Sew, a needle pulling thread

In case you hadn't guessed I like to cook. I love cooking, which is just as well as I do a lot of it, tonnes of the stuff. Our bread, cakes, biscuits, sweet treats, soups, sauces and meals are 99.9% of the time home cooked by my fair hand. As a consequence my wee ones enjoy time in the kitchen watching mummy go slowly mad trying to prepare four things at once and keep tiny fingers from being burnt/chopped/blended/crushed in the frenzy.

Alternatively I'm attempting to save the dish of the day from total ruination thanks to the wonderful 'help' the wee ones love to offer. Such help as adding handfuls of salt, pouring in twice as much liquid or dropping it all into the beaten egg mix; all and more has gone before my frazzled eyes as two hours of work goes into the bin. But, you know, it's my mummy-duty to encourage this cooking interest so I'm told and I always like to do what I'm told - well nearly always.

To be fair small boy is now very adept at helping and will almost do exactly what he's asked. I like this progress and to encourage it I decided it was time for him to own an apron. Toddler girl was gifted a charming pink apron which she adores mostly because it is pink. Pink is the colour of joy and happiness for her right now; she gravitates towards all things pinky like a bee to nectar. Both the wee ones like to copy grown up behaviour, so when I don my apron toddler girl must have hers. Poor small boy was feeling a tad left out.

Brighton has some fantasticly lush cook shops, and those shops that don't seem to sell anything specific just random things from joke toys to candles and in the mix is always some fascinatingly wonderful homeware that costs at least twice as much as you'd expect for the size/practicality/general existence. Off I went in search of an apron suitable for a small boy and aprons I found in said cook shops and random emporiums. Could I find one that was A) attractive and B) affordable? Could I heck. If it was cheap then it was usually branded with some hideous kids TV programme and if it was funky it was a small fortune for such a simple item.

Many choices of pattern but it comes at a price.

With no middle ground in sight and very achey feet from all that shop-browsing I admitted defeat and trudged home; it was on the slog up the hill that it hit me - I would sew him an apron. With bags of fabrics at my disposal it was the ideal sollution. That very eve I perused my fabrics and using toddler girl's apron (or apricot as she likes to call it, thankfully I speak fluent toddler) as a basic template I upgraded it for my small man. So easy, it took less than two hours to choose, cut and hand sew the whole thing. The next morning I made pancakes just to have an excuse to whip it out for him.

Should you fancy making your own I found this great web site which has stacks of apron designs you can use... Free-apron-patterns-you-can-make

Now my small boy sports a very dashing denim apron, designed especially for him. It has been lovingly hand crafted from recycled jeans and bears his name in chunky letters of other clothing related fabrics. Waste not want not as the mantra goes. When he stands still for long enough I shall post up a photo as I'm most chuffed with this needle and thread effort. It cost me nothing but time and it was time well spent. All three of us strut around the kitchen decked out in our apricots having a grand old time with whatever ingredients are called for; cooking doesn't get better than this.

The hunt for Victoriana

About three days ago I had a fantastic flash of inspiration for what I'd blog about come the weekend. Then in typical baby-mama style the idea got up and walked away before I could pin it down. Pesky thing. Sometimes I think it is amazing that I get anything done at all. I have so many balls juggling up in the air that I could go run away to join the circus. Now there is a plan, although they would probably want me to juggle chainsaws and as I value my hands, not to mention head and arms it is a plan best put to one side.

So rather than the thing I was going to talk about I'm going to whitter on about junk instead. Not just any junk but victoriana stylee-junk. See the thing with wee ones in the house is that nothing is sacred. In the three years we've had them we've lost glasses, plates, wedding presents, photo frames and teeny tiny fragments of our sanity. Sadly the sanity cannot be replaced by scouring flea markets, car boots and charity shops but the other stuff can. And it is with this mission in mind that the great victoriana hunt began. Given that we have limited funds and an in-house wrecking crew we're not after vintage wonders to make collectors green with envy. All we want is a mix'n'match hotch potch of dishes, cutlery and bits'n'bobs that fit with our victoriana theme. So if it has that funky faded gold trim on the edge, flowers or swirls and it looks like it came from 1900 then it is in the bag.

The plates that tempt us when small hands have played grab & smash

What is it with charity shops these days? Car boots and flea markets more often than not have the odd plate or dish way cheaper than charity shops and they have to buy the stuff they sell. Go figure. I know giving to charity is A Good Thing but some of them have obviously seen one too many episodes of Antiques Roadshow and a little knowledge is clearly a dangerous thing when it comes to pricing the goodies donated. This isn't Cash in the Attic folks, this is an almost ugly old plate worth tuppence so why mark it up for £3.99? I can buy a new one in Habitat for that. Pff! My favourite port of call at the moment is a guy at the open market who sells a big old mess of brick-a-brack for 50p a pop. He's always worth a rummage. Good word that, rummage, suits the action perfectly. For some reason no matter where I look there is an abundance of tiny plates and a total lack of big dinner plates. And post New Year no one has champagne flutes, maybe everyone broke theirs like we broke ours on NYE. So the hunt goes on.

This miss-match approach to dishes and associated breakables is highly recommended. If you have tiny tots you won't care if - or rather when - they smash the lot to smithereens and lose your cutlery down the drain in the garden. It is liberating this freedom from care and makes all our lives a whole heap less stressy. Not that we encourage destruction. Not one bit of it. But let's face it, it happens and better that it happens with a shrug rather than a total breakdown. And as a Brucie bonus it is fun. Dinner parties look fab with nothing matching at the table; I like to call it eclectic-chic. We might buy junk but it's funky junk with a style all its own and the re-cycle/re-use philosophy polishes our environmental halos to a Brasso shine.

Not that I don't have moments of longing. My champagne tastes came to the fore when I spotted a gorgeous plate that turned out to be part of a dinner set that turned out to be Clarence Cliff. A snip at £950. Hmm. Maybe leave that one for someone else to enjoy. So the hunt for Victoriana is still on, and given our breakage rate is likely to be ongoing. I like this. It keeps me busy and is one ball I don't mind juggling.

the gorgeous and desirable Clarice Cliff

Window shopping - Pah!

A day in the North Laines with hubby, toddler boy and baby. After shoes for toddler boy, yet another pair. Blimey they get through them. Happy to shop for the kids, getting them cute stuff is a pleasure. But oh how I'd like to shop for me.

Temptation, temptation everywhere. The clothes, the bags, the books, the music, the nick-nacks and jewellery, all so delightfully desirable and painfully out of bounds.

There was a time when window shopping was all fine and dandy, 'tis the cheapest way to shop afterall and comes with no post purchase regrets. However when all you can do it gaze at the goods it gets a tad wearisome. It was the big purple bag that did it. So huge, so purple (or blue, or brown), so cute with the oversized clasp and alice-in-wonderland size-blip appeal, so expensive, so out of reach. Ah the torture of it. Okay, there are worse things to be tortured by, I'm not a political nincompoop but some days a bag is all a girl needs. And I've been so good.

Still, I'll probably not want it this time next year. If I'm to be extravagant then better to use the indulgence up on something with a little more wear in it. Best keep eyeing up the windows then...