Because he talks...

A lot!

My dear H has never been short of something to say, ever since he started talking aged 18 months, he hasn't stopped. I remember a conversation that went along the line of, "bla, bla, bla", more "bla, bla, bla" followed by mine,"you haven't stopped talking!" which got this retort, "well, I have a lot of words inside me" when he was just a toddler.

I must say I am grateful for this. It means I get a full ( a very full! ) report of what went on at school.I decided to capture one of these conversations in a layout. Why this one ? This was a rather unusual conversation!

H is in the last year of primary school, and finds most things boring or stupid or {insert any negative word here}. I think he is definitely ready to move up to secondary! Anyway, science week was a departure from the norm. No disparaging remarks, AT ALL! Everything was wonderful, interesting, amazing, etc.

Here he is, extracting DNA from a strawberry! Do you think he is going to be a scientist ?

What a beautiful weekend

How was yours ? We were busy out in the garden. For most of the time, H and A were on top of the shed, extending and reinforcing the roof so that we can install some solar panels on top. H nailed all the roofing felt into place.

I had intended to do the cybercrop on UKS but it was too sunny to stay indoors for long. I did manage to finish a LO that has been lying on my desk though. I love these photos of J & A at Disney. They got delayed at the start because there was a group of less abled bodied drivers ahead of them. H and I managed to start without a hitch and finished the course (ahead) comfortably. We were sitting at the end, wondering whatever happened to them when they rolled up. But I was ready with my camera, hence the smile and laughter. I've called it "Sunday driving" because I found a strip of patterned paper with the word Sunday on it.

I decided to go light with the patterned paper which means I get to drag out more embellishments. But whatever am I going to do with all my patterned papers ?

My dining chairs

I promised some pictures of my first upholstery project so here they are. Our upholstery classes finished for the year at the end of March. Our teacher is having an operation on her shoulder this summer so she will be out of action for a good few weeks. You do need a lot of muscle power to pull and tighten when upholstering...I am pleased to hear her injury it is not upholstery related.

I started with this. These chairs ( and dining table and welsh dresser ) came from A's mum & dad and we've had it for nearly 20 years. They bought the chairs at auction. They enquired about having them re-upholstered but decided against spending £200 on just 2 chairs. I hate to think how much an upholsterer would charge nowadays but I have to say, I wouldn't begrudge them their fees...it does take a long time to do them properly. We have 4 chairs like this, 1 matching carver and 2 smallers chairs to make the numbers.


The chair is now strippped down. This chair didn't have a traditionally built seat to begin with. It was basically a few layers of wadding on top of the wood, a layer of calico followed by hide. I was adamant I didn't want leather to replace the top cover.

After stripping, I started putting the layers back on. I started by building up the seat ( called first seating ). There is about 2lb of fibre under there that I stitched and cajoled into shape. Originally you would have used horsehair but animal hair is very expensive so I resorted to coconut fibre.

Here is the finished chair. In between all the stuffing and stitching, A also put in a lot of work to remove the dark varnish. He finished the oak off with clear wax. I have covered the chairs with some left over from the curtains that I made for the dining room. A little bit too matching for my taste but at least I didn't have to go out and look for some new fabric.

Here is a layout I made about my new found hobby.

My journalling says, "Upholstery isn't quite as they make out on Changing Room, armed with a staple gun, you could do anything. You could, but it would take you longer than a weekend. These 5 (+2) chairs took me two terms."
My sofa is now with a man who is replacing some woodworm infested tack rails and french polishing the whole thing...it should look amazing.

Visitors at Easter

How was your Easter ? We've had 2 lots of visitors. First was Shera & Co from Oman. Shera joined TKC into form 1 when I was in form 4. She reminded me that she was my messenger to my pet sisters. I won't explain here, PS is too difficult a concept to comprehend if you weren't there LOL. So I haven't seen Shera since 1985 but you know what ? She looks just the same and I wouldn't have problems recognising here anywhere.

We went into the city on Good Friday but unfortunately, the colleges were closed. The BBC was at Kings recording the Easter concert.

Here we are on a bridge over the Cam, taken by Shera's DD2.

On Saturday, Nina visited with her crew. She is going back to Malaysia in August. Nina and I shippped over the UK on the same flight back in 1985 and now she is finally leaving. We visited a few colleges with her.

Here's Nina, having a little conversation with Darwin in the gardens of Christ's College.

And just to prove that the sun does shine in the UK.

And a little easter threat, the shop window of Ted Baker is featuring a large animated chicken, hunting for worms that pop up and down. The kids were impressed.

And the winner is...

TracyW who said...

That is a gorgeous book Ifa. Agree with someone earlier who said the book screamed 'nature' to them - do you have photos of pretty things, places that you visit on days out etc.?

Tracy, please email me with your address so that I can post it to you.

Thank you for visiting

I am so pleased to have been invited by Rebekah to play this weekend and even more thankful that so many people have visited and left some great ideas. I am loving the nature inspired ( perfect for my visits to the Botanic Gardens ), the childhood memories ( though I am really lacking in photos until I went to boarding school aged 12 ) but my favourite at the moment is a book full of pretty things that inspire me.
I will get my random number generator ( my little H ) to pick a winner this evening and will post the name of the winner tomorrow morning. I hope that's ok. See you tomorrow.

A little nothing...

I have made a little book. It is currently sitting here, empty, just waiting to be filled with wonderful memories. I don't know what that is. For now, I am calling it "A little nothing" hence the title of the post.

I started with a sheet of Prima paper ( Shabby chic morning poetry ), a Hambly overlay ( big vintage circle ), 3 sheets of Bazzill Cardstock with an edge ( Small rectangle ) and various embellishment. Some embellishment from this stage made it on the minibook, some didn't but plenty more appeared!

I started by marking holes for the cover. I marked a line right in the centre of the Prima cardstock. I marked at 1" interval along this line, starting 1" away from the top edge and ending 1" away from the bottom edge. So there should be 11 marked points along the centre of the cardstock. With some paper clips, clip the clear overlay under the cardstock. This enabled me to punch straight through to the overlay without having to mark out again plus the overlay would have been too slippery to work with independently. Punch out those 11 holes. I've used a Clikit hole punch but I guess you lucky owners of the BigBite would be laughing LOL.

Then I did the same to the centre of the Bazzill cardstock with an edge. These are 6" tall so I made 6 holes on each.

Next comes the binding. I have used a thin ribbon for my book. It helps if you have an emboidery needle with a large eye that you can thread the ribbon through. Unfortunately I couldn't find mine and had a torturous task of threading the ribbon through each holes. I got there in the end. You ribbon needs to be about 30" ( 2 x12" plus a little bit extra! ).

If you havent, fold the pages and the cover in half. Arrange the pages inside the cover. You might notice that the overlay doesn't really want to fold...that's ok, it is quite nice as it is.

Starting from the inside, push the ribbon through the top hole, leaving about half the length of ribbon on the inside. Your needle should now be on the outside at the top hole.

Push the needle through the second hole, go over the ribbon on the inside and push out again. In the photo above, can you see the loop over the ribbon ? Continue like this until you have all sewn through all holes.

The book now looks like this. I simply tied the two ends at the bottom. Can you see in the photo above ?

I then added some pretties to the front of the overlay. I have been unsuccessful in the past when I've used glue on overlay so I resorted to a stapler. If you think stapler is too harsh, you could also sew with a sewing machine or by hand. I have used a Prima canvas tag, a little flower and a Tim Holtz ticket.

On the flower I added a little bit of Prima lace, a sparkly buckle, and a little red leaf ( previously, looking unloved and lonely ).

I don't often get the chance to do pretty so I am a bit stumped as to what I could fill this book with. Leave a comment for me here with some suggestions, please. I will put all your names in the hat and draw out one lucky girl who will get the book ( I will make a duplicate! ) plus some more pretties to finish it off, some Cavalini butterfly stickers, some frames, some pretty brads....you can check them out below.

Happy birthday Rebekah. Laura Godfrey is next in line. Please check out what she has made at Talking Scrap.