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Sunday 21 July 2013

Mum on the Run - Being creative (!) with denim and a trip to Bicester Village

See, I knew that it wasn't safe to go in the water in Cornwall.  Apparently a blue shark has been spotted off the coast at Penzance. Whilst usually they are more likely to eat squid, they have been known to take the odd nibble at a human and what with me doing a very good impression of a seal the other night, I have no doubt that I would have been scoffed had a blue shark and I been in close proximity.  That would have been tragic - the wetsuit wasn't even mine. Safe to say I am now about as land-locked as it is possible to be.

I'm not sure what happens when I get home but all those things that I tolerated before I went away suddenly seem to irritate me - which is why I spent Friday night clearing out under the stairs, all Saturday afternoon touching up the walls with my roller and white emulsion, why today I emptied and sorted my entire wardrobe, why I went into the bowels of a huge cupboard to retrieve a light fitting that I decided we should have put up and why I persuaded my husband to help me move a chair downstairs and a chest upstairs, all because it would look better. The family know me well and my husband quietly takes over cooking the meals and bathing the youngest whilst the eldest two just keep out of my way, lest they are allocated a job. The problem is that because the house is now so tidy, everything really echoes, which is quite dis-concerting.

Along with all of the above, my husband and I had what he termed an "arts and crafts" day yesterday. It started when I woke up and decided that I needed to sort myself out with some denim cut-offs. A rifle through my wardrobe found the perfect pair of very old, and now slightly too short (not sure how that has happened as I haven't grown in the last five years) Topshop boyfriend jeans. They need to be a bit loose to start off with - skinny ones just don't work. Anyway, one pair of sharp scissors later and voila - a new pair of shorts (apologies - I thought that I'd cropped the finger out of the photo but apparently not). For what it's worth, I found the best way to make them was to cut up the centre front of the jeans to about mid-thigh, put them on and then decide where to start cutting horizontally - leaving a bit extra for a turn up. Not being an owl, or having a willing (or able) participant, I took them off before finishing the horizontal cutting but obviously it's a personal thing.


Our proudest arts and crafts moment came after visiting John Lewis and buying some fabric which we stapled over a canvas (pinched from the eldest). We like maps in our house - we're a bit nerdy like that.


And one outfit from the back end of the holiday - the Allium B Eliza dress, this time worn as a strapless dress. I quite fancied a strapless dress but didn't have one so I undid the buttons on the straps on this one, tucked the straps down the side and all was good - well apart from when I was giving the youngest a piggy back and I realised it has wriggled its way down slightly but it wasn't anything too outrageous.


Today we also squeezed in a trip to Bicester so I will bring you photos of what I bought later in the week. Sadly it wasn't what I bought that was the problem but more the potential for what I might buy in the future having visited the new Rag and Bone store and Sandro too. Dangerous. Very dangerous (but not as dangerous as a great white shark.)