 |
| Big E: Rowing on Loch Earn |
 |
| little e : paddling! |
Over exposed phone photos from a day at Lochearn Head.
Joining in with Jodi again for the 52 project.
Sunday, 27 July 2014
Thursday, 24 July 2014
A Sorbetto at Aberdour Castle
Husband took a fortnight of work at the start of the school holidays which was great, we were away for 8 nights which meant we had some time when we got back to get another use of our Historic Scotland membership.
It was a gorgeous day so we headed to Fife to visit Aberdour Castle. But this post isn't about the castle, which we had a lovely wander round then lunch in the tea room, it is about what I wore.
A new contender for possibly my favorite top status. Not the most flattering but I don't care, it has robots on it!
I got the fabric from Elise who blogs at Foof & Faff (and does lots of Historic Scotland posts if you are interested) at the Scottish Bloggers Meet up earlier in the year. It was meant for Big E....
... but instead it became a Sorbetto, minus the front pleat, for me. Do I feel guilty, not really, I will get many summers from this top and Big E would have outgrown anything I made by next year!
We nipped in to Tesco on the way home that day and I wondered why people were walking past me and smiling to themselves, then I realised what I was wearing!
Linking to some of these linky parties.
It was a gorgeous day so we headed to Fife to visit Aberdour Castle. But this post isn't about the castle, which we had a lovely wander round then lunch in the tea room, it is about what I wore.
A new contender for possibly my favorite top status. Not the most flattering but I don't care, it has robots on it!
I got the fabric from Elise who blogs at Foof & Faff (and does lots of Historic Scotland posts if you are interested) at the Scottish Bloggers Meet up earlier in the year. It was meant for Big E....
... but instead it became a Sorbetto, minus the front pleat, for me. Do I feel guilty, not really, I will get many summers from this top and Big E would have outgrown anything I made by next year!
We nipped in to Tesco on the way home that day and I wondered why people were walking past me and smiling to themselves, then I realised what I was wearing!
Linking to some of these linky parties.
Tuesday, 22 July 2014
A New Shower Room
Last week it was the utility room, this week the shower room that is off the utility!
We demolished the original shower room completely.
It was running the length of the room and meant there was a small utility, tiny shower room and useless dark corridor to the back door that was on the front of the house... This is an extension that was apparently architect designed, hmmm!
The shower room is now the width of the utility with a plain white sink and toilet and a decent sized shower.
The tiling, what can I say, we have wanted to tile a bathroom like that since visiting the Exploratorium in San Francisco in 2000 and have finally done it. The tiles are not really sloping, it is an optical illusion!
Finishing this room means we have done all the rooms downstairs and only need to do the hall and stairs for downstairs to be officially complete! Who knows when they will get done though, if only money grew on trees, or I could find a job that only worked school hours and had school holidays off!!
Linking to some of these linky parties.
We demolished the original shower room completely.
It was running the length of the room and meant there was a small utility, tiny shower room and useless dark corridor to the back door that was on the front of the house... This is an extension that was apparently architect designed, hmmm!
The shower room is now the width of the utility with a plain white sink and toilet and a decent sized shower.
The tiling, what can I say, we have wanted to tile a bathroom like that since visiting the Exploratorium in San Francisco in 2000 and have finally done it. The tiles are not really sloping, it is an optical illusion!
Finishing this room means we have done all the rooms downstairs and only need to do the hall and stairs for downstairs to be officially complete! Who knows when they will get done though, if only money grew on trees, or I could find a job that only worked school hours and had school holidays off!!
Linking to some of these linky parties.
Sunday, 20 July 2014
A Rainbow Cake for my Sister
My wee sister was 30 last month, gosh that makes me feel old, and I made her cake. Her request, a rainbow cake! I will be completely honest and the amount of artificial colours in this cake scares me and I wouldn't let the kids eat it but it looked pretty!
I made 6 separate sponges (made in batches of 3 then split into different bowls for the colour) and sandwiched them together and covered the whole thing with vanilla butercream. I put rainbow bunting on the top as a hint to what was inside but not many folk guessed and there were a few surprised faces round the table!
It tasted surprisingly good given how many evil colours are in it!
It is almost birthday month in this house, husband and little e a week apart, and husband has asked for a Millennium Falcon cake and little e an Olaf cake. Only one will be getting their request...
Linking to some of these linkies.
Thursday, 17 July 2014
Utility Room Renovation
Wow this post has been a long time coming! For those new around here we moved in to our house 2.5 years ago and it was a mess, it needed total renovation but was in the perfect location with a big garden.We have been slowly renovating, see here and here and here.
The utility room when we moved in was awful, in fact calling it a utility room was a bit of an exaggeration!
The downstairs toilet was running lengthwise in the room leaving a corridor to the back door (which was on the front of the house...) and the rest of the area felt small and dark with another door out the back. It was just odd. We knew it had to be totally stripped back to bare walls so, after Big E's birthday in January, we started demolishing!
We have put in new windows, blocked up the (front and back) back doors and put one in the side of the house which makes far more sense. The toilet is now along the width of the room at the end and the whole thing feels massive. It is bigger then the kitchen we had in our first house!
This is what you see when you come in the back door. The drawers will be painted eventually and the old freezer replaced when this one breaks.
Behind the door is the shoe storage, from Ikea, and the coat hooks made with scrap wood and hooks from B&Q.
We have stacked the washing machine and tumble dryer and put in a sink.
I am in love with the tiles (from Tons of Tiles on ebay).
We are going to do something to the front of the boiler eventually but for now it is a white eyesore!
Laundry cupboard and tall cupboard are from Ikea and are brilliant, no more piles of washing, each hole has a built in basket behind it - so clever!
The door goes into the downstairs shower room, I will do a seperate post about that next week!
The worktops and white units are from Ikea and the floor tiles and other units are from B&Q.
I ordered the doors and mis-matched knobs on line. Also, to save some money we used painted MDF as end boards for the units, this saved us £150.
I am officially in love with this room, I think it is the only one that feels right, the rest of the renovated rooms are missing something, mostly things on the walls but good pictures and mirrors are not cheap!
Next up are the windows in the living room and our bedroom which leak...
Linking to some of these linky parties.
Tuesday, 15 July 2014
My Top 10 Free Summer Sewing Patterns
1. Kids Oliver + S Shorts
2. Kitschy Coo Kids Tennis Skirt
3. MADE Kids Basic Tee (no photo)
4. icandy handmade Everyday skirt
5. icandy handmade Maxi Skirt
6. By Hand London Circle Skirt App
7. Kirsten Kimono top by Maria Denmark
8. Blank Canvas Tee by Cake Patterns
9. Colette Sorbetto
10. By Hand London Polly Top (this is just a muslin - odd fabric choice I know :) )
I have made all these patterns this summer except the MADE basic tee which I made years ago, before I had this blog, hence no photo. I am planning on some separate posts for some of these but knowing me by the time I have done them summer will be over so thought I should share the patterns now before we are sewing for summer 2015...
Details of the kids shorts and skirt are here , Kimono top here, circle skirt here and the Sorbetto here (I have another one to show you soon - it is brilliant!).
It really is amazing what you can find for free from such generous talented people on the Internet. I have managed to fill almost all the gaps in my summer wardrobe without buying any patterns using only fabric that had been in my stash for too long. Basically it feels like I have a free summer wardrobe which can only be a good thing.
Now to try and address the glaring holes in my Autumn/Winter wardrobe!
Linking to some of these linky parties.
Monday, 14 July 2014
Disneyland Paris - the big surprise
After our 2 days in Legoland we had a couple of days in London (which were a disaster as little e and husband got stomach bugs...) then we surprised the kids with a trip to Disneyland Paris!
We gave them their Eurostar tickets and a DLP t-shirt each and they were so excited!
We had a really nice time, totally exhausting though! We were staying in the Sequoia Lodge Disney Hotel so walked everywhere - turns out it was a minimum of 5 miles a day, no wonder the kids moaned about being hungry all the time!
4 weeks left of the school holidays to recover!
We gave them their Eurostar tickets and a DLP t-shirt each and they were so excited!
 |
| On Eurostar! |
 |
| Big E looks so happy..... or not! He was hungry... |
We had a really nice time, totally exhausting though! We were staying in the Sequoia Lodge Disney Hotel so walked everywhere - turns out it was a minimum of 5 miles a day, no wonder the kids moaned about being hungry all the time!
4 weeks left of the school holidays to recover!
Sunday, 13 July 2014
Friday, 11 July 2014
Legoland Windsor Resort - Amazing!
We are just back from 8 days away, the first two and a half were spend at Legoland Windsor Resort (This is not a sponsored post btw!!). It was amazing. We decided to splurge a little (lot...) and stay at the Legoland hotel, we booked a Kingdom room but it was unavailable so were upgraded for free to a Pirate Premium Room with park view. Wow. I will let the pictures explain...
We are now trying to decide if we should add a bit of Lego to the decoration of our house :)
I should say that Legoland itself was also great, not as slick as Disney in Florida but great fun!
Linking to some of these linky parties!
We are now trying to decide if we should add a bit of Lego to the decoration of our house :)
I should say that Legoland itself was also great, not as slick as Disney in Florida but great fun!
Linking to some of these linky parties!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
