft room and guest bedroom. It’s the ultimate slashie. Because we haven’t decided on the decor, and we can’t seem to agree on how we’d like it to be arranged, we’ve left it be. And so it’s become a sort of dumping ground for all things non-essential.

Now that I’m setting up my own business, it’s also become a home office. Except the only resemblance to an office is that the desk is covered in scattered papers and there’s an overflowing pile of receipts to either be filed away or shredded. It’s a mess.

So when the Kikki.K emails pop into my inbox, my eyes tend to gloss over and I always start to get a bit dreamy. Oh wouldn’t it be nice to have an office fitted out by Kikki K, all nicely organised and with everything in its rightful place. And with their new “Live Bright” Season Collection of purples, pinks and gold – it’s as if it was meant to happen!

I have an office just begging to be renovated and reorganised into a purposeful space that’s a hub for creativity and inspired work.

Here’s what I’m drooling over at the moment.

Fall in love with lilac & gold leather you say? Oh I have Kikki.K, well and truly fallen!

Right, I’m off to stock up on supplies. But before I do, I guess I better get things tidied up first.

Have you got a home office set up? Do you like things tidied and well organised? Or like me, do you often find things get away from you and the piles of paper get out of control?

image credits: kikki.k