Tree Fall

A Pox On Your House

In the space of a couple of days we have gone from this,

my beautiful girl eating her first ever piece of cake, which I must say she managed like a pro. Definately her father's daughter when it comes to cake!
To this,

my poor baby has chicken pox and is as miserable as sin. And you know what? After my post the other day about never having a sleepless night, Bella stayed up until 5am this morning and then woke again at 7am. The poor thing is feeling very poorly indeed and I am feeling horrible and helpless and useless. And I never again want to see my daughter look at me with such confusion as to why I won't  make the pain go away. I guess that will teach Jim and I to feel sorry for ourselves! It is just so wrong that I can't make her feel better.

On a much nicer note, here are a few books that I got for my birthday.

This book is wonderful! It's full of beautiful images of both modern and traditional rooms.

Sorry about the poor quality pictures, my scanner isn't working at the moment and the lighting wasn't very good. (and a poor workman always blames his tools!).

I also got this book.

Which is jam packed with fantastic photos! But I must warn you - alliteration is a dangerous thing in the wrong hands!

But this is my favourite one.

As it says, it's a recipe book, but it's oh so much more. It' s beautifully big and heavy and absolutely heaving with the best photo's ever.

If you've got all of Nigella's books and you want yet more, this is the book for you! It is personal and evocative and wonderful to actually read, with it's annecdotes and family photos. And it also has some fantastic looking recipes. Seriously, buy it!

A little Bit Light, A Little Bit Heavy

This cold (can I please call it flu even though it isn't?) has really knocked me for six. I wasn't able to get out of bed at all yesterday and although I am obviously feeling a little better today I'm still living in the land of Blluuurgghhhh! So please excuse me for being somewhat uninspired and posting about another lampshade.
I made this one today.


(what d'ya mean there's such a thing as too much pattern??)
This is obviously a modern shade as opposed to the vintage one I covered the other day. I'm really happy with it, but I particularly liked the juxtaposition between the vintage shape of the older one with the use of the modern fabrics.

I've still got a few kinks to work out in the design of these, especially as this one needed a slightly different construction than the other one, but I think they're working out ok. 

On a different note, Bella went to childcare for the first time ever today! Oh and I can't tell you how conflicted I am about this.
I work from home and look after Bella full time. And up until now this has worked for both of us, I hope. But I am getting busier and busier and in order to earn money and fufill my other obligations I made the decision last week to send Bella to a childminder for one afternoon a week. It's a childminder that comes highly recommended and that already looks after 2 of my friends children (I am the only sahm I know) and I obviously took Bella there a few times and got to know the women that work there (there's always two childminders together), before just dumping Bella there this afternoon (can you hear the guilt?!). But I still feel very very strange about this.
Now before I continue, I have absolutely no opinion at all about whether parents should stay at home or not. I do not judge either way and the opinion that I do share here, relates purely to me and my situation.
So, the childminder is a lovely person and has a lovely house that is full to the brim with great toys and books and paints and paper and everything else I would want Bella to be exposed to. And she respects the fact that Bella has never had chocolate or icecream or juice  and only drinks water and milk and blah, blah blah (fill in all the other things that prove I'm a crazy mother) and most importantly of all, Bella loves her. And I need to work and she's only going there 4 hours a week. So I know that I shouldn't feel guilty - I mean for goodness sake, it's for such a short period of time that if I wasn't paying for it, I'd call it a play date! But I honestly feel like crap about this. Even though I know that it's probably really good for her to be socialising without me.
Ack, you know what? That's my baby girl and no one can take care of her as well as I can and no one loves her as much as I do. And I know that at 15 months she's probably not too young to spend 4 hours a week away from me, but I'm her mom! You know?
Anyway, you know that she had a great time and although she was happy to see us, there hadn't been a single tear shed all afternoon. Even when we left. And I'm pretty proud of that. My parents weren't that great at instilling confidence into any of their children and it's something that I'm really aware of. So I spend a lot of time encouraging Bella to be independant and secure and hopefully it's working a little bit. So although I feel shitty about leaving her there, I am also incredibly proud of the fact that she was happy and smiley and, in their words -  'a complete angel'.
Yay Bella! And I'm sorry.

(ignore the bad hair day, as you can see, Bella stole my cap!)

Any Suggestions?

It's Bella's 1st birthday in a weeks time. I had planned a party for her, but due to some crappy circumstances it's now just going to be me and Jim and my parents (and Bella of course). Which I have to admit makes me feel pretty lousy. 
It  means that the plans I originally had aren't going to work and to be honest since finding out that both mine and Jim's families aren't able to come, I haven't been able to think about the day without getting upset. So here I am with only a week to go and nothing is prepared or planned. So I was wondering if anyone had any ideas on how to decorate the place and make it special for my little girl.
I have very limited time this week and even more limited funds, so I can't do much. I bought some bias binding today in the hopes that I will find the time to make bunting. But I also want to make a quilt and a doll for her and I'm seriously freaked about the time.
So if anyone has any suggestions it would be great to hear them. I really want Bella to know she's special even though there's only going to be four of us at her party.