American day

Every couple of months they have a culture day in nursery and reception at Anya's school. Yesterday was America day which really translated as Cowboy and Indian (Native American) day :)

I made this dress Tuesday evening after remembering that I had this fabric tucked away that has teepees, canoes, bison and bears all over it. I made it large so that I didn't have to faff with buttons or zips and I plaited some fabric strips together to make a belt. I also fringed the bottom of the dress to make it swing and move when Anya walks.

And here she is with her Indian girl mask. We frequent Buffalo Grill when we go to France and the waiters are taken with 2 polite English girls saying merci a lot so they get lots of free gifts like these masks :)

This is always what you want to see...

.....when you come back downstairs and refresh your Twitter account to see what has been going on in the world.

A bloody great big red box that says account suspended! Am not sure why but they should be resolving it soon :)

Sports Day

The sun shined which is a rare enough occurrence in Burnley as it is but on sports day - wow!

Sports day in Nursery and Reception is more games and activities than actual sports.

Yes Anya is wearing her tights under her shorts - she wore them to school and I assumed that school would just put her in pumps but no!

Tossing the beanbag into the bucket.

Waiting her turn for scoring a goal.

And Tara enjoying the day :) If you want to see more photographs of the day then you can check out my Flickr here - there are 2 or 3 pages I think!

Teacher presents

As an ex-primary school teacher I always like to make presents that will actually be used by the teachers we give them to! Here is what Anya made for her teachers.

Notebooks from Paperchase, drawings by Anya. I also included some fancy mechanical pencils but the photograph didn't come out.

Here they are all wrapped up ready to give out - complete with Swirlyarts tags of course!

Introducing Bozo

Well most of you will have seen him before popping up in photographs every now and then and if you have visited our house you will almost certainly seen him in person. Bo is Anya's teddy and he is very much loved and patched - as you can see in these photographs!

The reason he is downstairs today is that Anya has a teddy bears picnic at school on Thursday and she didn't want him to go into school with great big holes and I agree. He has been sitting on my workbox all day waiting patiently for me to fix him but alas it is nearly bedtime and he won't get fixed before bed. Tomorrow I think.

She loves this bear!

Treasury

A treasury I made the other day - I was inspired by all the flower fabric I have been chopping up!

A lovely sight......

.......that greeted me yesterday. Both girls desperate to read books to Nana and Nana being thrilled that they wanted to :) I love my mum :D

The washing fairy

How I wish that the washing fairy would come to my house!

This little lot is load number 17 of about 50 - why oh why did I leave washing all my fabric until I had 50ish loads to do?? I have bought fabric since I started this mammoth task and it has gone straight into the washing machine - lesson learned! I think it will take me until the end of the summer to get everything washed and sorted onto shelves again - just in time for starting Christmas ideas!

Although if the sky over Burnley stays like this then it will take even longer!

Shopping or The Tale of Things Jumping Into My Arms!

When my mum comes to visit we often go shopping - I like shopping and so does my mum! I had to go to Paperchase to get some supplies for teacher presents (more on that when they are made) and the only one I know of is situated in a Borders bookshop. Uh oh!!

This issue of Selvedge jumped into my arms - how did that happen! I have read lots about this magazine but hadn't found it until now - all I can say is wow! I like it a lot :)

This book also jumped into my arms - it has lots of great ideas to kick start your creativity if you like making collages, altered art etc. A couple of other books tried to jump into my arms but I restrained myself :) I only bought those two things along with the Paperchase goodies.

We tried to stop at a charity shop on the way home but couldn't find parking (or parking that Bumble could fit into anyway!) so we didn't stop at the one planned but we did stop at a different one instead.

Mr Barrowman jumped into my arms (if only!) and at only £1 who was I too argue?

This fabric also decided to come home with me - the pattern looks crap here but it is really nice in real life.

These plates were in the 30p box outside the shop (there is a set of 5) but when I came to pay for them he lady said 40p for the lot to get rid of them! Erm, I was going to pay 30p each but I'm not going to argue with little old lady charity shop logic!

And as I was paying there was a stack of magazines on the counter - I had a quick flick through and this one was 20p and therefore came home with me. I like to kid myself that one day my house might look like one of the ones in these magazines - I did say might!

Don't tell me I am the only one who has things jumping into their arms? Or online shopping cart?

Cake!

My mum is visiting this week and said that to save me from cooking that she would take us out to tea one night! I wasn't going to say no to that :) We went to what is known in our house as the pudding place. If I'd thought about it I would have taken a camera to document the sheer size of the puddings - they are huge! It's a pub that does your regular meals but the puddings are fantastic - huge and delicious.

This is what my mum came home with - a Sycamore slice which is their version of a vanilla slice (the pub is called Sycamore Farm). Looks delicious yes but it measures approx 4 inches square. That's one huge dessert!

I came home with Chocolate Junkyard which is a chocolatey mousse type thing with choc sauce and lots of marshamallows, malteasers, chocolate bits piled on top. This wasn't the normal size portion - they seem to be mean with the portions now :( The last dessert we got from them we couldn't finish all in one go.

And here is my lovely mum who treated us to these delicious things :) She wouldn't look up for a photgraph so I took one of her reading my magazine instead.