I keep writing paragraphs about my experience but I’m too cold/exhausted to elaborate so here in bullet points for you, my day yesterday:

• One of our staff – Claire – texted me to say the roads were grim and she’d be late.
• I called the kids’ nursery to see if they were open. They were, but advised against us attempting it as the roads were treacherous.
• I decided to go to work and take Greer with me (as Bob still shouldn’t be lifting her, post-appendectomy)
• We left the house and got onto the main road without much difficulty but the snow was unrelenting.
• Got onto the A725 which is the main road from East Kilbride to Glasgow and came to a complete standstill
• EIGHT HOURS LATER I eventually ditched my car in a pub car park, asked in a hotel if I could borrow a sheet to tie Greer on my back and walked just over a half mile UPHILL in snow up to my knee.

I had documented my day in photo form on my phone but I appear to have lost that somewhere en route home so you’ll have to take my word for it.

I know that my Canadian friends are probably HOWLING with laughter at the state that we’re in over a few inches of snow but honestly I was really quite scared yesterday and it was quite a relief to get home. So today we’re having a snow day with lots of hot chocolate, shortbread and films.

Stay safe, all of you!

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This is a sponsored post

We got that letter the other day advising parents to be extra vigilant as there has been an outbreak of head lice. Ick. I personally have never had nits and would like to keep it that way, but I have all too many memories of my Mum dragging a bone comb through my (extremely thick) hair every time my sisters brought home a headful of new pets. Naively perhaps, it was and has never really been something I’ve worried about with the boys until recently but since Nairn has inherited by lustrous thick and course hair I’m now obviously concerned.

So I recently got an email from Vosene kids to tell me about their new range of head lice-repellant products aimed at kids and the NitWatch website which supports it. They sent me a little goody bag to test out which I’ll admit to being wary of – after all, I remember all too well the nit lotion that my nit-obsessed Mum used to smear on us – but I was pleasantly surprised to find it was tea-tree I could smell. Plus one!

I have to say it’s a thumbs up from me. It’s not an embarrassingly obvious anti-nit lotion and so can be discreetly used regularly to help your little bugs stay nit-free and I’m more than happy to keep it in my bathroom from now on.

The folks at Vosene have offered 20 samples up to readers of this blog and to get one, all you have to do is tell us why you’d like to trial it. All horror stories greatfully received

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I have had the honour of working for Who Cares? Scotland on two separate occasions over the years and it’s an experience I won’t forget in a hurry. The aim of the organisation is to support, advise and advocate for children and young people who are or have been in care – something that has been awe-inspiring to watch and be a part of over the years – and I wanted to share a couple of videos with you.

This one features a Young Persons Worker talking about how his role makes a difference.

and this one was filmed as a group of young people and supporting adults headed off from Who Cares? Scotland’s head office to trek in Nepal.

Some of the Who Cares? Scotland staff members are running the Glasgow 10k today and they are 83% of the way to their fundraising target so if you’d like to support not a good cause, but a vital cause then clickety click here and pledge a few bob.

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Hello worthy friends!

I feel like I owe you all an apology. It has been weeks since my last update and I don’t see me getting much time to update more before the weekend so you’re getting a short and snappy one today. I have a couple of giveaways to organise, some product reviews, updates on where we are just now with the shop and of course stories of my wonderful children to come.

Just bear with me a few more days

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I’m getting to that stage in my life where I can never quite remember what I have done or not done recently so I’m going to assume that I haven’t told you much – if anything – about The Life Craft so far.

Way back in November I posted this entry explaining that due to a massive cock-up by my then employers, my maternity pay had been stopped three months early and I was being told to repay the entirety of my allegedly overpaid maternity pay. Because it had taken six months to discover this error, I subsequently was not entitled to claim maternity allowance from the state and thus this error put us out financially by somewhere in the region of £10,000.

Not content with that, the little doom fairies arranged for Bob to be made redundant from his job on Hogmanay, then me from mine at the end of March. Did I mention I had a complete nervous breakdown? We decided that since things were the lowest we could possibly imagine them to be, there was nothing to stop us pursuing our dream and thus The Life Craft was born.

Our website is now up and running and this week we will sign the lease on our gorgeous premises in the West End of Glasgow. We are going to be paying more per year in rent than I have ever earned and we are responsible now for five members of staff as well as ourselves. I probably shouldn’t be sharing this but what the hell – if the business fails, we will lose everything. We will have nothing except each other. And do you know what? I think I’m okay with that now. We’ve been through so much together that we can make it through any other bump in the road.

SO! In order to celebrate our future success, we’ve got a competition on the blog which I’d love you to enter. You can pick your prize from a selection of the amazing stock we have in store and share your crafty stories.

Bonne Chance!

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Carly over at Mummy’s Shoes is running a great cyber Cybermummy meet-and-greet and with only a week to go (eeeek!!) I thought I should probably join in.

Name: Vonnie Sandlan
Blog: Adventures of a Lady in Training
Twitter ID: @blottedcopybook
Height: 5’8″ and unlikely to be in heels!
Hair: It’s what I like to think is a pixie cut but is actually a I-hate-my-hair-hand-me-the-clippers cut. Currently brown with streaks of grey, may be red or violet by next week!
Eyes: Two of, blue
Likes: Babies who don’t vomit or blow out nappies, cake, politics, being a holier-than-thou parent, being right, crafting, blogging

This is me – I can’t wait to see you all there!

(Why yes, I did throw my fully-clothed firstborn into an unheated swimming pool and found it HILARIOUS.)

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Yesterday my pincushion swap parcel arrived, and luckily the one I sent to Gemma arrived with her too so I can show you both!

I’m still on this craft neutral bent, so upcycling and recycling was the name of the game. The pincushion base is a (thoroughly cleaned!) little catfood tin which I covered with some giftwrap and coated in a layer of PVA glue. The cushion part is a pair of Nairn’s old jeans which had burst at the leg and which were destined for the bin until they were repurposed.

The pins were made by supergluing some tiny beads which came from a broken necklace of Erica’s. I made a matching needlebook which is actually the item I’m probably most proud of! I’ve had this binding for a while but been too scared to use it because it was so ridiculously gorgeous. I used some more of Nairn’s denims to create the needlebook, some felt for the inside pages and some felt scraps to appliqué the front. I made 12 little pins with the beaded tops and added in a few sewing needles and buttons for Gemma.

The outside, all folded up

The inside

For me, swaps are all about what I can make. I’m not sure why because every swap I’ve participated in has been really overwhelmingly gorgeous but I tend not to have great expectations of them, so when Gemma’s parcel arrived yesterday I nearly cried.

Look how cute this tortoise is! He’s filled with lavender too and smells absolutely gorgeous.

Look at his wee face!

As if that wasn’t cute enough, Gemma also spoiled me rotten with supplies:

A cute box filled with buttons:

And chocolate! This is quite the trompe-l’œil because there’s actually FOUR fingers of fudge and a large Dairy Milk caramel bar in this picture:

So needless to say I was absolutely thrilled with my swap, as were the kids with their fudge bars! Thanks ever so much to Gemma for being a fabulous swap partner and additional thanks to Claire for organising

Gemma has blogged the swap too – go, read!

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I look back on some of my earliest entries in this blog and cringe to death at my first projects. My writing was abysmal, my crafting even worse and I was proud of this stuff?! You lot should have given me a slap

As I look over my progress – especially last year when I completed the ’50 things in 2009′ challenge – it’s empowering to have visual proof that I’m getting moderately better at the crafts I choose to turn my hand to, which is why I am so proud of this bookmark. Almost as proud as I was with Erica’s sweater, but in a different way. This is the first project I’ve completed following a knitting chart and blocking my work and I’m astonished at the difference this simple process makes. Any of you wondering what ‘blocking’ constitutes should run to Eunny Jang’s guide to blocking, it’s a fab step-by-step guide with lots of idiotproof pictures to guide you.

I wish I’d taken a before photograph of this sad, crumpled lump of knots because watching it become a thing of beauty as the lace opened up was just beyond words. It was like watching a flower bloom.

This is a nice little pattern (free, and available here) which I knocked out in a couple of hours in front of the TV. I did have a bit of confusion at the end of the project due to the chart – I’m not sure if I was reading the chart incorrectly as I thought knitting charts were read right-to-left – but I managed to skirt round it and still come out with a lovely finish. Isn’t it gorgeous?

Needless to say, this little bookmark has given me a boost of confidence in my own abilities especially since the last time I attempted a bookmark I failed dismally. I am truly awestruck at the transformation post-blocking and I feel somewhat embarrassed that I have never blocked before. I’m a convert!

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My lovely friend Anna posted a link to this story today about a throwaway comment made by Sharon Stone about Meryl Streep and the relevance to modern women. I have to say that I’m really not one to pigeonhole myself into a label, indeed on first glance I thought, “Hmm, I’m half and half” but actually in reality I have to admit that I recognised a lot of myself in the description of the unmade bed stereotype.

According to the definition in the Times, the only boxes I didn’t check were: drinks red wine (I think red wine is vile. Actually, I think all wine is vile but I’m trying to train myself to drink white) and carries a large handbag (I don’t. I actually still lug around a massive backpack like the eternal student I crave to be). You wouldn’t believe it to look at me, but I’m pretty clued up on current fashions and styles yet I spend the vast majority of my life looking like I’ve just rolled out of bed – and not in that sexy, tousled Eliza Dushku way. More like a yeti. I do occasionally impulsively do my hair, sometimes I even put makeup on but that behaviour tends to be reserved for special occasions like Christmas.

So what about you? Are you an unmade bed or a pristine pillow?

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This week my access to free healthcare, adequate medication and clean water saved my life.
This week, a natural disaster has removed access to the most vital supplies for an entire nation.

The Disasters Emergency Committee collects donations and distributes them to the agencies on the frontline. This is a list of the member agencies. £10 will barely buy you a cafe lunch, but it will save lives in Haiti. Looking at the photographs that have been splashed across the media & the internet my primary reaction is guilt that I can’t be there to provide physical help for the undeniable horror that an entire nation is feeling, but we can spare a few quid.

Please, give what you can to help Haiti.

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