I have a very cool friend called Dave who was introduced to me by mutual friends and who subsequently moved into my old flat when I moved out to live with Bob. He is good people, is GodFather supreme to all the kids and I am generally a crap friend to him since we only speak when he calls or texts me. I am appalling.

ANYWAY, I realised a few weeks ago just what a crap friend I’d been and suggested that we meet up to scour the charity shops of Glasgow. Being that Dave is a big fan of classic architecture and design, we firstly visited Glasgow Architectural Salvage which is just impossible to do justice to with mere words. This warehouse is packed to the gunnels with all kids of reclaimed stuff – my personal favourite today was a wooden crib that I had to be dragged kicking and screaming from. The chap who works there was telling me that it was deliberately built narrow in order to swaddle infants. How cool is that?

We browsed there for a while then drove to this antiques warehouse further down the same street where I insisted that the children pose with Uncle Dave for a photo:

And off we went. I wish I’d taken more photographs but my battery wasn’t looking too great, suffice to say this was yet another treasure trove albeit one out of my price range. There was a veritable feast of beauty including a vintage silk christening gown that I’m still considering going back to buy. No point if I’m not going to have another child to christen but it was just gorgeous and light as a feather. I did take a photo of this cushion though because I was so impressed with the detail! I’m just getting into embroidery and already losing the will to live so I have much respect for anyone who can create this kind of thing.

Erica and Nairn found some “holiday chairs” that they fell in love with:

And I saw this. Oh, reader. Let me tell you my dilemma. I know to the penny how much money Bob and I have. We’ve just used every single spare penny we have to get some essential work done on the house (which I will blog about when it’s finished) and to complicate matters, after consulting with you lovely lot on how to decorate it turns out that we’re going to be playing musical bedrooms in the very near future. With this in mind and knowing that the girls are now going to have a significantly larger bedroom, I saw and instantly fell in love with this (the chaise longue. I’m already in love with the child)

I need you people to talk me out of this. I have a mental pros and cons list going on.

Pros
It’s gorgeous
It’s childsized
It’s gorgeous
There is space for it in the girls new room

Cons
It’s (sharp intake of breath) two hundred pounds. £200. Two. Hundred. Pounds.
Erica couldn’t be more rough and tumble if we put a striped sweater on her & renamed her Dennis
Did I mention the price?
I’m not sold on the fabric.
Seriously. Dude, it’s £200.

I briefly talked to my Mum on the phone earlier and she suggested that I keep an eye out in the charity shops/auction houses for a similarly sized but wrecked piece that I could reupholster myself. I’m confident that I would make a good go at it but I’ve never seen one this size before. Am I kidding myself? Are these common as muck?

Anyway, we left there with Dave plotting on how to spend his as-yet-unwon lottery win and since the kids were now whinging about being starving we popped into the handily situated greasy spoon next door. Since I have been very proud of my recently-acquired ability to put Greer onto my back in the Moby wrap I decided to take a wee photo. I look hideous here:

before we headed down to Dumbarton Road. We hit a few charity shops with no luck until we stumbled into the mecca of all charity shops. I now present to you the most pissed off dalmatian you have ever seen:

At £3 there was no WAY I was leaving it behind. I also managed to get Erica two Disney dresses for £2 each that she decided she wanted and which I know cost upwards of £20 a piece. Alas, it was at this point that Erica broke a cup which was part of an 18 piece set so I had to buy that too but I still walked out of that shop only £14 lighter with a huge box of goodies.

So I had fun today! And I really must thank Dave for being a brilliant friend and excellent children-herder because I couldn’t have done it without him

Folksy is running a Christmas upcycle competition in conjunction with Sue Ryder. Check it out!

Posted under inspiration

Very quick little update from me today, I’m going to bullet-point for speed and efficiency.

• This is my 90th post. 90 posts! NINETY! For my 100th post I’m going to have a very special giveaway featuring some handmade goodies so tune in. I anticipate the 100th post to arrive within the next four weeks.
• I have finally bitten the bullet and opened my very own Folksy shop. There’s only some owl stitch markers listed right now but I’ll expand that with time. I am very nervous about this and hope it pans out because I need to start recouping some of the money I spend on crafty things!
• For the fifth week in a row, Erica is too sick to go to nursery. I can’t even explain in words of more than two syllables just how frustrating this is for me. Is it selfish to crave some time on your own? I have one day a week where everyone is at work/school/nursery and I haven’t had that day for over a month and I resent losing that time. I don’t resent Erica because sure it’s not her fault, but I really needed today. Ah well.
• I decided against using the cookie dough. It probably would have been fine, but there were eggs in the mix and with Erica being ill with seemingly no reason I just didn’t want to risk it. I am quite annoyed at the waste, truth be told.
• You can now become a fan on Facebook! Click the link to go to our fan page on facebook – I promise you won’t be bombarded by updates etc.
• We also have a web presence on Twitter and Flickr
• You may have noticed at the bottom of each post now there are a row of little icons. Can I encourage you to explore what they do and how they work for both you and I? Any questions and I’ll do my best to answer them
• Finally, I was wondering why whenever I leave a comment on your blogs I have no avatar that shows up beside my details**. Turns out that there’s a very simple way to do this – just go to www.gravatar.com, register your email address and the picture you’d like associated with your comments et voila! If you already have a wordpress.com account then your gravatar should be linked as long as you’ve registered the email address you use to comment. I know there’s a fair few of you who comment here but don’t have a gravatar set so go go go!

Today is going to be a day in the car. I have to get Nairn to nursery, Erica to see her Doctor, take our growhouse back to a large nationwide DIY store after it blew away Wizard of Oz-style last week destroying all our seedlings (nearly a month’s worth of planting and the DIY store in question are refusing to replace our seeds, making out like they’re doing us a favour by replacing the growhouse. I am unimpressed to say the least!) then we have to get some food in and finally take the cats to the vet before I can sit down. Happy days!

**Edit to add – the ever-lovely Ryan tells me that the gravatar thing doesn’t work for every blog as the blog owner needs to enable that option. For the most part it should work though!

Posted under general crafty updates, site stuff

I’m one of those people who – no matter how many compliments received – are rarely confident about their own work. When I was scouting for ideas on what to make for the aforementioned Owl Swap I had toyed with the idea of making stitch markers for my partner as she’s also a knitter (Annie if you’re reading this, look away!) so I got some supplies and had a shot. I’d bought enough to make ten stitch markers and so I donated a set of four to the Crafteroo Folksy shop for Comic Relief and they sold! Three and a half hours after being listed, they sold for £6.75 and I’m so shocked. Not only that but I subsequently had complaints from my friends that I hadn’t told them about the stitch markers because they’d have bought them!

Needless to say I’m absolutely thrilled to have made a contribution to the Crafteroo efforts and I’m a little proud that people think enough of my work to be grouchy at me for not telling them about it! These were the stitch markers I made. What do you think?

Posted under general crafty updates, swaps