Summer holidays

Picking beans at Grandma's

I didn't mean to take an extended break from this space!

There is not much sewing going on here as we are deep into the summer holidays. I am finishing off a piece of sewing for my son at the moment, to be blogged soon, and making vague autumnal plans. This is a picture heavy post and I know blogs are currently full of holiday photos but indulge me...honestly these are heavily edited.

We did a paper monster making workshop at this art gallery. Ther's a pop up paper cafe where you can have coffee and do some paper craft, it's still on if you are in the Exeter area in August. Can you see that Little I is going into a giant window paper envelope?

Back in Shropshire we have been camping...

Today we did a fab bushcraft family day (free thanks to PCT funding).

Eating fish cooked on the open fire. ("Mmmmm, yummy")

Shelter buildingLearning to use fire sticks to light a fireNot surprisingly this is the end of most days. They do both have separate beds of their own but often like to fall asleep in one bed together.

I will be back soon with normal service, some recent charity shop finds and a bit of sewing.

Completed ATC Cards

Little I's completed cards. T's are more comples, involving a series of puzzles and mazes, they are going to take a while to complete.

thrifty 365 days part 1

Look what Little I's nursery teacher gave me ...vintage barkcloth Noddy fabric, sorry for the creases. What do you think I should make from it? I have a couple of ideas...

In the spirit of Sarah's Thrifty 365 , recently we have been finding things to do that do not involve spending much money....we have been planiting seeds to grow vegetables. These are hopefully going to be pak choi.

I found a load of old mount boards in my mum's attic left over from when I last exhibited my art work (eek, too long ago, seems like another life). I bought it home and it looks great with childrens' watercolours on so we are using the last pieces to make our ATC Kids' Swap art cards. Little I did one big piece that I had drawn a grid of 3.5x 2.5 " rectangles on. Then I cut them at her nursery borrowing their big guillotine. They look lovely once cut up, the thickness of the mount board gives them a real Special-Object-like quality when you hold them.

I will photo them but right now the sun is shining and my kids are shouting at me to come and play.

Kids ATC Swap

We are signed up to participate in the kid's Art Trading Card Swap organised by Ellie and Abbie at Bright Eyes + Blue Eyes. The closing date for registration is 4th April. For those who may not be familiar ATCs are usually about 3.5 by 2 inches and are cards with images on by an artist. In this case they are to made by the children (ages 4 upwards). The kids are to be put into age groups so for instance my eight year old will swap with other eight year olds. (You have to be prepared to pay postage for your cards) Are you in?

Me Made March Catch Up and a digression or two

I need to do a Me Made March catch up here. Some crappy photos. Some bad hair. Sorry about that. Thursday 24th - Me Made top from a duvet cover and using Simplicity 3835, charity shop Gap jeans, Boden sale cardigan

Friday 25th March - Me Made nautical t shirt and refashioned cardigan, charity shop Gap jeans

Saturday 27th March - Me Made top from Simplicity 2245, stash fabric, another pair of charity shop jeans, Boden sale cardigan

No photo for Sunday but I did wear my me-made table cloth top.

Monday 28th March - Me made Amy Butler Anna tunic, very old Zara cardigan, those charity shop Gap jeans again

Okay here's the digressions:

The eagle eyed amongst you may notice in the last photo that the map has moved.

Little I is very interested in her alphabet so last week I finally cleared out the craft cupboard and then on sunday I put up the alphabet poster I had been searching for in the craft cupboard. I love this poster. It is by

Jan Pienkowski one of my favourite children's illustrators (I've loved his silhouette illustrations since I was a child - I cannot think how else to describe them). If you have small kids I recommend his website (in the previous link) if you go to "fun and games" he has some fab printable colouring pages. And if you read the "About" page you get a brief glimpse of a fascinating career.

Sometimes tidying up has its bonuses, I now have an idea of what is in the cupboard. I had forgotten we own sun print photo paper, a box of old fashioned wooden pegs for dolly making and many coloured lolly sticks.

Digression two - the Boden cardigan was bought when I went to a Boden end of line sale a couple of years ago when I still bought RTW clothing. If you get the chance to go to one it is funny and a good people watching experience. It was in an exhibition hall and clothes were on tables, in boxes and a few on rails. It was kind of like an upmarket jumble sale for middle class, middle aged women. We got there an hour after it opened and almost all the kid's clothes had gone. If you are especially small or big you can get some great bargains. There was a make shift communual changing room where you tried on clothes and tossed the unwanted into cardboard boxes where staff would put them make out the front. While I was there someone had put her own clothes down only to find they had been shoved into a box and taken out front for selling! I tried on lots of things but bought my mustard cardigan and have worn it so much since it was a definite good buy. I saw quite a few women I know vaguely from toddler groups or school run and do you know the weird thing? Boden's relentlessly jolly marketing kind of irritates me - they are a bit of a cliche and their prices are way out of my range - but all the women trying on dresses, tops etc looked really good. The Boden clothes seemed to fit and flatter middle aged women so I guess they must know what they are doing.

22nd March

With all these Me Made posts I haven't done much about making with kids recently.

We have been reading this book a lot recently and current project is the water clock from it (T's choice). We were given this book as part of a job lot from some friends with grown up children. It was published in 1976 but is full of good projects and ideas. Lots of games, craft and a science section. Reading the introduction the only bit that felt dated was the advice to ask your local hospital for old syringes, gloves etc. This seems so shocking now in our HIV-aware and health and safety culture.

Anyway it is a great book and when I checked there are some copies on amazon here. (Iam not benefiting in advertising this, just wanted to share) After the water clock is done I want to make a shoe box loom!

Puppets are a big thing here at the moment. We made some sock puppets last week. Of course Little I wanted pink ones.

I am feeling screamingly fed up on the sewing front. I have managed to half sew in the sleeves for the U.P. dress. While altering a skirt on sunday I broke my machine needle. Ever since then the machine has been doing strange things, needles jamming, needles unthreading. I changed size of needle and fiddled with the tension. It just jammed horribly while sewing the U.P sleeves. I just realised that I never found the tip of the broken needle and think it could be in there jamming the machine. I wll have a look later, otherwise I think a trip back to the sewing machine shop is due. I feel as if this U.P dress will never be done. I have made so many stupid errors on it. I feel like screwing it up into a ball and putting at the back of the scary understairs cupboard.

Instead I am going to go for a walk near T's school and take some deep breaths, probably stopping to buy some chocolate. And I shall be mainly wearing the outfit featured below:

Me made dress Simplicity 3964, refashioned yellow cardigan, Gap jeans via charity shop.

Hope your sewing projects are going more smoothly than mine. Grrrr...

5th and 6th March, and Pocket Love

T designed his own Thank You cards post birthday on paintshop.

6th March - possibly the most comfortable outfit so far this month. Me made t shirt (Built by Wendy Sew U Home Stretch book), Me Made Trousers (Sew U book) charity shop cardigan with altered buttons.

Saturdays are not my best day of the week and I didn't get to take any photos. I wore a Me made top blogged here. The day was filled with buying trainers for T, taking T to his swimming lesson, going to a talk about new national swimming lesson structure, washing and ironing school clothes, blah, blah. Good news of the day was that after almost a year on the waiting list Little I finally has a place at local authority swimming lessons. She has already laid out her costume in anticipation. (only 2 weeks in advance) Yesterday I made a rapid dash into the charity shop opposite the shoe shop and scored this size 10 lambswool M& S cardigan (with pockets, yippee) and two tennis balls. I have been cold a lot in March so far and this is warm and toasty. I will blog soon about the button alteration. I don't think button altering counts as refashioning, does it?

I also have to blog about the trainers, we let T choose from a selection of four pairs, he finds decision making hard. But he managed, and he chose some with flashing traffic lights on. They are growing on me. Mr Minnado and I both liked the tasteful brown trainers but then we are not eight years old, so obviously what would we know?

Frequent pocket occupiers, those essentials are car keys, lego man and lip/skin balm.

Hurray, hurray I made pockets for the sack dress. I used this fabric scrap to make two pocket bags, unpicked the side seams for the pocket length and sewed them in. I love this fabric, it came out of haul I bought back from Devon. Sadly there was only a small scrap. A larger piece would make a fabulous dress.

Finished pocket on Sack Dress

Christmas tree control freakery and a tea cup necklace.

It is all very busy here, getting ready for Christmas. I am pleased that I have managed to post my parcel of gifts to our friends in Poland.

We put up our tree at the weekend, Little I was in charge of decorating it and there is a large clump of ornaments at the front just at age three height. I have spread them out a bit but she keeps putting them back where she wants so I have decided to relax and leave it. I could feel myself becoming too control freaky about aligning tinsel, I think it is the result of seeing so many beautiful christmas decorations on homestyle blogs. It is an addiction to keep looking at Beautiful Home blogs.

This week is the last week of term so we have been making cards for teachers and gifts.
Remember all those cards I put in a previous post? We used them all up so we have made some more using origami. We these christmas trees - so simple a seven year old can do them (and did).

Finally, I made this mismatched necklace for Little I's preschool key worker, a lovely person who also worked with T when he was at preschool. She has a fab dress sense and loves handmade stuff. Little I has decorated a matchbox to put the necklace into. As I have collections of stuff (not hoarding of course) I happened to have a bead collection dating back to when I was about 10. Lots of these are lace beads that would be traditionally put on lace bobbins as weights. (my mum went through a lace making phase!) I have decided to crack open the bead collection and started making necklaces. I added a couple of doll's house teacups because I like them. I could call it "A storm in a teacup necklace" or "put the kettle on dear, we'll have a nice cup of tea" (Any one spotting that quote can have a prize!)

The Tooth Fairy

Little I is a very stubborn three and a half year old who does not like me to clean her teeth. She will let her dad clean them, but often he is not here at teeth cleaning time. Finally after many tantrums,tears, and hiding under the bed, I made this chart for her, complete with a letter from the Tooth Fairy (yes, the Real One). The letter tells her she can have a silver star to stick on the fairy's skirt each time she lets me clean her teeth without a fuss. This morning she was not interested at all, but at lunchtime she deigned to let me clean her teeth and then carefully added her sticker to the skirt. Who knows if it will work again tonight or tommorrow.

Blue Birthday Bunting

I know the blogosphere is awash with bunting but here is a bit more...

It was my friend's youngest son's birthday and we had to cancel going over for a play and tea as Little had a cold and I still felt unwell having had a lingering cold for over a week.

I now am going to post this present to him. The slightly embarassing thing is I started this bunting for his third birthday present...um... he was four this year, the half made bunting has languished in my sewing box for a year. On saturday I fished it out and finished it. Turned out I only has to sew on the ribbon, so it was one of those times when I wondered "Why didn't I do this last year??" Especially as he has such a nice short name!

Planting bulbs

Making presents for teachers - they painted the plant pots, plenty of glitter paint too. (I first sprayed the pots with a primer as a base

coat.) Then today we planted bulbs. Little I chose hyacinths that are the brightest pink. This is such a simple project that I haven't put it onto Crafty Christmas Club but there are some great ideas over there. Fingers crossed these bulbs flower....

We heart shelves

See the chaos - no room to eat at the table.

Pens, pencils, art straws, playdough, magnetic letters, talking globe...see they all fit!

When trying to practice mindful spending and not buying new things I have found that patience can be rewarded. I have been wishing to have some shelves for a long long time. I wanted to stick to my guns and buy second hand but I was getting fed up. Shelves offered on my local freecycle network get snapped up very very quickly.

I had even started to look at Ikea's website, and asking other people where their shelving came from. In short I was becoming an obsessive, shelving wannabee-bore. Mr Minnado doesn't like shelves. Really, really does not like shelves. When I suggest shelves in our new house that we are planning, he adds quickly "But wouldn't you like a door over them?" i.e. a cupboard. (But I would like a shelf in the kitchen to put some of my pottery pieces on.)

Due to his shelf hatred (yes, that is shelf not self) and my lack of funds we have had more things on the floor and the dining table than I would like. When he trips over a box of pens and swears, I suggest this would not happen if we had some shelves. But at last....having restrained myself from buying some new shelves from a shop... I got lucky... the local junky charity shop was closing selling off their ikea shelf units. I asked if I could buy two units for £6.00 each. Mr Minnado was slightly petrubed when we had a phone call at 9pm one evening from a gruff voiced man, "It's Dave from the charity shop". He had rung to tell me I could have the shelves. (When the local charity shop rings you at home, is that a warning that maybe you are doing too much second hand shopping?) So, I had to collect them this morning and it all turned into an epic task. I was on my own with the children and realised I could not fit children and shelves into my small car at the same time. So we walked, I had to carry each shelf unit home in turn while T pushed Little I in the pushchair.

I have put one set in the dining room as you can see above. The other set are ina kind of utility space we have which is very dark and didn't photo well. The bonus of it is that I was able to decant loads of stuff from the top of the fridge onto the shelves. In doing so I discovered,

• we have lots of children's paints, two sets of unopened tempera paints


• three large tubs of coloured glitter


• three tubs of never used magnetic letters and words

T used the magnetic letters to label the shelves as you can see in the top picture. I hadn't realised they were magnetic. As usual my seven year old knows more than me.

The point of this lengthy ramble about shelves is partly this, Hayley has written about containers before and the idea that you should only have stuff that you can fit into containers. When you have a container full of stuff, for instance a cupboard full of dried foods or a jewellery stand full of jewellery, that is it - you have enough.

By getting these shelves, which I would consider containers of a sort, I not only tidied up but I found things that I had forgotten we even had. I had been planning on going to buy more paints and glitter. Having them organised and easy to see means we can use them more often as well as saving me from buying things I already have. We have enough!

Apple day

We recently went to a local apple day. We go every year to this and this year was one of the best so far. Maybe it was because Little I was finally big enough to have a real go at the children's activities. Both of the children made a pot on the potter's wheel.

T made a wooden spatula, this was a serious business, using real tools. I held my breath and restrained myself from squeaking "Be careful!".

We took a bag of apples we had picked and got two litres of fresh juice. I did a bit of shopping there too.
I bought this knitted hat for Little I. She was wearing last year's too small pink fleece hat.

This one seems to suit her much better and is nice and soft. I like my kids to wear hats especially as the weather gets colder.

You can see below it is a good hat for the playground.

I bought these mittens for myself - they are also very soft and were knitted by ladies in aid of the local hospice.

Naturally with a three year old involved, the day ended with tears and an exhausted little girl having to go to bed at 4pm. That is possibly the sign of a good day out, that and the fact she woke up the next day asking to go back. Sorry, I had to say, Apple Day is only on once a year.

Wearable Art, Sugar and Spice....

It was raining and in a bid to get them away from tv, I got out the fabric paints and I gave T and Little I each a piece of calico. They did a bit of driving cars through the paint, then got busy with brushes.

Then in the evening I sewed Little I's fabric piece into a skirt for her. She is not a girly girl and this skirt suits her personality. She was very proud of the skirt she had made and wore it all day. (I am not sure though if I have just lost the plot and gone too far???)

But on the whole I tend to think that these are the kind of sartorial decisions a three year old can get away with though. (Believe me if she didn't want to wear it, she wouldn't!)

Christmas presents

I made these "rainy day" gingham bags for two sisters who are friends of ours. The bags are fully lined with some furnishing fabric which has given the bags a bit more weight and hopefully strength. I appliqued the initials and hearts from old jeans. They are called rainy day bags

because they are going to have scissors, crayons and paper dolls in them - and maybe some drawing paper too. I have added paper houses from Anna at twelve22 and a book of vintage paper dolls from Chez Beeper Bebe

The bags tie up with grosgrain ribbon. Now I have posted one image twice and cannot remove it....oops