Getting my craft on

Whilst pregnant I managed to get my bee-hind back into gear and started making and doing again.

I had some failures and I had some successes.

Enough time has now passed (almost 8 months, eek!) it is very much time for me to jump back in the crafting saddle. I still have a list as long as my arms (true, my arms aren't that long but they are long enough!) to beaver my way through.

First things first I have a half finished monkey eating cake languishing in my drawers. Wish me luck!

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Our prayers have been answered...

We are moving! Hurrah!

This...

Is to become this...

It is definitely what you would call a fixer upper, but it's a house. A whole house, with stairs all of our own. I can hardly imagine such a thing. It is only being rented so we don't have free reign over it, but what we do have is two floors, three bedrooms and a whole heap of space to fill. Oh, and a garden, A GARDEN! I can't explain how incredibly happy this makes me.

Hopefully this means Bean will start sleeping again without the constant sirens; no longer sleeping next to the kitchen. I may get more than 40 minutes at a time to myself. Such things are surely just fantasy. But I can dream and, gosh darn it, I will! Hip hip hooray!

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Pop up Poundshop

The pop up Poundshop is back again for the 2011 London Design Festival and this time they're online. Hoorah! In all 48 designers have taken part and are this year selling items for £1, £5 and £10. If you're in East London pop down and take a peak, if not get yourself on the web!

We will be purchasing the boy/girl pilliowcases, dog day print and ice lolly cards. What do you have your eye on?

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Our Home

I want to love our home. I really do.

But every time I think

"It's alright, we can do this, we can live here"

or

start planning to make it beautiful, to stay, to settle.

I am reminded; my plans and plots fall way to despair again.

As I type this another siren blasts past our window.

I can smell unknown youths using our stairwell as a smoking den.

The thumping beat from the balkan dance party happening on a floor below us.

 I can also hear my daughter stirring again as the intruders break her sleep. Again.

Not all of our neighbours are so selfish or loud.

The other flat on our floor contains someone much nicer, a constant reminder of what this place once was, lovely Molly. It used to be Molly and Wally until Wally recently passed away.

Now we see Molly for tea a lot more.

Wally was the Mayor of Waltham Forest. They lived here together for 60 years, they raised a family, they watched people come and go. They watched the community around them change, their family raised a family. Now that family is raising a family and still they were here. Now it is just Molly. With her tales of the residents, the concerts thrown by the children who all lived, grew up, played, learnt together in this block of flats. When once everyone knew each other. When everyone cared, looked after and was proud of these flats.

How I am nostalgic for a time I never knew. How I want to walk out of my front door and greet the many people I know on the stairs. To stroll down to the bakers to buy bread without the harsh glare of strip lighting and aisles.

These are just fancies, impossible dreams. I can not alter the world beyond my door in this fashion. I can not expect the other residents to change their lives to suit mine or to alter the routes of policemen and ambulances. So I will look behind my door for now.

There is so much that I love here. We have been here for many years. In many ways Hubble and I have grown up here together. We were so young when we bought it. Just babies really. We made so many mistakes when buying it. We didn't know what we were doing. It was just a starter place, never intended as somewhere to start a family. We treated it as a place to crash, to bring friends in the early hours of the morning and drink until late in the night. To be the unruly neighbours.

No matter how beautiful it is on the inside, the outside will still be there. No matter how much I ice it, it will still be what it is.

We need to find a home. One where I can step outside and smile. One where I can feel safe and cosy when I walk through my front door.

It's time for a change.

Where do you live? Do you love it? Do you hate it? Why?

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An early start to the day

With autumn came the assumption that darker mornings would equal sleepy baby.

This is not the case.

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Today we did nothing but play

Mother, O' Mother, come shake out your cloth,

Empty the dustpan, poison the moth.

Hang out the washing, make up the bed,

Sew on a button and butter the bread.

Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?

She's up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.

Oh, I've grown as shiftless as Little Boy Blue,

Lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo.

Dishes are waiting and bills are past due,

Pat-a-cake, darling, and peek - peekaboo.

The shopping's not done and there's nothing for stew,

And out in the yard there's a hullabaloo.

But I'm playing Kanga and this is my Roo.

Look! Aren't his eyes the most wonderful hue?

Lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo.

The cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow,

But children grow up, as I've learned to my sorrow.

So quiet down cobwebs; Dust go to sleep!

I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep.

 Ruth Hulbert Hamilton

Poem via here

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Shhh!

Don't tell my Hubble I'm in love...

I think this may be the most splendid coat I have ever seen. A little bit out of our price range at £88, but definitely worth it if you have the cash to splash... It is the coat of my dreams- for me and Bean! Matching outfits perhaps- I wonder if they could make one in my size?!

Belle and Boo have a whole range of super sweet goodies, the cutest clothes, beautiful illustrations, wall decals, lunch boxes and much more. I think I best start a Christmas list!

You can buy the coat here.

Found via here.
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Quick, quick... Hurry, Hurry!

Rush, run, move those sweet little behinds over to Kickcan and Conkers pronto if you want win this beautiful double-sided 50's/60's school poster...

Gorgeous I think you'll agree, but you have only an hour to enter so don't hang about!

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Work in progress

24 hours later it looks like this:

Still very much a work in progress, but a definite improvement!

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A change of scene

Last night the temperature in our bedroom dropped to below 15 degrees. It is barely even September. This completely unacceptable, but unsurprising since we live in a concrete box with open vents to the windy world beyond.

So, we're all moving in to the nursery. It is smaller so we can heat it with ease and much less draughty.

Although, it is not yet a nursery as such, more a massive pile of Hubble's design books, my old clothes and things to be ebayed The beginnings of the nursery are there, it just got waylaid somewhere between birth and now.

It was supposed to look more like this

Or perhaps like this

It currently looks like this.

Not really the look I was going for. I have a very busy weekend ahead trying to reconcile my dreams with reality. Wish me luck!

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Inside and Out

I try to do too much, be too much. I always have and it has always been my downfall. I spend so much of my time comparing myself to others, what they have, what they do, what they think, that I sometimes forget to figure out what I want to do, what I have, what I think.

I need to concentrate on me for a minute or two. 

For the first time in my life I feel as though I have a strong sense of self: I am a mummy. 

I know what I believe, what I want and what I have when it comes to being a mummy. At this moment in my life it is all consuming. There is nothing that can compare. But what about in a few years time, when Bean and whoever follows her is bigger. 

I will still be a mummy. Just from slightly further away, just far enough to leave room to breath and grow. 

But

I also need to learn to be me. 

As someone edging daily closer to her thirties, how does one learn how to be themselves? 

I need to break it down into to little chunks. Bite size pieces. 

I've been meaning to write a post on "My Autumnal Look". Looks have always been a little bit too important to me. It is time to make a change.

Today I made the decision to work on myself from the inside out. I had gone out to buy a new winter wardrobe, one that aligned with the picture in my head of who I thought I should be this season. It's never just a look, it's a whole character. A part I will try to play until I change my mind and become someone else for a while. I didn't buy my new personality this time. I bought some breastfeeding appropriate tops and some snuggly cardigans. 

One thing at a time.

No new personality overhaul that changes on a weekly basis, leaving me always trailing behind. I need to figure out what I want, what is important to me, where I want to go to. All without a silly facade. I need to be true to me.

I just need to find out who me is.

Image copyright Matthew Coleman.