Recently In the Kitchen

The kitchen is the place to be; not much cooking going on at the moment - but lots of other activities...





We know a lot of people with late June, early July birthdays around here... So I've been road-testing the rubber stamp set I bought at the papermash event last week.



Henry is getting the hang of scooting... scarily, even though he can only just see over the handles.

He is also very tolerant of having dubious hair accessories put upon him.



The mantelpiece is cluttered, as normal. I got a the Seletti palace pot/vase/object from Achica in a moment of madness, but I love it.
Coco made paper crowns with her Auntie when she stayed there a couple of weeks ago.
I think it might be tidy-up-time on the mantelpiece.



Flowers from Culture Baby Lucie who is over from San Francisco... and lots of milk bottles that never seem to get from the sink to the doorstep. I feel like we are in the last days of Henry having a bottle... I'm sad at these last milestones of parenting, you enjoy the firsts, but sometimes you don't notice the lasts.
Last bottle feeds for Henry and last days of pre-school for Coco.
(Sorry a little tangent sparked by seeing the nuk baby bottle in the picture)



Coco's balloon picture/card... made with a little help, but I like her composition, and as I have a strange gift of being able to draw an almost perfect straight line I'm very happy to see her lovely lines here. It's a useful skill; occasionally.

Double Exposure

I've done my first guest post over at Madeline's blog The Things We Do. It's about our holiday to Ibiza last summer and also refers a little to my first trip to Ibiza back in 1996... which is where half of the pictures below are from. The other half are Prague.
I do LOVE double exposure photos now, but when I originally got these photos back from being developed I was gutted.



I love that my friends snorkel looks like one of the clock hands.



Church Diving.

Madeline's blog was one of the first I ever subscribed to. I feel like it's quite similar to mine in that she posts about whatever she feels like, creative projects, days out, general musings and quite a lot about travel. She also has a girl and a boy nearly exactly the same ages as Coco and Henry, so even though we live in different hemispheres I often know exactly what she is talking about.
Thanks Madeline!

We've just booked to go back to Ibiza again later this summer (staying in the same place) I love you UK, but you just can't deliver the weather...

A Productive Evening

This evening I headed down to Clapham for the Papermash craft evening.



It's amazing what you can achieve in the time it normally takes to:
feed kids / bath kids / put kids to bed / feed self / clear up / flop.
I left at five and was home soon after nine...



...but in between I did a bit of screen printing, decorated a jam jar, drank (a few - whoops) lovely cocktails through lovely paper straws, put some blogs to faces, wrote a love letter on a doily and made some very good purchases.



A bit of old school type writing (think my fingers might ache from the key-banging tomorrow - they got a proper work out).



I'll take a bird cushion please - perfect for a new little baby that appeared on Tuesday.



Stationery and stuff... it's a bit like being in a sweet shop, I couldn't resist... I got some Honeycomb tissue balls, parcel tape, rubber stamps (perfect for emergency birthday cards) and ink... and of course I couldn't NOT buy some washi tape....




 Drying screen prints (courtesy of Zeena).



Lots of busy people and pretty things.



We even got a little goodie bag... perfect to occupy me on the tube ride home...
I think I need more evening activities from 5pm - 9pm

A Wise (new) Owl

Just after Coco was born Hugh bought me a lovely necklace from Shelf (one of my favourite shops - now online only - check it out).
It was a little owl, sitting on a branch and I wore it every day for a long time.

Then, as always seems to happen with me and jewellery, I lost it. Shelf no longer stocked the designs - Katy Hackney who designed it and is one of the shops owners had moved on to making (some very lovely) new stuff, so I kind of hoped that one day the necklace might turn up... and meanwhile wore my lovely Tatty Devine mustache necklace.

But then, back in March, Hugh and I went to the launch of the Spitalfield's Life book (where we had a great night hanging out in the old 'hood and also met Polly of Nice Kind of Blue). Katy was there, so I accosted her (really, I kind of did) and asked if she would make me a replacement.
And yipee - a few emails later - look what I got in the post.







My owl.

Watching Them Go..

Now that Coco can ride her bike Hugh quite often drops her off at pre-school... and every morning Henry wants to go along too.



Sometimes we watch them from the upstairs window... and he waves and says 'Bye bye' and something that sounds very like 'see you later'.



If we are downstairs I have to wrestle him to keep him from trying to escape... and he cries when we close the door.

PS I feel a bit embarrassed to be showing our shameful slightly squat-like front garden... maybe seeing it here is the kick I need to get out there and sort it out... maybe.

Plate Wall

Yes, we now have a wall with some plates on it.
It's quite an odd thing to do really isn't it? Stick plates on a wall... but there you go!



This random assortment of plates has been gathering, we had a few up in our old house, then the night before last we just decided to get them up*.



We've been a bit slow at committing nails to our walls... I think when you've lovingly filled and painted walls (or your better-half has) then it takes a few months before you want to bang holes in them. Or is that just us?



We decided on a rough arrangement on the floor, keeping it quite random so it can be added to... then we drew around the plates on to some newspaper and stuck the newspaper on the wall.



Just like so.
Then the plates went up and at the end the newspaper came down... easy peasy.

When I came down to breakfast today I was like 'oh, look at our lovely plate wall' Hugh's response was a definite 'humpf'.
Oh well, you can't please all the people all of the time.

On another note; I've just booked my ticket for the Papermash craft event on Thursday - anyone else going!?

*It actually took two evenings to put them up with an interlude for a trip to the shops to get extra wire plate hangers and picture pins... were never that efficient!

A Coffee at AC's

OK, so are you ready to go weak at the knees? I had a coffee (well, glass of squash actually) at my friends the other day... Now, sorry to be a tease, but I can't share this whole house with you in one go, partly as I haven't' taken pictures of the rest of it yet and partly as it's too good to do in one go! This is my friend AC's kitchen. And seriously it is amazing. I LOVE it. I'll let the pictures do the talking.



Hasn't she got good taste?



That is Otto her little boy who is the same age as Henry in the doorway...



And Henry, making himself at home... 



Shall I bore you with some details? That cupboard across the back that you can see in the first photos is actually a very cunning laundry 'centre' with the washing machine and some hanging space. The island is a slim-line one and has a special hob with four offset rings and is clad in boards that were used for drying cheeses which AC got at Retrouvius. Very clever don't you think? They also have a sofa near the toys - but I didn't get a great shot of that. We were actually looking after six kids between us on the day I took these, so I had to put the camera down and help...



I have a deep admiration for anyone who can have open shelves and keep them looking nice... (yep, I'm that shallow sometimes).

Isle of Wight in the Wet

We just got back from a few days on the Isle of Wight, or the Isle of Wet as we've nick-named it - somewhat unfairly probably.



It would/could have been a brilliant holiday if the sun had shone a bit more... We stayed in a hotel that was like a cross between The Shining, the hotel in Dirty Dancing with a bit of Fawlty Towers thrown in for good measure. That would probably be enough to put most people off, but, I could see us going back there. It was brilliant for kids, and when they are happy... we're happy...





So faced with wet weather we did what any self respecting Brit would do... we went to the beach in the drizzle, ate fish and chips on the seafront and ice cream in the car.





We sampled some bizarre indoor activities, Butterfly world (quite sweet and not really that strange) and 'Small world' which was a room of slightly weird moving mini pirates (creepy, very bizarre and Coco loved it) and had a couple of over-indulgent long lunches, The Pond Cafe if you anywhere near Ventnor is de-li-cious.





Then Hugh and I went our separate ways (temporarily) I stayed on the Isle and went to my friend Nicole's hen do (without the camera I'm sorry to say) and Hugh went off with the kids to our friend Charlie's slightly shot-gun wedding. I think I got the better deal as he had a two hour delay on the ferry home due to the weather while I was safe enjoying a glass or two of vino and catching up with old friends from school.



Why is it that when you get home from a holiday you really feel like you need a holiday?

(As the Isle of Wight really does have a time-warp feel I've been seriously abusing the vintage photoshop action by fallout75 - you can download it free here.)

Henry's Monthly (ish) Photo

We still do this ^ ^ ^ (sporadically)!
But Henry is a bit more interested in drawing on the blackboard himself now, rather than posing for a photograph.

I only just added his 12 month photo to the rest to make the full set of Henry's first year. It's almost enough to make me feel broody... until I read this.




Also HELLO to my new followers - Charlotte wrote such an amazing piece about this blog on her great blog (I'm blushing now) and also Lynn mentioned how much she liked Annabel's house on Tea for Joy... so it's been a bumper week here.

Have a good Jubilee weekend everyone (waves red/white/blue flag).