Busy, busy, busy ...

Today my gorgeous little man became a teenager.

I cannot believe how fast it has gone.

He has always been an easy child.  He is easy going and laid back (sadly he gets that from his father and not his highly strung mother!).  He is handsome and intelligent (he gets those traits from me :)  Ok, he gets those from his Dad too!)  He is popular and has a warped sense of humour (finally something he gets from me!).

We are so proud of him.

Happy Birthday Seth xxx 

Today is also the 25th anniversary of my and my husband's first date. 

I cannot believe it has been 25 years already.

Pat is a lot like Seth and he grounds me completely - I am such a worrier and he always puts me at ease.  He looks after me.

I'm looking forward to the next 25 years.

I have no photos of us to post as our home PC has a virus.  Apparently it's a virus which has swept our city over the last week.  All my photos are on that computer and not Seth's laptop which I am using now.  Hopefully we'll get it back by Wednesday.  I hope so - I'm lost without my computer.

Last weekend I made a cushion which had been milling around in my head and on scraps of paper for some time.  In my head the design was simple - double frayed ruffle with either piping or velvet ribbon.

In reality this was a pain to make. 

When it came to piecing it all together there were six layers of fabric to stitch together.

I'm not happy with how it turned out so I won't be selling it.  So it looks like I now have a cushion for my bed  Luckily it goes really well with my new blue throw.

On another subject I received a lovely surprise in the post last week from Kat from Low Tide High Style.  I'll be posting a picture of it soon but right now I don't know how to edit photos on Seth's laptop so it would have to be posted sideways.

One of the best things about blogging is the wonderful friends you make all over the world. 

Thank you all.

xoxox

Pom poms, turquoise cupcakes and a 9 year old

Yesterday my baby girl was 9.

Before you read much further you're going to ask yourself - "Flippin' heck, how many photos of one table can a person take?"  Well the answer is 39 if you love how the room looked but don't worry - I'm not going to show you them all!

Lily's actual birthday party isn't until Monday but yesterday her best friends came home from school with heer for tea and then we all went to the cinema.  I got to bed at 2.10am the night before and we got up at 6 so Lily could have a special birthday breakfast and open her presents before school so don't ask me if the film was any good as I fell asleep in the cinema!

I wanted to make the dining room look really pretty for her as a surprise.

This is my first attempt at pom-poms and I just love them.

I knocked up a little white linen table runner the night before.

Quick tutorial - iron some linen, make a snip at one end and rip.  Repeat.  Iron.

Hey presto a simple but pretty table runner.

I put some creamy roses into one of my treasured Ball Mason jars and used a heart shaped punch to make some tissue paper hearts which I scattered all over the runner.



Everyone who knows me knows I can't cook!  So a colleague made some gorgeous cupcakes which were covered in edible glitter so really sparkled.  The colour was a happy accident - she panicked as I asked for pale blue but they came out more turqoise.  I love the colour and it sort of helped with the way the decorating of the table ended up.

I brought out my favourite wine glasses which are really thick and robust so I didn't worry about breakages.  I bought kids champagne - basically sparkling fruit juice with a cork in the bottle.  Before anyone tells me this is wrong and I am just encouraging children to drink please note that I don't drink alcohol (apart from once a year on my works Christmas do where I just drink enough to make me think I'm good at dancing!  This is usually just a couple of bottles of beer) but I thought the girls would feel really special having such a fuss made.

The party bags contained all their treats for the cinema but on the table we wrapped little sparkly eye shadow sets in plain A4 paper with a little message from Lily on it.

My baby girl is in the middle with the blue 'Team Edward' (of course!!) baseball top on.

The others have been her best friends in the world since she started school when she was 3 and they are a great bunch of friends.

"Happy 9th Birthday Lily Manon"

"We love you 16 and a million"

~

(when Lily was tiny she used to think 16 was the biggest number in the

 world til her brother told her that a million was actually the biggest number in the world.  So then she changed her 'how much I love you' announcements to "I love you 16 and a million!"

xoxox

I am linking this up to Funky Junk Interiors SNS # 69

More grain sacks

I've just had a new delivery of grain sacks.  They only just arrived from Hungary on Monday and by Friday they were mine!  I love them.  

I had thought this one had my initials - SJ but on closer inspection I think it's FS. 

I think I can get away with it though and am probably going to make a cushion for me out of this one.

The one below is my favourite.  The thin stripes are so simple and understated.

On their metal rail ready to be washed and given a new lease of life.

I've got quite a lot on at the moment so I probably won't get a chance to work with these beauties for a few weeks.  For now I'm just loving looking at them.

~

On Friday my baby girl is 9.  She is having her besties back for a birthday tea and we are then going to the cinema to see Gnomio and Juliet.  Then on Monday she is having a pizza making party at Frankie and Benny's Italian restaurant for her friends, classmates, neighbours and cousins. 

The following Friday is my husband's birthday.  Who??  Poor Pat gets forgotton amongs the chaos of the kids birthdays. 

Seth will be 13 a fortnight today and a week Saturday is having a sleepover with a Chinese takeaway for his friends plus an evening of horror films!!!  I remember when I was a teenager liking horror films.  I would never watch one now. 

On the same day that Seth is 13, Pat and I will have been together for 25 years which seems just unbelievable to me especially as I only feel about 19!  So on top of planning birthdays, parties, party bags etc we are trying to find the time to do something special for our 25th 'dating' anniversary.  I can literally feel the grey hairs growing with the stress of it all!

I love it all though - except the part where my babies keep growing - I want them to stay little and live with me forever :(

Wish me luck for the next couple of weeks x

xoxox

My craft room progress

I've been busy after work recently moving stuff upstairs and trying to organise all my craft supplies in a really practical way.  I'm one of those people who spends a lot of time thinking about where things should go and not actually doing much.  This coupled with a week of horrible sinus headaches (again!) and internet connection problems has made progress on this room pretty slow. 

Anyway, at last I now have a space where I can do all my craft work and the best thing of all is that we have our dining room back and my study area is (almost) tidy.

I needed the room to have a few functions.

The first was somewhere to store my fabrics and my pillows.

This burnished metal clothes rail was bought from France when I had my shop.  I used to sell kids bedding by a Danish company called Greengate and I bought the rail to hang throws from and to pile more throws and cushions on the shelf below.

I love this rail and would never part with it.  I kept it as one day I want a laundry room and want this to be used there.  For now its being put to good use here to hold folded fabrics on the shelf below and pillows ready for printing and sewing from the rail.

I bought some new wooden clothes hangers and sanded off the varnish then stamped each hanger with the measurements of the pillows I make.  That way I can cut a load of pillows ready for printing and sewing which should save me a lot of time and mess.



I bought this vintage looking basket from Home Sense a while ago and was keeping it for my 'one day' laundry room but for now it's just the right size to hold the pillow inserts I need to pop into my pillows when I photograph them to sell on my etsy shop.

We've had our wicker hamper for years.  We brought it back from London with us and it used to hold Seth's dressing up clothes - he was a red power ranger for about two years!

It's quite big and has been a bit of a pain over the years as we've never known where to put it.  It's ideal here as it can hold my ready made pillows and covers.

I would like to stencil a word or some numbers on the front to vintage it up a bit but am undecided about what to stencil - any suggestions?

We've had this chair a long time but it's broken and has been up the attic for a long time.

It now has a nice new home here and will be used as a prop when I'm taking photos of my pillows.

These little teddies used to live on the spare bed - I can't hide them away in a cupboard so they can stay here.

I had two of these long thin tables made a few years ago.  The first one was to use in our study before I found the right desk.  Then I lent it to the shop and liked how it looked there so had another made for the shop.  My sister has been looking after them in her house and gave me one back to use as a sewing, packing and painting table.

I've put one of our dining chairs here for now so need to get a nice comfy chair.

I love the picture above the table but it looks out of place here now - it's called Amroth Storm and is of a beach in West Wales we love going to.

I plan on putting a large notice board here for lists and ideas etc.

This is on my to do list.

Craft supplies storage was the other thing I needed.

I had a unit built for the shop which has been in a  friends garage since the shop closed.

It's just the right thing for here so I made a linen curtain for the front which I threaded onto dowel and hung with cup hooks at either end for easy removal.

Here it is without the curtain.

I bought these little grey drawers from TKMaxx about a year ago and never knew where to put them.

I think they'll be quite useful here.

And finally some little tin pots from Ikea with blackboard pegs on the front to keep my most used supplies handy.

There are still a few things we need to do to get the most out of this room.

There is a closet in the room which is double width but with a single door.  My husband is going to open up the space and add shelves for more storage.

I need some lamps and a nice light fitting, a notice board and some nice things on the wall.  These will come.

I've only spend £20 on this room - £14 for the linen to make the curtain for the storage unit and £6 for the wooden clothes hangers.

I'm sure how I use the storage will evolve constantly but I now see light at the end of the tunnel - the rest of my house is now looking like a home again instead of covered in a constant cloud of burlap dust!

Another good thing about having a craft room upstairs is that I can work after everyone is asleep - I'm scared of the dark so my poor husband has to stay up with me (usually sleeping on the sofa) until I've finished sewing and now he doesn't have to - everyone's happy!

Hope you like it!

xoxox

I am linking this up to:

Metamorphosis Monday at Between Naps on the Porch