Moving on

I've moved!  Come and join me at my new bloggy home  -  Sunshine & Cheesebugs

Redesign, Refocus .......

Things have been changing here lately (again!) and I've been taking stock of a variety of things.

One of the things on my mind has been my blog and what I blog, when I blog (not very frequently obviously) and the reason for blogging.  When I first started my blog it was intended to be a record of my creative side, mainly some scrapbooking, photography and cross-stitching at the time.

Well as it has a habit of doing, life has rolled a bit and since then our life has altered completely and I now have 2 lovely small people who take up a huge amount of my life, as they rightly should.  So to reflect that I have decided that this olde blog needs a bit of a face lift and a slight change of focus.

I'm still being creative (when I can fit it in!) but there is so much more going on these days that I need to record much more than that, and more often too :)

So it's a case of 'So long, farewell, auf weidersehen, adieu' from my Funky Scrappy blog and why not pop over and join me on my new bloggy home from home - Sunshine & Cheesebugs to see what me and little gang are getting up to, hope to see you there :)

Noo gadgets!!

It's been a time of change in our household recently.  Phone contracts being renewed and what not.  So I'm currently playing with my noo phone (Samsung SIII) thingy to see how well I can blog with it.

My lovely hubby has also been very generous and donated me his BlackBerry Playbook. Its a tablet type gadget doodaa.  I foolishly lost my beloved Kindle Fire at the beach a few weeks ago and despite contacting the police again there is no sign of it. I bought an e-reader some time ago but never really got to grips with the concept of reading without holding a BOOK. However I was lucky enough to come into a little drop of money just for me last year and, along with my new Janome, treated myslef to the kindle and loved it! I used it every day and was in the middle of a really good book when I lost it. Still getting used to the Playbook but at least I was able to finish my book. (Kathy Reichs - highly recommend her if you have never read her before).

Ive also been trying my hand at cathedral windows. Only managed the cutting and a teeny, weeny bit of the ironing last night but I love how the wee blocks look. Careful ironing of the corners is vital!
?!?!

Round Up

It is just me or is it really hard to believe that it's more than half way through the year?  I can't believe it's already August. In my mind August is going back to school, family birthdays and basically the beginning of Autumn!  Although to be fair the turn in the weather this week is similar to autumn too, the beginning of July was glorious - please come back sun!!

July has been a busy old month in this household.  Firstly we went on holiday to a lovely place called Southerness.  Good old caravan holiday, I love it :)  We had a pleasant surprise when we turned up at our allocated caravan as we had a verandah (ooohhh!!!!)  

It was lovely inside too.  I love going to a caravan, especially with little kids, we can please ourselves what we do and when and still have some home comforts.  I'm definitely a homebody, I like going away but I do love getting back to my own space too :)

Not much on the making side of things has been done lately but we have gotten outside into the garden.  At long last we painted our shed and garden fence.

Of course the Dude wanted to, briefly, help daddy!

And this is the finished effort (excuse the washing), I'm really, really pleased with the way it looks.  Makes the garden seem a little smaller, but darker paint does that to any space, but it feels so much more welcoming.

We also received a lovely gift from my old friend Lynz of Domestic Light & Magic fame (I say old in no reference to age, purely on the basis that we have actually been friends for over 20 years, it fact it could be over 25 years if my maths is right).  The gorgeous Wee Hoolits quilt for Little Miss.  So this is her modelling it, wearing the fab outfit also gifted from Lynz (she has very good taste).

I still can't get over just how smiley my little girl is, this face beams up at you when you go into her room first thing in the morning and every time she sees you.  Our little photoshoot continued as did her smile, for a while.  This is my favourite shot.

And this one makes me giggle, not even 6 months old and already she has a 'are you done yet mummy?' face. I think I'm going to see this face a lot in the future!!!!

Flying the {little} flags

Honestly I really do wonder just how much of a doughnut I can be at times!

We all have lists of things we want to make, or try our hand at, and sometimes we work through those lists.  Or probably like most people the list just gets longer, whether or not we actually manage to score things off it is a different matter!

Well one of the things of my (endless) list has been bunting.  I know right, it's not like it's the hardest thing in the world to make, but it's something I've never quite gotten round to trying out until last week.  I had been into my work the week before for a meeting (even on maternity leave!) about a motivation boosting event which was being organised and I found myself saying 'oooooh I'll make bunting'.  So after a week of procrastinating .... ehem thinking about it, I finally pulled out a range of green fabrics (that was my team's colour) and made bunting to help our theme of 'A Day at the Races'.

(apologies for the really rubbish photo)

The afternoon at work on Friday went quite well, it was a 'celebrating success' event and we all made the effort by getting dressed up.  So I was at work on Friday, while on maternity leave, wearing a dress and heels!  That is completely unheard of!!!  In a way it sort of started my mental preparations for returning to work in 4 weeks - eeekkk!!!

End of Year Etiquette

So 2 weeks ago our schools finished up for the summer and this brought up the whole 'what do I do for a his nursery teacher?' query!

What is the normal done thing for a pre-pre schooler to give to their teacher.  It was a whole new ball game for me.  So I hummed and hawed for a few weeks and, as is my default position in life, left everything to the last minute!  Mug rug was considered and then forgotten about when I came across this little gem by Karen over at Quilty Creations.  Bingo!  This was just up my street and perfect as a little leaving gift for a teacher.  Karen's instructions are fab, but as usual, I managed to cock up, em, put my own twist on my first attempt it looked like this when I was done.  Looks ok doesn't it - didn't fit!  Still not sure how but I managed to make it too short in a way that it fitted fine if the notebook was open, just couldn't close it very easily.  So fairly useless as a functioning notebook.  Also my machine decided to have a little flaky to itself the night before I needed to have this finished - cue minor, mild panic at 11pm!

 

 This was also the night before we took our cat back to the vet to find out the full extent of the problems with him.  Saying I was a little bit tense was a bit of an understatement.  So after Little Miss decided she wanted fed at 4am I got back out of bed and attempted to fix my machine, which I did.  Then I decided to have an other go at making the notebook cover.  This decision was made at roughly 4.45am and I needed to have it completed (& have a willing sewing machine) by midday.  There's nothing like a little bit of last minute taking your mind off the unpleasant side of pet ownership to get your sewing butt in gear!!  And this is what I came up with :)

I tweaked the pattern a little bit, used one long strip instead of making the inside flaps different and I didn't finish by double sewing the edges at 1/8th inch. 

I was really pleased with the end result, I'm hoping his teacher was too!  (As it turns out Euan will have the same teacher after the summer so need to improve my gift idea before end of next summer term as she will have had him for 2 whole years by then!?!?!)

We've had our holiday and slowly slotting back into a normal routine, well as normal as I can do before returning back to work after maternity leave in 6 weeks.  But more about that next time, off to finish watching The Adjustment Bureau on LoveFilm - which is turns out we've seen before but neither of us can remember what happens!

Rollercoaster of a week

It's been a week and a half!  It was always going to be a busy week - last week of nursery for the Dude, the husband finishing up too and getting ready to go on holiday on Monday.  Things got a little bit more stressful last weekend when it became obvious that our cat, Jack, wasn't eating very much. 

To cut a long story short, after a trip to the vet on Tuesday, she confirmed what I kinda knew.  The cancer which was discovered last November, and we thought had been removed, had returned as she felt lumps in his liver.  The option of medication was discussed but initially we needed to have his bloods checked and scan his liver to establish the extent of the issue.  So Thursday morning off he went, still not having eaten anything substantial since the previous Friday, and after 2 hours we got the call back to say it was bad news.  Medication might have improved his liver function for a short time but it wasn't going to do anything about the tumours.  So we put our Big Girl & Big Boy pants on and took the decision to have him put to sleep.  He was 14, his has been with us longer than we've been married.  It feels strange sitting in the livingroom and him not being here. 

This all happened the same day that the Dude had his nursery graduation (I know it's a bit daft but good for the kids) and the school Headmaster did his last nursery graduation speech as he has now retired, it was a great speech, very much from the heart!  So Thursday was the day for emotions!

Looking forward to getting away for a few days next week to switch off and recharge my batteries.  We are off to a caravan park near Dumfries and as long as it doesn't rain EVERY day I'll be happy.  I was trying to think early of something to take with me to work on next week and I suddenly remembered I have still to finish this

I started working on this cross stitch a very, very, very, VERY long time ago.  So long ago it moved house with us (& we moved in 2005!) and it's still not finished.  So as it was bought because it reminded me of Jack, it seems only fitting that I finally finish it off in memory of him now.  (& thank god I've got new specs so I'll be able to see the bloomin' stitches lol)

Something to Think About

I came across a link the other day an a parenting forum I am a member of which really made me think.  The discussion was about someone not having many photos of them and their baby.  Mainly due to the fact that the mum doesn't like getting her picture taken and also that she is usually the one behind the camera in the first place.

This made me think about how many pictures I have of me with Little Miss (2 I think?) and with the Dude (probably about 3/4?) and this link made me realise that I need to stop being so self conscious about photos and capture our lives before time marches on and the moments are gone with very little record of them.

So with this in mind, this quote sums up my thoughts for today :)

Starting over

This week I rejoined Weight Watchers (again!).  Not really with the goal of losing baby weight, if I'm honest I've pretty much lost the majority of that, aside from about 4lbs.  No, I haven't really been at a healthy weight for some time (read that as most of my adult life - I can pretty much pinpoint the exact time frame where weight became an issue but that's a tale for another day).  So this time I've joined with a different goal in mind that previous attempts - wedding, to not feel as frumpy, blah, blah.  No this time I'm looking at the long term health aspect of being as overweight as I currently am.  I am very much like my mum's side of the family and very conscious that this side has had significant health issues and don't live particularly long (my mum passed at 48, her mum at 66 & her dad at 56).  It's probably a bit of a morbid view on things, but although all the health issues have been unrelated, I do believe that we follow a bit of certain path in life, healthwise, and that path is affected by your mother's family history.  Whereas my dad's side of the family go on for ever (he's about to turn 70 and still works in a supermarket bakery 24 hours a week, his mum was 82 when she passed and his dad was 6 weeks off 94 when he died last year).  So I am determined, not only to lose weight successfully in the long term, but also increase my overall fitness.  Getting out with Little Miss in the pram and walking the Dude to and from nursery is helping to build up my basic level of fitness, especially as there is a hill between us and the school, but I need to do more. 

So with that in mind I am giving serious consideration to doing the Edinburgh MoonWalk next year.  I've done it once before, the full 26.2 miles, and it was hard but I probably only did 6 months worth of training.  If I start now, and encourage a few friends to do it will me, that's all the motivation I need.  The icing on the cake is raising money for Walk the Walk charity, who are funding the building of new Maggie's Cancer Care centre at our new local hospital, which is due to open next year.  Oh yeah and I'm 40 at the end of next year and want to tick a few things of my mental 'do before 4-0' list :)

With all this in mind, this quote rings very true for me today

Interesting

Combination of fabrics here ..

Really not sure what I think of the blocks so far, but 4 down, 20 more to do!  It is definitely scrappy that's for sure.  Can't wait to see what it will be like finished but I'm thinking it will be more on the 'fugly' side of things, but that's cool, everyone needs a 'fugly' quilt I think.  Honestly we all do :)

Quote for today, perfect for anyone who gets out of the wrong side of the bed!!!!

Nice surprise

(or really dodgy memory, depends on how you look at it!)

I mentioned in this post that I was starting the Scrappy Round the World Trip quilt that blogland has been going crazy over for, well longer than I've known about it.  I'm always last on the scene with these things.  Anyhoo, I knew I'd chosen my fabrics, cut them into strips and had started to sew them together.  Now a little time had passed since I'd done that so I was CERTAIN that I still needed to sew the long strip together but when I finally got my butt in gear I discovered this .....

I've already done that (yay), (I've made one block just to get an idea in my head what my materials look like - it's VERY scrappy!)  Next was cutting the long strips/tubes into 2.5" strips/tubes and then unpick the short strips/tubes so that the blocks have the 'step' look.  Now that all the loops have been unpicked I need to sew them together.  That is tonight's task, well starting them.  Got 24 blocks to do and I seriously doubt I'll get them all sewn in one sitting.  Especially as they need pressed first and I've got to get the ironing stuff out then I really do the slightly large pile of ironing first.  At least then I can sew relatively guilt free!!!

My other minor obsession at the moment is Pinterest.  I (heart) Pinterest, doesn't everyone?  Currently my Pinterest obsession is the quotes section.  Some of them are funnies, some of them are motivational, some of them are inspirational.  I'm planning that I'll share one on every blog post.  (I was going to say daily, but really who am I kidding thinking I'm going to blog every day, need to be realistic here!?!?!)  So here's today's little bit of wisdom. 

Go on imagine it.  It works if you are upset or really annoyed, you'll laugh I promise.

Times they are a-changing!

Has it really been a month since I last updated anything?  What a quick month it has been!!  What I have been up to in the last few weeks. 

Well the Dude had a birthday, we now have a 4 year old who won't let me call him a baby :( 

His actual birthday was a Sunday but the festivities basically started on the Friday as he got a new 'big boy' bed which involved a complete rearrangement of his room, so it was sort of like a new room.

 Testing out his new bed for bounciness (goodness only knows how long the mattress will last!!)

Saturday was taken up with a small birthday tea party with family and this year I attempted a Rainbow Cake, really it should have looked something like this but I was happy enough with the results.  I do really, really need to work on my icing skills - fondant icing is not my friend!!

 Then on Sunday, the Dude's birthday, he got to choose what to do.  So after opening presents - surprise, surprise he opted for a trip to DeepSea World to see the 'sharks & fishes'.  It was our first proper outing as a family of four!  After seeing all the fish we headed over the Forth to South Queensferry for a meal at Frankie & Benny's or as it's now known, thanks to a slip of 4 year old tongue, 'Funky & Benny's'.

 

 (birthday boy with Daddy - who so hates getting his photo taken)

(me and Missy Moo, who wasn't in a very cooperative mood! (& I despise getting my photo taken))

Other than birthday celebrations, both kiddiewinks have had chicken pox - Dude much worse than Little Miss - at least they've had them so (fingers crossed) that should be it over and done with :)

Missy Moo is 15 weeks today :o  She is coming along great guns, started chatting in the last few weeks which is great (not so much at 2.45am but at least she doesn't scream the house down at that time!).  It's great to see how similar she is to how her brother did things but so different at the same time.  She's definitely a happy little soul, my little smiler.

Looking Back

Today I've been going through my photographs from last year (looking for a specific one for my sister which turned out I took it in 2011, so not last year at all) and I realised there's lots of things I didn't record in my blogging absence.

Some of things we got up to included visiting the Giant Pandas, Tian Tian & Yang Guang at Edinburgh Zoo

(Tian Tian, the female Panda, not really wanting to seeing anyone)

(Yang, Guang, the male, chilling!)

The male Panda was hilarious, this was the most animated he got - hanging over the side of his bed!!

We saw the Olympic torch as it went through our town (it's a rubbish photo - I realised too late I was on the wrong side of the street!)

Euan had a fairly impressive (if I do say so myself!) Pirate birthday cake

That's all for now!  I'll catch up on what else we got up to another time.

All about the Dude

Life is a whirlwind of nappies, feeding, cooking, washing and many other delightful household chores at the moment, seriously feels like if I blink another day goes by!  I once read someone say they were in the 'happy phase of sleep deprivation' - I can't say I'm happy about the lack of sleep but I do love the little moments in the middle of the night when it's just me and my little Moo Moo.

I'm also very happy that in the middle of all the chaos I've managed to get the Dude's quilt finished. 

I'm rubbish with proper details but the size is roughly a decent kid's lap quilt, not as big as a single bed quilt but good enough to sleep under when it's hot.  I'm also rubbish at remembering what material it is - my excuse is that I've had it for AGES so even if I did know it, I've forgotten it by now (my shocking memory is a source of many jokes for my dearest husband!), but I've loving the binding fabric, which was a gift from my sister - really cool paw prints in black and white.

After the Dude's quilt got my mojo, mojo'ing I also made up one of the blocks for my scrappy round the world quilt, just to give me an idea of how it's going to look.

It is very scrappy and is a combination of pinks, greens, yellows and some blues - the materials are mostly ones I've been gifted/acquired/stashed over the years but never actually done anything constructive with until now.  It's going to one of those quilts that you either love or hate I think by the time it's finished but I like that.  I'm cool with fugly stuff :)  So one block down, 23 more to go!!!

The last few days has also been busy/tiring due to No1 son coming down with good old chickenpox.  I noticed a couple of tell-tale blistered spots as he has getting ready to go to his new gymnastics class on Saturday morning (typically it only started the week before) and decided we'd be best not to go.  So Saturday morning he looked like this (one little spot on the side of his nose)

this was the poor little guy on Monday - miserable is an understatement!

I had the 'pox when I was 5 (on my summer holidays I seem to recall) and I've still got the scars to prove it but I don't remember having as many spots has he has, particularly on his scalp.  But we seem to be over the worst of it, he was running about outside as his Granda's today so that is a positive sign that he's feeling more like himself.

Normal service ....

... is slowly being resumed!  I can hardly believe that our little girl has been here for 8 weeks, those have definitely been the quickest 8 weeks of my life.  She has her own routine and we are gradually getting into a new routine which meets everyone needs.  Her longest sleep seems to be from 7/8pm until roughly 4am, which is a fantastic 8/9 hours.  However I would REALLY, REALLY love if her longest sleep was the other side of midnight through to 7/8 am.  I've tried doing a dream feed at 11pm but she still wakes at 4.30 so we're just going to have to continue our middle of the night wakings for a while longer.  But on the other hand I do get snuggly cuddles in the middle of the night and if I'm really lucky little smiles too! (she isn't smiley in this photo, but any excuse for a wee photo of my baby)

I have been slowly starting to make stuff again - yay!  Nothing exciting to begin with, more function, than frivolity, but still getting back in front of my sewing machine.  To make this lovely ............

peg bag!!  It's been on my to do list for goodness only knows how long and a new bag of pegs has been sitting in my kitchen for the same length of time.  But now it's made!  So I can hang my washing out and keep on with my peg OCD (honestly I have to use the same colour of pegs for each item of clothing - I'm weird, what can I say!).

The other thing I've started is adding the binding to a quilt I'm making for my son.  The quilt top has been a UFO, hanging about for ages (like many other things) so I've made the binding and pinned it to the quilt.  Just need to attach it now, maybe I'll get that done on Saturday night when Pedro's at work).

Loop? What loop?

I'm well out of the quilty/fabric loop, I have absolutely no idea what fabric is new/cool/'on trend' (I hate that phrase!) or indeed what is going on in terms of quilt alongs, swaps or anything these days.  My head (and life) have been full of many other things for so long that I feel like a total newbie again.

But I do a a couple of very good reasons to get back on that horse, get back into the loop.  One obviously my delectable little girl

(I'm so not over looking/taking photos of her yet!)

And secondly I was in the fortunately position a few months ago to be able to upgrade my sewing machine
so treated myself to this lovely beauty - a Janome XL 601

There are quite a few things I love about it - it's so much quieter than my old Janome, it has a top loading bobbin, it has a larger choice of stitches than my old machine (even though I'll probably only use the same 3-4!) but by far my favourite, bestest thing about it is the start/stop button!  I can't say enough about how much I love the ability to sew without using a foot pedal. It means I can sew in small spaces (handy when our office/craft roof is now a nursery) and I just find it so much easier.  Love, love, love that little button and what it can allow me to do :)

Although I have been out of the loop, one thing I have picked up on is the scrappy round the world that is doing the rounds at the moment, I think there is also a flickr group too, and to be honest I think I might have joined it but I can't actually remember.  (Yes my memory is THAT bad these days)  When I started my maternity leave I decided I would attempt to start a quilt so I went through my stash and came up with a fairly decent scrappy bundle of fabrics.  So I've made a start but that was 4/5 weeks ago, not much has been done lately but once Little Miss gets into a bit of routine at nights then maybe I'll have the odd hour or two across a week to pick it up again.

Quick things I need to tackle are a quilt for my son which only needs the binding done.  Just need to decide what fabric to go for - decisions, decisions! 

It's Been Too Long ....

since I blogged anything about what I've been doing or why I've been absent for such a long time.

Lots of things have been going on, work stuff, family stuff but mainly I've been working on a special New creation. A very special one.

Little miss Megan was born on 19 February at 6:53pm weighing in at 8lbs 4oz. She has slotted in fairly well into family life but it does feel like starting all over again in some respects. The dude is almost 4 so you kind of forget just how small newborn babies are and just what the techniques are for dealing with sleep deprivation - not quite mastered that one yet.

But she is just perfect, my family is complete and I'm one very happy (although a little tired) mummy!