Sunday 22 December 2013

Gorgeous trims, fabby banner and car probs!

Ellie's  Treasures
Sold this fabric wallet and received a message asking if there was any chance I could either make a wallet in different fabrics or update the heart ribbon on this one with something more funky/retro/stripy or checked.  Unfortunately time wasn't on my side to start a fresh new wallet ready for Christmas mailing (plus the fact I'd run out of zips and my supplier's stock had been completely ruined by flood damage).  Rummaging through my ever growing box of ribbons I couldn't really find anything suitable to use.
Ellie's Treasures
This gave me a good excuse to trundle over to my local store and have a nosey at what they had on offer.  First viewing was rather disappointing, I found, and bought, a metre of purple and white checked, but thought it would look a bit bland.  Then by chance I discovered a little box of bundled up trims and ribbons at amazing prices and spent a good 20 minutes deciding which trims would be good for my collection and to use on the wallet.  I was able to find four, and gave my customer a choice.  She picked the very one that I too would have chosen, so I set too unpicking and restitching in double quick time to get a new and very updated looking wallet to send off before last posting date.
Ellie's Treasures

Have you seen the new banner on my blog?  My daughter, Katie, put it together for me as she was spurting forth about how awful my previous, new, banner was (I actually thought it was quite pretty).  She's studying media at college and has a particular dislike to fonts that are readily available on the PC and also to Comic Sans (I know, I know, it's a known thing how terrible that font is supposed to be - for me, I actually like it and I've heard it's a good one to use for people who are dyslexic).  Anyway, she liked my Facebook cover and thought she'd adapt that for my blog and two shops.  Have to say, it's simple but effective.  Should add that the Facebook one was put together by me, so ignore the PC available font used on that one!!  She wants to design my next batch of business cards too, as again I've used a "terrible" font.

This week seems, once again, to be a "chasing my tail" week.  College finished on Thursday lunch time so I picked Katie up from her usual coach stop and she headed to the yard to have a nice, but rather excitable, hack on Jay together with the yard owner and one of her ponies.  At least I now have 3 weeks of not so early mornings, much needed I can tell you.

Paul, still working last week, set off to some far flung area of the country to hear weird noises as he reached Peterborough and decided it wasn't worth the risk of continuing.  Having called out the breakdown guys and had the car towed to our well trusted repair garage in Peterborough, it turns out this was the wisest thing he could have done.  Some belt or other was completely worn to threadbare and could have done some pretty permanent damage if it had snapped en-route.  Car restored to working order and then we booked it in again for another "simple" job that needed sorting under the bonnet.  Obviously not so simple as it's still at the garage and won't be looked at again until 5th January!  Sigh.  Luckily the in-laws have lent us their lovely "yellow peril" run around to use as our second car, although, shock horror, this refused to start yesterday evening after sorting Jay out at the yard.  With a boot full of food, chilled and frozen, and Ben at home alone, I wasn't too impressed, especially as again we had to call out the breakdown guys with suggestions that it would be best to tow the car back to Peterborough rather than home!  The lovely yard owner and her family invited us in for a home tour and warm cuppa as we waited for the breakdown van.  Luckily, the chap was able to get the car working - something electrical (I'm a women, what he actually did didn't really sink in).   Home and dry by 8 o'clock - a big glass of wine and take-out was much needed I can tell you.  So this year, we've used the wonderful GEM breakdown 3 times, for 3 different cars.  Money well spent I'd say!




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