Live, Laugh, Love

Its been a glass half empty day which was a shame because glass half empty days are not very productive and I'd had plans for my Thursday afternoon off...  However, as luck would have it, my recent purchases arrived in the post.  I buy the Laugh Lines calendar every year, it makes me smile every time I look at it.  Normally, I don't remember to buy it until late December, but this year I am strangely organised.  I also carry round half a dozen notebooks each year with my lists and thoughts and scribbles and jottings, and had decided that for 2012 I would instead treat myself to the date book from the companion Live with Intention range.  With storage space, month to a page, week to a page and extra notes pages, I think it may do the trick and keep me a little more organised than all my notebooks do!  We'll soon see.. In the meantime, I am curled up in front of the fire in my lovely new slippers (not yet chewed by Megs, a rare treat!), with a glass of red, and am taking a sneak peak at my purchases, no better antidote to a glass half empty day than wise words and beautiful artwork to remind you what is truly important.

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Well it's all still pretty quiet on the making and doing front, unless you count the tears on the 10yr olds trousers and the boyf's jeans which needed stitching up; contemplating blue or green for Dolly - votes are tied... hmmm; turning another pair of the boyfs (utterly ruined) jeans into boyf jeans for me, I'm thinking of decorative stitching to cover the tears; a tattoo for the boyf; and Christmas card designs.

In the meantime, the boyf and I celebrated our 5th Anniversary and my Mum's been Amazoning again with abandon... I have a lovely stash of books, which tonight calls for a cup of tea, a blanket on the sofa and a good old peruse.

The LBD, pictures from the ball

It doesn't look half bad my LBD :o)

Catching up, pottering about and my H&M skirt revamped

Post Halloween/Victorian Costume is a very quiet affair... I hardly know what to do with myself (she says smiling broadly!)  The beginning of the week, I looked at the boyf in mild panic asking "What shall I do next?" and the look on his poor face said it all!  And I have plenty for me to do (there's a certain naked Dolly looking at me very hopefully), it's just that the next big project may just have to wait a while so that we can enjoy the simple things, like our dining room being an actual dining room...  So I have promised not to take it over for just a while, projects will be short and sweet or "handsewn?" ;o)

Its proving rather useful: on Monday we made Godfrey (still no replacement for Gareth the Cow, but the 10yr old is not willing to part with him just yet); Tuesday... no, not so productive, Tuesday; yesterday I made a damn fine fire and worked on some Christmas related design work for work (I am so not yet in the mood for Christmas, but thankfully in my world, Herb Alpert and his Tijuana Brass Band are a year round treat!); and today, with an afternoon at home, I have finally finished a skirt revamp that I have been contemplating for ages now, have costed up the Victorian Costume, ordered my calendar for next year (instead of waiting till the end of December and panicking), sorted out the "stuff" wardrobe (the hoover attachments can finally stop hitting me on the head as I put my sewing machine back in; its in there, behind the ironing board somewhere) and am back to trying to find a little more Christmas spirit...

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My Favourite Skirt, Revamped

Its only cotton, from H&M, but it's lined, it suits me and it has huge sentimental value as it's the first skirt I bought after the boyf convinced me that I had legs worth baring!  It got torn ages ago and the repair did not look good so it languished in the cupboard until tonight. Following on from the LBD, I am having a bit of a love affair with broad two-tone hems and this afternoon I pulled out more of the leftover taffeta and recovered the bottom 10" of the skirt.  There wasn't quite enough taffeta to do a complete lap of the hem so I added a 4" wide decorative insert with a ribbon trim.  I love it!  It's pretty and a little dressy and I can wear my favourite skirt again, yay!

It's just annoying that black never photographs clearly...

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The Victorian Costume Costings

When I started looking for inspiration for the Victorian Costume I came across a blog where a lady had spent $3500 on a similar outfit!  I immediately decided that my budget would be 1/10th of that, in pounds, and I am very pleased to say that my final spend was £269.71 - for everything, corset, chemise, both skirt parts and the jacket.  Add in the bloomers and the petticoat and I would still have £30 to spare.  You can see the breakdown here.

7 Billion and Me!

I love facts and details and statistics, so when I spotted on the BBC News website a little calculator which could tell me where I come in the 7 billion of us that now inhabit this planet, I had to have a look.  So, where do I come in all of this?  The answer is 3,996,400,760th.  More astoundingly, they can tell me that I am the 78,314,786,509th person to have lived since history began.  The boyf went next and is the 4,676,113,840th and 79,398,145,545th person alive; and the 10yr old is the 6,196,400,082nd and 81,835,526,486th respectively.  I know it's not exact - that it may be pretty darn inaccurate really - but to have just an idea of a number is, to me, pretty cool!