Tree Fall

2007

January

February









March









April






May









June








July








August






September








October








November









December








Simultaneously the longest and shortest 12 months of my life. It's been an exhausting ride. But 12 months on, here we are, probably (hopefully) stronger than before, with an even scarier year ahead of us. Are we ready? Not even close. Are we looking forward to it? Yes. We. Are.

Thank you. Every single one of you. For support and love and words and hugs and laughs and tears. Thank you for sharing so much with me. And thank you so very, very much for allowing me to just be myself.

2008 here we come...

Party.

It was party time in the M-P household today. Up until now we've had a super, super quiet Christmas, with no visitors and almost no reason to leave the house for the last week. Which has been nice in a lot of ways. But also on occasion a little dull for the youngest member of the family.
Unfortunately we weren't able to get together with the cousins this year and with the way that Christmas day fell, friends have been  away and nursery is closed, so Bella has been stuck with just Mummy and Daddy for company for a week now.
Which meant that although I hadn't taken in to account just how sore and tired I would be at this stage of the pregnancy, I was still extremely relieved that I had arranged to have a small party today. Because it was just what we all needed to shift the post Christmas malaise and get us all ready for jumping back to reality next week, with work and nursery etc.
Because I am so uncomfortable, I tried to keep it simple and just made a couple of homemade soups, roasted a chicken for sandwiches, cooked some sausage rolls and made up a plate of cheese and ham. For pudding I intended to bake some stuffed apples with vanilla ice cream but at the last minute decided to accept defeat, and we just had the biscuits that I made last night (Bella felt very cheated to discover that I'd been baking biscuits without her!).
The cupcakes that you see in the picture are a big new venture for us. Because of Bella's severe egg allergy, we have avoided make any kind of cake in the past. But whilst we were food shopping yesterday Bella pointed to one of those lurid pink boxes of cupcake mix and declared that we had to buy some. We explained, as we always do that you need to make it with egg so it was a no go, but Bella insisted that we buy it for her friends to have, even though she knew she couldn't have any. Which of course broke our cold, hard hearts and meant that we finally broke out the egg replacer this morning and baked us some egg free cupcakes.
Egg free cupcakes that my daughter is now eating for dinner. Hmmm.

You know it's a good party when you get to sit on the kitchen floor with your friends and eat a huge Pyrex dish of ginger biscuits and the grown ups don't even notice!

Books.. part 1

Is there anything nicer than a new pile of books? Especially when it's a pile as good looking as that?
As you can see, Santa was very kind to me on the book front this year, which can only be a good thing.

The top book in the pile was a special treat. It's a biography of the wonderfully talented  and eccentric wallpaper designer  Florence Broadhurst. And it's a book that I've been wanting for a long time, but just haven't been able to justify buying because it's a little costly. Fortunately Santa doesn't care diddly squat for cost!
As well as being the biography of the Australian designer who was mysteriously murdered in 1977, the book has many, many plates of her amazing wallpapers.

Ack, can you imagine? Just beautiful.
I haven't done any more than dip into the book so far, but it's already worth every penny. And I can't wait to sit down in a quiet moment (hmmm) and read it cover to cover.

News on the baby front is that I don't have gestational diabetes - yay! Just a huge baby - boo!
News on the Jim front is that his Bells Palsy is much, much better and he's going back to work on Monday. His face is still a bit lopsided, but he's almost back to his handsome self. Phew!

The Gift of Giving

I always feel a little funny giving handmade gifts to friends and family. I never know if it's going to be received with gratitude for the time, thought and effort that goes in to making something yourself, or if it's just going to be seen as a cheap present to give.
I have a friend that really does think that making something myself is the quick and easy way out, which of course couldn't be further from the truth. And I have people in my life that appear to be singularly underwhelmed by what I do for a living, in fact I have people in my life that don't seem to realise that I do this for a living. I'm pretty sure they think it's a nice little hobby.
So when it comes to Christmas I get a little nervous about handing out the gifts and this year was no exception. Actually this year was worse because I made more gifts that I usually do.
I'm pleased to say though that the majority of the presents were well received and seemed to hit the spot. Phew.

One of the gifts this year was this topsy turvy doll for my Nana.

I'm not sure if that seems like a strange gift for my Nana, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. And it was so much fun making a more sophisticated doll than normal. My Nana's main colours are mint green and lilac, so it was a bit of a challenge to fit in with that scheme (I don't own a single piece of lilac fabric!), but I think I kind of made it work (I used artistic licence and substituted lilac for pink).

And I'm relieved to say that this was one of the gifts that was appreciated. Oh and the other gift we gave her  is our old laptop, so she's about to start surfing online, which I think is very cool indeed for a woman in her 80's.
Another gift that I made was for my mother. Some of you may remember that a while back she bitched about mentioned the fact that she never got a pin cushion of her own and if I recall correctly, you lot agreed that it was shocking that my own mother couldn't get hold of one. So I finally decided to rectify this crime oversight and make her one that she could call her very own.

Is it just me? Am I the only one that gets a bit antsy about giving handmade gifts?

Croc!

Every time anyone asked Bella what she wanted Father Christmas to bring her this year, she would say "a bracelet and a knecklace" (yes she got both), but every time her bestfriend was asked she would say "a crocodile with a closed mouth and a dinosaur with a pink tail".
Well I wasn't sure that I could come up with a dinosaur in time, but last week, when I couldn't sleep at all and ended up being awake the entire night, I decided that a crocodile would be fun to have a go at.
I started off by looking for an existing pattern, but just couldn't find anything that I liked. The pattern in Toys To Sew  came the closest but it was 2 dimensional, too big and the legs weren't right because they just hang underneath the croc.

So I decided to just make it up as I went along. It's obviously a pretty straight forward shape, and even with the gusset, you're still only looking at three pieces for the body, so I was feeling confident.
I started by drawing the main body piece freehand straight on to some thick craft paper and then I just eyeballed the size needed for the gusset.
My new found understanding (overstatement ) of dress patterns has already had an impact on my general sewing and in particular how I cut the pattern pieces, so things came together really quickly and much more accurately than normal.
You can't really see them in the pictures but the legs are my favourite part of the crocodile. Through no talent of my own, I've somehow managed to get them to look all gnarled and pointy, like real croc feet and they sit in just the way that I wanted them too.

As I mentioned, the request was specifically for a closed mouth crocodile, so I kept the stitching simple for the mouth, with just a hint of a smile. I really didn't want it to be threatening in any way and think that the fact that he looks quite cartoony is a good thing.
I'm also pleased that I kept him simple with my choice of fabric. Because it was 5 in the morning when I started putting him together, I really didn't want to be faffing about with patchwork and instead opted for one of my favourite Amy Butler prints - which I think works perfectly for a crocodile.
And I'm really pleased to say that the croc's recipient was very pleased with him and wouldn't let anyone else even look at him on Christmas day. Which in my toddler led world is pretty high praise indeed. 

White Christmas?

It wasn't so much a white Christmas around here as a pink one.
We had lots of this...

Followed by even more of this....

Then there was pretty much only this....

A pair of feet and the occasional shout for another toy to be passed in to her.

And when we finally dragged her out, there was a visit to the Grandparents and yet more of this...

I would love to say that we were successful at instilling the true spirit of Christmas in to her, but we weren't. It was about the presents. And yet more presents. And that's ok. As a rule Bella doesn't get very much, she honestly has less toys than all of her friends, which is fine, but it was definitely time to spoil her. And we definitely succeeded in that.
We did manage almost the entire day without any tantrums though. In fact the only one was late in the evening on the drive home, when Bella came up with a plan... she would hang her stocking up again and Father Christmas would fill it up some more! She didn't take our explanation of "just once a year" very well. But hey, I don't blame her!
All in all, it was a quiet day, but I'm pretty sure that Bella had a great time, and that's the whole point.
Right now, it's very early morning, and everyone else is still asleep (M-P2 gets bored if I stay in bed too long), and I'm looking forward to another quiet day. Tomorrow, life gets back to normal with a visit to the hospital and then I think it's time to actually start preparing for our next big event! Yikes.

Merry Christmas, One and All!

Have a wonderful  day! I hope all your wishes come true.
Manda
xxx

(the wonderful, wonderful Christmas decoration was a very much appreciated gift from Paula McGurdy , definitely my favourite decoration this year!)

Light work

Because I just don't have enough to do (I know you know how I feel), I lay in bed the other morning and decided that I needed to make some extra presents for some friends that, well in all honesty, have been owed presents for a long time now. So I did the obvious thing whilst heavily pregnant and exhausted, and dragged my huuuuge ass out of bed two hours before everyone else and made a couple of new cushions.
This one is for one of Bella's friends that has recently become obsessed with lighthouses (don't you love how toddlers do that?).

Because the brief was so straight forward ( a red and white lighthouse), this cushion came together in super fast time.
I drew the separate pieces of the lighthouse directly on to bondaweb and ironed it on to some Laura Ashley red and white heavy cotton, some polka dot cotton and some bleached linen. I then stitched some dark grey linen on to a gorgeous blue linen background and fused the light house pieces on to the whole piece.
I zigzagged around every thing and then used a small, machine straight stitch for the birds and the window panes.

For the backing I used a couple of pieces of cotton canvas, edged with red bias binding. I then used some beautifully soft red striped brushed cotton for the binding, which I sewed by hand as always.

The whole thing was completed in the space of a few hours and was really fun to do. I don't often do any thing representational these days and I've forgotten how much fun it is.

Just as a quick aside - I am massively behind in emails again and can promise you that if you have sent me a lovely email and have not had a response it is nothing personal - I am just absolutely snowed under and absolutely crap. I am however trying to work my way through the backlog. In the mean time please don't think that a lack of response is an indicator of you not mattering to me, because that couldn't be further from the truth!

Bella's Stocking

Bella's stocking is finally done. And I have to say that I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. It's probably not quite as pink as she would like, but in all honesty, what is?
I've been collecting Bella's stash of fabrics for a while now. Little pieces of fabric that are just the right pink to become a dress or a quilt or a stocking. I never really have anything specific in mind, other than Bella of course. And it's been the same with her stocking. Nothing specific in mind, just a little pile of prints that seemed to go nicely together.

I knew that I didn't want this stocking to be too pink, because of course, there may come a time when pink loses it's magic for Bella. And I knew that I wanted it to look like it had always been there, in the family.  But that was pretty much it on the ideas front.
When I received the latest copy of Marie Claire Idee's I knew that I wanted to include a little bit of red work in the design but was still lost about where to actually go with it all.
So I left the pile of fabrics sitting around and waited for inspiration to strike.

And then a couple of days ago I started cutting and placing pieces on the design wall and it all fell in to place.
I've used a combination of liberty prints, linen pieces, a couple of retro japanese prints, and some pink polka dot flannel. When I was at the Knitting and Stitching show last month I picked up a bag of vintage lace and crochet trims for next to nothing and used a large piece for the top of the stocking.
I've then lined it with one of my favourite vintage, tiny floral prints.

I embroidered the Doe and the Dove designs randomly and added my best red crochet trim ( I can't remember where I got it, but I really love it) to give it that little extra kick.

I really do like the fact that the stocking has a vintage feel to it, whilst still being  young and girly looking.
And because of the lining it's good and sturdy - perfect for holding all those presents from Santa!
Now I just have to hope that Bella likes it as much as I do..

 

The 20th!

The weather has been so bad here the last few days that I'm afraid I've been reduced to recycling last years Christmas photo's.

Like everyone else, we're all rushing around this week, trying to fit it all in and finish it all off.
On Monday Jim and I finished off the christmas shopping for friends and family.
Bella's nursery had their Christmas singsong on Tuesday night - a pile of toddlers singing Jingle Bells, what more could you ask for from the Holiday Season??
Hospital visit and latest ultrasound on Wednesday morning - bringing up a few more issues, the main one now being that they think I have gestational diabetes. I say Pah! to that idea.
Followed by yet more shopping (didn't I say we'd finished that?) and then a handover of child to Nana so that Jim and I could have a special treat and go and see It's A Wonderful Life at the cinema - in the middle of the day no less!
Today Bella and I had our weekly play day with our best friends - which started with Bella and Megan being horribly two, but evolved (thankfully) in to a fun day that was enjoyed by all.
And tomorrow Jim and I have to do yet more shopping (no really, didn't I say we'd finished that??), whilst Bella is at nursery.
We also need to fit in exchanging presents with friends, wrapping Bella's insane amount of presents (haven't even started that yet), giving the house a pre-Christmas clean and finishing off  those last few handmade gifts.
Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.