Busy, busy, busy

This time of year is always manic in our house. The Lovely Husband has been working on a project which has completely taken over everything and has swallowed him up into 18-hour days. I've been so busy at school with all those end-of-term jobs that need to be completed. And we've entered into wedding-birthday-end-of-school-year-party season. The combination of these things means that our home life has descended into chaos. My kitchen floor looks like the before shots on "How Clean Is Your House", the Lovely Husband has no clean pants left and the Beautiful Girl has eaten more spaghetti-with-butter-and-Parmesan dinners than I would ever happily admit to.

In the midst of the madness though, there have been moments of loveliness. Lovely Husband and I had a rare night out, just the two of us. We went to Winterbourne House again, only this time instead of blazing sunshine and cream teas there was live jazz, by candlelight, on the lawns. It was a very special evening.

Then there was my birthday. Lovely Husband is officially World's Best Present Buyer and I've started life as a 34 year old (eek! How did that happen?!?) with a fantastic pile of books, perfume that makes me smell like peonies, series 1-5 of "House" (Hugh Laurie joining my Older Men I Have A Crush On list) and the most, most beautiful flask for picnics, camping holidays etc. On the day itself he was poaching smoked haddock at 6:30 a.m. for my favourite breakfast (omelette Arnold Bennett - yum!), complete with chocolate birthday cake. He's not called Lovely Husband for nothing, you know. In the evening friends arrived, laden with thoughtful, generous presents and we scoffed homemade rocky road and drank strawberry bellinis. All in all, I had a wonderful day and, without getting too cheesy, felt blessed to have such wonderful people in my life.

Now we are all three finished with work and school for the summer and have very quickly found our holiday mojos. Only the second day in and we have already spent a lot of time in pyjamas. Got lots of lovely plans though and hope to blog a bit more often, as well as catching up on all the wonderful blogs I've not had time to read recently. Right now, bacon and eggs are calling though. (Another great thing about the holidays... plenty of time for greedy breakfasts!)

Vintage and Handmade Textile Fair

Vintage scraps of flowery fabrics; old wooden French cotton reels; green spotty ribbon to wind onto the reels; Liberty fabric-covered buttons. Tea and cake in a pretty courtyard. Long, uninterrupted converstaions with friends. It was just bliss. I'll definitely be back.

Deadly sin #4

Pride

OK... I'm not even going to pretend I'm anything other than utterly beside myself here.... I've been trying for so long to teach myself to crochet and then one day I have a breakthrough. All of a sudden I can do it! More than that - it's easy!

Whenever I sew or knit something I always enjoy the process but the end result is a bit... well, it's never quite how I imagine it will be. This time though the end result is (she says, immodestly) absolutely gorgeous. It is set to be a blanket for our bed, but as we have an enormous bed I've got a long way to go.

I took the blanket to show my aunt at a family get-together at the weekend (she is the most talented "domestic artist" I know) and she called it an heirloom. An heirloom! My Heirloom Blanket. Yep, absolutely beside myself.............

Just to add: the yarn is Rowan DK Extra Fine Merino. It's wonderful stuff - the colours are soft, yet deep and it is deliciously soft. I bought 4 balls, then, when I was certain it was working went back for more... only to find it on sale for less than half price! Bought 40 balls for £80, rather than £170. Even the yarn gods are smiling on the Heirloom Blanket!

Half term's been and gone....

............ and we had a lovely time.

I hosted a birthday afternoon tea for a friend who was visiting from Cornwall. It was so wonderful to see her and her two children and get our little group of friends together. The tea was yummy too. Did you spot my little collection of vintage teacups? And my cakestand, made with thrifted china? Am particularly proud of it because I've wanted one like it for ages, but couldn't justify the £40-ish I kept seeing them for. Mine cost the grand total of £3.25.

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We are big fans of Lauren Child in this house so when we heard a production of Charlie and Lola's Best Bestest Play was coming to town Beautiful Girl and I had to go. I wasn't at all sure how they would manage to bring the irrepressible characters to life but they did, wonderfully. Keep a lookout for it coming to a theatre near you!

Deadly sin #3

Sloth
Saturday afternoon. Beautiful Girl has her crayons, a pile of blank paper and Cbeebies. I sit on the sofa with a little project..... and sit..... and sit..... Lovely Husband comes home, baths the Beautiful Girl and puts her to bed while I sit..... and sit.....

(By the way, am very excited about the project and looking forward to posting a few pictures very soon.)

Where has all the sunshine gone?

Wasn't it gloriously, blissfully hot this weekend? We took full advantage of what felt like the onset of summer to have the First Barbecue of the Year on Saturday. Yummy food, lovely friends and just a little too much Pimms contributed to a really wonderful evening.
Then on Sunday we had a day out here at Winterbourne House and Botanical Gardens. The gardens at Winterbourne are wonderful (naughty blogger forgot the camera, so I can't show just how beautiful) and the house -a stunning Edwardian building - has just been refurbished too. To celebrate this the House held an Edwardian Fete. There was Punch & Judy, croquet on the lawn, a coconut shy and teas to be taken on the wisteria-bedecked terrace (jam and cream-laden scones, de rigeur). Best of all, for Beautiful Girl at least, there were donkey rides too. She has long held a love affair with all things equine - unicorns being her most favourite thing in the entire universe - with ponies and horses coming a close second, but after two rides on a donkey she was absolutely smitten. When she won 3pence on the roll-a-penny she solemnly announced that she wasn't going to spend it at the fete but would instead save up for a donkey of her very own. After a visit from Nanny yesterday, to watch her dancing in her school Maypole Assembly, the Donkey Fund now stands at a healthy£1:03. Maybe we should start looking into stabling options.....

Small pleasures

Each morning I have a few precious hours between dropping Beautiful Girl at school and heading off to work myself. In an ideal world I'd spend this time reading, baking, gardening or doing a little crafting. More often than not, however, it gets swallowed up by drudge work - washing dishes, shopping for groceries or preparing the evening meal. Today it is school work that demands my attention but - hurrah - the sun is shining so I take my books out to the garden, where there is homegrown lilac and iced juice in a thrifted jug.