Sorting, Cooking and Sewing!

I love January, I find it a real sorting month. It's a month where nothing much happens so you have a little more time than normal to get things sorted, I also like to get things organised in January as it gives me a good start to the year!

This year has been no different, but I'm making some bigger steps in sorting that I hope will be permanent solutions. I bought some little clear bags from ebay, super cheap, and they have revolutionised my sorting!! I bought them to sort my earrings originally. I had them stored horribly and altogether, stones were forever falling out of earrings and getting lost and I knew I had to do something, so now they are all sorted. This is how it all started eeek

Everything now clearly in little bags, and the advantage of this is, if a stone does come lose it does so inside the bag and doesn't get lost YAY!

Back in storage containers but now not all messed up!!

Then I thought hang on this would be great for my buttons too! I do have them in lovely storage jars which look cute but to be honest everytime I look for buttons I have to tip the whole jar out and search for a matching set, so I went through those too! Yes I know they don't look as pretty in the jar now but much easier to find!

I bought these lovely ones the other week, can't bear to remove them from the card yet, well until I use them.

I'd forgotten about these, love them!

Another tip, if you wear vintage clothes, when they drop to bits and are beyond repair, always remove the buttons before disposing of them. These came from a pair of very cute peddle pushers (capris) that would have fallen apart on wear!

If you're looking for novelty type buttons there are some great modern ones around, I bought these intending to make a tropical blouse with Carmen Miranda influence!!

Something else new I'm trying at the moment are some recipes from this book. As you know I'm vegetarian, but I'm not vegan, I don't really have any desire to be vegan but I've heard great things about this book so wanted to give it a try. I'm sharing just in case anyone out there is veggie/vegan and is looking for inspiration.

I highly recommend this, I've made a couple of recipes from this so far and OMG they were both delicious, not to mention healthy and low in fat, in my book that's a winner! Here's one attempt, Black eye peas and greens, with mashed sweet potato, YUM!!!!

And last but certainly not least, I have been saving hard to buy myself an overlocker (serger to my US friends!!) I was so excited when it arrived yesterday, except I didn't have time to set it up or try it until last night. It took me forever to thread it, boy that is complicated and I gave it a test. I'm so excited that my sewing projects will now have a much more professional finish, can't wait to get going. I'm going to play about with it a bit today, I'm brand new to overlocking so I need to learn how to use it properly before I launch into making something, but I'm super excited about it all!!

Right I'm off to play with my overlocker now......

BTW please excuse all my dark pictures, it's so hard to get good pictures in the depths of winter when it's constantly dark!