It's Me, Sarah

The School Holidays - Stuff So Far!

We are having a nice relaxing time this year for the school holidays.  Mark is busy sorting out the front of the house and having built a patio out there he is now stripping the paint from the walls in preparation for painting.  At the moment the paint stripping is making it look worse not better but I am assured all will be well in the end.

The weather last week was beautiful wasn't it?  We spent most of the time in our garden now that Mark has finished the patio it is a lovely space to go and sit in and we took advantage of that last week having quite a few barbecues with the kids, alone and also with friends.  We even fired up the Chiminea on our 20th wedding anniversary and spent the evening outside eating a nice bbq, drinking pear cider, alcoholic Ginger Beer and a glass of celebratory champagne. It was a lovely night together.  20 years!  Where did that go?

Happy 20th Anniversary

 We used the glasses from our engagement to drink out of (14th May 1992), Mark's idea :)

We are still getting used to having Treacle around and teaching the kids how to deal with a kitten because Noodles was already firmly part of the family and grown up before they arrived, having a kitten is a different matter!  They love him though, especially Amy.  We just need to keep reminding them that Treacle is a living thing and not a toy / doll.

Amy with Treacle

I even managed an hour of scrapbooking today!  I did a layout in less than an hour, videoed it and had it ready for upload within two hours so I will post that tomorrow :)

I have been busy knitting and I am currently making a beautiful (I hope!) shawl by Jared Flood, it's the Rock Island one.  I can't wait to finish it but I am currently still knitting the lace around the border which is taking an age!  It am so enjoying knitting it with my lovely Addi Lace Interchangeable circular needles that Mark kindly bought for me, they are the best needles ever!

Rock Island Shawl Edging

See you tomorrow with the Speed Scraps video :)

Homely Stuff

What no blogging! Well you know what I am like when the kids are on holiday , ever so slightly distracted from my routine!

We have been busy doing 'house-y' stuff though. Last year we managed to save £9,000 to go to Disneyland so we thought that this year we would any spare money to do nice things to the house and I am loving it.

So far we have done the girls bedroom and had wardrobes built in our room. We also bought a new bed and finally got some nice curtains in our room. Our room is almost finished, I just need to make a couple of canvasses and get a dressing table and rug and it will be done, but you can't buy it all at once can you?

Mark is painting the kitchen for me this weekend. Do you remember this post from 2008 when I was lamenting the fact that he was painting over my beloved red walls? Well, now he is painting them back red for me (it only took 4 years of nagging!). Insert a little happy dance here.

On a side note:  clicking on that link to the kitchen in red was quite a shock.  Where you see the TV on the side is now the door to my craft room and we also have wooden floors throughout the hall, kitchen and craft room which are not there in the picture!  It is surprising what a difference four years can make! The poster is still on the wall though :)

We have also bought lots of bits and bobs this year like a nice mantle clock, a canvas for the lounge and a rug. I have also got my looooong sought after Dualit toaster and kettle.

Our most recent conversations concern the back garden which is really just a yard. We are going to tidy it up a bit and get some pots for plants and a nice little table that we can have a sunshiney coffee at in more pleasant surroundings. I can't wait, I don't want posh, just a little cottage-y retreat which for me is just perfect!

A relaxing kind of week :)

I have been dreading this week because Mark was going away for a few days and it is surprising how quickly you become used to having company every night, even when you have spent the majority of your marriage spending weekday nights alone because your husband commutes to work and stays away during the week.  It wasn't just that Mark was going to be away but also because Charlotte has gone away with the school, on a residential trip.  For FOUR days (and three nights).  She's only 8 and I miss her because I know she is a big la-la and so accident prone - I think I stopped every teacher in turn and asked them if they would look after my little girl.  I hope they don't speak to each other about it, my hope is that they think I have asked them because they are the special one!

On top of that my Mum has left too! She lives across the road and I see her every day but she has flown out to South Africa to see my sister (who lives there and is 50 on April 4th *snigger*).  So you see Ben, Amy and I are a little lost this week.

I have mostly been doing a bit of sorting, new wardrobes tend to require a complete sort out of your 'stuff' don't they?

I have also been having a bit of me time...

...and admiring the flowers in my window (which my brother bought for my Mum for Mother's Day but I have acquired on account of Mum buggering off to SA).  A few quiet cups of tea, a bit of nail painting (interuppted and thereby ruined by untimely delivery of my groceries!) and some hooky happiness in the form of pillow finishing (the one to match my Flowers in the Snow blanket).

I have had some lovely moments with little Amy.  She has been doing little dances for me all the time and it made me realise that, perhaps, she has been wanting to do them for ages but that Charlotte always takes over / joins in.  It's lovely to see her doing her own thing and being so sweet with it.  Amy is a little lost at bed time though, she is not used to going to a room by herself and getting to sleep without her big sister!  Actually, Ben has been a little angel too, apart from trying it on a bit when he should be going to bed - I am sure he thought the bedtime routine would be discarded if Charlotte was away.  Ben misses Charlotte too, I can tell.  He would never admit it though!

Rainbows and Hearts are the room!

The rainbows and hearts blankets made by me and my Mum are in the girls bedrooms.

Here are a few pictures of them in-situ to give you an idea of how they look and the reason for the colour choices :) 

Don't they look pretty?  Amy and Charlotte love them!

See how happy they are.

The room is so much easier to keep tidy now that we have sorted it all out.  It looks like this all the time now.  In fact, it looks even better because they have a nice roman blind now and the wall has been painted pink (it was still plaster when this was taken as we had the wall batoned to combat the damp problem).

The wire below the TV is also a thing of the past as it has been hidden behind some trunking (is that the word?) which has been painted to match the wall.

I love their little room!

Blooming flower cushion and a bit of decorating

I finished my blooming flower cushion a few weeks ago but I haven't managed to blog it so I have finally taken a few photographs so that I can share.

I loved making this cushion, it was so easy and the cushion inserts (12") that I bought from Abakhan Fabrics are the perfect size for it, they are feather too so really soft and squishy :)

Ignore the errant blue thread, there is always one end which gets away and needs to be sewn in later isn't there?!

I am going to make another one of these later on to match my bedroom because I think it would look gorgeous nestling amongst all the other cushions on the bed.

Talking of beds, we have got a new one.  Finally!  It is memory foam and we splashed out on the memory foam pillows too.  It's heaven but I have found that the new bed makes me really warm so it is taking a bit of getting used to.  I am not sure that Mark is too fond of the pillows yet as he woke up the other morning and said he may as well of bought a breeze block and stuck a pillow protector on it!

I love our new wardrobes in our room too, it is lovely to have the floor to ceiling sliding doors especially as one of them is a mirror and I have been meaning to buy a floor length mirror for ever.  I am not sure about the reflection I see it it but the oak and mirrored doors are certainly gorgeous.

We have got new wallpaper and paint and as soon as Charlotte and Amy's room is completed Mark is going to finish ours off.  I can't wait.  I will share a picture when it is all done - it's going to look lovely. I need to get a little french dressing table and some wall art to finish it off,  I may make a mixed media canvas for the wall by my bed :)