The cost of living.

It's been a difficult year or so here in Northern Ireland. The housing market has all but died after the biggest growth period we've seen in a long time, on the up side this means that houses at the lower end of the market are dropping in price and finally, first time buyers can afford these houses again. Every housing market needs first time buyers like nothing else, the house prices here were increasing so fast and to such an extent it had to be inevitable that these buyers, the ones we need most would eventually be priced right out of the market.

Unfortunately, lenders are no longer offering 100% mortgages and most have stopped offering low rate introductory offers, this means that although the houses are now coming back down to a level which is more affordable first time buyers, who in theory can afford the houses and are eligible for the mortgages don't have the deposit they now require to add to the mortgage. Some lenders are now only offering 80% mortgage which means that a buyer will have to stump up £20,000 out of every £100,000 they want to spend on property. Now I don't know about you but that is a LOT of money to try to come up with, especially when six months ago most of these people were eligible for the 100% mortgages that banks and building societies were readily offering, they didn't know they would need a deposit and they simply don't have it.

I am in the unfortunate position of trying to sell my house at the minute and have resigned myself to a long sit in.

I'm having to be a lot more creative in trying to save money.

I'm in the process of altering all of tootsies winter clothes to double as summer clothes. I'll try to post some pictures eventually and everyone can let me know if the outfits are something they would let their own children out of the house wearing. She's had a bit of a growth spurt tallwise this year so although all her clothes fit her around the middle, they're now much too short. I had the forethought to remove all the girl trimmings from her baby clothes as she outgrew them so I now have a huge bag of lacy frilly edgings along with more buttons and bows than I can count. I've taken the scissors to a few pairs of her denim jeans and added a frilly hem around the bottom, they end just below the knee and have a small split at the outside edge which comes up to just above the knee. i fastened off the top of the split securely and added a bow to cover up my less than immaculate sewing skills. I have to say (even for my general ineptitude when it comes to sewing), those short are pretty cute. She loves them, she loves everything mummy makes for her, especially some of the things I have knitted for her over the years. But that's for another post.

My next task are two pink skirts, which still fit in the waist but are a little too short for my liking, although the had been wearing them on slightly cooler days with a pair of leggings underneath, she looks very on trend on them. These particular skirts are the kind of three tier boho(ish) skirts. This should hopefully make it easier to add a fourth tier to each skirt to lengthen them slightly. I have a white shirt of my own which was destined for the bin, I work in an office and it plays havoc with cuffs. Instead I'll use this white shirt as fabric to add the fourth tier to one skirt and in my bag of frillys I have a small gauzy butterfly which is also white with a barely there pink trim which I will sew to one side just above the join between the two fabrics and this should tie it together. I have some lilac fabric which I could use on the second skirt, but I'm not entirely sure I could pull this off as the colours may contrast too much. I might have to get a bit crafty and perhaps dip dye the skirt first, or die the whole skirt lilac. I have a lot of dylon cold water dies I picked up for 50p each a while ago and they could do with being used.

I have to sift through the rest of her clothes and try to come up with ideas for them. If anyone has any ideas or things you've done to stretch your children's clothing a bit further, I love to hear about it.

L.