Preschool fun

With hubby being at home over the past few months my days with Lillia have had an extra guest. This has been lovely for all of us as every weekend has been like a bank holiday with the three of us enjoying days out, picnics and lots of time together.

Hubby is now back at work so on my days off it's just me and the little one, just the two of us. I hadn't realised how much I had missed it. The challenges and rewards of looking after a pre-schooler, safe in the knowledge of course that come 6 o'clock the cavalry will arrive home from work, are truly great.

We started off yesterday with some potato painting. I LOVE cutting potatoes into shapes, though goodness knows I hate peeling and chopping them for dinner, weird.
It quickly descended into hand painting though...

And the best thing about potato printing? Aside from the mess and the masterpieces of course - the off-cuts...

No waste! Just chips...

Yum!

And the wonderful concentration of a three-year-old at work...

Sneak preview

I work in London, right on the East side of the city. At lunchtimes I go to Brick Lane, or Petticoat Lane Market, but best of all is Spitalfields Market. Every day is different – on Thursdays it’s antiques, which allows for a huge variety of stalls selling everything from vintage buttons, jewellery, bags and clothes to antique furniture, toys, crockery and dolls with missing limbs. On Fridays it’s hand crafted things – bags, toys, clothes, jewellery etc, with a splattering of the weird and wonderful antiques stalls thrown in.

I often go to Spitalfields just to wander and immerse myself in a world utterly different to that of the office. I like my job as a PA, but it doesn’t compare to getting hands on with needles and thread, or tiles and cutters, it doesn’t even come close.

The stall-holders are always really friendly, some are more hard-selling than others, some are just chatty and tell you the stories behind the objects displayed on their tables. I always come away feeling like I have had, at the very least, a small experience. Today, after managing to pull myself away from temptation of the Indian fabric shop on Brick Lane (don’t get me started on the abundance of sparkly things to be had in there, drool…), I found myself admiring a lovely piece of fabric at a stall in Spitalfields.

I am at work with no time at all so the best I can do for now is a sneak preview with my camera phone!…

About four metres in all of 100% cotton vintage fabric with a gorgeous retro print. Quite obviously out of my budget. I got chatting to the lovely woman on the stall who said she had bought it in Harrods when “fabric was sold in yards, not metres..but you won’t remember dear…”

I am always falling in love with fabric at Spitalfields, and it is nearly always about £50 over my budget. But today the fabric goddesses were smiling on me…£10!! So I sacrificed my planned treat of chocolate and a diet coke and handed over my tenner with glee*.

It really is gorgeous. I will post much better pictures over the weekend.

More from me later today…!



*note to self: must use the word “glee” more often.

Just Random Inspiration on a Tuesday

The sewing machine shop is inundated with the machines from local schools. It's the school holidays so apprently a very busy time for sewing machine fixers and doer uppers. So my old Elna will have to take a ticket and wait a while.

In the mean time I am enjoying doing a little hand sewing in the evenings whilst slurping on mugs of hot cocoa. My hand sewing is slow to say the least so I have no new creations to share today. Bad blogger, bad!

Instead I am going to post some inspirational and just generally blissful pictures instead. I always have a camera with me, just in case. So maybe Tuesdays could be Inspiration Tuesdays...or Random Photo Tuesdays...or, you know, just Tuesdays...

A mosaic path at the Watermill Theatre in Berkshire...

I have spread my dreams under your feet...

Storm brewing near Snelsmore Common, Berkshire. Whilst doing a spot of geocaching...

Marshmallow and chocolate cookies made by my sister-in-law...

Hiding under stone tables...

Lovely!

Day 246: Bookmarks and swaps

It's been quite a week.

After three months of redundancy, zero pay, a dozen interviews and nearly as many second interviews my husband has finally had a job offer, and a pretty good one at that. He starts tomorrow so the last week has been a whirlwind of excitement, followed by logistical planning. You see I work almost full time as well, I am also a mum 24/7 because that job is the most important and doesn't stop just because of a little distance during the working day. So we juggle a lot in the snipsnaphappy household and a new job in a new area of London means a whole new routine to get us through the days as efficiently and as happily as possible.

We have a lot of help: my mum in particular steps in for two days a week to look after our little one as well as doing the nursery run for the other two days while I am at work; and my sister always throws herself into her self given role of Fun Auntie when she is visting.

So during a visit to my Dad and step-mum's this weekend (who have also helped us out in more ways than I can list here over the past few difficult months) I sewed a couple of little bookmarks to say thank-you to a few people...




One is for my best friend Bee who has recently made a very large sacrifice in order to get me hubby onto a plane next month to take part in her wedding in Cyprus. Don't worry, I got her a bottle of wine and a couple of other surprises too!

The blue one is for my sister. For my mum I made another organic cotton shopping bag, and yes she also gets wine too!

I hope they all like them. I always feel very nervous giving people handmade gifts in case they secretly think they are totally pants. Speaking of which, I am very excited and very nervous about my first ever swap!! I have read in other people's blogs about swaps which go on and I have seen pictures of the wonderful packages people send and receive. So when I found a new blog and saw that Miri, who writes it, was organising a swap I jumped in. I have been paired with somebody in North Carolina (I think!) in the USA and I can't wait to get my package together to send such a long way away. But I am also terrified that what I send is going to be totally rubbish. The swap is for handmade lovely things and craft related items - like materials etc. I have no idea where to start!

I might start with a rummage through my ever-growing pile of vintage, almost-vintage (do the 80s count?!) and upcycled fabrics. I think a visit to the antiques fair at Spitalfields Market will also be in order next week. My ancient Elna sewing machine is currently in the sewing-machine hospital being repaired, so this could be an entirely hand-sewn swap from my end!

Best get started...

:)

Day 239: The end of a long weekend

The last two days have been spent up in Norfolk visiting hubby's family to celebrate his dad's 60th birthday. It all got a little emotional late in the evening (extremely long story) for some members of the family but all was, mostly, resolved by bed time and most of us had a lovely time.

Then this morning as we nursed headaches and drank tea our little girl tripped and whacked her head on the edge of a concrete step in Grandad's garden. We watched a massive dent turn into an even bigger bump and we whisked her straight off to A&E where she spent two hours happily playing in the children's area before being told she was absolutely fine. Phew.

After a two hour drive back to Kent we settled under a duvet, just the three of us, with ginger beer, milk for Lillia and Ice Age 2 on DVD. The patient is now tucked up in bed and I am ready for a good few weeks of normality.

Somehow we did manage this weekend to finally jazz up an old ottoman, given to us by my mother, who had received it as a wedding gift over 40 years ago from my grandparents. It had been re-covered a few times and had seen better days but I think we managed to revive it with our limited upholstery skills and plenty of staples!

Before...

After...

This week these rather cheerful things appeared in my garden...


But I am still feeling a little glum.

There is something wrong with my hands. The joints are very painful, I am not sure what is going on but it could well be arthritis, which is a common side-symptom of ulcerative colitis. I am in hospital for my regular IV tomorrow and I am hoping to chat with a member of my consultant's team to try and get to the bottom of it.

I am trying to stay calm and not to panic but it is hard not to. I cannot bear to imagine what life would be like if something happened to my hands...pfffffff...*deep breath*...I will not succumb to indulgent self-pity.

Lets change the subject.

Last week we took a day trip down to Aylesford in Kent. It was one of those days where you set out with a picnic and no plan and end up having a ball. We ended up at The Friars which is a retreat and a kind of ancient religious house. We went there because there was a sign saying they had a picnic area but it was all so lovely that we ended up staying the day.




There was even a mosaic or two...


It was very calming the Friars, even hubby was affected by the whole energy of the place. The three of us lit a candle in one of the chapels (we are not religious, just open to good things!) and made a wish for daddy to find a job soon. Lillia loved the whole thing and was especially good at respecting the peace and quiet, no mean feat for a three-year-old!

Hopefully I will be able to post some crafty pictures soon, despite the pain in my hands I have still managed to rustle up a few things, but more on those in a day or two! Right now I am going to put my feet up and, for once, do absolutely nothing.

Day 225: Making bags

More bags!

With much muttering, snipping, lots of newspaper, a set-square and a crayola easy-wash felt-tip I managed to make my own bag pattern, albeit a rather simple one. If I could have taken a photograph of the mess this created I would have, but the camera was buried somewhere beneath a mound of discarded paper (to later be recycled of course.)

I had wanted to create a simple, cute, kitsch little bag, big enough to hold just a few choice items for, say, a girly shopping trip without the kids. Something rather like this...


Please do not be overwhelmed by my digital drawing abilities, it is a gift.)

However my measurements weren't quite right (I really should have paid more attention in maths at school) and the pattern I did worked better the other way around, and so the Owl Bag was created...



The mustard fabric is another charity shop cushion cover and the red owl fabric, well it's just so very sweet...


But wait...look back to that first picture...what is that little taggy thing on the left side? Hmmm?!


My own tags! They are made by this very talented man on Etsy, I saw them one day whilst browsing and thought I'd treat myself to something totally self-indulgent. They look fab and they smell gorgeous too.

Having got the pattern measurements all skew-wiff the first time I was able to perfect it on the second go. It was hubby's mum's birthday this weekend, so on Friday night ahead of driving up to Norfolk on Saturday, I made this...


It is the first thing I have made where I can honestly say I was happy enough with the finish to be pleased to give it to somebody as a gift...


And I was proud to add one of my new little tags...


It is made with leftover Cath Kidston fabric (the flowery bit) and the rest is organic cotton. Inside hubby popped in some lovely goodies from Lush...


The birthday girl was very pleased!