The week of "naughty poo"

Treasure Pocket Pants and coordinating Mini Boden style applique t shirt

Apologies to readers who do not have small children. The title of this post says it all.

It started with the eldest girl. And then, in the true spirit of "anything she can do I can do better", the middle girl took on the baton, and ran with it for a full week. The youngest had it too, but since she still wears nappies, she did not require quite the same red alert rapid response service needed from Mummy in assisting with her toiletry needs. More of an amber alert, I'd say. Any money saved in not going out this week has been blown on extra purchases of loo roll and wipes. Again, I am sorry to those of you who do not have young children. But I haven't been out much in the last week.

Thank goodness it is the weekend, and we are back to normal - and, without the need to borrow the carpet shampooing machine from our friends. Bonus.

Anyway, if I haven't been out much - or sewed much either for that matter, I have received a handful of cool pictures in the last few days.

A lady who came on last week's charity sock monkey workshop sent me this picture, which she took on a return visit to Fancy.

One monkey returning to his roots.

Here's another nice picture, taken on the night itself.

Elisha (aged 8) came to sock monkey night with her mum, and made herself a monkey.

It was Elisha's birthday that night - how cool that she choose to spend it doing a bit of sewing with her mum. (And enjoying a yummy chocolate brownie, too, of course.)

That was the second charity sock monkey night - organised by a group of us who are friends that sew, and held at the cake shop near where we live. You can read more about what we're up to on the fundraising front here.

The next couple of pictures are from two of the ladies who just finished a Children's Clothing Course - this time we used the Treasure Pocket Pants from Sewing For Boys, along with some simple applique t shirts (read how to do it yourself here)

Sewn by Anwyn

Sewn by Celine

While we were all a bit housebound, and the girls were busy doing a lot of at the table drawing and cutting and sticking type activities, I gave my sewing machines a bit of love.

It always surprises me how quickly crap builds up inside them.

Whenever tension starts playing up with a machine, if it isn't fixed by the obvious rethreading checks (my sewing equivalent of switching the computer off and back on again), a new or different type of needle (often works wonders), swapping cheap thread for the expensive stuff, and, not to mention the most obvious `has a small child been fiddling with the dials' check that has to be done in this house - I know it's time to give the girl a good clean. And maybe even treat her to some oil, too.

We did a quick maintenance lesson during one of my recent courses - as the ladies were in agreement this was something that they found a bit daunting. As a relatively newly converted believer to the `love your machine and it'll work like a dream (and save you money on paying for servicing)' school of thought that my Mum has always preached (to my deaf ears), I was more than happy to oblige.

Not the most exciting task - especially when you know you are using precious sewing time up doing it, but so worth it. My machines work like new every time after they've had some TLC. Any niggles seem to disappear in a very pleasing way - even if I wasn't entirely sure what had caused them in the first place.

And money saved on servicing means more money to spend on fabric, right?

You get what you pay for.

Completely unrelated, has anyone been following the brilliant Martha at NeverSeconds? Wow. I think she is one fabulous little girl. Here's my tribute to her. But just go and read her blog - if you are not in the UK, there is a chance you haven't heard about her. 

Chicken and lemon risotto

Bananas and custard

Alternative pudding of a Fab ice lolly (quickly to be rejected by the two year
old who asked for it in the first place, and polished off by yours truly)

Time taken to eat - 45 minutes (groan)
Overall popularity with whole family - 9/10
Health - 10/10 (did you see the broccoli?)
Trips to loo for middle child during the meal - (only) 1
General squabble factor - 7/10

And finally...

This is what the youngest was doing whilst having her lunchtime nap one day this week. Grr.

I know I have it good, in that she is well past the age of two and still sleeping like clockwork during the day as well as at night, but I am just not ready to hear the words "maybe she is just ready to drop her daytime nap".