A thank you and a giveaway!

 Sweet treats from Mr

I want to say thank you to Bee from the linen cloud for nominating me for a Liebster award. It is given to blogs which have less than 200 followers as a way to raise their profile and increase their readership.

In the spirit of the award I have to nominate five other blogs. I have found a lot of inspiring blogs lately as I have been trawling the Internet. These are a few of my favourites.
I nominate:
My rainbow vintage
Bungalow bliss
Vintage sheet addict
Jelly jam
The owl and the accordion
I hope you find inspiration at these blogs.

We have done so much this summer its hard to know how much to share. We went to Hyde hall garden, East Hanningfield last week and they had some free craft activities for the children. I was looking after my neice too so the baby, little man and me made paper, did a bug hunt through the meadow and painted some pretty pictures. It was a really great day and they all got on so well all day running about and playing hide and seek. It was lovely getting out in the sunshine.

The baby's room needs to be decorated to be her own it still has pirate decorations hanging up because I was convinced she would be a boy. So I have been thinking about what to do.I looked on etsy and found loads of mobiles that I liked but in the spirit of crafting decided I would make my own.

When she is older she will remember I made it for her, that as well as i can't now afford to buy these sorts of things with my current no job situation. I bought some felt from lupin handmade and plan to do some melcanholy elephants. I am going to do a whole post on her room when its done.

I have also started on a quilt for when she gets bigger. I am keeping it simple and just doing a patchwork of small squares. I found this one at sweetcsdesigns.com and just love it.

I love the ditsy flower print mixed with the aqua, pinks, dark red and yellow and am going through my stash trying to get some similar together. I cut 100 squares out on Thursday night and left them on the lounge floor overnight so I could look at it again in the morning. To my disgust I came down the flowing morning and found Dexter the cat had been sick over some of the squares. Needless to say about a dozen squares had to be binned.

I just want to say hello to all my new followers that have joined lately. I hope I can write things you will be interested in.?? Maybe not too many posts on cat sick.

I think it has been long enough and I have decided to have a giveaway. There will be three prizes-

                                                  a vintage cake stand from my collection

                                               a crochet craft book and some crochet goodies

and a sewing book mentioning the 'c' word (never too early to be organised) and some vintage sewing goodies.

To win simply just enter a comment and tell me ''what's the best thing you did in the summer'' and which prize you would like to win. For another chance to win become a follower and your name will go in the hat twice. And for a third chance to win put my giveaway button on your blog.

I will draw three names from a hat (or hats)or a random number generator thingy on the 9th of September.
Please make sure I can email or contact you in some way.

Spread the love and good luck
Sarah x

I heart buttons

I love buttons, I collect them in a big jar on my dresser and look at them. Occasionally I tip them out and go through them looking at my favourites.

 I love the colours

 I love the shapes

 I love the combination of different colours mixing and matching.

I collect them from all over Carboot sales, charity shops, vintage markets, friends and relatives.  Occasionally little Man likes to play with some to put in his tipper trucks. He isn't given the good ones though in case he loses them.

My sister was given an old lady's button collection recently, sadly she had died and her daughter was looking for a home for a tin of buttons and a box full of old zips and various old haberdashery bits and pieces. So I took them in and marvelled at the collection obviously collected over many years. There are small random containers full of little buttons.

 Although i love buttons I rarely use them, they are only for special items like the baby's cardigan or Christmas stockings.

I should use them more often but I think I would miss them. Do you love buttons or something else like ribbons? That's another post my love of ribbons.

Lego mania

Some call me mad others a nutcase my husband certainly thinks so i have spent hours sorting Lego. Little OB has a massed a lot from Christmas and his birthday. It all started with a free boat on a newspaper last year. He was only 2 1/2 but he took to it really well. He has never put toys in his mouth so I wasn't worried about him eating it he is quite sensible like his daddy. Does that make me unsensible? He is now 3 1/2  and he helps build the models and then distroys them to make his own creations. They are usually long boats with wheels... Lots of them and bilma's. I need to explain these, as far as we can work out they are water squirting guns. Anything long can be a bilma sticks, golf clubs, hosepipes etc, the sticking up grey bit is a bilma.

I am not a control freak nor do I have OCD but I don't like our house being messy it's too small and I  have had enough of tripping over toys and hurting my feet on Lego so it has been my aim to sort out some storage. I have searched the web for ideas and found this on I heart organising.

I don't have a link for this one but thought it was rather clever 

And this on not a stepford wife.

I then spent hours sorting into colours

Ikea seemed the obvious choice for boxes so off we went in search off trofast.

I now have Lego perfection.... But for how long?

Holidays and treasure

Back from our holiday in France we are rested and relaxed. We had a lovely time and the weather was a little hot some days but we just stayed in the shade. It was mostly a beach and pool holiday so we didn't do much treasure hunting but we did find some old French books at a night market i bought them for the picture obviously. I am not that good at French although one is a French dictionary.

We visited our favourite island the Ile De Re and had a donkey ride, a shop around the town and a lovely meal.

In total contrast the kids and I went to the bootsale today. I gave little OB two golden coins to spend and he purchased a army land rover and a pair of Walkie talkies he was over the moon. I was equally happy but had to spend a lot more golden coins. 

A new washing basket

A doll's cot

And this wonderful piece of barkcloth. It's similar colours to the blanket that I have just finished. I think it's destined to be a new bag.