Sunday Sevens - #1

I love reading everyone's Sunday Sevens (a quick pictorial round-up of a blogger's week) and it's exciting to now be apart of it. So here's my first post - a soggy week packed with lots of crafting, procrastination, emptying kitchen cupboards and a date with a star-struck child and a famous tiger.

1. It's been raining most of the week here in Canterbury. This is the view from the car when we went to the beach in Sandgate. A familiar British summer beach scene. Soggy and miserable outside the car, lots of singing and laughing inside the car... then, lots of ice cream in the car, and then the stickiest three-year-old you have EVER seen in a car... and then the stickiest parent you have EVER seen ransacking the car for illusive wet wipes.

2. I've been trying to fit in some embroidery, to finish off the dress I'm making for my little girl. So when she fell asleep in the car on the way to meet my hubby for lunch, I was prepared. Embroidery on the go! Am I the only person who walks around with a full embroidery kit in their bag? I'm not sure it's even legal, since I also carry my massive embroidery scissors, which could be classed as carrying a weapon!.......... I'm so cool!

3. I've been trying to organise my sewing stuff, because it's out of control. The odds and ends of embroidery threads now have a little place to live - on mini bobbins in a kilner jar. I really need to sort out a sewing room, never mind messing around with mini bobbins!

4. Since the weather hasn't been great, me and the little one spent a day making all sorts of things including balloon animals and these mini canvas masterpieces. Lots of mess making. Getting her to the sink to wash the paint off her hands is always tricky, since she loves to tease me by pretending to wipe her hands on the sofa. A comedian at three!

5. We've had a bumper crop of cooking apples from our tree, which makes a change from previous years. We're not sure why we've been getting such good apples, perhaps it's the wet weather, or perhaps someone is throwing supermarket apples over our fence? Anyway, my husband made a lovely apple pie, which we ate in one go! So greedy.

6. We're having a new kitchen fitted next week, and so I've spent a crazy amount of time packing up the kitchen ready for it to be ripped out. The good thing is that even though I can't use my sewing machine while the kitchen is being done, I can catch up on my other (million) projects. Plus, the kitchen table, which I do my sewing on, has never been so clear. Just one pile of embroidery stuff. Amazing.

(Update: I took this photo after the tidy up and a day later the table is littered with bits and bobs of material and sewing stuff).

7. One of the most exciting things about this week was our visit to the excellent Gulbenikian Theatre to see The Tiger Who Came To Tea. My little girl loved it, and was so excited to see the tiger that she tried to get on the stage! There's nothing a parent loves more than wrangling an excited star-crazed child in front of a captive audience of a hundred people, while trying to crouch down as low as possible so not to block the stage. Throughout the show she kept asking in her loudest voice "can I go on the stage". We did contemplate just letting her get on with it, and then sitting back to enjoy the mayhem, but I don't think the tiger would've come out alive. It would've been when I met Vic Reeves all other again.