Babes in the Woods

Yesterday was truly exciting, busy, manic, hilarious, cute, gorgeous and exhausting! We had our first photo shoot for the shop with the amazingly talented Sarah Mason from Sarah Mason Photography; so bright and early in a small clearing in the trees we were pitching our Bell Tent and trimming up with bunting and balloons!

The weather was generally kind to us- lovely sunshine to start then a little cloudy later, but we all stayed dry and generally warm enough. The children could not have been any cuter or more well behaved! They were all such good sports and seemed to have a super time as well!

We will be getting the images once Sarah has worked her magic with editing, but for now here are a few 'behind the scenes' that I snapped in between running around like a loony all day!

The Play House Project

We hadn't given much thought to a birthday gift until about 3 weeks prior to the big day. We Father Christmas bought Bunny a toy kitchen for her first Christmas and she has played with it daily. Like most young children she loves role play and spends hours 'cooking' or 'vacuuming' with her Hetty. So, to expand on the theme we decided to get her a play house for the garden.

There are loads of different ones available, but we decided to go with one by Windmill Crafts. The guys were so helpful, and luckily were delivering another play house in the county 3 days before her birthday, so could drop Bunny's off then too!


They couldn't paint the interior for me, but the exterior came in my choice of colour, so that was settled, Easter weekend I was all set to do a little decorating and get it all looking fabulous.

I really wanted to keep it as a surprise, so my husband could also be there to see her face when we showed it to her, so I 'wallpapered' the kitchen doors with some old off-cuts. Amazingly she only tried to peep once, and seemed quite happy with the explanation that it was a surprise outside! I would NEVER be able to be so restrained!

I managed to get it all painted, and even ran up curtains in time. I really enjoyed the sewing, and plan to make a quilt / cushion for the upstairs area.

To save time and my sanity and stress levels, I bought some bunting from Next, along with the wooden hearts hanging up and some fairy lights. The curtain fabric was some old bits left in my stash from ages ago, I didn't quite have enough, so added the green dot onto the bottom to eek it out a bit. I think that the green makes them look much better, and it has neatened the back up so no hems are visible. I didn't do tie backs yet, but will try to next time I sit down to sew. 

                                  

      the very well loved kitchen! 

                                                                    

 

 

The deckchair is by Egmont toys and we can order them in upon request. The faux (!) flowers are rather loud; we will probably plant the window boxes properly, but until it warms up there seems little point. 

The plan is to have the garden 'tidied up' in the next few weeks (it is hideous atm), and the playhouse will be moved to its permanent position, hopefully with some lovely planting around it to soften the edges and make it a nice feature. But until then it is just outside the kitchen, which has worked well with all of the snow we had to contend with.

Knowing your limits

I love baking, I really do, but there are times in life when you have to realise that circumstances are not favourable to spending a couple of afternoons indulging in sugar and icing and expressing yourself through the medium of cake. And, Easter weekend was one of those times for me.

Rewind 2 years, and I would have been going hell for leather to make sure that I fully achieved every task on my impossible list, along with a pile of arguments, panic attacks, hissy fits and plenty of tears along the way.

But that is why I got so ill.

With everything else I had to do (more on that later) I realised the cake was going to be too much so I decided to ask Anne if she could help me, and if not, I would just buy one. Happily she said yes, and it was AMAZING! Such a talented lady, all the cakes she creates are works of art, I showed her the photos on my previous post and voila!

Isn't she clever? We were all thrilled with them, and they tasted even better than they look!

The birthday girl was truly spoilt, and had such a fabulous time playing with her little friends and cousins, and the guys at the Ice Cream farm could not have been more helpful - they were great.
(To clarify, Anne works in the shop and kindly offered to fit baking and decorating the cake around her other plans over Easter)  

here she is wearing her mini rodini flower blouse, contemplating blowing out the candle!