Oh my goodness it's been too long since my last post! So to get me back into this blogging lark, here are some pics of recent goings-on round my way...
some of the lovely bits I won in Caroline's giveaway...
signs of spring...
hearts and pancakes (weeks ago!)...
another lovely spring flower...
a bonfire with friends...
our local city farm allotments have been yarn bombed!
my amazingly talented friend Cath made this tiny diorama which hangs in her living room...
crocuses are one of my favourite spring flowers...
a few finds from my weekend away - back at the beginning of Feb!
I never mean to take long breaks from blogging, but the last few weeks have flown by - I can't believe it's March
already! We have been given some 2nd hand kitchen units - our
kitchen was in dire need of refurbishing so the last couple of weeks
have been spent stripping artex (vile stuff!) off the ceiling, and plumbing, and living surrounded by the contents of our kitchen in boxes. It's nearly finished but we still have the tiling to go, and as Frank's doing it all himself it's still going to be a week or two before we can stand back and admire the final result. It's been hard work but it will be worth it!
I've been buying lots more fabric to restock for my next fabric sale so now the sun is putting in occasional appearances I'll take some pics and let you all have a sneak peek... :) I hope you're enjoying the start of spring...I've been terrible at keeping up with all my favourite blogs (it was impossible to sit at the PC when Frank was working so hard in the kitchen - would have made me feel awfully guilty!) but I hope to catch up with you all soon.
Thanks for reading and welcome to my new followers - lovely of you to join me here! Rachel xx
Hello lovelies!! How are you? Haven't got long tonight...on deadline to make a lampshade that a friend has commissioned...as usual I have left it to the last minute! But in a weak moment I checked my blog roll and look what Alice Apple has been up to...
Sooooooooo pretty!!! They are postcards and are available in her Etsy shop - though I think a few of the designs may have sold out already - I love them all!!
Thank you all so much for all the amazingly supportive comments on my last post - I'm so sorry I haven't had a chance to reply to them all but we've been hit by more illness - will it never end?!
The fabric sale went really well and it will definitely be a regular thing. I had a great time and met lots of lovely people; I got a real buzz from the happy smiles on their faces as they left clutching piles of my gorgeous fabric! And best of all I sold enough to justify buying more fabric to top up my stock - Yay!!! So here's a sneak peek at some of the lovely new bits I've bought...
Yikes what a treat - it appears that I now have the beginnings of a job - buying fabric! And the best bit is that I can sell a bit and keep a bit for myself - I'm in heaven.I have set myself a deadline of end of March for getting my first listings into the Etsy shop so I'm going to be busy for the next few weeks - fingers crossed for no more germs!
I hope you've had a good week and have a nice weekend planned...I'm popping down to the seaside to visit a good friend - on my own. She has a free and easy lifestyle with no kids...I can't quite imagine what we'll get up to but I'm most excited about the prospect of a lie-in! Have fun whatever you do won't you? I will be! Rachel xx
Hello, how has your weekend been? Mine has been rather special...I've been away. With friends, and no kids...I know - exciting!! This was the view from our window...
and this was the view when I looked up...from the hot tub!...
For 2 nights I stayed here with some amazing friends. We laughed and danced and ate and drank and watched films and painted our nails and stayed up late and wore silly wigs and slept in late and read trashy magazines and NOT ONCE did I have to wipe someone else's bum or make someone else a snack or tidy up a mountain of lego or think about anyone elses' needs but my own. It was heavenly.
It was the first time since having M, over 7 years ago, that I have been away from my family. By this afternoon I was missing them, and it was brilliant to see them and get all the hugs and kisses and 'I missed you Mummy's that were showered upon me when I got back. But those 2 days were precious, and I feel soooo relaxed. I'm going to try to hold on to this feeling for as long as I can. And we've already booked to go back next year.
Hello lovelies, I hope you've all enjoyed your Saturdays, and are looking forward to the rest of your long weekend...the end of the school holidays is almost upon us, and I am feeling a mixture of wistfulness and relief when I think of M returning.
I want to say thanks again for all your lovely messages of support, encouragement, love....I feel very lucky. I am generally a pretty positive and optimistic person, but sometimes when things are going pear-shaped and I'm tired or depleted, I can feel myself slipping into a dark place....that's where I was at yesterday, and I reached out, and you were there for me. It made a real difference. Thank you.
I found this the other day (on Pinterest of course!), and it sums up what I need to remember when it starts going a bit wrong....
Aah, so true. So today I have banished all those dark thoughts, and focused on the moment, which is really all we have anyway. Tomorrow I'll be back to show you some of my favourite pretty vintage things from the magical world of the internet, because that, among other things, is what this blog is supposed to be all about! Sorry if I forgot that for a while, and thanks for sticking with me, you're great.
Thanks all of you for your lovely messages earlier. I really appreciate you taking the time to send a hug or a kind word, it has made a real difference to my day. I find it hard striking the right balance here, between honesty and misery, or positivity and inauthenticity (is that even a word?!) - I don't want to act like my life is always perfect, but I don't want to bum anyone out either, and of course I know everyone's got their own problems to deal with, a lot of which are probably far more challenging than mine.
I'm sure my worries are being amplified by the school holidays, the rain and being woken at a hellishly early hour by the boys - giving us all a lazy day with no expectations seems to have helped my mood to lighten, combined with the magical feeling of being supported by you lovely bloggy women, most of whom I've never even met - it's a lovely thing.
Here's the tune that I listened to today that helped me to get a grip, it's beautiful and wistful, not too happy but not too sad, and from my one of my favourite films...RIP Tony Scott, what a sad thing, puts my minor wobbles into proper perspective.
I hope you didn't mind me sharing my blue mood, I think maybe I should have saved that post as a draft and waited to see how the day panned out, but at that moment I needed friends and you were there, thank you.
Today I had some errands to run which could not wait, so off we went in the rain...luckily R is a cheerful little soul so jumping in puddles kept him entertained on the way.
Yesterday was a quite different story though...both me and Lou of littlegreenshed found ourselves child free for the morning, so rather than our usual 'quick coffee then off home to do the hoovering' routine, we treated ourselves to a proper adventure! I don't know about where you live, but our local high street has pretty much everything you need for day to day life; this is great, but it does mean that sometimes I go WEEKS without venturing out of our neighbourhood! So we hopped in Lou's car and off we went to the OTHER SIDE OF TOWN - I was so excited!
After a chat over coffee and a slice of delicious cake, our first stop was the delightful Flo Jo Boutique, a lovely shop and craft space which has recently been featured in Mollie Makes ...
They run fabulous workshops including knicker making parties! The shop is beautifully styled, with all the goodies displayed in 50s kitchen dressers and vintage sewing baskets.
Just over the road we discovered an amazing charity shop, called SHOP, which was an Aladdin's cave of retro and vintage gorgeousness....
...again, it was styled really nicely, more like a vintage boutique than a charity shop. So far, Gloucester Road was proving to be a feast for the eyes! And then we headed further down the road, and I'll show you what we found there tomorrow...
The sun has come out while I've been writing this, though knowing the weather it will start raining again just in time for the afternoon school pick up! It's the last day of school here, I am almost hoping that it rains again tomorrow because I think what M needs more than anything is a day at home in his PJs.
Well here we are, the weekend again, and the Easter school break has started - 2 weeks of no school run, and hopefully lots of time to play out in the sunshine (though not much evidence of that yet today!). It has been a busy week, and here is one of the reasons why....
I have made a lampshade for a friends' 40th birthday present, from some rather lovely 60s Heals fabric (called Conifer, designed by Gay Dulley). It's not a massive job to make a lampshade, but it is a fiddly one, and if you mess it up it looks rubbish and isn't easy to fix. I've been feeling tired and not really in a crafting mood, so I had to keep doing a bit and then putting it down to finish later...well I got there in the end and I think it looks pretty damn good. She likes it anyway, and that's the main thing (she had chosen the fabric in advance, I wouldn't have risked it not being to her taste!).
I do love the feeling I get when I've finished making something and it looks lovely; hopefully I'll get a chance to get back into my sewing over the next couple of weeks. I have an urge to do a bit of patchwork, maybe another cushion cover, or maybe I should start something a bit bigger like a quilt...it might be nice to have an ongoing project to dip into when the mood takes me! After all, I have got a fair bit of fabric to choose from.....
Well much as I love my boys, I'm afraid Mother's day morning was not about me as a Mum, but about me as a vintage & retro addict. I headed off to the Bristol Vintage & Flea Market which is held monthly just round the corner from my house, with a good friend who isn't really into that kind of thing, but loves me enough to wait with a cup of tea while I got over-excited about the stalls!
I used to be a sucker for a box of shiny things, but nowadays I'm happy with a photo....
Love the mad expression on this deer's face!
A lovely vintage style cat from Katie May's Bears....
If I'd started looking through the scarves, I would have been there all day...
I found that having my camera made it easier to be restrained, if something had a gorgeous pattern on it, I could just take a photo instead of giving it a new home in my already over-crowded house.
I love these 70s M&S trays - I'm glad I already have a matching tea towel in blues, as I really don't need any more trays but this pattern is hard to resist!
This little basket was very tempting, with its cheerful yellow and floral motif...
and I love the bright concentric circles on this box...
While I was there I bumped into the lovely Lou, and we spent a bit of time ooohing and aaahing over some rather fabulous curtains, one pair of which I managed to resist (a tad too extravagant, though gorgeously scandi), and one which I didn't - a photo of them will be shared tomorrow! After all that I allowed my friend to steer me in the direction of a nice local cafe for brunch, and then I was off home to build a den with my boys. A very good day!
Monday has rolled around all too quickly, here we are again - hope you have a good one.
Wow what a week, from the ridiculous to the sublime - more illness, a broken washing machine, the usual too much boring domestic stuff to do and not enough time or energy. And then to balance and outweigh all that, the beautiful sunshine, and yesterday meeting up with Lou of littlegreenshed.blogspot.com, who lives just around the corner from me.
Our older boys go to the same school so we have known each other to say hello to for a while, but since I started my blog she has been full of encouragement and it was lovely to get together. She went home and blogged about her visit, and it was funny to see my home from her perspective - she noticed all my favourite things, and made me look at my messy toy strewn house with renewed affection. She has a lovely Etsy shop with cards of her photos and illustrations, this is my favourite of her new postcards...
She's getting some A3 and A4 prints in the shop soon, I'm looking forward to seeing them!
So many people read her post and came here to have a look at my little blog, and left such lovely comments, that I'm now feeling thoroughly chuffed and and definitely reassured that people like what I'm doing; just the encouragement I need to get on and open my Etsy shop. Now I just need to get rid of the germs and the laundry mountain so that I can make the time! Thanks for visiting, have a lovely day! Rachel x
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