yay, we’re married

the weather was lovely

all elements were in place (mostly – i forgot to pick the sweetpeas…)

our guests were wonderful – some even braved the compost toilets (after being given instructions by Boo)

more to follow at another time

i just wanted to say that now i’m mrs tom – although i’ll be keeping my name

oh and we had the most delicious wedding cake – pic to follow at a later date, like when i have some that aren’t just on facebook!

the sewing was worth it, as you’ll see when i get round to pics, and the memories of the day will be with most of us for ever (we think Yogi might not remember very much, maybe she’s just a little too small for that – which makes me a touch sad as it happens)

wedding prep (not for much longer though!)

things are happening almost constantly now… Tom’s busy with his prep and I’m busy with mine.

boo & yogi have tutu’s & costumes – although need to do black dye on leggings & tees to aid the effect

eddie’s dress will be ready tomorrow, as will mine

wedding favours in progress as we speak (courtesy of eddie)

tom’s built compost toilets, sink stands, steps, he’s brewed & measured & assessed, planned set lists organised helpers

i’ve sewn, & made & budgeted, planned & shopped & delegated….

rings have arrived, i’ve spoken to our lovely friend who’s making our cake, had my ‘dress panic’ and now i’m feeling surprisingly calm. just 5 more tablecloths to finish and then i can start on the ‘nice to have’ things,  the pretty finishing touches that we can do without but i’d rather not – after i’ve made tops for boo  yogi that is, oh and visited rogby & peller and done the annual school uniform shopping…….

holiday snippet

not many words in this post….

firstly a birthday, a 30th in fact for Tom

next, our cabin – just about the only thing i saw on our 35 hour ferry crossing…. i was not a well bunny, or a happy one for that matter. my dad did his national service in the navy he suggested the best way to not get sick was to stay below deck and not see the sea. popular advice is to stay on deck in the fresh air and always look at the horizon. i am never ever ever following popular advice again, my dad rocks, he know his stuff.

all i saw of the ferry.... both directions!

a buried boo!

yogi & a very blue sky

Tom & the girls & a not so blue sky

Us, my parents & Tom's mum

 

Yogi trying to get a drink

Yogi loved the fountain and didn’t want to share it with any of the other children in the playground, she felt it was her fountain and they should all probably go get their own fountains….. thanks to Noise for taking this pic, i was of course holding her up as it’s not a baby sized fountain!

how to put a smile on someone elses face and leave yourself feeling pretty damn good too

a link for you

http://thetoysociety.blogspot.com/

something that should definitely be on my to do list, and once i get this wedding over and done with it most definitely will be – not that the wedding is something ‘to get over and done with’ but you know what i mean, once i get some semblance of normality back into my life!

i am so the crappest blogger in the world….

hello, i almost feel i need to re-introduce myself it’s been such a long time since i blogged.

i won’t though, that’d just be daft, you can just look at ‘about’ and then you’ll remember… or look through my previous posts!

wedding plans are spinning along nicely, all feels a bit like lots at the moment (erm i’m not sure what’s happened to my language skills but heyho)

we’ve just got back from 2 weeks in spain with my parents and other dearly loved members of my family and this time for the first time ever we had a guest! my soon to be mother-in-law came over for a few days. no one has ever visited out there before, it was really nice for me to share some of my life with someone who wasn’t actually my significant other and none of my other in-laws have ever thought enough of my family to visit so thank you so much mother-in-law to be.

i’m not sure what to write about first! so much has been going on since i last blogged once again i don’t know where to start.

i guess wedding update so i have it in writing somewhere so i can look through it again oneday (if i ever feel the need to torture myself that is)

girls dresses/costumes are all in handor completed.

noise is wearing the dress she wore to the masked ball, including underwear and shoes so she’s sorted.

eddie is having her dress made, lovely dress maker in nearby burgess hill is making it, it was originally going to be one colour and then this changed to be another – my main objective on the bridesmaid front is that they are completely comfortable so they’ve all chosen their own dresses, including colours (well except yogi who’s wearing what she’s wearing because one of the others has chosen for her!) – she’s having her fitting for this next wednesday so fingers crossed she’ll like it! 

boo has 2 outfits, one a ladybird costume which i designed and made myself (although of course i do realise that  mother nature actually did the original design) the second one she wanted and which i plagiarised from another blog with permission from the original author and which i will link to once we reach a point where it won’t spoil the surprise for those that might actually attend who read this blog, she’ll be wearing the same colour for this as noise, her request – ladybird is complete, second outfit just needs finishing touches but could do as it is

yogi also has 2 outfits, one a bumble bee costume, again designed by mother nature, borrowed by me and then the second the same as boo but in the same colour as eddie (at boo’s request) the choice of bumble bee was picked by both boo & eddie (eddie mostly though, boo just approves wholeheartedly!)  – bumble bee front and back just need attaching to each other then yogi’s completely sorted

 pictures will follow for the costumes when i’m not in the middle of dinner and trying to snatch a few minutes to blog….

my dress is at the dressmakers as we speak being altered slightly to suit me more (like being taken up as i’m such a shortarse and having adjustments made to allow me to wear a bra…)  it was a freebie. i went to a charity clothes swap in aid of cancer research UK and there it was, asking to be tried on even though i wanted a nice ordinary dress in a sensible design that i could wear again… french connection uk for the princely sum of £5 entry fee and 5 items of clothing to swap (i also came away with a pair of jeans, some pj’s for eddie, 2 pairs of trousers and 2 t-shirts!  i just need underwear!

tom has a shirt, that’s as far as he’s got. and in fact the shirt needs altering, by me. my mum has clearly taken to tom like she’s not taken to any of my other husbands in the past…. she has given him my grandfathers cufflinks as a wedding present, her father died a very long time ago, long long before i was born so she clearly thinks he’s a keeper! unfortunately the shirt’s not designed for cufflinks so i’ll be altering that. i also think it needs a rounded rather than straight hem as i know (i so totally do) that tom won’t tuck his shirt in.

 

that has got to be it for this update otherwise i’ll get bored too and if i’m bored you must be thoroughly… also if i don’t go now dinner will burn and the girls will all be rather annoyed at me

Where do I begin to update?

I guess I’ll begin with now and then gradually go back to catch up!

Wedding plans are on the go, lots of things booked in order to make it happen. Registrar, hog roast, portaloo company (m-i-l doesn’t fancy her chances with the compost toilet Tom’s been building!), trestle tables & chairs. 

Marquee & car parking agreed with the farm next door.

Invites are almost complete, compost toilet is on it’s way – frame built, just need cladding round it to hide ’stuff’, elderflower champagne on the go, nettle beer just being begun now, as I type in fact!

 nettle beer-to-be

more on the nettle beer soon, the smell of the nettles steeping in the kitchen was really rather vile, I do so hope the initial smell isn’t reflected in the eventual flavour… mmm tasty

elderflower champagne (maybe – we shall see…)

The elderflower champagne on the other hand has smelt rather delish from the start (well apart from a bit of a cat-pee smell from the leftover umbels in the kitchen..), more on this later too.

chocolate, chard and cheating

Easter Sunday, a day of chocolate feasting for many. Luckily for us for the first year ever the girls received absolutely minimal chocolate from others (still more than desirable i.e. any, but an improvement) although Yogi did actually receive some!

We decided to not go with the traditional (for us too) Easter Bunny hides eggs throughout and be a little more honest with Boo and tell her that later on in the day we would set up an easter egg hunt. She did ask me about it, where did people get the eggs from if the EB didn’t bring them so I told her we bought them. She seems happy enough, she was still getting her easter egg hunt, but could thank us for the excitement rather than just expecting them to be there. She didn’t seem to miss the ‘magic’ and was thoroughly excited running round the garden hunting for eggs, for me it was better as I didn’t have to remember to hide them the night before or make sure I didn’t accidentally point any out. It also meant I could judge the weather and then decide whether or not to hide them outside. We did, but before they started they were ordered to ‘go find a basket each’ and it had to be a proper basket or they weren’t allowed to go hunt (Noise tried to use an empty ice cream container but got sent back!). The big girls enjoyed it (as always) and Boo seemed extra excited screeching at me for finding such good hiding places etc. It was nice, nicer than ever before I think. I only hid a few mini choc eggs each and then I also hid the ones they’d received from Grandma & another. Neither of the received eggs were big, Grandma did little ones, cadbury cream egg sized and ‘another’ bought the littlest size of the boxed eggs. So nothing too huge. I also hid two little bowls I’d made for Yogi & Boo and an easter egg colouring book for Boo and ‘Ten Chirpy Chicks’ for Yogi, Boo has the caterpillar version and we’ve borrowd the tadpole one from the library so I knew it’d be a hit and it was.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Onto the chard!

Actually it starts with the sowing of carrot seeds, onion sets, parsnips and beetroot. Boo sowed beetroot, radish and carrots in her trough and then decided she’d plant a cabbage plant and sow some chard too.

So, bed number 1 has the carrots, the onions, the garlic and the parsnips along with half a row of beetroot too. bed number 2 is for the legumes so not planted yet (except I decided to sow a row of rainbow chard) and bed number 3 belongs to the brassicas. I can’t remember whether I should have been planting brassicas just yet but I did – more about that in the next section….) bed number 4 is potatoes but that was a few weeks ago – although I should note we have shoots! Strawberries are surviving transplantation well and I even found a few more had popped up in the potato bed so they had to come up too! All in all a pretty productive time.

     next comes the cheat….

last years experience with the brassicas was so bad I wasn’t sure I could repeat it this year (and I haven’t got round to it yet either…. but that’s another story) so I decided to buy seedlings, quite big ones. Cheating but as last year was such a non-started I figured what the heck, it’d still be cheaper than buying the same veggies at the supermarket and I’d still have to take responsibility for their growth from now on so here they are

 

and then Yogi woke up and she joined us too

we’ve set the date!

Yay, finally after being engaged for 2 years we’ve set the date. The registrar + venue is booked, the Hog Roast is booked and those that we absolutely must have there (that aren’t us) have been told to ’save the date’. Still lot’s more to tell of course but we’ll do that as soon as we’ve sorted ’save the date’ cards (or maybe an email to be more green).

Not sure what to do about flowers as I really would like home grown sweet peas but I realise time is ticking away, luckily we only want minimal flowers not hordes so we might be ok. If not whatever we need needs to be local not imported and in season rather than hothouse raised.

vintage patterns!

Knowing I needed to find a pattern for a top to take part in the spring top sewing I decided it was time to look through my pattern stash. As previously stated these patterns were all handed down to me by my mother (still alive and kicking but no longer sewing thanks to the arthritis) or by another elderly lady (elderlier… than my mother and also plagued by arthritis) so none of them are modern.

I’ve picked a few for show and tell, they span 3 decades and include some with fond memories for me! 2 of them don’t have dates on them so I’m not sure which decade from but they’re definitely from within the 3 the others span so I’m not too worried. I decided to leave out the incredibly cringeworthy 1980’s ones as I feel maybe my mothers mistakes don’t need to be made too public and why single her out when just about everyone made fashion mistakes in the 80’s!

a small selection

left to right top row first 1954, 1961, 1969, 1970 (maternity)

bottom row 1969, no date, 1973, no date

I distinctly remember at least one of the dresses my mum made out of McCalls 5915, it was cream and beige, a kind of medium weight texture waffle, I think it was wool. I’m sad she doesn’t have it anymore, when she returned to Spain in the 1990’s she didn’t take any of the clothes she’d made in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s with her. I think it’s a shame, I’d love my daughters to be able to see the wonderful clothes their Abuela made, and of course maybe ‘borrow’ them for myself…. there were some beautiful items, all really well made out of really good fabric.

The 1970’s maternity dress was the short version with long sleeves, it was black with tiny orange, red and yellow flowers all over. I know because I wore it for my first pregnancy in 1993 (only I wore it as a top not a dress, my mum has always had good legs (even now, bit wrinkly but still better than mine)). I gave it back to her after Noise was born, I don’t know why but she didn’t keep it so I never got to wear it again. I didn’t have this pattern and didn’t think to ask my mum for it when I got pregnant again in the 2000’s, I so wish I had, I’d love to have had such a comfortable, cool top to wear these last 2 times! Maybe next time……

Simplicity 5152 my mum made at least 3 versions of, my favourite being a heavy boucle type fabric with huge beautiful buttons. I loved that suit when I was growing up.

The sad thing is I never saw my mum in any of these, I just used to hug them and stroke them in her wardrobe. By the time I was old enough to notice what my mum was wearing it was the 80’s……

Knit, nurse, knackered

The title says some of it, but not all!

Knit – well, that’d be the wedding present I’ve been happily working away at. Quite excited about it as it’s quirky and fun – and not boring to knit. I planned it, saw the fabric shop had indeed re-opened bought the goods and began it, almost half way through now and still have plenty of time. There is actually another thing I’d like to make if I get time but the thing I’ve started is what I really wanted to make so I’m pleased I’ve got on with it. There are so many things these days that I want to do and never get round to.

Nurse, well that’d be Noise (soon to have another name as it doesn’t suit her anymore) and Boo. Vomit city in our house again. I don’t know what it is with those two. Noise was quite poorly as a baby with bronchiolitis and then following that lots of tummy bugs and recurring pneumonia so I always put her susceptibility down to that, she was also bottle fed (whether it makes a difference or not depends on whose opinion you’re asking) which I do feel made a difference, in that when she was poorly she got either half or quarter strength formula or diaoralyte – neither of which comes even close to breastmilk so whether being bottlefed in itself is an issue may be debatable (but not by me) the fact that during illness she couldn’t get what she needed was. Boo, on the other hand was (and still is) breastfed. She’s had breastmilk whenever she’s been poorly and on one occasion it did stop a stay at the hospital. And in this case although she’s been really very sleepy and out of it she hasn’t been as sick as Noise (who I have absolutely NO intention of breastfeeding…), I wonder whether she’s more susceptible because she’s more tired in general than Eddie & Yogi and all the other guys her age. It’s been a week for Noise, Boo started Wednesday and is managing to eat today (well she had toast through the day and then a little bit of dinner this evening) but Noise has returned to vomitting whenever we introduce anything other than chicken soup, and her temperature keeps spiking at over 40 C. Yogi and Eddie have managed (so far, fingers crossed, touch wood) to stay well. Although Yogi has definitely showed signs of jealousy – Boo has been getting far too much attention for her liking which has resulted in increased amounts of ’nursing’ of the other kind! Tom it seems feels rather a big bit poorly this evening…. he’s been out building a chicken shed all weekend and now he’s really not too good. We’ll have to see how he’s doing tomorrow but I’ve already told him if he’s poorly ‘he has to stay in bed out of my way and not give me anything more to do..’ harsh I think, but I’m

Knackered. Which finishes off my title and explains why I haven’t blogged this week.  And which is why I really should be going to bed instead of blogging, it’s just it’s so nice to be downstairs and awake without someone wanting my attention so here I am.