an Easter scene by the girl
Well, dunce that I am, I've just accidentally posted a rambling half-soaked draft of this post and then had to delete it - time to start again!
We're having a lovely Easter holiday. The fortnight since my last post has been spent largely gardening and Spring cleaning, and the place is beginning to look all the better for it. The boy's bedroom has been vastly improved with some new ikea flat pack furniture, cunningly making it look slightly less like the tiny boxroom it really is. We've also finally cleared our own room after having carpets fitted over a month ago. My rationale was that if we left all the under-bed storage boxes along with the plastic-bagged contents of our broken chest of drawers in the middle of the room, we'd be forced to sort it out, rather than just put it all back where it came from. Apparently, my tolerance for a junk-filled room is better than I thought, 5 weeks on. It was time to take matters in hand though, before the local press came round to write an article about the family who had to tunnel their way through their own rubbish! Now I can actually see the new carpet, which is nice, though I am concerned it will mean I have to hoover more.
This weekend has been spent having Eastery fun, with much chocolate eating. I wonder though whether I am the only mother in the country who tries to cajole one of her children into eating chocolate. The boy, who is a bit on the stubborn side like his daddy, resolutely refuses to even try chocolate, in spite of my best efforts. He doesn't eat biscuits or cake either, though his sister more than makes up for him! We did have a minor breakthrough the other day though, when he ate a
jaffa cake, so progress has been made.
Other than household chores and simultaneously trying to bribe one child into eating chocolate whilst stopping the other from overindulging, I've also been grabbing some time to sew. The coin quilt is coming along nicely now that I've added some white sashing.
I'm toying with the idea of free motion quilting after seeing
Florence's lovely bird and flower applique as I'm a little bored with straight up and down lines. I saw
this excellent post over at
Oh, Fransson!, which is really helpful, though I think I'm going to need a lot more practice before launching into a whole quilt. If anyone has some tips, please do share them!
I seem to be on a bit of a green phase at the moment, judging by the projects I've been working on - I used my very last scraps of green for the Chinese coin quilt stacks, and though I was itching to buy more, I resisted, as the whole point for me was to make it from scraps. That said, I couldn't not buy the lovely green herringbone tweed and liberty tana lawn I saw in
Fabrics Galore, which became this shoulder bag:
There was also the lovely furnishing weight fabric in taupe with a flash of lime green that became this big pleated bag:
Maybe it's something to do with all that time spent in the garden?
I'll leave you with this gem of a reader tip from
Prima Magazine ('your top tips for March', so sorry it's a little late). I can't read this without laughing out loud. Is it just me?
At £25 a pop, I'm considering writing in with one of my own about how to persuade your previously resistant-to-chocolate child to eat a jaffa cake.
