Come on England...

Our household, along with many many others, has been taken over with Football and The World Cup......So what's a Mad Mummy to do when she comes across an England Rugby shirt in Hubby's wardrobe clear-out pile......Make it into a dress for the Little Miss of course!!Come on England...

x Steph

Cupcakes, a little birdie and a Wedding...

About 18 months ago, I answered a plea from a very lovely lady. She had seen a picture of a little silver birdie clipped to the top of a cake stand and wanted to find one of those birds for her own Wedding Cake display. As I was reading her blog post http://mollycupcakes.blogspot.com/2008/12/calling-for-help.html I had the exact elusive bird sitting on my windowsill waiting to be packed away into the loft for safekeeping until the following Christmas... Well, of course I sent it to Catherine, and our friendship began...

Today my Family was delighted to be invited to celebrate with Catherine, her Handsome Husband Ben, and gorgeous Cupcake family...

And after partying, there seems to be a funny face competition...!!

Wishing Catherine & Ben Happy Ever After and lots of love...

x Steph

Holiday, Volcanic Ash & a Computer Virus...

Oh, what a month... April turned out to be even more fabulous than we hoped, what with a wonderful trip across the Ocean to catch up with friends. We packed lots into our two week holiday which then turned into three and a half weeks due to the Volcanic Ash!!!

As you can see, there was much brother burying on trips to the beach...


trips on boats...

free tickets to Busch Gardens for stranded passengers ;0)

double Birthday celebrations (hubby and my Birthday on the same day!)

And a little bit of homework, a 3d cat (which we were very proud of!!)

Then almost as soon as we had got home and turned on the laptop, we were invaded with a nasty computer virus :0( Luckily that enabled lots of sewing time (ie I couldn't be distracted!!), and now life is slowly returning to normal (whatever that is...!!)

x Steph

Happy Easter...

When looking for some "special" fabric, something different to the material I usually use for all my baby blankets, I came across Saints and Pinners http://www.saintsandpinners.co.uk/ Here I found a fantastic selection of fabric, excellent customer service and speedy delivery, what more could a girl ask for!!

William's Gift - Blanket and Initial T Shirt...

Coordinating Blankets for the Twins... Bags...An outfit for a little girl's 1st Birthday...
A Quilt...And finally, last Saturday we were encouraged to turn off all lights for an hour in the evening, so to promote this at school, we had "turn out a light, wear something bright!" mufti day!!Wishing you all a very Happy Easter, we are off on Easter Sunday, on an aeroplane, to search for the Sun and to catch up with friends, wish us luck ;0)

x Steph

Dr Seuss...

Just a quickie, as I'm helping with Mother's Day crafts at Brownies tonight, but didn't want EVEN more time to pass before I posted the below photos.

Last Friday the children were allowed to dress as a favourite book character to celebrate World Book Day. We are Dr Seuss fans and after seeing a costume that Dana made http://www.dana-made-it.com/search/label/Costumes I thought I would give it a go...

As you can see, it was a rather frosty morning!!

The little munchkin also had a dress up day at preschool, the theme was "Around the World", so I made a tunic (adapted a pattern for a boys shirt, leaving off the collar, overlapping the front panels and making it longer) and after googling "how to make a turban", was rather pleased with the finished outfit!!x Steph

Car seat made new...

A very dear friend of mine is expecting Twins any day now. She already has a gorgeous Daughter, and therefore one car seat, so when double trouble (!) was predicted she asked to borrow my baby car seat. This is it, brand new carrying Little Miss, eight days old. However, eight and a half years later, it was looking a bit sorry for itself! Whilst on the internet one day, I stumbled across a truly inspirational blog, Made, http://www.dana-made-it.com/search/label/Carseat%20Covers and was motivated to transform my zebra print seat... ...into this!

The Twins are one of each sex, and as there is already a girl in the family, and hence lots of girlie things, I decided to cover it for the boy! I had some Laura Ashley cowboy fabric waiting in my stash for something special, and this was it... I can't tell you how happy I was with the finished result (as was my friend) and I'm looking forward to meeting the little ones and seeing it in use!

It just so happens that Dana (Made) is having a month celebrating boys, there are so many wonderful ideas for those of us who love to create, but perhaps fall short of ideas for boys, check it out...http://www.dana-made-it.com/

x Steph

Half term fun...

...What fun we had!!
Unfortunately the week started with the funeral of D's lovely Aunt, and although sad, was a happy celebration of her, and a rare get together of all the little cousins x
We have had pyjama days, baking days, crafting days and on the last day of the week we took our three small people to London to go to Dinosaurs Unleashed... It was FAB!!! Huge, life sized, moving dinosaurs!!

From there, we went on to Covent Garden, where we met up with Little Misses Godfather, and the youngest ended up performing (very entertaining!!!)

Then on to Chinatown for a delicious dinner!!

Now it's back to school (hooray!), a mountain of washing to tackle (boo!), work to be undertaken, but best of all some gifts to make for a lovely friend's newborn Son!

Hope you are not getting too soggy where you are...

x Steph

Blankets...

Last year consisted of rather a lot of blanket making, but I think I saved the best until last...I had come across the fabric below on a trip to Ikea sometime in the Autumn, and had in mind to make a quilted blanket for Little Miss. Unfortunately time/inspiration/bravery seemed to be somewhat short in the run up to Christmas, but in those quiet days before New Year I LOVED making something special for my beautiful girl! I patchworked randomly in gorgeous bright colours (mainly pink of course!), then machine quilted that, with the wadding, to a fleecey blanket before putting on the above fabric as a backing/front (depending on which way she has it!) and binding it. She absolutely adores it and i was thrilled with it too!

A great crafty end to 2009...

x Steph

Birthday treats...

So today is a year since I witnessed the arrival of my friend's second child, Happy 1st Birthday Evie xHere's what the postman delivered to her this morning...

Hope we don't get the snow that's forecast (AGAIN), life was only just starting to get back to normal (whatever that is...!!)

Stay warm,

x Steph

Going snow crazy...

The little people are loving it, Sledging, Igloo building, Snowmen (and women!) galore, days off school (all back now though thankfully!), rosey cheeks and LOTS of hot chocolate!!!

It seems like it's not going away anytime soon, Stay warm...

x Steph