Father time has been busy!

I wonder daily what father time does to the clocks in our house, he seems to be pushing them on whenever I look! Autumn is now well and truly here and I have not even been able to write a single post until now. This time of year is always a busy one for me because it is Toby's birthday as well as all my nieces and nephews on my husbands side!
It is also a very busy time at Tree House Blue as we go on the search for great new products and excitedly open the parcels when they arrive. If you have not clicked on the "new in" icon recently, then you really should, there are some great new 'must' have gifts. We even featured in the Daily Telegraphs top ten oilcloths feature with our red floral oilcloth.
One of my reasons for not blogging might also be because I have been making some new products for the shop. The storage boxes I made with the oilcloth featured in the Telegraph, for the shop have been received well, the larger boxes I made for storing bathroom items such as toilet rolls etc., we discovered fit our welligogs beautifully and so save the shoe cupboard or car boot from becoming covered in mud!

I have also made some reversible fabric children's headbands which feature a school uniform gingham on one side and another more funky fabric on the other, thus it can be turned round the minute the girls come out of school but whilst at school they look incredibly smart.

It has been a bit of a 'make it' week or so because I also customised two organic cotton t shirts for my goddaughter to send to Australia, I usually send a gift from Tree House Blue but this year I had not been to the shop in time and so had to resort to a homemade item.

I did attempt one year to send The Princess and the Pea to her, I took ages painstakingly wrapping it so that it would not get damaged but then nearly fainted when I got to the post office and it would have cost almost as much to send it, as it was to buy it.

So now I am always very conscious of what I choose her. I think this Christmas it will be something from our soft fabric pretend play range, our vicar bought the tee pee and Indians one year to send to Canada for her grandson so I know these would be ideal to send.

My friend has a beautiful little girl called Freya whom my daughters adore and love to go round to bath her and give her, her bottle. Every time she comes to our house she loves to play with my maileg pixie so I have made a note to buy her one for her birthday next week.

This is even more poignant now because my own pixie who sits by my fireplace all year round very happily is also very well loved by our dog shadow, unfortunately too well loved!!

I will be on the lookout for a new one this year when they come in for Christmas!
Shadow arrived at our house last year for Toby's birthday and is now firmly part of the family he even featured on Toby's birthday cake. Unfortunately for some reason I did not take a photo of the cake that featured shadow, but I did take one of his other cake which depicted Toby's new hobby instead! He led a very persuasive argument for the reason why he needed two cakes for his birthday and being a glutton for punishment I crumbled when his bottom lip started to drop!!!

At Tree House Blue we love our pets almost as much as our children!, which is probably why we have a whole section dedicated to them. The woof lead holder is such a brilliant idea, in our house we would also need a neigh and a quack, though on second thoughts we don't actually take the ducks for a walk. Toby was over the moon when he came in with the most enormous egg we have ever seen produced by Poppy, I told him it must have been his birthday present and he was so pleased. I used it to make his other birthday cake( yes that would now be number 3) that he takes into school and it was double yolked as we suspected.

It is getting harder to find a time when it is light enough in the mornings to walk the dog, but I did take this photo the other day because the mist and the sunlight looked so magical. Winter is just round the corner and with it we have Halloween, bonfire night and of course Christmas to look forward to. This year I will be taking Tree House Blue to a new 3 day Christmas Fair at the mansion house(Trunkwell House) in our village, they are having an ice rink and funfair as well as lots of stalls, it will be over the Halloween weekend whilst the children are on half term, so that should be something to look forward to for everyone.

Susie also has other events planned so if you would like to see where we are, leading up to Christmas just send us a message via info@treehouseblue.co.uk and we can let you know what other events we will be attending.

Floral Inspiration

It is amazing how in just a few weeks our gardens and the countryside have blossomed into beautiful palettes of colour. My next door neighbours have the most amazing country borders full of foxgloves,delphiniums, aquilegia and sweet william, my garden is not quite so wonderful but I use theirs to provide me with enthusiasm and inspiration. Taking this inspiration the theme for flower club this week was a summer basket, which Margaret our teacher thinks we should all enter into the local Country Show competition in September. I think we will need another one or two of the white wine spritzers we had last night to convince ourselves we are worthy of entering a competition but once we had all finished our creations and our spritzers! we did feel slightly more confident about the whole concept.

I had a theory that if I tidied and beautified my working space it would help with my creativity and production, so I set to work to do this and was very pleased with my definite floral themed working area.

I have since made some of these oilcloth holdalls, that I discovered whilst trying to come up with a lunch bag design. My initial one had some definite design flaws and so whilst I was waiting to buy the extra bits in order to rectify these flaws I put all my sewing bits and bobs related to the project inside the said failed bag. Hey presto! this has now become an incredibly handy tidyall for my sewing room. Thus I digressed from lunch bags and moved onto reversible oilcloth holdalls and set my imagination going as to what they could be used for around the home, below are some of my ideas. As you can see the little pencil pot looks great with the twig pencils that we sell at TreeHouseBlue, they really jazz up any workspace and are so great to hold. I think I will take these up to the shop next week and see whether Susie and Sam like them.

I have become stuck on my lunch bag design and so am now thinking along the lines of painting overalls! In between though I have had to make a white pair of trousers for Toby , as it will be his first Whitsun festival on Friday. I realised I may have made them a little wide in the leg , when Toby burst into an Elvis impression the minute he tried them on!! He seemed happy enough with them despite this, I now have visions of him at school amidst a very reverent and beautiful assembly becoming the king!

Looking out the window I see that my plan at the start of the Spring to make my veg plot equally inspiring and chintzy is coming together a little slower. The sweetpeas in the flour tin are doing great, I think what would help the effect along even more would be the really gorgeous windbreak and matching deckchair!! as featured in this months Country living. The screening we put up to hide nextdoors rubbish and discourage rabbits from entering my plot has not faired at all well through the Winter, maybe the solution would be to use the windbreak to add colour to the garden through the Summer but it can be safely put away for the Winter months and brought out again the next year. Equally my deckchairs are a disgrace, I have attempted to cover them in a different fabric and for now I think that will have to be my solution but really the whole effect would be completed by some new ones to match. Maybe my husband would like one for Fathers Day, what better way to relax, than in the garden, in a deckchair with a good book!

To bring things back around to flowers and Spring, I have taken a photo of our current nature table, every family who goes to a Steiner Waldorf school will have a nature table somewhere in their house. It helps to demonstrate to the children the Seasons and the rhythm that the year brings as well as allowing them space to put any of the treasures they have found whilst out and about. Some of them can be incredibly beautiful and elaborate with lots of handmade as well as bought items to help set the scene for the time of year. Our table tends to be busy with all 3 children contributing. Soon the whitsun doves will appear and some of the other items will go.

Sending the children to The Steiner school means that they are aware of events in the calendar such as Whitsun but at the same time are aware of the slightly more commercial events such as fathers day also which are just as important in a child's life.