Everytime I start something new, I can immediately tell if it’s something I’m going to be obsessed with. And this is exactly how it went when I started this “learning to knit” thing of mine!

I’m such a granny, I know, I know! But everything that calls for an endless number of cups of tea, layers of chunky blankets, cosying up and staying warm especially in this cold season, simply has my name written all over it.

You might have seen me featuring this chunky pink yarn in one of my Christmas Gift Guides; well, that was just an excuse to *finally* getting started somewhere, after the longest period spent stalking down all the knitting-themed Instagram profiles.

I actually remember being a fan of knitting and crochet since I was little, and admiring the women in my family for all the lovely works they made back then. When I shot these pictures I was still working on my very first hat, which has now been worn a couple of times already and that I love more than anything! I guess it’s the effect of holding your own finished product in your hands!

And I have now started a new hat already, which I’m even more excited about! But what I love the most, let’s face it, is curling up in the evening in front of a TV series, popping my PJs and chunky socks on and enjoying such a cosy hobby!

I’m not a pro or anything, as you can imagine, but it’s just the relaxing calming environment that makes it all so enjoyable to me. I’m loving Wool And The Gang a lot, for their video tutorials as well as their kits and patterns, but I’ve also just discovered Red Heart and I’m obsessed, so many amazing free patterns for all the skills and all the projects!

You can be sure I’ll soon have a new cosy blanket and, quite certainly, a couple of new mittens too!

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Any other fans of knitting? x

P.S. Make sure you enter my Christmas Giveaway to win lots of Christmassy goodies!

You might remember last year I wrote a feature on Brother and how to implement one of their labellers in your daily life, and today I’m pretty excited to collaborate with them again to bring you four new ways to use a labellers as a personal organizer and try and be creative with it in the meanwhile!

But, really, don’t know if it’s just me, but as soon as I started brainstorming some ideas for this post, I couldn’t really stop! There are just so many things in life that could need labels on, isn’t it?!

As I said, I could have found an endless amount of ways to put my brand new baby blue labeller into good use (think creating little flags with toothpicks to put on top of cupcakes, or labels for your home-baked biscuit tins or to create categories for your beauty storage…) but I’ll limit myself to only show you four creative ideas to transform a Brother labeller into your own personal organizer!

So, if you’re curious, please read on…

Create Your Own Recipe Journal

I have this vivid memory of child-me and my mum in the kitchen, having fun with cake batter and a few recipes from her hand-crafted recipe journal. She always used to say she will pass it on whenever me and my sister will have our own places, to have her recipes always handy!

I’ve always wanted to start my own recipe journal too, and what better occasion to get started than a shiny new labellers to add little notes and fun details to what once was a plain notebook and now is turning into a beautiful custom recipe holder!

I’ve printed a few pictures of my recipes and glued them to their pages to remember what the results look like, and then started writing my very own recipes by hand (because that’s the only way possible!!), taking my time to compile my journal and promising to myself I’ll keep coming back to add more and more! I had so much fun adding little comments with my Brother labeller, or use it to create a fun rating system with its symbols function!

Customize Your Parties

Let’s say you’re throwing a party, whether it’s a grown-up party or something fun for your children and their little friends – you could use your labeller to add little flags with names to the paper straws, to help the guests remember where they left their glass (especially if you’re using actual dishware, you’ll love this little trick that will avoid you to wash an endless number of forgotten glasses)!

Maybe it could be a fun idea to also add a little something to someone’s breakfast in bed or romantic dinner for two! 😉

Organize Your Notes

I don’t know about you, but although my phone has the biggest amount of list-making apps installed, I always find myself grabbing the random piece of paper instead to write down my notes and impromptu ideas whether I’m at home or on-the-go. That’s probably the reason why I love notebooks so much (or not?).

I’ve been using my labeller as an actual personal organizer to create sections in my notebook: with short texts like ‘to-do’ or ‘don’t forget’ or ‘business-related’ quickly printed under my eyes, I can stick random pieces of paper where I’ve written down my notes in a hurry and organize them in my notebook of choice!

I also do love to add pictures in my planners, and of course couldn’t resist adding some more labels with cute little notes and comments!

Organize Your Tech

Sure, the previous three ideas were fun, cute and useful, but this last one is… smart!

I bet you’ve all at least once experienced the drama of looking for a cable to charge one of your (insert infinite number) of mobile devices and cursing at yourself for not being able to find that Kindle charger you are sure you remember how it looked like! Or the annoying situation when your cables all look the same but you have to spend 15 minutes to actually find the one.

The solution is so simple! Use a labeller to print your mobile devices names and stick them to their corrispondent cables, so that next time you’ll be instantly able to identify the one you’re looking for in the pile! Simple, right? Still I don’t know how I haven’t thought about it before!

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Hopefully by now I’ve convinced you you’re desperately needing
a labeller as a personal organizer in your life, ah!
Would love to know if you use labels to organize your home/life/business and how! x

Oh photography! We all love it, one way or another, we all take pictures daily nowadays and have our phones and computers storage full of memories. It’s so absurd to think just a few decades ago people would still rely on films and that a few decades earlier people wasn’t even able to take its own photos as well! This is why I’ll never complain about this digital age (although, I’ll admit, vintage cameras still have their own charm!) but, if I really have to complain about something at all, it would be about the endless list of times a memory card or USB pen broke and the million photos I thought I was safely storing in them went lost forever. Or the huge amount of times phones ended up getting irreparably damaged in the sink, a pool or even a random deep puddle and all my hardly collected memories have perished with them.

I have grown a love for photography in the years, and since the very first time I decided I wanted to see my hard work into physical form, I’ve been obsessed with printing my own photos every now and then. Having your memories stored into something you can hold between your fingertips is something technology can’t really replace. Putting your favourite photos in a photo frame and looking at it everyday, absently or on purpose, can’t really be compared with pinching your way through all the pictures in your iPhone really!

And it doesn’t really matter if they’re Instagram-worthy or what, even the very first pictures I took with my old iPhone 4 crappy camera and printed in polaroid form, they’re still some of my favourites to browse through!

So hopefully, if you haven’t started printing your own pictures just yet, you’ll feel a little bit more motivated to, as today I wanted to share three of my favourite ways to make use of printed photos..!

I purchased this Paperchase Kraft Scrapbook a couple of years ago, bought a black label for the front and hand-written ‘Vol. I’ on it. We bought transparent photo corners and started selecting the pictures that were worth going into the album between the huge amount I had got printed – and let me tell you this, it was (and still is as we still do it every now and then whenever we print new photos) such a fun and sweet couple activity!

We didn’t wanted a proper photo album to start from, but something that gave us freedom to add doodles or notes if we wanted to, or decide on the layout we wanted to go for for each of the pages, and that’s why we went for a scrapbook instead, which I’d highly suggested if you want some more creative freedom!

Keeping a photo album allows us to have our pictures stored in chronological order (and we’re getting around also making labels to organize them by date or periods!) and to be able to browse through them every now and then and smile at them so easily or reminisc of the times that have been so effortlessly captured and printed…

Check out Why You Should Print Your Photos and What to Do With Them

by Giada Correale at Mode

One other thing I love (and should also do more often) is framing pictures. I have this picture of us in the snow from last year on my dressing table in a simple IKEA Photo Frame and it’s seriously the thing I love the most about my room. Just looking at how happy we were in that photos put a huge smile on my face each time!

I also like to pin photos to my mood board or hang them around the room with the help of a clip or two – these, I just switch them around based on the period of the year or on what keeps me motivated during that particular time, but it’s nice to always be able to look at your own personal memories together with your work notes or inspirational cards or illustrations!

And yes, these are my favourite ways to store and use my printed photos at the very moment! I’ve also shared a few more DIY ideas over on Mode this week if you fancy having a peek!

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Would love to know what’s your favourite way to store or make use of your printed photos! x