Oops!

I didn't realise it had been quite so long since my last post - things have been a little hectic around here lately!

Poor Jasper has had what seems to have been a constant cough and cold since he started nursery one day a week in September. I realise this is because of the barrage of new germs he has been exposed to but it is taking its toll on all of us! He's not sleeping properly because of his coughing and spluttering - and the fact that he seems to be getting four of his molars through at once. Still, when he isn't crying all night and being miserable for most of the day, he's still a real cutie-pie and rather cheeky.

Jasper celebrated his first birthday last month - and had a little party (Halloween themed as he's a Halloween baby!) with some of his friends and family. I had grand plans of making him a 3D pumpkin cake that looked very realistic. In true 'poor neglected third child' style, I didn't get around to thinking about how I was going to attempt this until the day before. So he got a pumpkin cake but it wasn't anything like how I wanted it to look. In the end I used one of those bundt tins (the ones that look like a jelly mould with the hole in the middle), on top of a usual cake tin cake.

Not quite how I imagined!

As for things chez nous, the new playhouse is coming along nicely. I gave it a lick of paint last weekend and hubby has finished glossing the trim for the outside of the windows this weekend. We should get that put on tomorrow and then all that's needed is a front door (which I think will be a stable door style), a staircase/ladder for the mezzanine floor and the railings for the front veranda. I'm looking forward to putting some window-boxes up in the spring and introducing the girls to growing their own flowers (that aren't sunflowers!).

Humble beginnings!

Taking shape

I've been very busy on the sewing front - trying to get through as many orders as possible, before the Christmas rush. In the last two weeks I have made a backpack, a drawstring school bag, a pen roll, seven lots of personalised bunting and six dribble bibs. My poor son has been taking Ellie's old (bright pink) Peppa Pig backpack to nursery whilst I was supposed to be making him a more manly one. Two months down the line and I finally got around to doing it! It is made from Riley Blake's Foxtrails laminated cotton. The pattern is Made by Rae's Toddler Backpack pattern which can be purchased HERE  The pattern is relatively simple to follow - I'd recommend it for more confident novice sewists. 

The toddler backpack

The quilted bottom (which is the same
fabric as I've used for the lining).

On a completely bonkers change of topic I am currently reading Shakespeare's Hamlet - yes, for fun! - and wondering why oh why I have never read this play before. It's really very good! I did Shakespeare at school of course (Romeo and Juliet (in early high school), Macbeth (GCSE) and King Lear (A-level)) and I've enjoyed a few of the plays performed in Stratford-upon-Avon (King Lear, Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night and The Tempest). I also loved the film of Much Ado About Nothing (starring Kenneth Brannagh and Emma Thompson) and one of the more recent film productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream. But I have NEVER read or seen Hamlet, surely one of Shakespeare's most famous plays. Rather luckily for me I know that David Tennant (whom I loved as Doctor Who) played Hamlet so I will hopefully get hold of a copy of that soon. I must admit that I didn't honestly properly enjoy Shakespeare at school. I liked watching the plays and films but would never have read one of the plays just for fun!

Having just discovered Hamlet, I think I shall be enjoying much more Shakespeare in the future :)

Rainbow roll

I have a small sewing business (Bye Baby Bunting) where I make things to order; most of the things I make seem to begin with the letter 'B'. I have no idea why, it has just happened this way! I mainly make personalised bunting, bags, blankets and bibs. I have also made some other one-off pieces. My most recent commission is for a set of egg-cosies! I'm still working on the pattern for those...


Here is the rainbow pen roll. I'd been toying with the idea of making a pen roll for some time but just wasn't sure on what look I wanted to go for. Eventually I stumbled across this blog post at Chez Beeper Bebe and decided that a rainbow was definitely the way forward! Matching each pen to its own fabric colour pocket seemed a lovely idea. I've seen lots of tutorials for making pen rolls but decided to make my own up. I really disliked the visible seam lines on the outside of the rolls and so I went about mine differently. I shall be posting my own tutorial very soon so will give more details then...

Here's the open roll

...and here it is closed

Well, here it is! The inaugural blog post!

I have absolutely no idea if anyone will ever stumble across my humble little blog but it will, nonetheless, provide an outlet for my incoherent ramblings thoughts. I hope to write about the children, progress on our house renovations/works, sewing (possibly some tutorials) and perhaps the odd bit of recipe sharing! First and foremost I want to share real life. I'm not a Stepford wife or Nigella Lawson and doubt I ever will be. My house is cleaned and tidied fairly regularly (particularly in those frantic 10 minutes before a guest arrives) but isn't immaculate. It used to be a lot better pre-kids but with all three of them at home at the moment it's a thankless task trying to keep it show-home pristine, much as my husband wishes it was. The kids do drive me to distraction on occasion and I do admit to resorting to cBeebies once in a while, in order to give me a break whilst the baby is sleeping!

I guess the first thing to do is to introduce myself:

I am a thirty(something) year old harrassed mother of three little darlings, un-domestic goddess/wife of a hard-working husband, sewist extraordinaire (not really, but I do have a teeny tiny sewing business - www.facebook.com/byebabybunting - that provides me with a pathetic modest income) and more recently an accidental smallholder.
The latter sounds more grand than it actually is - we actually only have eight sheep (Zwartbles breed) at the moment and they'll be reduced to four come November (shhhhhh, don't tell them that!!). We may have chickens and ponies by next year but as we are also saving for a much needed extension - that came in at quite a lot more than we were expecting - then the other livestock may have to go on hold for a little while!

As for the little darlings themselves...First we have Ellie, the eldest at the grand old age of nearly five. She is the peacemaker of the family; a lover of animals, food and books. She's about to start school and is desperately excited about it.
Tabby comes next. She's three and a half and suffers from that terrible affliction, Middle Child Syndrome! She has three main aims in life: to have hair as long as Rapunzel (a rather ambitious wish as she currently still has very little hair!), to beat her big sister in a running race and to eat as much porridge each day as she possibly can.
Jasper is our last, and most definitely final, child. He's almost 10 months and a complete menace joy. He's been crawling (in a Platoon extra, shot in the legs manner) for three months now and we are thinking of hiring him out to building firms due to his uncanny ability to locate even the most hidden wires/cables in a room. He is a generally chilled out, happy, smiley baby but if he is remotely hungry or tired then the whole world is quickly apprised of his situation.

My husband is a metrology engineer. Ever heard of one of those? Nope, me neither. It means he gets to go and visit places like F1 factories, aerospace and military installations and measure stuff for them/sell them stuff to measure their stuff. It's all terribly exciting and glamorous. Actually, it really isn't, but he's a bit of a geek so he loves it :D
In his spare time, my darling hubby is a bit addicted to building sheds. We currently have three in the garden and he has just designed a playhouse for the girls that will be being built soon (he assures me). He's also just in the throes of designing a shelter for our sheep. No doubt it will be bigger and better than they actually need but he'll have fun doing it, which is the main thing.

I think that's probably plenty of writing for a first post, particularly one that doesn't actually have any readers yet! Further posts to follow hopefully...