Introducing Bozo

Well most of you will have seen him before popping up in photographs every now and then and if you have visited our house you will almost certainly seen him in person. Bo is Anya's teddy and he is very much loved and patched - as you can see in these photographs!

The reason he is downstairs today is that Anya has a teddy bears picnic at school on Thursday and she didn't want him to go into school with great big holes and I agree. He has been sitting on my workbox all day waiting patiently for me to fix him but alas it is nearly bedtime and he won't get fixed before bed. Tomorrow I think.

She loves this bear!

Treasury

A treasury I made the other day - I was inspired by all the flower fabric I have been chopping up!

A lovely sight......

.......that greeted me yesterday. Both girls desperate to read books to Nana and Nana being thrilled that they wanted to :) I love my mum :D

The washing fairy

How I wish that the washing fairy would come to my house!

This little lot is load number 17 of about 50 - why oh why did I leave washing all my fabric until I had 50ish loads to do?? I have bought fabric since I started this mammoth task and it has gone straight into the washing machine - lesson learned! I think it will take me until the end of the summer to get everything washed and sorted onto shelves again - just in time for starting Christmas ideas!

Although if the sky over Burnley stays like this then it will take even longer!

Shopping or The Tale of Things Jumping Into My Arms!

When my mum comes to visit we often go shopping - I like shopping and so does my mum! I had to go to Paperchase to get some supplies for teacher presents (more on that when they are made) and the only one I know of is situated in a Borders bookshop. Uh oh!!

This issue of Selvedge jumped into my arms - how did that happen! I have read lots about this magazine but hadn't found it until now - all I can say is wow! I like it a lot :)

This book also jumped into my arms - it has lots of great ideas to kick start your creativity if you like making collages, altered art etc. A couple of other books tried to jump into my arms but I restrained myself :) I only bought those two things along with the Paperchase goodies.

We tried to stop at a charity shop on the way home but couldn't find parking (or parking that Bumble could fit into anyway!) so we didn't stop at the one planned but we did stop at a different one instead.

Mr Barrowman jumped into my arms (if only!) and at only £1 who was I too argue?

This fabric also decided to come home with me - the pattern looks crap here but it is really nice in real life.

These plates were in the 30p box outside the shop (there is a set of 5) but when I came to pay for them he lady said 40p for the lot to get rid of them! Erm, I was going to pay 30p each but I'm not going to argue with little old lady charity shop logic!

And as I was paying there was a stack of magazines on the counter - I had a quick flick through and this one was 20p and therefore came home with me. I like to kid myself that one day my house might look like one of the ones in these magazines - I did say might!

Don't tell me I am the only one who has things jumping into their arms? Or online shopping cart?

Cake!

My mum is visiting this week and said that to save me from cooking that she would take us out to tea one night! I wasn't going to say no to that :) We went to what is known in our house as the pudding place. If I'd thought about it I would have taken a camera to document the sheer size of the puddings - they are huge! It's a pub that does your regular meals but the puddings are fantastic - huge and delicious.

This is what my mum came home with - a Sycamore slice which is their version of a vanilla slice (the pub is called Sycamore Farm). Looks delicious yes but it measures approx 4 inches square. That's one huge dessert!

I came home with Chocolate Junkyard which is a chocolatey mousse type thing with choc sauce and lots of marshamallows, malteasers, chocolate bits piled on top. This wasn't the normal size portion - they seem to be mean with the portions now :( The last dessert we got from them we couldn't finish all in one go.

And here is my lovely mum who treated us to these delicious things :) She wouldn't look up for a photgraph so I took one of her reading my magazine instead.

A day in the life - 5th July 2009

I've been meaning to do one of these posts for a while but have never managed to get round to it! This one fell on the day of my craft fair at the Lancaster Steiner School so I managed to detail everything for you.

6.30am The alarm went off but we snoozed it twice!

6.46am Got up and went in the shower

7.01am Got dressed and looked in my jewellery stash for something to hang my new (handmade by me!) pendant on - photos at some stage this week.

7.15am Kettle on

7.30am Sorted stuff into my new handbag as the old one broke in a Disneyland related incident.

7.31am Splashed fruit tea destined for my flask all over this list (handwritten at that stage)

7.36am Stopped faffing and ate breakfast

8.05am Loaded my stock into Bumble

8.45am Left home for the fair

9.15am Waved at another VW campervan - the first I've seen whilst driving Bumble :) I was very excited.

9.45am Arrived at the school (after turning into a tiny road that was a nightmare to reverse Bumble out of) and set up my stall.

10.50am Watched the girls playing in the garden

10.55am Got on with some embroidery

11.25am Made my first sale of the day - a chicken doorstop, 3 lots of tags and a set of mini envelopes!

12.05 pm Lunchtime! Veggie kebabs with quinoa (sp) salad, pitta bread and lettuce followed by a big slice of carrot and walnut cake.

Then more selling and embroidery until

3.00 pm Pack up at the fair

3.30pm Leave the fair and realise that my headache has turned into a migraine.

4.45pm Arrive at home and promptly fall asleep on the sofa whilst the girls play and Matt watches the tennis

5.45pm Matt wakes me up and sends me up to the Chinese for tea :) Such hardship!

6.05pm Teatime. The girls had chicken fried rice, Matt had Chicken Cantonese style, no carrots with fried rice and I had crispy chicken strips with salt and pepper with fried rice - it was yummy!

7.05pm Put the girls to bed after a story

7.10pm to 7.40pm Put the rubbish out for collection, washing on and empty the dishwasher.

7.40pm til 8.15pm Check emails, blogs, upload photos and pack up a Folksy order.

We watched the end of Back To The Future and then went to bed at 8.50pm - lightweights!

And I actually remembered to get some photographs of my stall this time!!

If you head over to my Flickr page then you can see notes on each photograph to see what all the goodies are.

This is where I will be tomorrow!

This is where I will be tomorrow selling my recycled goodies :) If you are in the Lancaster area then please do pop along and say hi. It's at the Steiner School which is on Lune Road. I'm off now to make some more goodies for the fair - a good root around in my craft room should help me find some inspiration!

Hope to see you there and this time I will remember to take some photographs to show you my stall!

Some new things

Some new gift tags - I love the beach ones which you can get here and here.


And some Peter and Jane ones.

And this set of Cinderella envelopes which aren't listed yet but will be soon.

I have 8 other sets of gift tags and another 7 sets of envelopes to list at some stage - soon!!

Pile of fabric

This pile of fabric represents about one and a half shelves worth of fabric. I have washed, dried, cut the selvedge off and pinked the edges of one and a half shelves worth of fabric that is now put away back away on the shelf. This lot will get done soon(ish) so that will be another one and a half shelves of fabric - 3 shelves in total. Only another 10 shelves of fabric to go :) And some people thought I was mad............