Some of you will know that my workplace had put me and all of my non-permanent colleagues onto 90 days notice before Christmas and a final decision was being made on Friday as to whether our contracts were being renewed or not. At 8pm last night I was finally told that my job was gone and as of the 26th March 2010 I am no longer employed. It’s a very scary situation to be in, especially with Bob being out of work now too but I’m also filled with a sense of peace and relief – and a heartfelt desire not to work for “the man” anymore. Bob and I can and will make it on our own and we have an exciting new venture in the pipeline.

I’m not sure if my feelings have been exacerbated by the news of lots of babies being born to friends old and new. The very fact that new life continues to arrive even while things aren’t so rosy in the world proves that there is always hope and it blooms constantly. A friend of mine has delivered a tiny baby boy at 35 weeks weighing a smidge over 4lb5oz and so I’ve made this little hat to go to him. I hope it fits him only for a short while, before he becomes a monster giant baby with no health worries for him or his enraptured parents.

In other news, Sarah at Dolly Donations has featured me today. I’d love it if you guys could pop over and say hello to her, she’s an inspiration to us all and someone I truly hope to emulate.

Thanks for all your support, you have no idea how much it means to me.

Much love,

Vonnie

Posted under inspiration, knitting, me

First of all I should preface this in bold capital letters: DO NOT WORRY, I AM HOME AND BEING WELL LOOKED AFTER. Which means that when I tell you I was rushed to hospital in an ambulance last night you won’t fret about me, right?

I’ve written and deleted this a few times because I don’t really know how to explain it without it being really scary! So brevity is the way forward. Last night I collapsed unable to breathe and was rushed up to hospital by ambulance and my aforementioned ear & throat infection turned out to be a raging case of bacterial tonsillitis. I am now taking enough medication to floor your average-sized elephant and the Doctor reckons it’ll be a good week before I’m back to full strength. Tonsillitis! I can’t believe it, I thought it was a bit of a sore throat you know? This is unbelievable.

Of course, this has hit me right when I have reams of deadlines to meet and crafting that I want to do. I have a stack of half-finished projects waiting for me and I just don’t have the energy to deal with any of it. Ah well. I’ve been well warned that I need to rest up to let this clear so I’m going to spend the next few days doing very little and enjoying having Bob pamper me.

Thanks for all the lovely comments in my last post and on twitter – you’re a bunch of superstars!

Posted under me

This is pretty much how I have spent the last 48 hours, and how I expect to spend most of tomorrow.

I’ve been hammered with an ear and throat infection with a wicked fever to boot, poor Bob has been my nursemaid and has looked after me ever so well. It’s still sore to swallow but I’m hoping that by tomorrow I’ll have refound my energy. I am the world’s worst sick person, poor Bob.

The lovely quilt was a wedding present from Bob’s Aunt Jill, who is one of the most awesome and inspirational women I have ever met. Perhaps I should tell you about her one day

Posted under me

Wishing that the best of 2009 is the worst of 2010 for all of you. Happy New Year, and thank you so much for reading, commenting and engaging with me & my family over the last 12 months!

So there’s a lot happening Chez Nous right now. Yesterday was Bob’s last day at work. Terrifying. Naively I did not expect to have this level of panic when Bob’s last day arrived – after all, we’ve known it was coming for a few months now – but it’s real. Really real. My husband is no longer in possession of a secure job and in three months I will be in the same boat. We have plans afoot which we’re keeping close to our chests right now – not because we want to be edgy and interesting, but purely because the concept of failure is simply not one we can entertain. If you’re at all intrigued you can follow The Life Craft on twitter and we’ll see where things go from there.

You may have seen me whinging once or twice recently about my poor pictures as a result of our camera (a much loved and overused Canon 300D) giving up the ghost so Santa Claus brought Bob a new Canon 500D. He managed to shoot this picture last night so I’m hoping my new photographs will be a similarly excellent quality!

Christmas this year wasn’t quite what I’d planned it to be and I think that’s okay. Under the circumstances it’s more than understandable but there’s still an element of disappointment there for me, the eternal child. I had great plans of an adventurous Advent with Christmas activities every night, steaming mugs of hot chocolate and black & white films to be watched with my all-consuming children. Never happened. Of course, perhaps that’s me expecting too much of my children who are of the cbeebies generation – The Wizard of Oz simply doesn’t have the magic that In The Night Garden contains, nor do my children have the patience to sit through 101 minutes of dated cinematography which has led to possibly the second big decision of the year thus far…

…but I’ll save that for another blog post

Posted under me

Bob linked me to this website earlier and I was quite amused by his picture strip and decided to do one of my own. It’s cracking fun this, you just need a webcam hooked up to your computer – click the buttons and away you go! Here’s me:

Aaaaand here’s Brian Blessed Bob:

Your turn!

This is my 200th post! Isn’t that nice?

Posted under family, me

Just a wee quicky post from me tonight.

I was blog hopping tonight and found this blog entry by none other than the extremely gorgeous Carrie Fisher of Princess Leia fame. I think I’ve just found a new hero.

I honestly can’t remember if I’ve posted here about my body issues but here goes. When I moved back home from boarding school, my parents enrolled me in a school that was something like 2 miles away – about half an hour’s walk – so every day for four years I walked about 4 miles. I ate a lot but that was okay because I was walking 20 miles a week usually fairly quickly because my timekeeping isn’t the best and I was invariably late. I also had PE two or three times a week. I hated the way I looked. I remember being at the school playing fields one sunny afternoon and a friend of mine commenting that I had no cellulite. I didn’t really care – I mean, I had massive hips and horrible skin and a big stupid nose that had been broken time and again – I was ugly so my lack of cellulite was not really of interest. At 5′8″ I weighed just over 10 stone and was a size 12.

Then of course I left school, got a job, got pregnant and learned to drive. The latter two combined meant that my previously svelte figure was out the window. I lost most of my baby weight after having Findlay by lifting his pram down three flights of stairs and walking from our flat to the local high street every day but I never regained my pre-pregnancy weight or body. The lowest weight I got to was 11 stone and a size 14.

Getting pregnant with Nairn and then Erica very quickly afterwards meant that I gained more weight, my back & pelvis problems meant that exercise was very difficult to maintain without leaving me in pain. My heaviest post-pregnancy weight was 11st6lbs and a size 18. I tried to lose weight. I tried every fad diet you can think of and probably a few you haven’t. The cabbage soup diet? The GI diet? Atkins? I even did a month on Orlistat. I lost maybe half a stone. After having Greer I started going to the gym. Every night I’d leave Bob at home so I could go to the gym and six weeks later I’d lost 4lbs. Not exactly an inspiring loss.

The thing is, I wasn’t losing weight for me. I was losing weight because it made me feel ashamed to buy clothes in a size 16. I was losing weight because my horrible flabby post-pregnancy belly made me feel paranoid about breastfeeding in public. I wasn’t bothered that people might see my boobs – I was bothered that people might see my belly. When you carry that kind of self-loathing, does that make you a good role model to your daughters? I certainly don’t think so.

My greatest fear is that my children will grow up feeling bad about themselves and I find it ironic that after a year of worrying that Erica was too skinny, too small, I found myself recently worrying that she is chubby. She is TWO YEARS OLD. What difference does it make if she’s chubby or not? She’s a healthy, active toddler who eats and drinks well. She’s perfect! So if I – a healthy, active adult who eats well with albeit more cake than is probably sensible – am projecting a belief that I am somehow not a person of worth then how can I teach my children that THEY are people of worth no matter what they look like?

This post got a little longer and a little heavier (no pun intended) than I anticipated when I first started writing but the sentiment remains. I’m fat and I don’t really give a toss, because I am a person of worth no matter what people like Elizabeth Hurley think.

Posted under me

Maybe it’s a cyclical thing, but the more astute amongst you will have noticed recently that I’m barely blogging, not twittering much and certainly not crafting. I have no idea why – the drive is there, but I just feel uninspired right now which is very disheartening. I wish I could kick myself into gear.

I got some shocking news on Monday when I discovered that I’m actually due back at my day job in three weeks, not three months as I’d understood it. I’m waiting to hear if my proposition has been accepted so that I can stay off until the end of December so wish me luck! I’m still not quite sure how this is going to go – working 25 hours a week with four children and a sick husband – but one can but try.

How do you shake off the funk? Do you ever get in the funk? Am I overthinking?

How are you doing today?

Posted under me

My lovely friend Lisa has tagged me with this, since it’s a quick and easy way to update I’m going for it.

1. I can’t understand crochet. It doesn’t make sense to me. I have a very mathematical brain and need to understand how things work, I can’t understand how crochet works so I can’t do it.

2. I feel quite uncomfortable sharing very personal things on my blog, but I am a chronic oversharer in person. My friends can attest to this.

3. If it wasn’t for the fact that I get very unwell when I’m pregnant, Bob and I would have had at least one or two more babies. I still feel desperately sad that I’ve had my last baby but very grateful to have had four lovely children. I had a miscarriage before we had Greer though, and hence I’m extremely supportive of my friend, Rosie who is running the 2010 London Marathon for The Miscarriage Association. Follow her on twitter, she’s very inspirational.

4. Despite being in the Air Training Corps as a teenager, I am a pacifist. I am still very grateful for the experiences I had as a result and I’m also supportive of our soldiers, but I believe that our involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is at best misguided.

5. I spent more time at university engaging in student politics than I did studying. I am assured this is a common occurence for student politicians. I served on the NUS Scotland Women’s committee for two years and would have liked to have stood for election as Women’s officer but life got in the way.

6. I can eat chocolate until it’s coming out of my ears, but I’m not a fan of fizzy jelly sweets.

7. As a household, we have restarted a boycott against Nestle. I cannot in good conscience financially support a company with such abysmal moral practices. I found this blog post very insightful. We are also dedicated to living a green & moral lifestyle, hence keeping our own hens and quail. I heard a quote recently, “Have nothing in your home which does not bring you joy” and I think it’s something to aspire to.

8. I (like Lisa) love cheese! My favourite is Stilton with ginger & apricot with Applewood smoked coming a close second although I’m not a big fan of stinky stinky cheese, it tends to be a little too strong for me.

9. I hate the feeling of sandpaper, it gives me the heebie jeebies. I can’t touch nail files/emery boards because of it and this has meant that I haven’t finished my resin pieces. Ugh!

10. I constantly post on here saying, “Tomorrow I’ll do x” and never quite get round to it. I am full of great intentions but still coming to terms with having four children and the time involved in parenting them!

In return I tag…

1) Amanda at Kitschycoo
2) Dawn at Bubblefish Cards
3) Chrissy at I Love SpoiltPig
4) Torya at Butterfly Sparkle
5) Emma at jellybelly*jellybrain
6) Eileen at Real Mum beauty

(I was about to tag Daisie but quickly checked over at her blog and I think she might be a little too busy any time soon! Click over to see why.)

Posted under me

LOOK!!

I posted a photo in my “A day in the life” stream, showing a project I haven’t quite finished yet and it was picked up and posted on OhDeeDoh which is one of my favourite blogs, ever. I am so honoured – thank you for featuring me!

The project featured is this table which I’ve découpaged for Findlay and Nairn’s bedroom. The kids’ Godfather, Dave, is moving out of his flat and has given me a few bits of furniture that he was going to throw out. He and I are hoarding kindred spirits, can’t see any crap thrown out ANYWAY, one of the things he gave me was an Ikea Lack table which had seen better days but which I decided could be given new life!

I used a vintage annual (the 1991 Bash Street Kids annual, for reference!) and a LOT of PVA glue to stick it down and then seal the top. I had a bit of a disaster with the top which I am hoping to resolve this week – I wanted a hard, clear varnish so that the paper would be safe if the kids were to spill something on it and when I asked someone in B&Q for clear acrylic varnish they gave me Ronseal. I didn’t think anything of it but when I applied it, it cracked the PVA. Disaster! I’ve now got some plastikote clear enamel but it’s been raining here today and I haven’t been able to get the table out to spray it.

I have also left one leg uncovered just now until I decide if I like the legs découpaged or not. What do you think?

Posted under interior decorating, me, site stuff

A very quick question – do any of the cross-stitch fans out there recognise this?

I believe the pattern was printed in a magazine but I don’t know which, and I don’t know when. This sampler was done for Erica by the Mum of one of Findlay’s friends and I’d love to do a matching one for Greer. I won the pattern on ebay but it appears to have gone AWOL in the post and I’d really like to track this down!

Can any of you help me?

Crisis averted! I forgot to change my address in paypal so the pattern was posted to my sister. Doh!

Posted under me