I can not express my love for Spring weekends at words! There’s nothing more lovely to finally have a sunny weekend day all for yourself after spending the whole week looking forward to it, and enjoying the hours of beautiful light outside doing things that involve nature, soil, fresh flowers, tidying, and all those things that make Spring a refreshing and renewing season!

I don’t really think there’s anyone who doesn’t love Spring as a season anyway, but if you happen to lack on Spring weekend activities ideas for any reasons, I have a nice little list for you to try and get creative outside & inside!

Press flowers

I remember being a little girl and hand-picking my favourite flowers from the garden, only to go inside and keep them safe pressed between the pages of diaries and books. There’s something beautiful into pressed flowers, and it’s something I bet will most likely remind you of your own childhood, and your moms explaining how to preserve flowers like precious memories. But besides taking a trip down memory lane, you can do a lot of things with pressed flowers, like your own custom prints to hang into beautiful frames on your wall, or phone cases or patterns for any purposes really!

Tidy & change things

If you’re after that classic Spring refreshing and renewal feeling but going outside it’s not in your plan, try tidying your house, or moving your furniture around or changing things up! I know, it sounds a boring Sunday plan, but with the time I’ve come to enjoy a bit of spring cleaning: nothing can beat the refreshed feeling you’ll be left with right afterward, and you’ll be ready to start the new week with a whole lot of positive energies!

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What are your Spring weekends looking like so far?! x

** Don’t forget to enter my Stationery Giveaway! Only one day left!

When I started my first blog years ago, I wanted it to be all about easy craft and DIY little projects as I was going through a period of my life where I was giving vent to my creativity by creating the easiest yet cutest DIY jewelry, homeware and all kinds of crafts really! Many years and a pair of blogs later, my initial purpose totally went lost along the way and, apart from some quick and easy ideas, I rarely share DIY projects on the internet anymore. It is quite sad to say, but the times when I used to spent hours in local craft stores shopping for glitters, tape, coloured paper and beads is now over, and yet I’m a creative deep inside, so when I was introduced to Sykes Cottages Simple Craft Guide, a beautifully illustrated guide put together by different talented craft bloggers, that easily guide you through the cutest and simplest craft projects, I saw my inner crafter being very excited about trying my hands at something new!

This isn’t my first time at attempting to make a candle from scratch, yet it’s actually the first real time the whole project turned out practically perfect! I remember doing my own researches about DIY scented candles and trying my best at making the wick stand by itself, yet it was a total failure, because both I didn’t really have nose for mixing scents that complemented each other and the handmade wick wasn’t exactly perfect… I decided to meet the challenge and give it another try, this time with proper equipment and an easy guide to follow that made it all a piece of cake!

Melting the wax and adding essential oils and wax dye is the fun part! What I did wrong before and that I’ve learned now, is that once the wax has melted down completely, it’s important to turn off the heat and let the wax cool down for a minute or so before adding the scents and colours. Also, the trick for a neat result is to use a funnel (and it’s something so obvious but of which I’ve never thought of!) and to make the wick standing by itself, it’s just necessary to leave the wax cool down a bit more until it starts turning opaque and cloudy. Lastly, you’ll be surprised by the amount of drops of essential oils you’ll need to add to actually make your candle smell intensely!

I made a pair of different candles with different colours and scents, but my favourites have to be the white coconut candle that looks so neat in my IKEA 365+ Glass, and the tropical fruits (a mix of mango, caribbean berry, melon and sweet rum) blue candle that looks and smells like a tropical cocktail!

By mixing the wax dye a little less and not letting it melt completely, I was able to achieve a speckled effect with my smaller candle, which looks pretty lovely too!

Simple Crafts: A Guide for Beginners features other five easy DIY tutorials that are thought to be simple to make, require inexpensive and low equipment and be ideal to make at home, on holidays or when you’re away, and they’re one cuter than the other! If you are itching for learning some new skills, I’d highly recommend giving it a peek!

Have you ever made your own candle? Or are you going to give it a try?

* THANKS TO SYKES COTTAGES FOR SPONSORING THIS POST *

None of my thumbs are green, seriously, and I might be the least appropriate person to write a gardening tips post, but one thing I’ve learned this last few years, is that a green thumb can surely be grown! Plants I was buying used to die after only a pair of weeks and fresh flowers to be everything but fresh in less than two days, but thanks to a few tips I’ve learned these past few years, I’ve build quite a nice little indoor amount of greenery lately. I love the look of fresh flowers in clear vases around the house, as well as a touch of green here and there, it really brightens up the rooms and make them look more alive – and it’s actually being very easy to take care of them all lately that I feel my green thumb might actually have grown a bit!

I bet I’m not the only one who didn’t know where to begin with taking care of a green living being, so, even if I’m no expert at all, it might be useful to some of you to learn about those little tips that improved my plants and flowers life for the better! Now that spring is on its way, from a green thumb dummy to other dummies that want to grow a bit of indoor greenery, here is my fuss-free guide to keep plants alive for more than a pair of weeks!

1 :: Polish and cut your flowers.
This makes a huge difference. When you buy a bunch of fresh flowers, don’t simply dust off an old jar and put the flowers in there without ever worrying about it anymore. If you don’t want to be bothered with taking care of them, simply don’t even buy any! But instead, if you do like the look of fresh flowers on your dining table, take each flower and polish them by removing the leaves that might be broken or dry (which will only steal nourishment from the flowers which are what you *really* want to keep alive) and especially the ones at the bottom. It not only helps with obtaining an aesthetically cleaner and neater result, but will make your flowers last a lot more. Also cut a pair of inches of their stalks away with an oblique cut, and once done, cut the stalk a few inches up vertically. This will maximize the exposure of the stem to water and nourishment for the flower!

2 :: Create a nourishing and disinfectant solution.
While filling your vase with water, try adding a tablespoon of white sugar and a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar to it. Mix well until both have completely dissolved in the water! The sugar will nourish the flowers and keep them beautiful, whereas the vinegar will make the solution disinfectant!

3 :: Change the water!
The water solution has to be changed every day or every other day! This is the best trick to make your flowers last longer. I used to forget about this, but now that I try and remember it, I was able to see my tulips as beautiful as when I bought them for more than a week!

4 :: Pick cactus and succulents instead!
If you’re not the best at taking care of greenery, instead of going for plants that require a lot of cares, try picking cactus and succulents! I love how little succulents look on my desk, they add a little bit of life to it and everything feels much more spring-like, plus cactus and succulents have to be watered only once a week in spring and summer, and only once a few weeks in autumn and winter, which reduces the commitment to the minimum!

5 :: Don’t throw away your bulbs!
I’ve bought a little plant of daffodils last year and I loved seeing the flowers come to life once a week, but it didn’t last too long and once the flowering has finished, all the leaves and flowers dried out and everything looked quite dead! But fear not, bulbs can be kept with minimum (if not none) cares until the next year, and they will grow again! So don’t throw away your bulbs, you can keep them in their vase and leave them there during summer and winter, and comes springtime, your flowers will bloom all over again – just remove the dead leaves and water once a week if the topsoil is dry in spring!

That’s it! Those are the little tips that changed my plants and flowers life for good! If you have other beginner tips for me, I’d love to hear about them! x