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!