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.

Happy top

Here is the dyed duvet top - I am so pleased with how it came out. It is much, much better and I feel I have learnt a lesson here - I no longer feel like a huge tent when wearing this top so maybe a big white top just makes me look bigger?? I cannot tell you how much happier I am - when I first wore this in its white incarnation I felt grumpy and fat - wearing it grey I feel happy and not fat - I know this is ridiculous but there you go - it is true! It is in fact a bit scary how much what I wear can affect my mood, I am obviously very shallow.

I have been uploading my Me Made May images over on flickr - I have missed a couple of days out when I was wearing repeats of previous days. There are some great and interesting discussions going on in the group - I love this group - what am I going to do when May ends?? (well, of course I do have a list of things to do)