Making, photographing and writing posts about all these candles, lanterns and pretty things is a lovely escape from more urgent matters such as emergency plumbers, the computer screen message 'your hard drive is about to fail', avoiding fallen trees and salting icy paths, ordering and stacking more logs, replacing greenhouse glass broken in the gales....winter here is hard work at present!

I blogged about these lanterns last year, but that was before the 'blog hop' www.thriftyhousehold.co.uk so I hope it's worth repeating.

You take a few tin cans, fill them with water and put them in the freezer till solid (or just out the back door here today).

Then with a hammer and a nail you punch holes in a pattern, which you can mark with a felt pen first.

I found the easiest way to manage this was to sit on the doorstep holding the can between my feet.

Nine year old Ross helped make these ones.

The photographs were taken in the bitter cold, so are slightly out of focus!














If you were really patient and had saved up lots of tin cans, you could put a letter on each to spell out someone's name or a message....

Making something on the beach or in a park or a wood with what is already there is fun, and creative.

I sometimes make 'North Points' (essentially arrows pointing to the north) when on holiday or out on a walk.

This is part of one.

Sometimes if you go back to one you find that someone has added to it.

Simple fun..