Weekend photos

 

 

 

Just a few random pictures from around the house today.  I'm not doing the 365 photo project, but trying to make time to just capture everyday moments.

• The bunny in the last photo Yoyo and I made yesterday.  I wasn't feeling well so sitting in my chair and quietly stitching this was about all I could manage.
  

• Croissants this morning - a little indulgent but marked the weekend.....a change from the usual endless rounds of frantically made peanut butter on toast we're used to.

• The tulips - don't you love this stage where they come to the end of their life and start to go bendy? Had to capture it.

• And the robot picture at the top.......just made me smile.  It was one of the few non-lego gifts that littlest one got on his birthday on Monday.

Hope you all had a good weekend, most of yesterday was written off here with me feeling poorly and having to go to bed.  For some insane reason I thought it would be an ideal chance for me to learn to crochet....so was drifting in and out of sleep watching endless crochet tutorials on youtube.  Didn't achieve much quite frankly - although I am now an expert on starting the first round of a granny square.  Just can't seem to make it any further.

Any must have crochet resources...do let me know.  I'm feeling a little lost!

Another trunk

 

Littlest one's birthday turned into a bit of a Legofest.  You know when you mention to a couple of people that Lego may be a good idea.......and then you jump on the Lego bandwagon yourself?  You get the picture. Oodles of the stuff.

I wanted to show you the treasure chest where we store the Lego.  This trunk came from a photography studio in London where the Queen of Clean used to work a long time ago.  He rescued this trunk from being put in the skip....can you believe anyone would consider throwing such a lovely thing away?  I quizzed him on what this trunk was used for and he replied 'anything and everything', but when pushed admitted lights and cables for location shoots.  It all sounds terribly glam....but I don't think it really was.  I remember him working long, long hours and never having a chance to eat.

But back onto the point in hand.  This trunk has been with us for years and has been used as a side table downstairs.  Since we put wood flooring downstairs, this trunk has been banished upstairs to littlest one's room as we didn't want the metal underneath to scratch the floor.  Actually I'm not worried about scratches at all......but I guess you know who is!

So this box stores lego...mainly The Queen of Clean's old childhood lego.  And the odd stray Barbie leg, a ha .....so that's where they got to! But now, since littlest one's birthday we have lots more to add to the collection.  I'm pondering on being super organised and keeping new/old lego separate....but I think that may cause stress.  Which is always best avoided Chez Whoops-a-daisy.

That is Rose sat on the trunk in the top picture, she is growing just too fast.

And please be assured... this is the last trunk post.  I have no more such containers with long and slightly romantic stories attached to them.

This trunk

I was going to post something profound about the three little bottoms perched on this trunk.

But as I thought about it, I started thinking about the trunk itself.   Not that in any way the trunk is more important than the people sat on it, I assure you.

This trunk was in an antique shop that was a couple of doors down from a house I shared whilst I was at University.  I walked past it every day for months and thought, when I have my own home, I want a trunk like that.  I thought a lot about that trunk on my long walk up a hill to lectures, and the home it would eventually fill.  I then saw the price tag.  It wasn't pretty or achievable on a student budget.  So my Mum agreed to buy it for my 21st birthday.

So one afternoon The Queen of Clean and I went in to buy the trunk and carry it to my student room.  I think my housemates thought I'd lost the plot.  It wasn't every 21 year old girls dream really now was it, some old trunk from the shop over the road?  It was so heavy and we had to lug it up the stairs on these little decorative handles that dug into my hands.  So there it sat for the remainder of the year, in pride of place underneath a 'Titanic' poster.  It was the 90's......Kate & Leo where the height of fashion back then.  I promise.  Or perhaps it was just me.......

So later that year when we bought our first home, this trunk became our TV stand.  And I had no idea that just a couple of years later it would be a toy chest for my firstborn.  Or fast forward now 12 years later it would have those three adorable bottoms perched on it playing Wii. 

So this trunk is very important to me.....because when I reflect at how things have turned out, perhaps not as originally planned, I want to go back to that 21 year old me contemplating the trunk and let her know that the trunk is definitely a good purchase and that her home and life will be all that she wishes it could be.

Style resolutions 2010

A blog I read regularly, Tea for Joy has challenged readers to post their style resolutions for 2010.  So after some consideration - here we are:-

• I want to appreciate the opportunity for every corner of my home.  Like my kitchen windowsill above.  I want every corner to reflect who I am, and things I love.  A tall order perhaps...but there are so many corners that you overlook or just accept as being unchangeable.  I want to challenge that this year.
  

• I will finally learn the art of displaying a group of pictures on the wall.  I have seen so many beautiful examples of this on flickr photo groups and other blogs, magazines.  I think perhaps I am building this up into something more than it is......and I just need to be brave and do it.

• I want to devote more time (please someone tell me where to find time....it just slips away from me) to crafting.  I desperately want to learn to crochet to create some of the beautiful granny square cushions I have seen and adore like this one below from Emma Lamb.

• Our main project for 2010 will be the bathroom we started to dismantle 18 months ago when we moved here, and ran out of budget for.  I will find the funds to tackle this and create a functional, but beautiful bathroom.  On a shoestring.

So there you have it.  My style resolutions for 2010.

The cake

There is much excitement here this morning.

It is littlest one's birthday and Ga (Grandpa) has just delivered the much talked about cake.  Littlest one had spotted this cake on the internet about 6 months ago and has mentioned it at least weekly since then. 

And here it is...in all it's dessicated coconut glory.

 

Littlest one was so overwhelmed he hid when it was delivered!  Did I mention before my skillful delegation of all children's birthday cakes to my parents?  The fabulous Garlie and Ga (aka Granny and Grandpa).  I highly recommend this strategy to all parents.

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For now this cake is safely hidden under the laundry basket, from our inquisitive kittens, until its unveiling this afternoon at a very small tea party.

Littlest one and I have a day to ourselves....so for now we are off to have some fun!

Sprigs, hats and kitten paws

Realised I hadn't posted three beautiful things for a while, and after an eventful and rather stressful afternoon I thought it might induce some much needed calm!

So without further delay, they are:-

1.  This little sprig of fir tree in the jam jar on the left was gathered on a family walk on Saturday morning.  Poor Yoyo was really struggling to make it back home and it had started to snow again - we kept her spirits up by asking her to look for the 'Christmas tree' so Mummy could put it in a jam jar. 

The plot worked, she kept walking (and stopped whining) and she is very proud of her little sprig.

2. The constant and ever changing display of hats and gloves drying on the radiator.

3.  Rose the kitten plays with my toes this morning as they hang over the edge of the bed.  She doesn't use her claws, just her soft paw pads.  I take this as a sign of feline affection, although I am doubtful that is her intention.

Aaahhh, that's better....feeling calm.

And where is Disneytown?

 Imagine my surprise when this weekend, The Queen of Clean announced he was going to tackle some unscheduled decorating.  Usually these things are negotiated weeks in advance.  I was of course, delighted.

We had months ago bought this map of the world mural for our playroom, but never started the mammoth task of putting it up.  So this weekend we did it (aswell as painting another wall and some shelves, and finishing the skirting board in this room).

I cannot recommend this particular mural - I understand now why it is cheaper than all the others!  It was a complete pain to line up (it consists of 8 pieces) and midway through I had to ply The Queen of Clean with Pinot Grigio to get him to carry on.  The children were so excited and littlest one here kept asking, 'And where is Disneytown?' I tried to explain the various Disney locations (and the cost implications - we'll be camping in the UK again this year) but it was rather lost on him.

There is still much to do in this room - we have got to decide whether to paint the pine bookcases that line two walls of this room (40 shelves in total!) white or leave them as is.  After today I'm leaning towards leaving them......... We also need to build a boxed in piece of skirting to hide the pipes under the radiator, and edit the contents of all the shelves.  So much rubbish.

So for now, here is the little corner where I am sitting right now!  We are going to replace this chair (borrowed from our dining set) with a bentwood vintage chair when I can find one or one of these.

The two shelves above the computer The Queen of Clean built for me after I saw something similar on the Pottery Barn website.  They have a little ledge at the front so you can use them to display pictures with no risk of them falling off.  I found out a couple of weeks after these were built that you can get exactly the same thing from Ikea for about £5!  (so naturally I got some more for my bathroom).  These ones though are a little wider which means I can display vases and toys etc.

As the room is finished I will show you more, but here is this little corner for the moment.

What do you think?