the killer draft

image by me, illustration by me...

So my new plan is to work in the evening, to design, blog, make, plan, do and organise after the kids are in bed. And it's tough. I'm lucky to grab an hour or two a couple of evenings a week before I have to drag myself to bed. Griff is teething and not sleeping well right now, which of course means that I'm not sleeping well either. But it is lovely, having an hour or two in the evenings for myself. I feel so content sat at my little desk in a quiet room with a candle on and no one shouting 'MUMMY! I NEED YOU!' Bliss. Our new desk is in it's place in the corner of the middle room. It's very compact and leaves much more space than the last desk to use the rest of the room as we want. But the draft there from the floorboards is beyond cold. It's Arctic. The other night my feet got so icy I got chilblains. And I'm not a person who feels the cold now that I'm a dress size up on 2008. Bloody baby weight. And, erm, bloody cheese.

Anyway, the cold corner. Tonight I'm clever enough to wear slippers.

And a cashmere cardigan helps.

And a hotwater bottle.

And a cup of tea.

And now I'm toasty.

And ready to work...

So I guess that's the cue to sign off.

Bye!

lipstick, cigarettes and car keys

When I was a small child I loved watching my Nan get ready for a night out. The smell of her perfume (Yves Saint Laurent Paris), her lipstick (Estee Lauder), the cigarettes that she held but rarely puffed on (Regal king size) and the drinks her and her friend Winnie sipped as they chatted (vodka? gin? Not sure), these things make up such strong memories for me. 

To me she was the height of sophistication. 

Remember when you were a child and you got to peep behind the curtain into what you thought was the adult world, that glamorous grown up world that you eventually realise doesn't actually exist at all? The smells, the silky petticoats, the snatched fragments of conversation that only make half sense. For me, the symbol of adulthood above all others was a set of car keys. I wasn't interested in actually using them to drive, I just wanted to jangle them about in a self important way. Of course they had to be my keys, not my dad's or my boyfriend's, that just wouldn't have the same impact. I managed to achieve my ambition at the age of 33, just 16 years after passing my driving test. And yes, it does make me feel like a proper grown up holding those keys, I'm in the club now.

Things that make me feel grown up. 

My kids
My car keys
Having a pot plant that hasn't died yet
Radio 4
Having a dog

Things that make me feel like a kid
My hair
My mess
My parents
In fact, mostly everything else

Is that the same for most of you? 

Do you feel grown up most the time? Or just like me it it only really when holding a set of car keys? 

half an hour

This afternoon the weather can't make up its mind about how it feels. Dark brooding skies, heavy rain, howling wind, blue skies, hello sun... and repeat. I have so much to do. You know that feeling when there's so much to do and so much you want to do and you just don't know where on earth to start? That's my general default feeling at the moment. I have a baby, a job, a little girl, a dog, a house to run etc etc and yet I still feel like I'm never getting anything done. Just getting 'life' done should be enough shouldn't it? Feeling bad cos you haven't covered a chest of drawers in vintage wall paper is a little dumb really.

Griff is having a nap and so I'm taking the time to write this. A quicky.

Blogging can be a trap I think, taking time away from the thing you really want to do. If I have an hour 'free' do I want to spend it writing here or should I be doing something else? I don't think I always get this right but I do know that I enjoy writing and this is the only place I get to do that right now. 

Annnnd... he's awake.

Bye.

the second half of winter

Edie asks me every few days if it's 'still winter' and counting the weeks until spring has made me realise how short the seasons actually are, how they fly by and how in just six weeks it will be March the 1st. This winter's been a mild one and spring will soon be upon us, so with this in mind I'm trying to embrace this second half of winter. Even if I have an actual chilblain on my toe. Even if I hate getting up in he dark every day. Even if last week everything felt a bit rubbish.

Perhaps last week was a bit like that for most of us?

I've been thinking of ways we can enjoy the coming weeks more. Thinking of things we can do when it's darker and wetter and colder and you feel half human half slug. And not a healthy slug, a slug with a nasty cold.

I'm hoping for some dry evenings as the dark nights mean that you can see the stars before tea time. Edie's got the star gazing bug from some Cbeebies' show she's mad about so I'm going to wrap us up warm and take a flask of hot chocolate out to the garden on a clear night to look up at the twinkling stars. She wants a telescope for her birthday but it's hard to tell what's a passing fad and what could be a real interest with a four year old. Although the same can be said for me I guess, perhaps she's just like her mum.

I've always loved looking up at the night sky. That feeling is nuts, isn't it, when you've been staring upwards for a while, amazed by the beauty of our solar system, and then... boom, it hits you, how colossal the skies are and how minuscule we are and the ground kind of shifts beneath your feet and you have to go inside for a sit down and a cup of tea.

These few weeks will pass quickly as all weeks do these days and I want to snap out of this little funk I'm in. Perhaps the stars can help me to do this a little. Here's hoping for a twinkly, cosy, happy, second half of winter. X

monochrome print

This is one of the monochrome prints of mine I mentioned in the last post. I made it a few months back now but it hasn't made it into the shop as of yet. In fact the shop has been generally neglected for quite some time now.

I don't think I've mentioned it here before but I have a part time job as an art tutor. Since having the kids it's just been a few classes a week but it's the best fun. I had a class today and we made dream catchers. Getting paid by the hour to help people make dream catchers makes me do a little happy dance. BUT this lovely little job of mine is under threat and I fear it'll bite the dust very soon. I'll be lost without my classes, my students and my time away from the kids.  

I would love to say I'll have more time to do my other work, my design work, my Etsy shop, write, that kind of thing, but it's not easy with a nine month old baby and a four year old... But people do it, don't they? Somehow they manage to get the stuff done. 

It's 9.30pm right now and my children are both in bed. My husband is on his way home from London and the dog is asleep on the sofa. And I have time right now, this time, evening time. So I guess I sacrifice Netflix and baths and books and early nights and instead work every night along with any time I can snatch in the daytime and on weekends. 

And we'll see. 

Do any of you guys work on stuff in the evenings or weekends? What do you sacrifice? 

dreaming up a monochrome wall

Black and white. It's been a 'thing' for ages now (like triangles and teepees... imagine a monochrome teepee in a trianglular print. Too much? Or bloody lovely? Probably bloody lovely.). But it's a 'thing' that I still love the look of. Perhaps black and white will never really look outdated if you do it right. Black and white with a 'pop' of colour (the 'pop', let face it, usually being a cushion).

Anyway , I want a gallery of black and white prints. With maybe a 'pop', or maybe not a 'pop'. I'm unsure on the 'pop'.

And when you have a hankering for design inspiration you turn to pinterest and get blown away by the lovely homes that people have and how clever and not lazy at all they are. *sigh*

So here you go-

all these and more here at Pinterest

I have some black and white prints of my own that are good to go but if anyone has any black and white print recommendations they'd like to share then please do! 

this year, last year

I mostly did a baby in 2013

I'm only now getting my head around the fact that it's January and that it's a brand new year. Well, not brand spanking new, but still pretty fresh out of the box. Last week I was still catching up on 2013 so I guess I'm starting 2014 a week behind. Sounds pretty right for me these days.

Last year was a good one. Our family grew by one. Having a baby boy was clearly the stand out moment. A peg to hang the whole year off, 'What did I accomplish in 2013? Well, I made a human being!' I'm pretty sure I won't be making any more human beings in 2014 and so I'm going to have to make a little more effort to make this year's big events, projects and general ambiance special. 

It's the stand out moments that stay with you and make memories. And those moments usually have to be made, they don't happen when you spend every evening in front of the telly and every weekend at the shops, do they? So I'm going to make a list of what I'd love to happen in 2014, and I'm not going to hold back because I know we haven't any spare cash or because doing stuff with a baby is hard. I'm just going to write it because even I'm not sure of what I want to do, and that's no place to start making moments.

I hope you all have a wonderful 2014. I really do.