Lovely Little Thing

The past few weeks have creeped along, as days seem to do here in January and February but in the last week or so I've felt a noticeable change of the pep in my step with the days becoming longer. It makes such a huge difference to me when it's not completely dark at 4:30pm! Light! Bring on the SUN! Ahhhh. Keeping busy is the best cure for the winter blues, I think. I finished reading Life After Life, which was wonderful. I've also been doing the usual crafting. Finally finished a simple scarf and now I've started sewing the quart coat but I probably should have done that in the autumn because now I'm feeling a bit over winter and would rather sew summer dresses. I made a detour for a while to make some of the Purl Soho City Gym Shorts. Love those, but I must finish the coat! I also have a few little Easter dresses in the works for the girls. AND it does help to have some lovely press about your life and work from wonderful magazines to get you through a winter funk.

In Bloom

I love Christmas and the weeks leading up to it--the ornament making, cooking baking, tree decorating, shopping, wrapping, Christmas music, seeing family and friends, food, food and more food--I love it all. But I'm equally over it almost as soon as 25 December passes! I'm ready to put all the decorations away, clean out closets and cabinets and think of things I want to accomplish in the new year. I don't make resolutions as such, but I often make a list of things I want to get done around the house and goals I'd like to achieve. This year some of those include ordering many photo books and yes, I've made a long list of them. Lois is now 7 and I've only been meaning to to that for all of those 7 years! (Only just today I uploaded her 5th birthday photos to an album online.) I want to organize and clear off the 2,000+ photos on my phone and about a bazillion on my computer, which I have a hard time keeping up with regularly. I want to keep challenging myself with new sewing patterns. Though I still haven't knocked out the quart coat it's next on the sewing table, yay! Ah, there are really so many things on my list! I'm sure it would be a bit boring to hear me rattle on about too many more of them, but one crafty thing I'd also like to learn is how to make beautiful paper flowers, and I think it would be a fun activity to do with the girls as well. I've made some basic paper flowers in the past but never detailed, intricate or particularly life-like flowers.

Holiday Cheer

I love holidays and Christmas is a favorite. This year we're staying in London for Christmas, which we've only done one other time in the 5 years we've been here. Even when we go away, we always decorate a bit, 2013 being a favorite, before we re-arranged our house. I thought we'd go all out decorating like mad, but I'm a little behind in all the things I had planned. But it's still quite festive and we've done a good bit of Christmas crafting and baking. We made a lot of paper snowflakes, which are addictive and really easy to make. They're in our front window and so pretty to look at in the evening light.

Little Christmas Dresses

I'm so happy I finished the girls' Christmas dresses! I wasn't sure I'd get them finished in time (I'm pretty slow at sewing actually) but I got them done with about a week to spare before Christmas. These actually went a lot faster than I was expecting. Since I've made the pattern once before for the girls for Easter, I was already familiar with it so I knew they wouldn't be too challenging but they do have a lot of steps, and I needed to make two, so there was that to consider time-wise.

Sewing Jeans!

My head is a flurry of Christmas to-dos and excitement right now. So much to do, so little time! This week I want mail our Christmas cards, most of which go to the US so need to be mailed soon, make stockings, start the the girls Christmas dresses, which will be a Christmas version of the Oliver + S fairytale dresses I made a while back, and wrap lots of presents. The girls and I have been having fun making some Christmas crafts and are looking forward to getting our tree this weekend as well. Soon I'll post photos of our merry making. But now, I'm happy to have finished my most ambitious sewing project that I tackled solo, which is a pair of jeans! They are Jamie Jeans, a pattern by Named Clothing. When I saw the the pattern on the web site, I thought, woah, those are some great looking jeans! And how amazing do they look on their model? I love the contrasting piping on the pockets and the shape is great too. I wanted to step it up this year and challenge myself with some more ambitious sewing patterns and this was one of them.