Mid Season?

'Next' have their mid season sale on. Can someone please tell me what season we are mid way through? Have we had spring yet? Isn't it still winter? Did British Summer Time begin today? How did we get through the last 3 months so quickly? I'm confused!

Spring brings lots of birthdays to this household. Both my mother and I gave birth to our babies in spring which makes it a busy time for this family. My 'baby' turned 3 last week. She has grown from a lovely easy going baby to an adorable little pickle of a girl, ready to embrace anything life throws her. She makes me laugh so much and must tell me at least 20 times a day that she loves me, usually very loudly when out and about, which makes everyone around us smile. She's the best little surprise I could ever have hoped for.







I had a visit from my lovely friend Amanda. This time she brought her youngest son, Elliott, to stay. Alfie was in his element and they were inseparable for 3 days. In fact Alfie loved having him to stay so much that he hid Elliott's shoes on the morning of their departure thinking that this would prevent them from leaving. We only discovered this after Alfie had gone to school and, as the shoes has been neatly lined up with the others in our hallway earlier that morning, we guessed what had happened. Luckily mummy knows his special places and I found them fairly easily!


I am busy getting ready for my sale next week. I have soooooo much stuff to sell. I think I will have to start planning my summer sale straight away! I might be a bit busy for the next few days so I won't be around to post but I will be back with photos and a report of how it all went. Wish me luck!









Oh I see blue skies outside. The bootsales are on! Hoorah, catch you later


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Happy Easter

Lovely Easter card sent from Tanya

Easter Bunnies

Chocolate bunnies

The children's Easter Tree

Spotty Hens and Easter Eggs

An Easter Bonnet bought from Niki

and Easter Weather, pah!

Wind, rain, snow or sunshine, I hope your Easter is a very happy one x

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Back to Black

My friends Matt and Amanda bought gig tickets to see Mark Ronson for my daughter and her boyfriend. Supporting him was a local band from Tiverton called the Rumble Strips. They did this version of Amy Winehouse's Back to Black which I think is awesome and have put it here to share with you. What do you think? Pin It

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Things that make me go........

........Grrrrrrr


I have had a new website built, at great expense, which will make my life so much easier in the long run. It means that I don't have to adjust my total stock manually anymore, that will be done automatically, it send me a lovely order form which I just print out, no more scribbling details in a notebook, it sends an email to the buyer when I have posted their parcel and it means that I can add more categories and more images. I spent hours and hours manually putting in the stock totals and changing the listings, the only time I will have to do this, then, on Tuesday, my website simply disappeared! It was nowhere to be seen. I was devastated. My website designers were fairly positive and explained that it was to do with 'propagation of DNS', blah, blah, blah. When my website men talk to me I imagine I am hearing the way dogs hear us talking to them. It makes no sense to me whatsoever. I just want to know that it is ok, it will be fixed, and how long it will take. The trouble with most Devonian young men is that they would rather be surfing or skateboarding than working on computers (and who could blame them?) so they tend to be a bit laid back which can be infuriating! So all Wednesday I tried to be philosophical and relax about it but I was just so fed up as I had worked sooooo hard getting it together. I had frantic customers ringing me asking if I had closed down and I was aware that new customers would be unable to find me. I have an ad coming out in Selvedge magazine this month and I imagined all the people clicking onto my site from that ad. Luckily Selvedge contacted me and apologised for the delay in printing the latest issue. I was thrilled! On Wednesday evening it reappeared. I was so happy to see it.

I also lost my emails for a week. Any emails sent to me were bounced back to the recipient. This was part of the website issue apparently. So sorry if any of you had your emails bounced back. All is well now, I hope.

I have had a recurrence of the flu symptoms that I suffered over Christmas which I first put down to stress related to the website fiasco but soon realised that lots of people who had been ill over Christmas were having a relapse. It's a nasty old bug!

We had 2 viewers for the house on Saturday, the first we have had in weeks. I spent the usual 4+ hours manically cleaning and tidying, staging the house to look like a show house instead of the usual family chaos house that we live in. Daffodils were picked from the garden, hot cross buns toasted in the kitchen to create a nice smell when 1 hour before the first viewers were to turn up there was an almighty crash from upstairs. I knew immediately what it was as I was just talking to my mum about a large crack that had appeared in the spare bedroom. I was right, we entered the room to find a huge section of the ceiling has collapsed and was now all over the bed and floor. The room was filled with plaster dust! On the upside I was relieved to see that it was only plaster and that the old lathes were still firmly in place! Paul was just off to work so he waved goodbye while Mum and I tidied up the room. We got the place perfect for the first visitors (just!) and I managed to make light of the ceiling situation saying that we had taken it down as it was bowing and it would be fixed before anyone bought it, phew! They had no idea of the drama that had taken place earlier.



It's wet and very very windy and, although we were pretty lucky to escape any destruction here in North Devon, we have been warned that there is more to come. Where has spring gone?




......Mmmmmmmmm


I went to my first party as singleton. I would have been happy to go with Paul as we are amicable and it was to mutual friends but he was away working so I thought I should still go. I never get to go out at night and he always does. My socialising is done during the daytime. I felt sick before I went out. I have been 'Donna and Paul' for 20 years and it felt a bit weird to be just 'Donna'. I needn't have worried though as all my lovely friends were there and I felt very comfortable. My friend Carol picked me up and brought me home so I was able to enjoy a drink. I had just enough pink fizz to feel merry. The party was to celebrate my friend's new kitchen. They live in a huge manor house and have had the biggest kitchen I have ever seen in my life created. It is truly beautiful. The last time I saw it was when it was under construction and it was dark. I peered into the darkness aware that I couldn't see the other end of it. It looked like a village hall. It is still the same proportions, in fact it may be bigger than most village halls, but is now a warm, bright and airy with the biggest Aga I have ever seen. I did covet the Aga I must say! The food Christine cooked was superb, she is one of my favourite cooks and I had a brilliant time.

I have tickets to see Nick Cave. I am soooooooooooo excited. This means a trip to London in May with his concert as the highlight. I have seen him in concert many times before, he is mesmerising.

I have had a haircut. All that long hair was getting me down. I prefer the sharpness of a shorter, no nonsense, cut on me.




I had lunch with my friend Dolly who is an antiques dealer. She has a beautiful original gypsy caravan in her garden and she suggested that I use it for taking photos for my website, yippee!


The response to my sale has been huge. I contacted Jo at Cowslip Workshops and as she is doing a workshop at Cowslip that weekend she is going to bring Julie Arkell. Imagine my excitement. I know Julie has already had some of my fabrics in the past as Janet Bolton bought some from me saying they were for Julie. I have people travelling from all over the country. If this is the success I think it will be I will be holding more during the year so don't despair if you can't come to this one, there will be others.

Cosy hand knitted slippers sent to me from a sweet boy down under. The kindness of strangers in this blogging world never fails to amaze me.




My babies after a bath, warm, snuggly and a little bit silly! They could easily be put in the Grrrrrr column too but today they make me go Mmmmmmm.




Duffy's new album came out last Monday. It is beautiful, as is she. Her voice is enough to soothe any frazzled, stressed out souls. I just knew she was going to be big.


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