London Mummy

Paper Play + Ikea

 
Just give me some gorgeous papers, glue, ikea storage boxes and I'm a very happy bunny!

Spring Kitchen

There's nothing like a little glimpse of Spring sunshine to give you the urge for a bit of re-organising.  These shelves, which I built years ago, were originally in Livvy's room holding just some of her mountain of a library.  But since building these babies into the attic void in her room, my homemade shelves were ready for a new home.

Years ago, when we originally refurbished the kitchen, that wall had deep blue cupboards and a plate rack - somewhere I have non-digital photos which I will dig out and scan, someday, but if felt heavy on that wall and the slots for the plate rack were a nightmare to try and clean plus, I wanted a much lighter, more open feel.

I love my new, old shelf it's so handy for unloading the dishwasher just below and I love the white LED Ikea light string which is also practical as there are currently no ceiling lights owing to a badly leaking roof!  I just wound the lights round the shelving unit a few times and secured them with white-tack - so simple and so pretty at night too.

At the far left I fitted an old Ikea square cubby cupboard, it originally had a blackboard door which I simply removed and painted the carcass white - I think everyone I know bought at least one of these little cupboards!

At this opposite end I'll build and add another little open cupboard and will add a frame to the front of the large shelf as I did with Livvy's new bookshelves which will help disguise the battens I used to fix it to the wall.

I'm thinking a long narrow shelf underneath might be rather useful too .........

 

 

 

Getting ready for Easter

We love Easter in this house, maybe it is the promise of Spring finally being on it's way or simply because it is such a stress free holiday unlike Christmas.

Our Easter tree is up, this year I've added some of the very cute little  Anne Claire Petit bunny rabbit key-rings which I have in my shop and next week Livvy and I will make some little chocolate treats to hang too - yummy!

I'm working on some special Easter projects this weekend and hope to have something to show you early next week, including a little tutorial for you all using some of this delightful fabric:

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Today the sun is shining, my bulbs are starting to push their way through and for once we've managed not to lose too many to those cheeky little squirrels who live in the Gum tree in the back garden. 

Pretty white grape hyacinths brighten up my kitchen and I'm making some progress on a new crochet project ....

What more could a girl ask for - have a lovely weekend :)

One hundred and twenty granny squares later ... Olivia's afghan is finally finished

Hooray, I've finally finished Olivia's granny square afghan and will admit to feeling very chuffed about that :)

The sun has been shining recently, a very welcome change, so I took the opportunity to grab a couple of photos of it, artfully draped at the end of her sleigh bed .....

One hundred and twently granny squares. three centre colours and two rounds of cream to each one.  Four extra rounds of grannying and topped off with two rounds of double crochet.  Was unsure whether to add anything else to the border but  the general concensus seems to be to leave it just as it is :)

I used about 14 balls or is the correct word skeins, I'm not sure ..... of Rowan double knit wool in Snow and the colours are from my stash of tapestry wools and some additional purchases of  Rowan DK.  I joined the squares as I went along which was really great for someone who is as impatient as I am plus it mean't that I could plan my colours right there and then.

To anyone who has been thinking of taking up crochet I would definitely say just go for it.  If I can do it, so can you :)  It does seem difficult at first, especially when trying to learn from a book, it would be much easier to have someone physically show you but it does suddenly all fall into place I assure you. 

The fabulous Sarah London has a great  Step by Step granny square tutorial on flickr - I'm so envious of her fabulous coloured yarns  That is the one thing I have found, here in the UK we seem to be seriously lacking in the bright coloured yarn dept but maybe I need to search a little more.  If anyone knows any great yarn sites then please do let me know.  She also produces lots of tutorials and patterns to purchase for a couple of pounds apiece, all of which are really well written and easy for a beginner like me to understand.  

Another good source of inspiration and knowledge is Lucy over at  Attic24, Lucy has a really great teaching style and is very generous with her tutorials so it's not hard to see why she has such a huge following.

Not content with the blanket I decided to make a matching mini cushion:

The cushion is made up of 42 mini granny squares which I made with the sublime baby cashmerino from Debbie Bliss, really love that yarn, so lovely to work with.  The cushion measures approximately 45 cm by 35 cm, I ordered a huge number of feather cushion pads in varying sizes, 150 to be precise, for my shop and they take up an inordinate amount of space in our flat so the more I can use quickly the better :)   A few people have asked me to offer these cushions at London Mummy,  but I need to work out some pricing first as they are not quick to make and the yarn is not cheap! 

Right I'll sign off now as, this post has once again taken ages to produce thanks to my really slow broadband speed.  Fingers crossed my ISP manages to finally sort this problem out after many many months of  superslow speed and constant interruption of service, not great when your business is online :)  Who know, I may even get to blog a bit more! 

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Re-surfacing after a long absence ....

I'm back, although I never intended to disappear for quite so long,   Apologies to my poor brother for leaving that unfortunate still of him frozen in cyberspace for months :)  It does feel a tad weird , you know what it's like when you haven't seen someone for ages but so much has happened that you really don't know how to start to catch up.  I've lost count of the number of times I started a post and then faltered.

It was a much needed break though as there were just so many things I really needed to get to grips with.  Still got a long  way to go but I think I may just have finally learned to stop trying to achieve the impossible and give myself a break.

So what have I been up to then ......

Well, I have finally got my London Mummy website up, after so many false starts.  I eventually went for a Big Cartel store which I customized  myself.   It's very far from perfect but I had spent so long procrastinating and worrying that it wasn't going to pass muster and being embarrassed by the fact that it was taking me so long and that I couldn't afford to purchase all the stock that I wanted, design and make my own items etc that I was in danger of just never getting it done, quitting London Mummy altogether and then beating myself up about it. 

I always knew that it was going to be tough given that I was starting from zero, no capital whatsoever, with a child to support and being someone who is not good at asking for help.  I find just admitting that things are tough really really hard but I must and will change - starting with not hitting the delete button after this admission.  

Earlier this year I did a fair bit of work in Livvy's room.  The work I started on opening up the two void spaces under the eaves is nearly finished.

 

This is the right hand side void partially opened up - was the original lathe and plaster

 

Lovely!

Can't tell you just how much dust and muck was involved but after moving some of the upright supports, adding an extra horizontal beam for support, battening out and plasterboarding the walls and ceiling, laying a floor on the joists, sanding the two angled beams and fixing tongue and groove it now looks like this:

Oh and lots of white paint!

This is the little secret box I built for her which sits between the floor joists as I couldn't extend the floor any further there - still have to fit the lid for her.

The left hand void was even trickier - I don't have any before photos as I just wanted to get on with it but here is what it looks like now:

The left hand wall was a real mess, bulging mortar between the bricks, horizontal beams and half beams and of course, nothing was straight.  

I boxed in the horizontal beams and built out the boxed area a little so that I could build the shelves under the slope to house Livvy's Nintendo DS games and CD's.

I managed to build in a shelf unit behind the sloping beam for more CDs and books. 

Having run out of tongue and groove, I only fitted it to the area under the slope and recycled one of the old floorboards to both cover the gap and fix some hooks to with a little shelf above. 

To the right of the picture are more upright supports and some shelving I built in which is to be accessed from outside the cupoard although I'm now changing this slightly to create large bookshelf areas accessible from the room.

There is more to do to finish these but I unfortunately discovered a pretty major problem with water ingress under the window between these two void areas which has damaged both the brickwork and timber beam which runs underneath the window and across the full width of the room.  Not covered by insurance apparently and which needs to be sorted out by the Management Company for the building, along with various other leaks!  One disadvantage to being on the top floor of an old Edwardian House .....

I'll show you more of her room another time.