There are also some little things about the house that drive me nuts. Example: in our cloakroom, some wise soul decided it would be nifty to install a light pull that lights up in the dark. On the surface, this seems like a genius idea – in a dark room, who wouldn’t like a little help finding the light pull? Only, the glow-in-the-dark light pull needs light to charge up. So it only glows in the dark after you have been in the room for a bit. I don’t need to be able to see it once I have turned the light off because I AM LEAVING THE ROOM, THANK YOU. Oh yes, and it has a light bulb graphic, how witty. Ugh.

I have started a Pinterest board for our future redecoration of the cloakroom (hardly a big job since the room is tiny; hardly an important job but we have to start somewhere). Eventually, I want to create boards for all the rooms in the house so I can actually plan our redecoration a bit.  It will be nice to be doing it for us instead of being motivated by trying to sell the house. Do you see the Laura Ashley light pull? Much nicer…

On Friday, Jo and Phil tied the knot at the beautiful Kingscote Barn near Stroud. I was not nearly on good enough form to celebrate with them as heartily as I would have liked but they looked so happy and it was a special day. Rich made me beam with pride (and literally LOL) during his best man’s speech. We returned yesterday and collected Evelina who had spent the night with my parents.

On Sunday, my Mum and I hopped on the train at Coventry to visit the Big Smoke. When we first arrived, we had a mooch around Covent Garden, popping into Cath Kidston to buy a couple of ‘essential purchases’ (a key-ring and business card holder for me and a phone cover for Mum).

We then walked over to St Martin’s Lane to have a spot of lunch at Browns. We both had the Crab and Avocado Stack for starter which was delicious and then I had the Boar and Chorizo Burger while Mum had a very fancy looking Shepherd’s Pie. It was so great being able to spend the whole day with my Mum since most of the time, we are just passing by as I drop off Evelina or Mum comes round to look after her while I am at work.

Suitably fed and watered, we walked down the street to the Coliseum ready to take our seat for the English National Ballet‘s production of Strictly Gershwin which is described as “a dazzling celebration of George Gershwin and the sparkling age of Hollywood”.

It has been an age since we have been to the ballet together and this was so much fun. The show was a mix of styles from traditional ballet with the requisite tutus (in the most delightful teal ad light blue) for Rhapsody in Blue to a spine-tingling Tango (Argentine and Ballroom) for It Ain’t Necessarily So. The vocal accompaniment to the dancing was provided by four talented members of the Maida Vale Singers. The costumes were exquisite, the guest tap dancers were brilliant and the orchestra, complete with the guest jazz musicians, played its heart out. The entire show was glamorous, captivating and thrilling and I loved every second it. What a wonderful Christmas present – thank you Mum and Dad!

It was lovely to watch so many of the junior and company dancers feature prominently. In fact, I have just voted in the Emerging Dancer People’s Choice award for Laurretta Summerscales who is the company dancer who performed one half of the aforemetioned Tango-style dance.  You can see her dance in the video below:

Happy new year to all my readers. I hope 2012 is spectacular for you all. My 2012 Goals list so far has the following:

• Complete the NHS Couch to 5K challenge
• Submit my teaching applications
• Launch the new blog / website for sew make believe
• Complete Organized Simplicity and implement as many of the suggestions that I think would be helpful
• Make at least one project from each of my craft books
• Write to my penpals Jules and Tanya - their respective letters are only about a year overdue

You (and I ) can keep track of my progress at my 2012 Goals page where I will be checking off and adding new tasks as I go.

I am in the process of trying to complete my teaching applications and setting up a new business as well as dealing with the usual day to day stuff of living i.e. work, housework, Christmas, craft and motherhood. Don’t get me wrong, I am super-enthused for all these things, but I need to get a grasp on what is a priority. My daily docket is still working for me although things have been a bit all over-the-place the last couple of weeks and later I will be listing my tasks for tomorrow so that I can make the most of my day off. Ricardo is on his way home so I want to have a quick whizz round the lounge so it is clean(ish) ready for the Christmas decorations which I want to get up tonight!

Thanks to Sarah, Evelina now has a lovely perpetual advent calendar which saves me a job of making one ready for today! I have yet to fill the drawers but since she is not really wise to the whole advent thing at the moment, I should get away with it! Maybe I will pop in a rice cake for later!

Now that the birthday shenanigans are done with, I need to focus on Christmas. We have made good progress on the presents we need to buy but I still have a lot of things I want to make, including the secret santa present for sew make believe which needs to be finished in time for our Christmas party on 14th December.

I was not able to make use of the latest crochet workshop to get tips on how I can make the crochet jars which I want to give. I was too busy finishing off Evelina’s quilt. I will have another go at trying to make them tonight I think…

Since we weren’t having a ‘proper’ party for Evelina, I didn’t go too mad on decorations or food but I still couldn’t have people come without doing *something*; that’s just not my way!

I re-used the bunting we used at Evelina’s Baptism and put up some pink and cream balloons – already, things are looking like a birthday party! We opened up the cards which had already arrived and I managed to get a helium balloon in the morning.

I made her birthday cake on Saturday night (the sponge layers at least) so that I didn’t have to do it in the morning. I used Caroline’s always popular Blueberry Nutella Cake recipe which went down very well. I cut out an ‘e’ from some cardboard so when I dusted the cake in icing sugar, it made it a bit more personalised.

For nibbles, I chose to serve dips and chips, essentially. The dips included White Bean Dip, Homemade Hummus and Hot Spinach Dip. I made some Cheese Chips as well as serving bread sticks, nuts, crackers and Cheddar cubes.  It seemed to go down well – it was only when everyone left that I remembered I had bought in a load of crudités – broccoli, cauliflower, peppers, celery, mini sweetcorn and sugar snaps – which would have made the spread look a lot healthier!

For drinks, we served the usual hot drinks along with white and red Rioja, Belvoir Ginger Beer and Fenitmans Rose Lemonade and Dandelion and Burdock – proper party drinks!

Visit Mama Kate for more pictures of the big day.

A year ago today

We are getting ready for the family coming over but hopefully we will have some lovely pics of the birthday girl in her new frock. I will post them over at Mama Kate later.