Contented

Friday

It's Friday and we're coming to the end of our half term break.  It's been a lovely, lazy sort of week, but the weekend is actually going to be quite a busy one.  It's Joe's 7th birthday next week so we are having his little birthday outing on Sunday (he doesn't really do parties) - a trip to the cinema to see Fantastic Mr Fox with his two best friends.  Tomorrow I will probably be whizzing around like a mad thing shopping, tidying and baking in readiness - we're coming back here after the movie for birthday cake so the dining room at least needs to be tidied up!  At the moment it's covered in school books, toys, random bits of paper etc - the usual crap!   On Joe's actual birthday we will have a little tea party with both sets of grandparents coming to visit, so that'll be another cake to make!  I must check our candle situation too....

Thanks for the comments about my planned table runner.  For those that were interested, this is the pattern I have my eye on..

It's the Rail Fence Runner pattern that was in Sew Hip magazine a couple of months back.  It looks pretty straightforward, but I'll let you know how I get on with it.

In the meantime, looky what arrived in the post this morning...

Have a great weekend!

R x
  

The "C" word...

Don't worry, I know it's still only October so I'm not going to start talking about the "C" word just yet (not here, at least, although it will be coming up very soon over at TLBG...), but I just wanted to show off some lovely, festive fabric that arrived on my doormat this morning. 

The top three designs are all by Riley Blake, and I'm intending to turn them into a table runner.  (The bottom fabric, of course, isn't festive at all, it's another print from Amy Butler's Love collection that just happened to sneak into my shopping cart!)

They were all purchased from here.

R x
 

Half term

The first seven weeks back at school have flown by and we have next week off.  It's gone so fast, and both boys have settled back into school really well.  I wasn't worried at all about William and, aside from the extra nagging that seems to be involved (reminding him about homework and remembering which books to take), he has taken to secondary school like a duck to water.  I was concerned about Joe but it turns out I needn't have worried - he's settled into Yr 2 remarkably well.  I think continuing with his hour per day one-to-one with Katie has really helped and he is even going in by himself in the mornings too!  The trick is to get there early so that he can be first through the gate when it opens and he then runs in as fast as he can, to try and be first into the classroom!  His reading is still going really well and we're trying to work more on getting him to write - his least favourite activity!  He can be very uncooperative when it comes to doing homework, but I do need to make the effort to spend more time doing writing with him.  We don't have much planned for half-term - just a nice quiet week pootling about at home so hopefully we can spend some quiet time together practising words.  I found this brilliant website (after Angry Chicken blogged about it recently) where you can type in your own words and it then generates printable handwriting worksheets - Joe is currently obsessed with a Super Mario Smash Brawl (or whatever it's called!) video game so I'm thinking of printing out things like Mario, Sonic, Yoshi etc to try and spark his interest. 

First and foremost though, I'm looking forward to a week of lie-ins and no rushed start to the day!

Enjoy your week!

R x

Love

Cushion cover no 2 - made using fabrics from Amy Butler's new Love range, and inspired by another cushion seen here.   

It's still a work in progress, this one.  I've yet to find a suitable shirt for the backing.  Once again, I pieced it directly onto a piece of fleece, and have quilted three lines around the central square.  Do you think I should do any more?  I can't decide.  I really, really like these fabrics.  Up till now I only had a couple of pieces of Amy Butler fabric in my stash - whilst I do like her other ranges, none of them really sang to me the way that this one does!  In fact, there's another print from this range winging it's way to me as we speak!

 R x
 

TLBG Wednesday

The topic for this week was water conservation.  You can read my post on That Little Bit Greener here.

R x

Happy Friday!

I've finally been able to enjoy some fun sewing this last couple of days.  The dreaded Santa's Grotto curtains are finished (hooray!!) so yesterday I had a lovely morning playing around with fabric, cutting and sewing and generally making a huge mess all over the dining room table!  I made a piece of patchwork which was to be the front of a cushion cover.

The fabric was pieced directly onto a piece of an old fleece blanket, a technique I've seen on a few blogs, and I was really pleased with how this worked.  I then machine quilted around the squares and, this morning, I cut up one of Peter's old shirts to make the back.

Such a brilliant idea to use the front of the shirt, so I didn't have to worry about making any kind of opening at all!  I think I might check out the charity shops for some flannel shirts, then the cushions could be even cosier!

I had bought some cheap cushion inserts from Argos which, by the way, DON'T!  They were rubbish and only about half full so I cannibalised some old Ikea cushions we had lying around and put some extra stuffing in to make the cushion nice and firm.  I am so pleased with how this has turned out so there will definitely be some more being made very soon!

Also making me happy today is the fact that my little pink baby quilt has been featured on Katherine's blog, Wolly Wotnots, as part of her Pink Friday series, in aid of Breast Cancer.  Do pop over and take a look if you can.

I also finished writing my letter to Susan for the Letter Swap and got that posted off today.  I wanted to make something a bit different for the envelope so I had great fun cutting and sticking pages from old magazines!  

 

I hope she likes it!

Have a great weekend!

R x

 
 

Swap news

Hopefully, everyone participating in the paper-bag swap has made contact with their partners now and are busy making friends!  The deadline for posting out your paper bag of supplies isn't until Monday (19th) but myself & my partner Claire, have already exchanged parcels - they both arrived today!  And rather spookily, we both sent rather similar fabrics!

Here's what I sent to Claire...

 

Some scrummy French Hatbox - a floral and a polka dot - and this is what Claire sent to me...

 

...a very pretty pink floral and a polka dot!!  What can I say, great minds obviously think alike!  Despite this being my swap, I found it really hard to choose what to send, at one point my dining room table was literally covered with fabric as I "auditioned" combinations! 

 

Claire and I didn't pick a theme for our makes, but we have agreed to make one thing useful and one thing "pointless but pretty"!  I've been busy today looking online and through all my craft books for some inspiration and ideas and, to be honest, I'm not sure I can pick just two things to make!  But I'm really looking forward to it and I know that my fabric is in safe hands too.

R x

 

Abel & Cole

Recently, I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to try some organic food from Abel & Cole, in return for writing a review.  Now, I'll be honest with you, we are not the healthiest eaters in the world in this house - both the kids and myself are rather fussy eaters - and we don't eat a great deal of fruit or veg.  I do try to make sure that the kids eat more but I don't think I've ever had my "5 a day" - shocking, I know!  So I was very up-front about this with the lady that was organising it, but she was happy to send us some stuff anyway.  We got a mixed fruit and veg box, plus a small chicken.

 

 

In the box were apples, oranges, ruby grapefruit, gem squash, potatoes, carrots, onions, corn-on-the-cob, broccoli and leeks.  I wasn't sure that we would be able to get through all of this, but we gave it our best shot!

 

The chicken was quite small so I cooked it for the kids' tea - in fact they had a totally organic meal as I also used the potatoes, carrots and broccoli...

 
I did of course sample the chicken myself too, and it was, without doubt, the tastiest chicken I think I have ever eaten!   It was moist and juicy and tasted, quite simply, absolutely delicious!  It tasted really good cold, in sandwiches the next day as well.  I would definitely consider buying organic chicken again. 

We worked our way through the rest of the items over the course of the week. With most of the veggies, to be honest, we couldn't really tell the difference, although Peter thought the potatoes tasted nicer.  Peter and Joe also shared the corn on the cob, and they both thought that tasted better too.  It was a similar story with the fruit - the apples and oranges just tasted like apples and oranges, nice but not amazingly different to "regular" supermarket produce.  The grapefruits, however, went to my mum and dad, as none of us like them, and they reported back that they were really delicious and juicy.  

So, in summary, some things tasted noticably better than non-organic and some didn't.  But I suppose taste isn't the only reason people buy organic, is it?   I would certainly prefer to be able to feed my family all organic food, all the time but, at the moment, it's just not financially viable for us to do so, and we don't eat enough fresh fruit/veg to justify a box scheme like this.  However, I will be looking into the other products Abel & Cole have to offer & we'd certainly be more likely to purchase our meat from them.  
 
R x

One year older...

 

Yesterday was my birthday.  It was one of those big, milestone ones - let's just say I'm 21 with 19 years experience!  I had a really nice day, despite the cold (which is on the way out now, thank goodness - I'm a real wuss when I'm ill!)  The rain stopped and the sun shone all day for me!  Peter has had the whole week off and my mum & dad came down and we all went out for lunch - just Pizza Express but I do love pizza - and then home for cake after the kids came home from school.  A very low key affair but I don't like to make a big song and dance about it.  We'll be going out for a proper celebration with some friends soon, as soon as I can arrange babysitters (ie grandma!) for the kids.

I feel like I've been neglecting my blog a bit recently - nothing very much to post about - but I'm hoping that next week I'll be able to get down to some serious sewing.  I have four cushion inserts that need covers made so I'm quite looking forward to having some fun playing around with my fabrics!  Plus, of course, there's that "C" word approaching...

P.S.  I was almost beside myself with excitement when, in amongst the birthday cards, these arrived in the post this week...

 

Anyone else going?

Have a fab weekend, everyone!

R x

TLBG Wednesday - Morsbags

Today I'm supposed to be writing a post about the brilliant Morsbags project, but I have a stinking head cold and am feeling very sorry for myself so, instead, I'm going to cheat and I'll just give you the link to the site itself - www.morsbags.com - or you can go and read the post I wrote about it on TLBG last week.  Please do have a read if you've not heard of it before, as it's a fantastic idea. 

Now if you'll excuse me, a big mug of hot chocolate and some paracetamol are required. 

R x