Contented

Seven

Yesterday was Joe's 7th birthday.  He had a really lovely day, went into school happily, came out of school happily, was thrilled with all his presents and enjoyed all the attention.  We had his birthday outing on Sunday (Joe called this his "fake birthday"!) when we took him and two of his friends (and William) to see Fantastic Mr Fox at the cinema.  All the kids really enjoyed the film - I did too although it's not at all your typical children's movie.  After the film we came back here for birthday cake mark one...

And then of course I had to make another cake for his actual birthday too!

Yum....

I also got a very special present yesterday, but you'll have to come back tomorrow to find out what it was.  Here's a sneaky peak...

 
 R x

Fabric show and tell

Hello!  How are you all today?  Good, I hope!  Well, I promised to be back with some scrummy fabric to show off, so here we go!  I had two orders arrive over the last few days, the first to arrive was this little bunch from Fabric Rehab:

 

Some cute owls, sweet Alexander Henry birdies and, in the middle, some Saffron Craig pink dandelions, which I am super excited about, it's so lovely!  And also from Fabric Rehab came these two:

Fabulous Parisienne ladies! 

And then on Monday, another parcel arrived, this time from Pink Chalk Fabrics, who had a sale on.

 

Some really lovely blue Olive Rose and then a bit of Heather Bailey Freshcut - I've had this before (I think it was actually one of the first fabrics I bought when I started sewing!) and I also think this is the first time I've gone back to buy more of a design.  I'd used up all I had and didn't even have a scrap big enough for my coin collection, so when I saw this on sale I just had to get some!

 

I also snapped up these two - pink woodgrain effect, which is rather funky, and another very cute Alexander Henry print called Petite Granville.  All this lovely new fabric has, as usual, got me itching to start making something!  It feels like I haven't sewn anything for ages, in fact, I actually cleared away all the fabric lying all over the place and put away my sewing machine at the start of the hols, but I think it might have to come out of it's hiding place sooner, rather than later!

Today I also finished the scarf I started, I really enjoyed this stitch, it needed a much lower level of concentration which suited me perfectly!!

 

 

What else was I going to talk about?  Oh, yes,  a film review.  On Sunday William and I went to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.  It was ... well, okay.  I should point out that William really enjoyed it but I felt a bit lukewarm about it.  I will admit that, out of the seven books, this was probably my least favourite, and it probably didn't help that I re-read it just before we went to see it, so I was all too aware of all the stuff that was missed out - stuff that I personally thought was quite important to the plot - like the fact that the locket was supposed to be Slytherin's, what Dumbledore suspected the other horcruxes were, and the big battle at Hogwarts near the end - all missed out!  I thought it had quite a different feel to the other films too, the music was very different and it didn't seem to be quite as action-packed as some of them either.  (And ending on such a sad note kind of puts a downer on things too!)  

Also on the subject of films, I was quite excited to see a trailer for The Time Traveller's Wife, a book that I really, really loved - although, perhaps excited is the wrong word - just watching the trailer made me cry!  Imagine what I'd be like watching the whole film!!  I think I might have to wait until it's out on DVD and I can watch it on my own and boo my eyes out without getting embarrassed! 

Finally, I promised some news about my secret project!  Well, it's going to be a new blog, set up by myself and my lovely blog friend Emma, and it will be launching next Wednesday, the 5th August!  We are both really excited about it and hope that lots of you will want to join in too.  I can't spill any more beans just yet, but stay tuned, and don't forget to come back next week for the big launch!

R x

Bits and bobs

I hope you all had a lovely Easter weekend!  We did, just mooching around at home as usual, but still nice.  Now, what have we been up to?  Peter has had the last couple of days off as well, and today we all went to see Monster vs Aliens - in 3D!   If you haven't seen it - then go see it!  It was a good fun family movie but it has to be said, the 3D effects were pretty spectacular!  We explained to Joe what it would be like before we went but, unfortunately, he decided -after about 5 seconds! - that he didn't like the things jumping out at him and refused to wear the glasses!  He still enjoyed it though, although it looked pretty blurry without the specs. 

So what else have I been up to?  Let's see - my Saffron Craig fabric arrived, just a couple of fat quarters but they are very lovely!

 

No idea what I'm going to do with them yet, of course!  Although I did notice that they seemed to go quite well with the other piece of hand printed fabric I bought a little while back, what do you think?

 

I've also just finished reading this book:

 

Now, you know I don't "do" book reviews, but I did enjoy this one and would definitely recommend it.  It's a  little bit different - I'm really crap at explaining things so I'll just give you a bit of the blurb off the back:

"How can I describe this place?  It's an in-between place.  It's like a grand hallway that leads you nowhere, it's like a banquet dinner of leftovers, a sports team made up of the people never picked, a mother without her child, it's a body without it's heart.  It's almost there but not quite.  It's filled to the brim with personal items yet it's empty because the people who own them aren't here to love them."

I think I enjoyed this one better than PS, I Love You, just my personal opinion, of course!

Finally, I signed up for Silkiesue's Freestyle Swap and have been partnered with Lisa at Periwinkle.  I'd not discovered her blog before so I've been enjoying looking through her archives and learning a bit about her. She's made some gorgeous knitted bunnies!  Now I have to get my thinking cap on and decide what I'm going to send!

Ooh, no that wasn't the final thing, there's more!  Emma at Bagladee is celebrating her blog's first birthday and is giving away one of her gorgeous handbags so do pop over and say hello!

That's all for now.  Enjoy the rest of the week!

R x

This is..... my favourite film

I recently joined the This is.. group over at Three Buttons.  Basically, each week a different theme is chosen and then every Sunday the participants post their choice for that category.  I thought this sounded like fun - a good way to post about things that I might not otherwise.  And the category this week is favourite films.  This is a really tough one!  There are so many great films to choose from, and so many that I love, all for very different reasons.  So I'm going to cheat slightly and pick two.

     Apologies for the tiny pic, I can't seem to get the size right - it's either this size or enormous!  Anyway, I saw  A Room with a View in April 87.  It's a lovely film in it's own right but is made even more special for me as it was my first date with Peter.  And then he bought me the video of it for Valentines Day the following year!  So yes, this is one of my fave's for mostly sentimental reasons, but that's as good a reason as any, right?

And my next choice is Back to the Future. What a fab movie,  I saw this three times, I think. (Although that was probably partly because I had a huge crush on Michael J Fox - and yeah, I still do, a little bit!)  But again, I love the film anyway, it had a great soundtrack too.   Peter knows me so well, the box set of the 3 Back to the Future films was another gift from him!

Oh, this is hard, can I list some more? 

Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Dirty Dancing

The Breakfast Club (you can tell I was a teenager in the 80's, right?)

The original Star Wars films

Amelie

The Railway Children (although i can't watch the end of it now, it makes me cry every time!)

It's a Wonderful Life - an absolute classic

and my favourite recent film was probably Stardust.  I'm sure I'll probably think of a load more right after I post this, but I think I've probably listed enough!

What's your favourite film?

P.S. I bet loads of people would pick Mamma Mia - but can you believe I still haven't seen it yet!

R x

39

Yesterday was my birthday.  Birthdays are fairly low key affairs in our house, but it included a lovely lunch out with my Mum and Dad,

 

beautiful flowers, sent from my big bro and his family,

 

a new book I can't wait to start reading,

 

sweeties from the kids,

 

chocolate cake (of course!),

 

and in the evening Peter and I watched this movie (it made me cry!).

I've also just found out that I won the giveaway over at You Go Girl!  How cool is that?  But now the countdown begins to the big 4-0 (yikes!)

R x

By the sea

Today we headed down to Hastings.  We're starting to miss William now, so trying to make sure we do some special things with Joe.  We picked the perfect day - gorgeous sunshine but not too hot.  We went straight onto the beach,

put our toes into the water,

then spent some time throwing pebbles into the sea before going for a game of crazy golf.  At this point I completely forgot about the camera, suffice to say that Peter won officially, but Joe got the highest score!  Then it was off for some fish and chips for lunch, followed by an icecream on the seafront (and a bag of candy floss to take home!).

We just had time then to go back on the beach for another paddle and some pebble collecting,

The sea was cold but not bitterly so - I actually felt that I wouldn't have minded going right in, but we hadn't come prepared for that so it will have to wait til next time.  We didn't stay long, but I'm not one of those people who can be out in the sun all day - just as well really as, although I used Once suncream, the one bit of me that I missed (back and side of my neck - only one side though, weirdly) did catch the sun and is now a fetching shade of lobster!

I've been getting on with William's quilt in his absence - I got the "sandwich" put together yesterday and have started hand quilting it, I'll try and remember to take some photos tomorrow.  We have been getting daily emails from the Chinese thing, with lots of photos too, it looks like they're having a good time.  I can't wait til we go and get him on Sunday though.

Oh yeah, and we went to see Wall-E yesterday.  It was lovely, completely unlike any Disney film I've ever seen before.  Peter wasn't as keen, but I would definitely recommend it, even if you don't have kids.

Stardust

Last night we watched Stardust, and I loved it!  Joseph was a little scared by the witches and the ghost princes, but Will enjoyed it.  I think that I might have to put the DVD on my birthday list.  It's definitely one I could watch over and over.