✴ freezing

On Esher Common.

Bbbrrrrrrrr!

✴ my place and yours :: shoes

Wedding shoes made by Emmy. White suede, soft, velvety...yum, now slightly grubby grey from so much dancing on a dusty oak dance floor. Silver leather trim with sparkly diamante  buckle. Handmade beaded decorative shoe clip, one later worn as a brooch but after too much wine at a party was lost on a drunken cab ride home....Sob!

I've been pondering for the last two years about whether to dye these shoes. But then I'll wear them all the time, they'll get battered and tatty. The heel will wear down to a metal point and that 1930's Hollywood style elegance will be lost, forever. But is it better to leave them hidden away, wrapped in tissue, inside a box, at the back of a wardrobe? Hhmmmm....

I'll never wear my Jenny Packham wedding dress again. I'll never wear any of the three headdresses I made and wore throughout the day and I'll definitely never wear the veil - it's all just a bit over the top for nipping out to m & s for a crusty baguette and a bag of satsumas.

But then I'll never get married again, so I guess the day was a bit of 'one time only' sort of day!

I'll never wear these things again, but I have a very strong feeling that in a few years time a little someone will love dressing up in these, marching around the house, playing here comes the bride....and that just won't be the same with black shoes, will it?

For more shoe stories, as chosen by The Craft Gypsy, head along to my place and yours at Punky & Me.

✴ my creative space

Here is my creative space this week. Because of a horrible cold, which thankfully is now on it's way out, there hasn't been any pushing out of pram and mama tea and chat. But there has been much staying in, cbeebies, crochet and chasing an adventurous and stir crazy one year old!

There has been lots of crochet. In the evenings, after dinner, while watching a film, lovely. There has been some more grannies, obviously!

And there has been some flower crochet, which are then to be beautiful brooches, hopefully, eventually.

There has been some stitching of a birthday gift, shh..... don't peek! Which should be hurried as deadline is looming!

And most importantly, there has been much admiration of Miss Ella's first doodles on her thank you cards.

Isn't she just so creative? I especially love the colours she has chosen. There are 12 of these! Mainly done during her 'da da' period. Whilst chewing on a rice cake. And then the pencil......!

My creative space is back! Pop along to Kirsty's to see what she and everyone else has been up to.

✴ quite contrary

And pretty maids all in a row.

The crochet craze continues....

You know when sometimes strange things seem to happen, like signs. That make you say, 'Oh that is so weird!'

I'm having one of those sort of days.

✴ while she sleeps...

Today is a good napping day. Probably due to the early wake up call, but Mr H dealt with that while I slowly buried myself under the duvet, joined by a naughty Olive.

The weekend cold is still here, numbing my senses and making the day too fuzzy to actually get on with anything productive and necessary, i.e housework. Bleaugh!

So it's a cup of hot water with lemon and honey - I always forget how good this is until the uninvited arrival of a cold prompts the making of this refreshing and 'a good way to start the day' (so we are often told) drink.

A bit of crochet, so relaxing to do. A perusal around blogland, so inspiring to do and a look at a few online shops, so expensive to do!

Reading Homeshoppingspy and there is a post about the V & A's upcoming quilt exhibition  which, totally being out of that 'gallery/shopping/lunch' way of life, had no idea was on so I'm quite excited about that and even more excited about the selection of limited edition fat quarters inspired by quilts in the exhibition. Such striking prints, and yet another incentive to get making that quilt this year!

'Rose' Limited Edition fabric. Image here 

✴ not exactly Robbie Burns...

 You canna shove your granny off the bus

You canna shove your granny off the bus

You canna shove your granny,

Because she's your mammies mammy

You canna shove your granny off the bus!

But you can make a lovely blanket!

Taking part in Pip's A Granny A Day challenge! 11 Squares so far. It's such good fun.

Happy Burns Night!

✴ some kinda one-derful

Last weekend was all about the number one. In this new decade which the powers that be ( whoever they may be) have named the 'one-ders' (!?) my little Ella reached that most important of milestone birthdays.....The very first!

Just like the Queen she celebrated it twice. Oh, get her!

She had a party on her actual birthday for her fellow one-ders and then a second at the weekend for family and close friends. Needless to say there was much baking and culinary creativeness for both!

We had sugar-free birthday buns for the baba's and sugar full birthday cake for the mama's (and papa's) and colourful cupcakes and sweet treats to thrill!

In a desperate bid to alleviate that gloom and doom of 'post christmas decoration pulling down syndrome' of which I suffer badly from each and every year, we had birthday paper chains, balloons, fairy lights and baby food jars (saved last year for some impromptu jamming sessions) filled with a selection of pink flowers and tied with pink ribbons...So pretty!
Much fun was had by all. Especially by a new one year old.

Happy Birthday little one.

xxx

✴ hello holly!

Look who has arrived in the mail all the way from Australia. It's Holly the Cardi Bunny who I was lucky enough to win in Beck's giveaway on her fab blog Dandelion .

Ella was most excited as we opened the package and the hidden treasures of dried lavender and an 'S' vintage style scrabble piece was such a lovely surprise.

Isn't she lovely. I think she is a little bewildered at the snow as I expect she has never seen it before and it was very hot where she came from!

Ella bestowed her with many loving squeezes and cuddles but fearful of drenching poor Holly with too much dribble on her very first day in Blighty I have put her amongst the other cuddlies in Ella's room with a good view of the slightly melted and crunchy snowy Surrey landscape.

✴ peepo

The past few days have been a breath taking cold white blanket of beauty and a reminder of Christmases past, of sleighing, snowball fights and building the best snowman.

Looking through the bedroom shutters in the morning, it's the sort of day where hopping back under the duvet and watching a good film with a large mug of tea, a couple of chocolate biscuits and cuddling a hot water bottle while wearing thick woolly socks and two pairs of pyjama's (darn those 1930's house draughts!) is by far the best way to spend the day and avoid those totally unprepared travel operators ( I mean, really? It's Britain not the Bahamas, is it that much of a shock??!) and slippy ungritted paths.

Alas though, it would seem an almost one year old has a whole other idea of how to spend the day.

However this does include endless chuckling games of peepo with a magician style shout out of 'Ta Da' at the reveal, and who would have thought it was Miss Ella hiding behind that mucky bib??

It is a good way to spend a day indoors if you ask me!

Ta Da!

✴ until next time

Today is the last day of Christmas. The day when all of the decorations must be pulled down and packed away until next time.

It's always sad to think it's all over. That's it. Done and dusted. It never seems to last that long, after all that effort and preparation.

I read recently in a magazine somewhere, that Sophie Conran starts to prepare for Christmas in July! How bonkers is she? I thought. Now I'm thinking that isn't such a bonkers idea. Infact, now I'm thinking it's a pretty good idea actually. I always have great hopes for lots of festive making and baking and I always seem to run out of time or find myself hurriedly writing Christmas cards in the car/bath/dentist waiting room or am struggling to remember exactly how to fold the perfect origami crane at sometime past midnight!

So now we are left with slightly drab and bunting-free walls with the occasional small patch of plaster missing from too much tape...(ooops...who did that??!) and two confused pusscat's desperately searching for anything bauble/pine cone-like to kick around the floor and bury under the sofa.

I'm keeping the fairy lights up though, it doesn't say anything in the rules about having to take down fairy lights, I mean they're not just for Christmas, are they?

✴ on the first day...

Today was a bright, brand spanking, new day and we took ourselves off for a frosty winters walk in Painshill Park .

The last few days of the old year were grey, gloomy and drizzly. This day, the very first of this sparkling new year was bright and beautiful with a warm winter sun and clear blue skies over frost bitten rivers and sugar dusted hills.

We wandered through this park like being in a fairytale land passing victorian follies, gothic towers, giant cedar trees and a turkish tent high on a hill with a breathtaking view.

A large flock of geese pecked at the grass along the footpath because the lakes were frozen and no place for a swim or a sleep.

Hidden in between the trees we could just about make out various shapes of old ruined buildings and a surprising and seemingly out of place well tended vineyard!
Other than the squabbling quacking and hissing of the geese and ducks at each other and the occasional chirp of the birds in the trees the only other sound to break the peace was the gentle whirr and slushing of a water wheel.

Miss Ella for once, didn't try hard to pull off her mittens and hood because it was cold...very cold! Bbbrrrr...!