Snippets and why kids shouldn't eat crackers in bed

  • Nothing beats lying on the grass, eating ice cream except maybe lying on dry grass, eating ice cream when it isn't raining. Still good though.

  • The peas are in and we've been picking and munching away on them. A single pea has yet to make it past the back door though and Chloe will only eat them if they're still in their pods. I'm glad I bought those delicate little plants instead of the woody big boys that taste like monkey nuts.

  • I've a website now, kind of, well it's getting there and for scatter brained little old me I think I've done alright so far.

  • I've cut my hair again. It is very, very short even by my standards. I'm plucking up the courage and waiting for whoever it is that is going on holidays and left their luggage hanging around beneath my eyes to come and collect it before I chance any photos.

  • My old faithful camera is very nearly knackered. I do not like the husband's canon as much as I did when it was merely a back up instead of my very soon to be only option.

  • I wonder how hard it is to fix a digital camera!

  • My mum's dog, the rottweiler, has taken to sleeping on Chloe's trampoline when he thinks no one is around to see him. Unfortunately twice now he's being doing that walking in circles thing that dogs do before lying down and he's obviously gotten up a bit too much speed and started to bounce, not been able to control it and vomited all over the thing. Hasn't stopped him climbing in there though.

  • When do sunflowers flower? Our plant just seems to like making more and more leaves and if it gets any taller we'll have to go upstairs and look out a window to see the flower if it ever does make an appearance.

  • Children left unattended after their bath are more than capable of sniping downstairs, grabbing a box of cheesy crackers, climbing back into bed again and eating half the box all in the length of time it takes to rinse out an average sized bath tub.

  • Cracker eating in bed will result in me having to endure the husband's dirty looks as he tries to wipe the cracker crumbs from the bed at half past midnight before giving up and plodding off downstairs in a sulk.

  • I slept in that bed all night, didn't feel a single crumb.

  • Sometimes I think I live with the princess of princess and the pea fame.

  • It occurs to me that if the "princess" had a hairy chest and hands like shovels, whether or not she could sleep in a bed with fresh produce would have been the least of the prince's worries.

  • And seriously how convoluted a plan was that whole pea under a gazillion mattresses thing anyway. Surely an easier way would have been to tell her she'd let herself go a bit. If she runs off crying then she's the delicate (if a bit high maintenance) little flower for you, if she lamps you one round the side of the head then it's probably time to start hanging out in singles bars again.

  • I thought bullet points were supposed to focus the mind and stop people prattling on endlessly about complete nonsense.

  • I probably shouldn't do too many posts like this.

Folksy Bird Swap


A while ago .... actually quite a long time ago (she's very organised you know) I signed up for another of Noodlebubble's swaps. I had to really, it was based on birds for a start and I do like a birdy or six but better yet, it was a Noodlebubble swap. She's the Queen of swaps, basically when the woman's driving the bus you just hop on board!

Anyway, I was properly down in the dumps today. I mean well and truly disgusted. The main reason is that the weather is really, really getting me down at the minute. It's having a much worse effect on me than it is on Chloe. We were all ready this morning for a walk to the park with enough snacks and drinks to carry us over lunchtime if we happened to stay later than planned. The sun was shining and it was a glorious morning, we got ourselves together, locked up the house and were on our way. We'd managed to get maybe a ten minute dander from the house when the sky turned black and the rain came down hard. We even had thunder and lightening. Even though the ten minute dander away from home was cut down to a two minute sprint at full pelt back again we were still soaked through.

So another rotten day trapped indoors, looking out through the windows and running through the checklist of "Super Fun Things To Do When It's Raining" which we've already worked our way through half a dozen times already and really don't care if we never see another ball of salt dough ever again. Seriously, we already have xmas decs made!

And then the postie arrived. Lately there isn't much to get excited about when the postie arrives because my normal bestest postman in the whole wide world is off on holiday and the guy covering his route likes to punish us for making him go out in the rain by carrying all of the post in arms while his empty bag flaps around in a useless fashion at his side. I've had paper mache twice this week already.

But today my parcel arrived wrapped in plastic (#suckit postie).

Isn't it absolutely gorgeous ....



Lynne of Lynne's Pattern Parlour fame made it for me.




It's a gorgeous crocheted notebook cover. Crochet is about the only thing that completely stumps me, I just can't get my head around it all so it makes this even more special.




I really was so down today that when it arrived and I opened it, it very nearly brought a tear to my eye. I'm not kidding, I was just so overwhelmed by her kindest and how completely perfect it is that I had to take a minute to compose myself.




Notebooks are like crafter's crack, we buy them, make them and stockpile them. They're absolutely everywhere in our homes, but this one will be kept for special things. I'll carry on writing my usual (mostly crap) ideas down and then transcribe the very best ones into my new book.


Thank you Lynne, I really do love it:)

A Quick Fix


Eww, I've a horrible case of mummy guilt at the minute.

Those of you who put up with me regularly will know that I've been prattling on about redecorating Chloe's room since Christmas!  It still hasn't happened and she's making me feel downright awful about it.

She gets a look on her face like the Little Match Girl every time we have to put it off for yet another week.  I could give a list of reasons why we haven't got around to it yet, like money but in truth we have all the paiint and bits and bobs already bought then only thing we need to buy is new carpet.  It's not exactly the biggest room and I'm not minded to buy the very best Axeminster for a five year old's room so it won't cost much.

I could say we've been busy but in truth we just haven't tried as hard as we could have to find the time to get started.

I could say that I'd rather do it on a weekend when she can stay in my mum's house overnight because I don't want her sleeping in a room which smells of fresh paint, but the problem with that excuse is that we've had a few weekends like that this year and she could just as easily sleep iin our room for a night or two instead of her own room and it's the Summer holidays and if I were to throw up a two man tent in the living room and give her a sleeping bag she'd be over the moon.

I've got no excuse other than a shortage of time rather than a complete lack of it and an abundance of laziness on my part.

To ease my guilt I opted for a quick fix ...


I bought two huge sheets of decals to brighten her room up a little.


You'll have to excuse the awful photos, it's been a bit grey and miserable here but trust me, her room is really bright and cheerful.


I managed to get them all on the walls while she was at my mum's house because decals are really just glorified stickers and the only thing kids love more than putting stickers on it pick pick picking them back off again.


And all for the grand total of £4 and 20 minutes of my time.

We will get to decorating her room as soon as we can but in the meantime she's happy and I no longer have to wince each time she gives me "the look".

*I don't really know what's going on with blogger at the minute, but it just refuses to centre images*

Commission

It isn't something I do an awful lot of these days. I found myself making a lot of jewellery in the run up to Christmas last year.

Jewellery is one of those things that I don't mind making in small quantities, I'll make a few things for myself or as gifts but it isn't something I enjoy enough to do it full time.

However, a friend asked me if I would mind making some for her to wear to a wedding at the end of July.

Luckily she's quite specific in what she wanted because with me being no expert on jewellery making if her instructions had been at all vague I'd have been completely stumped. She'll be wearing a pale blue maxi dress with a halter neck and a slight plunge to the neckline so she asked for a very simple chain but with something a bit more elaborate at the end than a single pendant and she wanted a bracelet and earrings to go with the necklace but didn't want everything to be too matchy matchy.

More importantly though, she's pretty much tapped herself on the dress so the jewellery couldn't be too expensive or overly dressy that she wouldn't be happy to wear bits and pieces of it on your average day out for a walk in the park with the kids.




She called yesterday to collect them and I'm glad to say that she was really happy with them.




I used nickel free silver plate for the findings and chain and sterling silver for the ear wires. She's one of the lucky people who doesn't seem to react to nickel at all, but I just prefer the nickel free stuff, it seems to stand up to a bit more man handling if I'm honest, regular silver plate seems to chip quite easily, or at least it does in my hands. I was lucky and able to pick up some clearance beads in colours she loved from Jillybeads and the little jewelled disc which the beads are suspended from on the necklace was harvested from some old jewellery.





All in all, I'm really pleased that I was able to give her something nice and still have it come in under budget for her too.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've been missing my sewing machine something awful.

Public Apology


Murphy I'm really and truly very sorry and for what it's worth I promise never to try and get one over on you ever again. I've managed to dupe you out of a bit of good luck twice now and I know that is more than my fair share. It won't happen again, honest!

Thursday was not a day filled with laughs.  Don't get me wrong, I'm sure we'll laugh about it one day, just not today.

We started the morning peering out of the windows trying to work out what the weather was going to be like.  Of course we could have checked the weather on the tv or online but I'm fairly sure they're all standing in the met office peering out windows and wondering what the weather is going to do as well.

Having finally decided that the last remaining clouds weren't suddenly going to blow away and leave us with a beautiful day we decided to risk it.  I packed a picnic, we jumped in the car and headed for the Folk and Transport Museum.  This is the third year we've tried to plan a trip to the folk park and something else always seems to crop up or get in the way.

This year was no different ....

I needed to lift out money and told Robert this before we left the house, but as soon as he's behind the wheel of a car he slips into autopilot and managed to drive past every ATM on the way there so we drove on past and stopped at a garage in Holywood so that I could get some cash.

Just as a quick aside on the slim chance that somebody from Tom Tom should ever come across this.  Luckily we know where we're going but it doesn't stop Robert punching in postcodes "because he can", but I just wanted to point out that the exit from the city bound lane into the Folk Park is roughly 200 yards closer to Bangor than you think it is.  It is not, as you would lead unsuspecting people to believe, at the end of some poor bloke's driveway!  You should probably fix that by the way, best case scenario is that the guy has a couple of barbecues disrupted by people unfamiliar with the area while he redirects them 200 yds back up the road, worst case scenario the poor guy winds up on a register after running out into the garden wrapped in a towel to grab some underwear off the line just as a huge gust of wind carries the towel up into a tree and at the same time a bus load of school kids on a day trip arrive at the top of his driveway while he makes a run for the house to a chorus of screaming kids drowning out the dulcet tones of the rather posh lady telling the bus driver that he has arrived at his destination.  What, it could happen!!

But I digress ... we'd just pulled into the garage and parked in one of the uncovered spaces close to the ATM, which was out of order so instead I nipped into the shop to get us a few drinks and pay with switch so that I could get cash back.  I had just hopped back into the car and put on my seat belt when Chloe told us that her tummy hurt, she then proceeded to pebble dash the entire back seat of the car with Frosties.

We both jumped from the car, just as the heavens opened and started to try and clean her up.  Completely and utterly soaked to the skin and looking like a couple of drowned rats we both finally realised that we'd have to take her out of the car if this little exercise in cleaning up was to be in any way successful.  It was at this point that we both turned to look at the spaces beside the petrol pumps, which were bone dry as they're covered by a huge roof to keep people from getting wet when they have to get out of their cars.  These spaces were a mere ten feet away from us.  Robert jumped in the car and reversed it back under the roof and we lifted Chloe from the car, just as the rain stopped!

We finished operation clean up as best we could and headed for home .... at about 10mph.  The car having decided that it didn't really appreciate being covered in sick and then parked in the rain with all it's doors open had decided that now was the time to take a huff and not work properly.

We arrived back home again a little after 11am, completely knackered, still soaked to the skin, with a child still smelling of sick and while I started the clean up, Robert tried in vain to figure out what was wrong with the car.  He had a look over it himself and was stumped so he called Renault and explained what the car was doing.  The guy on the other end of phone told him that he hadn't a clue what it might be and that he would have to bring the car in to be hooked up and the diagnostics checked to see what the problem is.  This alone was going to cost £76.00 before they even thought about fixing the problem!

Then my lovely postie arrived with a kilo of buttons for me and obviously because of the state I was in when I answered the door (bedraggled, might have been a bit of Frostie stuck to my cheek) he asked if we'd had an eventful morning and after listening to me rant for a few minutes he told me about SS Car Repairs, just round the corner from my house.

Robert called the guy and was told to bring his car down to be looked at straight away.  He drove the car into the repair centre, turned off the engine and stepped out of the car only for the mechanic (proper mechanic, with a socket wrench set rather than a laptop) to tell him the problem was a coil pack.  He didn't even have to lift the bonnet, he just listened as the car came in.  £30 later and the car is running like a dream again.

So the silver lining to this miserable, manky grey cloud is that we now have a car guy and a bloody great one at that:)

Whimper

I've only gone and done it again.  Since Tuesday I've had a blinding headache and a noticable case of the shakes after standing for nearly two hours waiting for and then watching the bands with Chloe.  It was a great day and Chloe loved every minute of it, but of course I did my usual routine and spent all our time in the scorching sun covering Chloe up and plastering her in suncream and making sure she drank plenty of fluids and didn't bother a jot about myself.  So I'm a little rough around the edges at the minute.

I'd say we live and learn but you probably all know me well enough by now to know that if I did the same thing last year and th eyear before, chances are that I won't be learning anything new in time for next year!

The July Jesters are still going strong and I'm managing to keep up alongside getting ready for another craft fair on 7 August.  I've been making button bird purses again ...




















And the rest of the Jesters aren't exactly struggling to keep up either.

Here are some of my favourites today...




Fairly GirlyPipstrelleMade With Love XMirrabeadsPants and PaperHWRDesigns



Folksy Friday - July Jesters

Woohoo, day 9 and I'm at least managing to keep up with the listings. Hmm, still 22 days to go though, so you'll have to wish me luck.

I'm not alone in challenging myself to list an item every day in July, and I imagine I'm also not the only one with an ever expanding wish list.

Here are some of my favourites ....



Damselfly GemmaJCU DesignsAdien CraftsMade by LollyNorthfield PrimitivesIyobo Design



Wildlife

I actually remembered this year to snatch a photo of one of the little hedgehogs which potter through my garden in Summer.



These little guys are brilliant and probably the biggest reason behind why I'm able to go into my garden and pick salad and greens completely devoid of nibbles.

More often than not I don't see the little guys, but I always hear them crunching and slurping their way through the slugs and snails. It's a bit gross to be honest, but to each their own:)

When we moved into this house there was no gate closing in the back garden and adding one was one of the first things we did. We planned on having kids and wanted the garden to be secure, but at the time we didn't know that hedgehogs came to the garden so now I have to remember to leave the side gate open for them from the beginning of June onwards.

I only managed to get this photo because the cat was giving off stink in the back garden and when I went out to check on her I realised that the hedgehog was stuck in the garden because Chloe had closed the gate before coming in and I, stupidly, hadn't noticed at the time.

The cat doesn't bother them, I think she maybe has had a go at a hedgehog in the past but now she leaves them well alone so they're perfectly safe in the garden.

I love looking out into my garden and being able to see the wildlife which comes tottering through, from all the birds and insects to the hedgehogs and the very occasional squirrel.

Which brings me rather untidily to the Campaign for Decency. Fox hunting has been banned in the UK and now there are plans to repeal the ban. You can add your name to the petition in an effort to stop this repeal. There are links to the petition in the top left corner and at the bottom of the home page of Campaign for Decency though I warn you that there are some very unsettling images near the bottom of the home page. If you're likely to find these images upsetting a) that's all the more reason to sign, and b) please use the link for R.O.A.R at the top left of the page.

Thank you.

Leanne

Belmont Tower Craft Fair

I spent almost all day Saturday at Belmont Tower Craft Fair. My very lovely mummy and I arrived a little after 8.30am and started to set up my stall. Well, I set up my stall and my very lovely mummy (who knows better, bless her) sat drinking coffee and watching me from a safe distance.

We all like things done our own way, don't we?

I finished up sorting the stall out and with plenty of time left before the doors opened I started having a natter to some of the other crafters. It turned out that all bar two of us were completely new to the fair so we had no idea what to expect.

I sat having a quick coffee and watched a few people taking photos of their stalls once they were ready and I thought, I must remember to take a photo!

Anyway ....
Head like a sieve as usual, honestly where some things are concerned no sooner have I put it in there, than it falls straight back out again. Photos seem to be one of those things. But look ...

Chocolate!


Thought that might work.

I was really pleased with how the fair went in the end. It wasn't the busiest, but because the other stall holders and the customers were of the absolutely outstandingly brilliant variety it meant that I got to stand and have a chat with everyone instead of having to excuse myself every few minutes.

Sales wise I did pretty well, well enough that I've booked again for next month (bagged the last free table) and I've booked ahead for November too. I was very pleased that the first thing I sold was one of my handbags, this one to be exact. The first hour of the fair was very very quiet and all of a sudden a lady appears out of nowhere and declares "Lovely bags, I'll take that one please".

Do you know when it's been so quiet to begin with and then someone asks to buy one of the most expensive things on the stall and it throws you for a second. My mum and I just looked at each other as much as to say "did she just say she wants a bag?", "aye I thought that too, must be the acoustics in here". We just couldn't believe it for a second, but quickly got over it:)

So you'll find me there again on 7 August. Now if I could just ask one of you lovely people to yell, "don't forgot the photos", on my way out the door that would be great. Ta.

July Jesters - Day Four


And I'm already playing catch up! Though I did only miss one day and I have added two new purses today, so I'm back up to date again.

Still I'll have to try better for the rest of the month . . . I will, honest!








Thankfully there have been plenty of lovely new things listed by the July Jesters, though I can't help feeling put to shame slightly when Pipistrelle can manage to crochet an item a day:)





And NOfkants Curios can make a fossil. Doesn't happen overnight you know!





Silvessence can even make things from metal faster than I can plug in a sewing machine.





I really must try harder for the rest of the month because I'm totally letting the side down.

Can I blame the craft fair, I've been blaming it for everything lately and I guess I can probably drag another couple of good days worth of excuses out of it, even though it was on Saturday.

The craft fair? It was great, but that's a post for another day.

Challenge Murphy

One day Murphy will become wise to my little tricks and when that day comes I'm officially screwed, but until then I might as well make his trickery work for me.

I've decided to take part in the July listing club on Folksy. The idea is to list an item every day in July and to help encourage and promote everybody else taking part.

This is my first offering in July



It sounds easy enough, right? 31 items, listing one a day, can't be that hard. Especially if you're like me and have two full boxes of stock sitting in the corner. I could actually list two or three items a day and not run out before the end of July.

The only thing is that the stock in the corner is currently earmarked for a craft fair at Belmont Tower this Saturday. Now there could be two possible outcomes here:
  1. Nothing sells at the craft fair on Saturday, I'm a little disappointed but at least I now have a whole load of stock to be listed on Folksy which will allow me to at least keep up with the challenge, or

  2. I sell out on Saturday and arrive home with nothing but empty boxes, which will leave me with nothing to list on Folksy and no way to keep up with the challenge and I'll have to start working like a woman possessed and making as much as possible, keeping in mind that this is the first day of the school holidays so I also have a smallish one to occupy.
So, if you were of the 'slightly twisted, loves to take pleasure in other's misfortunes' persuasion which outcome would make you giggle?

Murphy's nothing if not a joker.

And I'm counting on it!