Win! Josie Jeffery's Seedswap (closed)
Competition time! We've got 5 copies of Josie Jeffery's Seedswap to give away.
In her Seedswap guide, Josie introduces the exciting new global seed swapping movement, looks at why plant heritage is so important and gives us plenty of advice on how to go about getting involve!
We've got 5 shiny new copies to give away! Click over to our competition homepage to enter.
P.S. If you're already embracing the seed swapping spirit, this year's
will be taking place on Saturday 20 October at Wakehurst. Pop over to the
for more info!
How to make your own butter
At The Simple Things, we think that sometimes it's worth putting a little extra effort in to make something everyday a little more special.
With that in mind, take a peek at this recipe for homemade butter at Longest Acres. The instructions require no specialist equipment and are so simple, they made us wonder why we'd never tied this before.
We're planning on having a go at this when we next have a free hour. We're daydreaming of toasted English muffins spread with butter made with our own fair hands, eaten tucked up in bed on a lazy weekend morning. Totally idyllic.
Issue 1 : reader photos!
The Simple Things went to press last week - can you believe it?!
We're still buzzing from the launch, and could not be more pleased about all your amazing comments! Loads of you have been sharing pics of yourselves getting into the Simple Things spirit - taking time out to do some crafting, baking (our raspberry brownies especially proved to be a massive hit!) or get back to nature. Here are a few of our favourites.
Keep 'em coming on our Facebook and Twitter pages, we love to see what you're up to!
Thanks to (deep breath) ...Caroline Madaher, Miss Leoniest, My Red Wellies, Betherina, Jody Richardson, House Mouse, Madeline Norris, Poppy Sakulku, Bella and Will, Kate Helen Carter, Forest Flower 23 and Jayne Lynch for your photos.
How to make origami cranes
How lovely are these little origami cranes?
This weekend, we'll be taking some time out to folding up a mini flock from mismatched papers, and stringing them up with some bright thread. So simple and so pretty.
Pop over to the Penelope and Pip website for a free paper crane printable.
Illustrated Bites
When Heather Diane's herb illustrations popped up on our Pinterest feed earlier this week, we instantly fell in love. Californian artist Heather combines her love of food with her talent for drawing to create quirky illustrated guides to all of her favourite foodstuffs.
Our favourites are her latest edible flower design and super-pretty herb guide . Check out heather's website for more illustrated loveliness.
Mollie Makes Christmas book - reader offer!
Have you heard? The Simple Things' big sister Mollie Makes has put together their very own Mollie Makes Christmas book!
Mollie Makes Christmas is filled with cute craft projects for the festive period, designed exclusively by regular Mollie Makes contributors especially for you. Whatever your craft of choice, there are ideas to decorate your home or give as gifts, all with the loveliness you'd expect from your fave craft mag!
Mollie Makes Christmas is out on 4th October in the UK, but pre-order now and enter code Mollieloves at the checkout to get your copy for just £7.00 (it's usually £9.99)!
Click here to pre-order your copy now.
Wordless Wednesdays ... afternoon tea
By Alice Gao at Lingered Upon.
Etsy love : Good Intent
You'll know from our Canopy and Stars post a couple of weeks ago that we're big fans of camping. The latest items to make our holiday lust-list are these beautiful handmade sleeping bags.
The handiwork of Etsy seller Good Intent (geddit?), we have a whole lot of love for their lush fabric combos and wriggle-friendly shape. We might have missed the camping-appropriate weather window for this year, but these unzip into a lightweight quilt, which makes them perfect for visitors during the colder months.
Vegetable of the month ... courgette
Champion of the veggie patch this month is the courgette. Join us as we round up our fave recipes for you to get stuck in to...
Kicking off our collection is Gourmande in the kitchen's raw courgette ribbon salad which we'll be trying out while there's still a little summer warmth in the air.
This salad was born when garden-less blogger Sylvie offered to help take some home-grown courgettes off her friends' hands - what a good Samaritan! We love that it requires barely any ingredients. A little dressing, some crunchy pine nuts and crumbled goats' cheese are all that's needed to make the courgette shine.
When the weather starts getting a little chillier, Cafe Johnsonia's spicy courgette wedges will be just the thing to warm us up. Blogger Lindsey 'made this up as she went along' and assures us that we can do just the same. We're thinking cumin, garlic and a little paprika...mmm...
Finally, we had been hunting out courgette cake recipes for this post, but when we came across this beautiful harvest cake on Roost we just had to share it with you. This recipe combines courgette with apple and carrot, and is sweetened with honey and vanilla cream. We think it'll taste as wonderful as it looks.
Do you have any favourite courgette recipes? Share 'em below!
Remember to check out the rest of our vegetable of the month series.
Welly boot liner DIY
It's half-way through September now and we can't ignore it any more ... we've officially reached autumn.
We might be waving goodbye to the sunshine for a while, but it's definitely not all bad. Autumn means blackberries and apples, brightly coloured leaves and blustery strolls in the countryside.
Combat the nip in the air and the drizzly days with these welly boot liners from H is for Handmade. We especially like her clever scarf upcycling for the turnovers.
Do our readers have any ideas for autumn craft projects? We'd love to hear from you!
Limited edition seed packets from The Balcony Gardener
We loved chatting to our favourite city gardener, Isabelle Palmer, for our interview in issue 1 of The Simple Things, so we were mega-excited when we heard she was designing exclusive seed packets for her shop.
These b-e-a-utiful limited edition seed packets come in edible flower garden, butterfly garden, wildflower garden and scented garden varieties. Which is your favourite?
P.S. Keep an eye out in next month's The Simple Things for a sneaky appearance from Isabelle's gorge designs ...
Book launch : The Sprouted Kitchen
For a little while now, the top food blogs have been buzzing with excitement over the latest cookbook to hit the shelves - The Sprouted Kitchen, by blogger / author Sara Forte and her talented photographer husband Hugh.
The Sprouted Kitchen has a very similar attitude to food as The Simple Things - in their own words, the book collects together 'ideas for cooking with seasonal produce, and simple, tasty, wholesome dishes for family and friends'.
If you want a bit more a vibe of that it's about, check out the Happy Yolks blog, where there is an absolutely gorgeous little video to accompany the book.
Wordless Wednesdays ... late summer lunch
By Susk + Banoo.
Win! A Simple Things goodie bag (archived)
In honour of our launch party last week, we put together exclusive goodie bags filled with The Simple Things loveliness to give to each of our guests.
We managed to hide 3 away, and now we're giving you the chance to win a The Simple Things goodie bag!
Lucky winners will recieve -
* Issue 1 of The Simple Things (of course!)
* Notebook with gorgeous illustrated cover by Gabrielle Treanor
* Bookmark featuring our inside cover design by the talented Melanie Cook at Spoonflower
* Wooden crochet hook
* Packet of seeds from Allotinabox
* Set of The Simple Things postcards, featuring photography from the mag
* Tree identifier poster courtesy of New Holland publishers
All packaged up in an exclusive Simple Things canvas tote!
Pretty cool, right? Click over to our competition homepage to enter.
P.S. The eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed that there is a cake in the photo. Sadly, these would have gone off by now, so we had to eat all the spares. We're very sorry.
Vertical pallet planter DIY
We’d all love to have acres of space outside our back doors – giant lawns where we can sit out for breakfast, embark on elaborate landscaping projects and perhaps host a small football match.
Sadly, as our city-dwelling readers will know, this isn't always a possibility. Which is why we love Fern Richardson so much. Her blog (and book), Life on the Balcony, is a haven of tricks and tips for those of us who only have a small space to work with but still want to get a little mud under our fingernails.
One of her most genius ideas is this vertical pallet planter DIY. It ticks all the boxes of a good small-scale gardening project - easy to do, looks great and takes up barely more ground space than a plant pot. If you make like Fern and hunt out a second hand pallet, it’s dirt cheap too!
Do any of our readers have useful ideas for making the most of small gardening spaces that they’d like to share? We’re always on the hunt for inspiration!
Cool camping at Canopy and Stars
‘Camping’ and ‘luxury’ are not two words that often go hand in hand. Don't get us wrong, we're big fans of getting back of nature, but for all this chat of ‘glamping’, in our heart of hearts we know a floral Cath Kidston tent and beribboned Hunter wellies do not an indulgent getaway make. And yet … when we stumbled upon the Canopy and Stars website, we were more than ready to eat our words. The Bristol based company hunts out exceptional, eco-friendly camping places, cabins and tree-houses.
All Canopy and Stars' destinations manage to couple unmistakable luxury with a sense of adventure that has our inner child hopping with excitement (did we mention there are tree-houses?). Wood-burning stoves, sofas and iron bedsteads, these are tents unlike any tent we’ve seen before.
Click over to the Canopy and Stars website to plan your next getaway, or simply gawp at the photos.
The Simple Things launch party
On Wednesday night was The Simple Things official launch party. We've been twittering on about it for so long, we thought we better share some snaps with you! So here goes - see who you can spot ...
The venue - the coolest cheese shop in London, La Fromagerie. We knew we were in for a treat from the moment the delicious cheesy aroma hit the cab as we pulled up!
The Simple Things team ready to meet, greet, mingle and generally announce our new magazine in style. Do we scrub up okay?
Lucky guests each recieved a cool canvas tote filled with sweet eats, beautiful stationery and other Simple Things loveliness.
Psst... we managed to save a few precious goodie bags for those of you who couldn't be there, so keep your eyes peeled for your chance to win one very soon!
Our talented marketing team helped us put our stamp on the gorgeous venue.
You can't have cheese without a bit of vino!
'The Cheese Room' proved a surprise hit with mini-tours from an incredibly knowledgeable La Fromagerie employee (we're calling him the cheese guru).
Bloggers, producers, crafters and writers got their first peek of the new mag.
La Fromagerie came up trumps with the best. snacks. ever. Diets out of the window all round.
Pause for a quick speech ...
... and then it was time to let our hair down!
Finally, a cheeky cup of tea to round off the night.
... and so to bed.
The Simple Things - your snaps
In the run up to the Simple Things magazine launch, we've loved hearing all your feedback.
Turns out, one of our simple pleasures is reading your excited comments on Facebook, receiving Tweets saying that you were running to check your post to see if your copy had arrived, and stumbling upon lovely mentions on our fave blogs.
When UK subscribers started getting their first issue in the post, you all took to social media to share pics of how you'd be enjoying your new mag! We loved your snaps so much, we've collected some of the best reader cover photos for you to see.
Must dash now ... we have a launch party to get ready for!
P.S. Thanks to Kimberley Hall, Sharp & Noble, Laura Tanser, Dragonfly, Lucy Kennedy, Suzie Williams, Lisa Wright, Caroline Noble, and Make Do Sew for their photos!
Shop love: The Shop at Number 57
The Simple Things readers, meet The Shop at Number 57. It's our new fave online home store, and its bursting with old, new and revamped treasures.
The Shop at Number 57 is the brainchild of interiors stylist Marie, graphic designer Simon and their dog Dudley. Their home (at, you guessed it, number 57) became a little too full up of flea market gems and antiques fair finds and the rest is history.
Our pick of the shop? Vintage chemistry flasks re-imagined as quirky vases (genius) and monochrome cross stitch kits, in which embroidery gets a modern make-over.