I listened to a very interesting podcast the other day about the process of choosing what gets put on commemorative stamps. It was US centric show, but I’m guessing that the procedure is pretty much the same over .

What impressed me most was the passion and the importance that the postal service puts into its stamps. Real thought and enthusiasm goes into it, and the whole thing certainly made me stop and think about an aspect of day to day life that I’d previously pretty much overlooked.

Now, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed – but there seems to be some sort of giant sports day event thing planned for this summer down in London.

It’s pretty unsurprising that with the London 2012 Olympics coming up the Royal Mail are issuing an Olympic themed set of stamps this year. However what is rather more unexpected is the innovative way in which they are doing it.

For the first time in history the Royal Mail will be issuing stamps in real time! (well…the next day anyhow – but that’s pretty good for the post office).

Every time the Great Britain team get a gold medal the Royal Mail will issue a stamp featuring an action shot of the Gold Medallists putting in the winning performance. These will then be printed up by lunchtime the next day and sent to a selected 500 special post offices for the public to buy, with the stamps then being rolled out to a further 4500 post offices later on during the games.

In addition to this Be The First set, the Royal Mail will issue a set of stamps to commemorate the Paralympics games too – which is something I very much approve of as I feel that the Paralympics are far more representative of the true Olympic spirit.

So if you’d like to be amongst the first to get your hands on these special Olympic stamps then you can Register your interest now on their website. If you do so you also get a handy dandy presentation folder. Marvelous stuff!

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Hey you! Yes you!!

If you’d like to follow my summerhouse making efforts further, or even follow my gardening exploits in general why not go to my brand new gardening blog Cabbage Dan!

Go on, you know you want to!

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I’m reaching a point now in my pallet summerhouse project where I’m waiting for things to arrive before I can do move forward. Mainly the windows, which will be arriving tomorrow (hopefully).

I could of course leave gaps where the windows are to go – but I’ve got a suspicion if I did that then they would end up not fitting and I’d have to take everything to bits again.

Still, I hav made some progress. I managed to put another level of pallets up on the back wall. Of course after I did this I started thinking I’d made it too tall. After a brief battle with my laziness gene I decided that if I left it like it was it’d just irritate me – and so sawed about 25cms off the top.

Oh yes, this project’s all about the meticulous planning and pinpoint accuracy.

Through good fortune I’ve actually got this next week off work, and so am hopefully planning to get a good chunk of the summerhouse built over the next few days. Providing the weather holds up that is.

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Day two of my efforts to win Ronseal’s “I Did It!” contest on behalf of The Joseph Salmon Trust and construction has begun (ably assisted by my daughter too!)

I’ve quickly learned that the trick to building sheds with pallets is that to use ones that are as uniform as possible. The other trick is to have the flexibility to let the pallets dictate the design of the project, rather than rigidly impose your own design on the pallets.

I’m pretty sure it would be useful to have some DIY skills as well, but two out of three ain’t bad.

As might have noticed on the photo I’m cheating a little bit with this recycled summerhouse in that I’ve actually bought a few new bits of wood from Wicks. I’m like one of those vegetarians that still eat fish and chicken.

I’m sure that given enough time I’d be able to scavenge long enough bits of wood for corner posts and roof slats, but because there is a deadline for the contest I’ve decided to reduce my stress levels and just buy them new. I’ve also bought some windows too – but these are second-hand so still count as recycled in my book.

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While I’ve not actually started any construction as yet, I have made quite a bit of progress in my grand scheme to win Roneseal’s “I did it” contest by building my own summerhouse out of pallets and recycled materials.

My main job has been to level off the patio so it can act as a decent foundation. This is a job that has been on my to-do list for absolutely ages, but I’ve always shied away from it as I envisaged it being too difficult.

I’m not sure if you could see on the “before photo”, but the patio was suffering quite a bit from subsidence. It has done since about a year after we had it put in to be honest, and is probably caused by the hardcore used to make it not being compacted sufficiently.

However it hasn’t got any worse in around four years now, so I think it’s probably subsided as much as it’s going to now. Therefore all I did to make it level again was fill it up with 23 bags of sharp sand and slap the slabs back on top.

Well, I say “all” – The patio is at the top of our near vertical garden, and so dragging them all up there gave me quite a sweat. But the job’s done now, and it wasn’t half as difficult as I thought it would be.

Because I’m an idiot I didn’t take a photo of the finished patio, but here’s one of the work in progress:

The other thing I did on day 1 was make a sweep of the local area for errant pallets. This quest was greatly helped by the fact that the kind people at both Cheap as Skips and Bower Skip Hire have offered to give me any pallets that come in on their skips. Behold my magnificent haul!

I love it when a plan comes together.

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Recently on the blog I mentioned a competition that Ronseal are running to win £1,000.

In nutshell Ronseal choose 20 contestants who have various bits of garden DIY to do. They give them enough paint, wood stain, varnish, etc to do whatever job it is – and then in one month they showcase all the different projects on their Facebook page and get people to vote for their favorite.

In a fit of stupidity I sent them an outline of project that’s been rattling around my head for a while – making a summerhouse out of recycled pallets.

Unfortunately Ronseal liked my idea and shortlisted me.

So now I actually have to do it.

And I have to finish it by 9pm on Sunday the 27th of May.

Oh bugger.

If I win I’m going to donate the prize money to The Joseph Salmon Trust (a charity that provides finical support to bereaved parents who have lost a child). Not that I’ll win of course because I suspect you have to have competed the project to do that (and probably have some DIY skills too).

Here’s the Facebook page for the contest. You’ll notice that some of the projects are “repaint my fence” or “revamp my garden furniture”. I suspect those people are slightly brighter than me.

I’m up for it though, and have been looking around for a new obsession for a while no so this will do nicely. I’m planning on documenting the build here, and will keep you updated about when you’ll be able to start voting too.

Here’s where the summerhouse will go, and also my entire stock of pallets.

I have some work to do.

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Buying a sofa when starting a family might seem like madness – with stains and spillages from breast milk or formula, fruit juice, food, sticky hands, and, worse but inevitable, secretions from nappies, your sofas take a bit of a battering in the first few years of family life – but many retailers offer a cleaning service, which is sometimes even included in the warrantee. This makes the purchase a less crazy decision although you might end up on first name terms with the pro’s who’ll arrive to manage the myriad of stains and smelly spots with professional products – off-the-shelf cleaning sprays, liquids, gels etc never quite compare – and these guys can remove almost everything without a trace.

When your sofa warranty has expired, it’s another story altogether. There are a few products sold in supermarkets or hardware shops that cope with regular spillages – a bit of spot cleaning with Vanish or other fabric cleaner, or even baby wipes, work for some light spills. Tough stains might require professional cleaning services in your area, but it’s a pretty big spend for a tired looking sofa. Searching the internet or the advice of friends and family will result in some weird solutions – vinegar, salt, lemon juice and bicarbonate of soda are amongst the staple ingredients in the natural cleaners’ cupboard. Some work, but again only on fairly light stains.

If the damage runs deeper than the fabric upholstery and affects the cushion foam, and if the old-wives methods and chemicals have failed you, you can try cosmetic sofa-surgery. New seat-cushions or even the armrests which might have been picked at by small, insistent fingers can be re-fitted with relatively little expense and hassle. Traditionally, you would have had to think about re-upholstery but these days you can do it yourself. The internet is it’s usual mine of information and you will be able to find options such as Cutfoam offering foam cut to size which you can cover in matching or complimentary fabric, and you can make sure that the new covers are removable and washable. If your talents with a sewing-machine do not run to piping or fitting zips, a tailor will be able to run up some covers fairly cheaply – and the overall cost will still be less than replacement or re-upholstery.

Unless you are fortunate enough to have a ‘grown-up’s room’, as you can’t banish your children from the sofa’s you have to learn to relax and be less precious. Watching the little one’s imagination taking flight as they turf the cushions off the sofa to make rafts to cross the imaginary raging river is rather more important after all.

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When I was at school we used to scribble graffiti on our pencil cases while the teacher, with their back turned, was busy writing on something called a blackboard.

That was a long time ago and nowadays decorating pencil cases is a more sophisticated business. Helping kids customise their school equipment makes a great classroom activity and is a fun thing to do at home at the weekend so that kids can look forward to showing off their handiwork on Monday morning.

To customise a wooden pencil case you will need the craft supplies; all of which are available at Baker Ross.

• A wooden pencil box – a pack of four costs £3.99
• A craft buttons value pack (£6.99)
• Silicone glue (a pack of two costs £3.99)
• Foam alphabet stickers (a pack of 600 costs £2.99)
• Acrylic Deco pens – a pack containing six colours costs £10.99
• Pearlised sparkle acrylic Deco pens – a pack containing six colours costs £10.99

All prices are true as of 3rd April 2012.

Once you’ve got all these items it’s time to get cracking. Oh, and by the way it’s a good idea to try decorating a pencil case yourself before letting kids loose with all the equipment.

Start this task by colouring the surface of the case. Kate (whose hands you can see in the photos) chose to use a turquoise sparkle deco pen to do this. She gave the pen a good shake before colouring and only stopped when no trace of wood was visible.

Next, turn the pencil case on its side and select a white Deco pen. Kate chose to draw a flower on her case – always a happy image to look at during lessons.

Your design is really beginning to take shape now and will look even better when you glue some buttons into the centre of the flowers on your case. Put the glue on the back of the button and hold it in the flower’s centre for a few seconds to make sure it takes root! Repeat this process so that all your flowers have buttons.

Wait for the glue to dry and turn the pencil case over so that you can see the sliding lid. I should have mentioned that it’s a good idea to empty the case of pens and pencils before you customise it!

You’re now ready to make sure that the whole world knows who this pencil case belongs to by putting your name in foam letters on the lid. Make sure that you glue the letters in places where they won’t impede the sliding mechanism.

Once the glue has dried your pencil case is ready for public display!

If your cases don’t look anything like the ones in the photos, then don’t panic; you can get extra help by looking at this tuition video.

Happy case making!

This is a guest post by James Christie, who writes for art and craft company Baker Ross.

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I’ve been fighting with a few urges to start projects recently. Whether it be new gardening blogs, changes to the way I podcast, or even a new businesses making plant pots out of old recycled tires I’ve been hankering to roll my sleeves up and do something new.

Ronseal got in touch with me the other day to tell me about a new DIY “I Did” competition where people send in photos of areas of their homes or gardens they want to transform. Twenty people are then chosen, given a bunch of Ronseal products, and given a month to get the job done.

Then the finished projects are put to the vote over on facebook and the winner gets a £1,000 prize and a Samsung DSLR camera. I you want to enter it you can do so on their facebook page

A couple of weeks ago my natural choice for this contest would have been our dilapidated wooden patio furniture set. But during the Easter holidays Amy and I gave it a bit of a facelift:

But there is something else I’ve been tempted to do for quite a while now. However I suspect it may be a task that would be beyond both my skills and the 1 month deadline given by the contest:

Build a shed made out of wooden pallets:

Isn’t it glorious?

It’s a scheme that’s kept me awake at night going over how I’d do it. I’d need to find a source of old pales of course – and an efficient way of transporting them home too (when I built my pallet compost bin I discovered I can only fit 2 in my car at a time). But it remains very tempting indeed though.

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