naughty eyebrows

We've had quite a definite bedtime routine for quite sometime in our house. Now that The Boy has entered the realms of the terrible twos however, this routine can run more smoothly on some evenings than others. This evening was a not-so-good one. But I had to smile when he looked over at me and asked why I had naughty eyebrows. Slightly perplexed, I asked him what he meant, to which he told me they'd gone upside down and then mimicked my facial expression.

Note to self, must stop frowning!

new begins

well, I've been a bit of a bad blogger. A truly terrible one in fact.

Over the last few months, life has been a bit of a whirlwind. Not only have we relocated, The Frenchman's business has grown rapidly, I've stopped working, and we've welcomed this little lady in to the world.

Any woman who has given birth, will tell you how quickly you forget about the pains of pregnancy and labour, but what they don't tell you is how you also forget the lack of sleep, the temporary feeling off loss of identity and control of your life, and the fear that you always smell a little bit like baby sick. But would I change it? Not on my life.

And so it is, that 12 weeks after arriving in our world, I find little Miss A asleep in her own cot, in her own room (a happy and terribly sad occasion in equal measures), and find myself twiddling my thumbs, wondering what on earth it is that people who aren't pacing about trying to rock babies to sleep do with their evenings. So perhaps I'll have a little more time again to give my poor neglected blog a bit of attention. Who knows, maybe I'll even dust off my sewing machine next!

Things for sale

I'm going to be moving house within the next few weeks, and have decided to try and have a clear-out rather than move everything with me. Here's a quick peek at what I'm going to be putting on ebay - but I thought I'd put a few pics up here first in case anyone feels like saving me the ebay fees! If you're interested in anything, leave a comment, or message me . I'll have a think about prices for things and edit the post, but feel free to leave me an offer!

Chapel chair (with bible holder on back) needs a bit of work, which I never quite got around to doing!

Pine Piano stool

Cream metal framed double bed with slient night matress (guest bed, so hardly used)

Two seater chesterfield - an ebay find - one of the arms drops down. I bought it to recover and never got around to it - the person I bought it from said it had been covered in and resprung within the last 5 years, so functionally it's fine, and perhaps not quite such a snotty colour as this picture would suggest!

Shoe last (one only)

I've also been stockpiling Orla Kiely fabric - as I can never quite bring myself to cut into it, it seems a bit silly just to keep it for ever more, so I'm going to let it go! All pieces are 1/4m unless otherwise stated.

Classic stem print

Stone and orange scribble stem print (1/2 m)

Rhododendron

Green carpark

Retro Flower

Please let me know if there's anything you're interested in!

Stroller quilts

I have been woefully slow in making these - my friend had twins a month ago now (eek, how did that go so quickly) and as she's been supportive in trying to order things from me in the past, I thought I'd repay the favour by making a couple of stroller/cot/snuggly quilts

They're fleece fronted and have gorgeous cloud 9 rabbit design flannelette on the back, which I quilted together, as well as appliqueing each of their initials in the quilt corners.

I got this far in about a week, and then it took me the rest of the time to do the binding... which in the end really wasn't a problem - I just put it off over and over again! I'm really pleased with the way they've turned out.. I just hope the twins like them too

We're going on a chair hunt

Ok, so I'm going to oust myself as a lot of a geek here. When I was little, I used to love going to the library. I liked the sound that the books make when the plastic sleeves hit together (just me?!) I liked having my own little library tickets

I thought that date stamping books seemed like quite possibly the most exciting job ever.

But the other thing I love love loved about our library - apart from the parquet floors and the catalogue cupboards

(to this day, I kick myself to think that I missed the opportunity to buy one that was being thrown away from Bristol University for about £20)

was the orange plastic chairs in the childrens section. Chairs not dissimilar to these:

These cute round plastic little fellows. Please excuse the bad picture (if I could find a good one, then I'd probably also be able to track the chairs down!)

Now that I am not so little, the idea of stamping books as a job doesn't seem quite so alluring, but I can't get these little chairs out of my head! (or parquet floors for that matter, but I suspect the chairs may be more in my price bracket) I just have to get one for the Boy. I've spent many an hour scouring the internet for them, but to no avail. I know that they must still be made, because I saw them in a library this weekend. I'm under doctors orders to rest in bed at the moment, so my search continues, but if anyone can help me, please let me know who they're designed by/what the name is!

cushions are here

After months and months of procrastinating, I have finally finished making the new cushions for the sitting room

As anticipated, after all of those months of faffing about it took me about 3 hours to make them

The Boy seemed to be quite take by the OK ones yesterday (he clearly has taste) although today was more interested in eating brio (but not all of the time)

tweet!

I've just discovered Qualy

I don't know anything about the company

except that I love these everything I've found so far

a nod goes to supercutetilly who posted about the key holder and started my newfound love!

How does your garden grow

We've been taking advantage of the glorious weather we've been having recently, trying to spruce up the garden a little. While I appreciate the garden looking nice, I certainly wouldn't purport to be any kind of gardening expert! The little plants really seem to be enjoying this sunny spell though and are thriving

My bump is also growing nicely too.

You can't really tell that's what it is, but I had to include the picture, as when I took the it, the automatic setting icon on the camera changed from little flowers to a mountain, which made me chuckle, and I thought was rather apt!

work in progress

Perhaps work in progress might be a little misleading, not to mention generous. What I actually have is piles of material, ready to be work in progress. I need to ( well ok, maybe don't need to, but I'd like to) make some new cushions... which I may just have mentioned a few times already. In fact, I'm pretty sure that if I'd spent a fraction of the time I've been procrastinating about making them actually sewing, then we wouldn't be able to move for cushions.

excuse the grotty radiator

I was thinking it all looked a bit beige and staid, but then I remembered the Orla Kiely Rhododendron print that I had stashed away, which I think makes it just that little bit less so. I plan to re-cover the grubby bench that all of this material is sitting on in the heavy-weight linen on the right, which I misguidedly covered with cream fabric pre-the Boy. It actually looked just fine up until about 6 months post-the Boy, when he started crawling about. These days cream things aren't an especially good idea. As we have a 4 day weekend, my grand plan is to get on with it and make these things, so all being well I'll be able to report back soon with a post of my cushions in situ... and then you'll be able to see my equally misguided decision pre-the Boy to buy cream sofa covers too.

more liberty

So I might be a bit late to the party, but I stumbled across the liberty collection in

Zara kids home recently

Swoon

All these lovely things of course rely on baby G co-operating and being a girl

flipity flop

I treated my feet to these cute little flip flops from accessorize today. As the rest of me seems to be growing at quite a rate, and most maternity clothes are frankly a bit depressing, I figured these little lovelies would help to perk up my wardrobe a little.

Once again, I'm have to apologise for the decided lack of posting of late; although thankfully morning sickness is a thing of the past, I just don't seem to be able to shake off the constant feelings of tiredness that has plagued me since December (which needless to say is becoming a little wearing after 5 months)...I guess its' probably something to do with having a full time job and a nearly-two-year old to run after when I'm not working, and a family business which is under construction! As a result my sewing efforts have been frankly non-existent lately too. Although I've been feeling the sewing itch recently - I still have some cushions to make for our sitting room after the power drill incident, friends have just had a new arrival, which I think calls for some onesie embellishment, and perhaps some kind of nesting instinct is meaning that I constantly have the urge to beautify the house with lots of nice things. So hopefully I'll be able to start updating my blog again with a bit of work in progress, but even if i don't, I'll try and visit a little more frequently!

Liberty

After saying I'd get back on form with my blogging, I've really failed miserably. It's not for want of trying; all of a sudden I'm finding it really difficult to write anything - I feel as if I've got out of practice and lost my voice. Today I thought back to when I first started to write this blog, and how it just seemed to help me to get on and write this thing, so that's what I thought I'd do today. But I haven't been working on anything lately. Well unless you count a bit of a furniture moving/house re-arranging frenzy that I had at the weekend, which I guess may be a bit of a nesting thing, but was actually driven by a run in between the Boy, a power drill (and not of the child toy variety) and one of my beloved yellow linen cushions in the sitting room (sigh). But rather than dwell on the sad loss, I decided to take the opportunity to have a little change around, which initially meant just changing the colour of the cushion covers, but somehow resulted in a full-scale re-organisation. What with all of that activity, I still haven't made the cushion covers which prompted the whole debacle in the first place, so here's a picture of a liberty suitcase instead. I love it.

Just saying

I'm back! Sorry for the break

I'm feeling woefully guilty of having neglected my poor blog and shops a little - well a lot really - over the past few months.

I'm pleased to be able to say that (for once) I have a pretty good excuse. All being well, baby number two will be arriving with us in August, and I've been suffering just a bit with the morning/afternoon/evening/nighttime sickness that comes hand in hand with this stage of pregnancy. Couple this with the raging insomnia that also hit me about 6 weeks ago, and you end up with the shell of a person that I've felt like for the past few months.

Consistently getting a maximum of 4 hours sleep, no doubt coupled with raging hormones, finally took it's toll last week, and led to me being signed off work by the doctor for a week, so that I can rest, relax and recuperate. Oh, and not run the risk of shouting at/bursting into tears on the next person who moans at me at work... something that I'm not entirely sure how I managed before I went off (although I can say with absolute certainty that I would have had the doctor not intervened!)

And slowly, slowly, I do seem to be feeling a bit more human again. I even mustered the enthusiasm to do a bit of sewing this morning, which is a first in a long time for me. Nothing too complicated, just these little felt flowers. I planned to turn them into a brooch, but I'm kinda liking the way the look against the linen when I photographed them, so perhaps I'll have a rethink!

Thanks for sticking with me during this quiet period, and I promise to try to resume with business as usual as soon as possible.

too good not to share

It wasn't so long ago that I used to spend a lot of my time in the kitchen cooking and baking, which I love doing. These days circumstances are such that I don't really do an awful lot in the kitchen, but this morning I really fancied making something naughty. I found this cookie recipe here a little while, and decided to give it a try. the reviews are right, and they're really like proper shop-bought cookies, so I thought I'd share the recipe.

Best Big, Fat, Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients

250g plain flour

1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

170g unsalted butter, melted

150g dark brown soft sugar

50g caster sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 egg

1 egg yolk

325g chocolate chips Preparation method 1. Preheat the oven to 170 C /Gas mark 3. Grease baking trays or line with parchment. 2. Sift together the flour, bicarb and salt; set aside. 3. In a medium bowl, cream together the melted butter, brown sugar and caster sugar until well blended. Beat in the vanilla, egg and egg yolk until light and creamy. Mix in the sifted ingredients until just blended. Stir in the chocolate chips by hand using a wooden spoon. Drop cookie dough onto the prepared baking trays, with each cookie around 4 tablespoons of dough (for smaller cookies, drop 1 rounded tablespoonful and adjust baking time as necessary). Do not flatten the dough. Cookies should be about 8cm apart. 4. Bake for 15 to 17 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the edges are lightly toasted. Cool on baking trays for a few minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.

If you look at the site itself, you'll see that I've changed the sugar and vanilla extract volumes based on the feedback on the site. I also only added 100g of chocolate (I just had a bar of green and blacks which I chopped up into chunks) and I would probably go with the volume on the recipe! Finally, I used tablespoon sized blobs of the cookie mixture, and came out with the cookies in the picture above - I think if you used the 4 tablespoons that the recipe recommends, then they'd be the size of dinner plates ... although that doesn't sound entirely awful!

phone case

I had a Folksy order yesterday for a phone case. As I passed on some stock over Christmas for presents, I had to make one up from scratch, and I love, love, loved doing a bit of freehand machine embroidery, and just getting back to the machine again. I've altered the design ever so slightly now to add a little elastic button loop, as my experience of using my own case was that without some kind of fixing, the phone kept falling out! More will be added to the shop shortly.

a parcel

the first of my ebay purchases arrived today. Which was very quick, and very exciting. I have been collecting Fishley Holland pieces for some time now

large jug

If you have not heard of this pottery before, it is from Clevedon in Somerset and is known for the distinctive grey and duck egg colouring.

small jug

I had a little gap at the end of my shelf just waiting for one final piece, so was really pleased when I found this listing, as I knew the smaller of the two jugs would be just perfect. I don't know what I'll do with the larger one, it seems a bit sad to split them up when they're such a lovely pair, although I expect I might know someone who might like to give it a new home (that means you Mum)

small jug joining some friends

and I thought I'd take a picture of it all in situ, as I love this bit of my kitchen

I still have a little Christmas money burning a hole in my pocket, and as the only shops I've managed to visit this year are supermarkets (sad but true) I've been browsing on line. Today I thought I'd share a selection of lovelies I found in Urban Outfitters

I shouldn't make myself sound like too much of a martyr, as while I haven't ventured to any brick and mortar shops, I have been doing a bit of ebaying; some new OK fabric and some fishley holland jugs to add to my collection. Unfortunately I can't copy the pics over from ebay, so I'll have to save those for when they arrive!

Amber

I was brushing the Boys teeth the other evening, when I found that he'd cut not one but two eye teeth. Anyone with small children around will know that for this event to pass without sleepless nights (I do hope I'm not tempting fate by having said that) is something of a miracle, so I thought I really ought to share the love for amber necklaces. They're supposed to release natural anesthetics that not only help with teething, but also skin problems like eczema. I don't know whether they actually work, or if it's just a coincidence, but I'm a bit scared to take it off until he has a full set of gnashers, just in case. He's been wearing his since he was really ickle, so doesn't seem to notice it. but we do. Thanks for the sleep necklace!