Catch Up

Where oh where does the time go? Oh dear readers I am so sorry that I do not make such regular appearances on my blog any more, I have such good intentions, and I would not be at all surprised if you have not all abandoned me! I have been so busy doing lots of lovely and exciting things, that I long to share with you, and the time left over is so short that I find myself doing anything other than turn on my computer.

So, a quick update?

I had a great time at the Talent for Textiles Fair in Ilminster. I don't usually sell at fairs as it is difficult to organise with the children but I was asked to have a stall. It is such a lovely fair and very hard to get into so I felt privileged to have been asked, and determined to do anything I could to make it happen. Mum said she would help me on the stall, so, with her help, and the help of my brilliant childminder who usually looks after my little Lizzy for a day and a half, I managed to put together a stall. I decided to take 1940's and 50's fabrics and kid's fabrics as there are plenty of sellers who sell faded florals. It was great to meet some customers, both old and new, hang out with other lovely stall holders and fabricaholics. It was so nice to see Sue and to see that she is on the mend, slowly! I had a great day.






I was lucky enough to be next to my favourite stall holder Lizzie. Here are her gorgeous bits.




Then we had another birthday in the house, Alfie was 8. He had a great time, lots of Lord of the Rings goodies (his new passion), a pizza making party with his best buddies and then a big party at his Daddy's laser site playing soldiers. I can't believe my little boy is 8 already. He is growing into such a beautiful big boy.








My friend Amanda came to stay with her son Elliott and her husband Matt and we spent a great few days together. Alfie and Elliott are just stuck to each other like glue and are totally oblivious to all around them when they are together. Amanda and I have been firm friends for 17 years and it is so lovely to see our boys being such good friends with each other.







It was nice to see the big boys playing so nicely together too!






I also got to spend a day with Lizzie, and her nephew and niece who were staying with their lovely Aunt for the week. We decided to take them to Tropiquaria , a funny little theme park in Watchet which Lizzie described as being a little 'RoystonVasey'. She wasn't wrong but the kids absolutely loved it and that's all that matters!




We did get to visit the lovely Buttercup and Roses shop where we made some pretty purchases and met the lovely Jennifer. Here is Lizzie and the gang outside. The kids are trying to figure out why on earth we would want to go inside!


I really enjoyed spending time with Lizzie and the kids got on great together too. After going back to her house for tea I left with 2 tired children and set off for home. About 15 minutes into my journey I experienced the heaviest rainfall I have EVER seen. I could not see out of the car and was hitting big lakes of water in the road. I thought it best to pull into a layby for a while to see if the rain would stop. I was so scared, in fact I have never been so scared before. Lizzy had fallen asleep by this time but Alfie was still awake and was also so scared that he started to cry. After sitting there for 10 minutes with no let up in the rain, in fact it was getting heavier, the layby was starting to fill up with water and I phoned Paul at home for some reassurance. He was in the garden, cutting the grass, in the sunshine!!! No rain in North Devon. The sky was so black and there was thunder and lightening which cut my phone signal. I decided to leave the layby for fear of being swept away, it really was that dramatic, and head for home, towards the dry weather. So slowly, slowly I drove through the craziest rain and storm until after about 30 minutes it stopped as suddenly as it had started. It was such a relief and looking back at the black black skies behind us Alfie said we had just left Mordor! It was not an experience I want to repeat and I have never been so glad to get home. Watching the news that night I saw that I had been caught up in the flash floods that hit Somerset that day. It was way worse than anything I saw on that news report though!
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My Fabric Sale

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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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Spring Sale

(Click on invite to enlarge)

The date has been set and the invites printed up, now all I have to do is post them off and get ready for my first open house sale! I'm so excited. As well as vintage textiles and homewares I am going to have tea and cakes served in the kitchen so that hopefully I get to socialise a little with my customers. So, what are you waiting for, book that time off, plan a weekend in North Devon and come visit me! Pin It

Still here!

Well where did January go? and February seems to be slipping away at a rate of knots too. Not that I'm worried, that means that spring will be here before we know it and I LOVE spring.Signs of spring are everywhere here. The sun has been shining, although it is now cold again, and our daffodils are all coming out.

January was actually very hard for me. The illness I suffered over Christmas dragged on for 3 weeks and combined with my situation with my ex partner, it left me feeling down and despondant. It was hard just getting out of bed each morning. I felt like I was in a long dark tunnel with no light at the end. This came as a great shock to me because I am not normally a 'down' person and it took all my strength and the support of my mum and a few good friends to pull me through it. It's not somewhere I fancy going again, very scary.

On the upside work has been very busy with the New Year bringing new opportunities and lots of new customers who are always so excited to have found me. I am busy making preparations for an open house sale in Spring, 3 days, so that people can come and visit me here. I get daily requests from customers to know how to get to 'my shop'. They are disappointed to hear that the physical shop doesn't exist and that the business is primarily on-line. This will be a great chance for customers to come and visit and have a good rummage through my stock (of which I have masses!). I am hoping that the weather will be nice by then so that I can have it outdoors, using my Cath Kidston gazebo, as well as indoors. I will be serving teas and coffees as well as home made cakes and cream teas. It will be loads of fun. If any of you want to come please let me know and I will send you an invitation.

I have been househunting in Exeter. I have decided that this would be the area I would most like to move to and although we have not yet sold our house I have been using every weekend to do reconnaisance missions to check out various areas around Exeter to see which would be the nicest to live in. So far I only like Topsham which is just gorgeous, a small but pretty town just a few miles from Exeter. Nowhere else has grabbed me yet, If any of you have any knowledge of the area around Exeter and can help me please let me know. I can't decide whether I want to be right in the city so that I can walk everywhere, something I can't do here, being so remote means driving everywhere, or to look for a cottage in a village nearby. I have a yearning to still be in the countryside and a small rural town like Topsham seems to offer both options.

I have taken on the services of an independent marketing expert to help with the house sale. He can tell us if there is anything we are or are not doing that could help to market this house to the right sort of person. In my opinion we have not yet had the right person through the door. We had one lady on Thursday (our first viewing since before Christmas) who was the most likely candidate so far. She loved my house, loved all my things, but her husband wanted to be right on the coast. We are just a little too far from the sea for him. oh well. In the meantime we are taking the advice of the marketing chap and making a few changes to our details, new photos, and the interior, changing the room layouts in some rooms and reducing the price. Wish me luck!

I had a visit from my lovely friend Amanda. We managed to drink a few bottle of wine between us, stayed up 'til 2am putting the world to rights and then went for a long walk on the beach to blow away the cobwebs. Bleary eyed photos attached (at least Amanda had the good sense to wear shades!). I love the beach this time of the year. One thing I do know is that I don't want to be far from the sea.









Alfie has been having skateboard lessons from Jack. It's a real benefit for him to have a cool older brother figure to do things with. He really needs positive male role models at the moment.


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HAPPY NEW YEAR

I really don't know what happened to the rest of December. It seemed to fly by in a bit of a blur! Christmas was upon us before we knew it and now it is the New Year. I have had a house full of people, 10 to be precise, so it has been super busy with my sister and her family here from Denver, USA and mum staying too. We have had a lovely time together although I have been really very ill, probably more ill than I can ever remember being in my life. I am still suffering now and have resorted to antibiotics after putting up with the symptoms for over a week. The doctor said it's probably viral and the antibiotics won't make much difference but I may as well take them. I hate it and can't wait to feel better. One of the awful symptoms is that I cannot taste anything, all food tastes like cotton wool, so my appetite for all the beautiful meals we have had just hasn't been there. If you cannot taste your food there is absolutely no joy in eating, good for dieting maybe but not for having around Christmas. Everyone except Jazz and Jack got the bug to varying degrees so it has been a strange old time. The plus side of feeling this way is it gave me lots of snuggle time with my little ones as I could do little else.




We saw in the New Year last night ensconced in the bar, listening to great music and playing the Wii. Paul went out dressed as woman (as he does every New Year's Eve!) into Bideford and Jazz went out with her friends too. Bideford is one of the top places to be for New Year in the country. Everyone dresses up and plans their outfits months in advance. There are entertainers and bands playing on the quay and fireworks at midnight when everyone rushes over the old bridge to the East side of town. There is always a great atmosphere and is really friendly. Jazz went as a pussy cat while her boyfriend Jack went as Russell Brand. Paul looked like Ugly Betty but thought he was Amy Winehouse, hahaha! I shall leave you to make your own conclusion!





Anyway, Happy New Year lovely people. I hope 2008 is all that you wish for and more. I am glad to see the back of 2007, especially the last bit where I was so poorly, so bring on 2008 I am ready for ya. My New Years resolution is to stop making the same old mistakes. I am just going to make a whole bunch of new ones! Pin It