Flutterbymama

Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Jaume Plensa

Great Sunday last weekend spent at Yorkshire Sculpture Park with 2 sets of close friends that we don’t get to see nearly as often as we would like. I’ve known Brian & Fiona pretty much since I’ve been with my hub and Sam & Alice we met through Brian and Fiona when we were both heavily pregnant about 5 years ago. It was a meeting of music minds!

So anyway we miraculously managed to all have the same day free with no prior plans… amazing! We all made it to the same place at the same time and what a great place! Definitely a place to go and visit. Expected to stay for maybe 4 hours but only left after 6 plus hours and still didn’t get all the way around! There’s a reason to go back again. It was free to get in and just £5 to park all day.

As well as lots of magnificent sculptures and things to see there was a great cafe and a fabulous little shop that I could have spent days in!

As soon as we arrived I knew my hub would love it and it just got better and better. I took far too many photos which I’ve uploaded to my website for private view but if you’re interested you can see them here.

Here are some of my favourites…

Henry Moore

The views and lanscapes were phenominal Continue reading…

The boy goes to school

4 years, 2 months and 21 days later and my baby? had his first day at school. Well technically it was only half a day but hey my little boy is growing up. Where the hell did the time go?

Family breakfast…a healthy start

A little sad?

People have been asking me, ‘will you cry?’, ‘are you feeling sad?’, ‘have you been worrying?’. To be honest, no! I have no doubt in my mind that he’s well and truly ready for school. He and I can’t wait for him to start to learn to read. He sits with his books and makes up stories from the pictures. He gets sad sometimes that he can’t read the words. He will have a whole new experience when he can read those words himself and make some sense of it all. I’m also ready for him to go to school. I’m needing to move on with stuff in our lives. I’ve completed my course, I have other opportunities opened up to me in the last 6 months and I’m ready to get going. Hopefully I’ll be able to blog a big explanation in the next month or two as I don’t want to jinx things.

Getting himself dressed

Looking so grown up

I’ve not been particularly worried about Lucas going to school as just over a year ago we moved him from childminder near the hubs work to a local nursery. He’s met lots of the local kids, and 4 of them, are at the same school and we know their parents so it’s not like he won’t know anyone. He’s the type of child, like I was and probably still am, ok not so much the child bit, who will go in and be on their own for a day or two and watch. When ready he will make those important bonds and friendships. In the meantime he will just be silly and try to make people laugh or pretend he’s not clever. He’s a bit of a comedian and people like him. On the downside he can be ‘told’, by other kids, what to do but he’s also got a stubborn streak where if he’s not interested or doesn’t want to do it anymore he won’t be pushed. I don’t yet know how he’ll settle in but I think he’ll do far better than I ever did.

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Lucas’s 4th birthday!!! (Yup a tad late)

But better late than never I always say. And believe me I’m nearly always late…even the boy was late!

The boy was born shortly before 6 in the morning on Sat 9th June 2007. It was a fairly straight forward birth. Into labour about 11pm Friday night and, although the midwife said it would be at least another 12 hours before I needed to come in, I was in hospital by 4am. Have some rest and try and sleep she said… yeah right! I had no idea that he was coming so fast but boy am I glad he did. Within a couple of hours I had him in my arms and we were overjoyed. Most of it was a gas and air blur and I saw baked beans on the ceiling and traffic lights changing from red to green but it was an amazing experience. It’s true what they say about the pain fading from memory to some degree. The midwife who delivered my bundle said I could probably be home by lunch! Fab I thought. Then it started…

I made a decision, mainly because I brick it if you come anywhere near me with a ruddy needle, to not have an epidural or the needle in the thigh to speed up the placenta removal. I had a brilliant water birth in a small local midwife run unit and I would do it all over again. The problems came whilst waiting for the placenta to come away. It never happened. So in the needle went to help it on it’s way. Still nothing. It was like trying to give birth all over again but this time it was painful. Sorry for those who are squeamish, they pulled on the cord, I pushed, nothing! After a couple of hours they called the larger local hospital as I had to be transferred so they could do a removal procedure in theatre. All pretty intense and I’m so glad my mum was there. She turned up from work just after Lucas was born. Thanks mum I can’t thank you enough for what you did that day. So long story short… they tried again to pull it out and then I heard a pop, yay it’s out no need for surgery. No it turns out they snapped the ruddy cord off the placenta. So spinal block and manual removal it is… woohoo. I’ve never been so effing scared in my life. Procedure went well but felt pretty shit as had no sleep since the previous morning, hadn’t fed Lucas and my poor hub thought he was going to lose me. It all sounds pretty dramatic but remember I was on gas and air throughout most of this so I was non the bloody wiser half the time. Very surreal experience. Not something I want to re-live but there is a high chance of it happening again if we decided to have another child. The moral of this story is that we are all safe and sound and happy and that that was just a small blip in our lives which we’ve had to come to terms with.

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AWOL-Hello

As you’ll have noticed I have neglected my poor blog for the last few weeks. It’s been a hectic old time. It’s been my last few weeks finishing my college course which just swallowed up all my time. I’ve been helping my hub with work related issues, more on that in a later post. The same day as my college open evening was my son’s 4th birthday, and the Saturday meant his birthday party, as usual we don’t do things the easy way. Then I had a little project to do, again another post on that later and basically we’ve all been wiped out and wanted some fun family time together so we’ve been away.

Lucas on the day of his actual 4th Birthday

I’m now back and getting on with the stuff I’ve been building up to for what seems like years.

I just wanted to say hello to those few good people out there that so kindly come and check out my blog of nonsense. I also want to say Thank you to those who leave comments to let me know you are there. I really do appreciate that you keep coming back and now it’s time for me to give you something to read.

I’ve been finding my feet for some time now in many ways. Since having my son 4 years ago I sort of lost my way and lost my identity…I’m sure some of you know what I mean. My photography career took a bit of a bashing, not to say I don’t still love photography, but with most people owning a point and shoot and/or mobile phone with camera capability and most budgets being slashed I was just not getting the flow of work I was used to. It suited me to work around my newborn and then toddler but something changed in me. I lost a little confidence and direction and wondered just who I was. I started buying items for our home from thrift shops and car boots and really enjoyed the thrill of having a house which had different things in to my friends and getting a bargain to boot. I have a love of DIY and love that I can learn how to tile or change door hinges etc. A mummy friend said she was going to try and get on a local college’s interior design course and I thought I’d pop along to the open day with her. I was sold. It wasn’t the swag curtains, pelmets and cushions I thought it would be. I could learn the history of interior design and use some of my old Graphic Design skills as well as my photography. It seemed an ideal way of passing the time until my boy started school. Well that was almost 2 years ago and I just received my results this morning and I now have a certificate for a BTEC National Diploma in Art & Design (3D) Interiors with a triple distinction. Not bad considering the first month or two of the second year I didn’t attend due to delays with build work and then missed quite a bit of time near the end of the 2nd year due to my hubs business issues. I only just managed to get all the work done necessary for the end of year show.

What this course has done is help me to regain the confidence I lost after having my boy and also help me understand what it is I love about homes and furniture. We had a great tutor, called Ian, who filled me with even more of a love for Mid Century design. Now I know what I’m looking for at a car boot or in a charity shop better than I did before. I used to buy what I liked but now I buy for a different pleasure. I have been thinking about it, since last summer, opening an etsy sellers account to sell vintage wares but a few other things have happened since then so although etsy may be the starting point I have been talking to my hub about using his reception area as a sort of shop. It’ll be online but viewing of an item can be done in his work place, that’s presuming that other things go as planned.

A sneaky peak at hubs business premises interior

My final college project was re-space planning and interior designing the whole of my husband’s company premises. It seemed appropriate due to the amount of time I have been spending there lately. He likes it so much he’s considering letting me do most of it, if and when the company is bought out by us. It’s all seeming to be falling into place and this scares me a little. I’m definitely negative until proven wrong whereas some people I know…hub included are positive until proven otherwise. I don’t get that because I think you’d feel more let down that way?! Anyways I digress …so from not knowing where to go I now have many ideas running through my head. I started knitting 18 months ago and really want to do more and sewing has really hit me in the head recently. I made some little gifts for the children attending my son’ s birthday party and they went down a storm and the parents suggested I could be selling them. I also have a friend who is a crafty mum and have asked if she would be interested in joining me in this new venture so fingers crossed she’ll be on board too. All of this is to keep finances in the black whilst I help my husband keep his job and 3 staff jobs. We don’t yet know the outcome of this buying the partnership yet so this is really where I need to be for a few months.

Party Bag Monsters made by me

When college finished, the original plan was to set up a company with my friend in Interior Design, we were just working through some names and how to go about it, when it came to light that the hubs business partner was very ill again. Totally unexpected and threw us all into a tizz.

So that’s pretty much me at this moment in time. I hope this goes some way to explain my sporadic posts but I’m hoping from here that things will start to settle down. If not for us then for my boy as he starts his first year at school this coming September…my big boy: (

Thanks for reading and hope I haven’t put those few special readers off returning. x

Brockholes – It floats!!!

After a week of stresses, Saturday was bliss. The whole family needed to get out and have some fun. We crafted at home in the morning and played games like monkey chuck…the boy thought it would be funny to throw his monkey high in his bedroom and see if he could catch it. Mostly he didn’t and sometimes he did. After a little train track building we headed out for lunch. I love lazy days mixed with a little adventure. The weather was rather interesting too. Rain followed by sun, followed by rain, followed by sun… you get the picture.

We ended up at a new place on the map called Brockholes. It’s a beautiful new nature reserve in Lancashire. We expected to pay for parking but as it’s only just getting up and running it was free all day. Now, this is a work in progress but I tell you, when it gets going it’s gonna be a fine place to visit. There weren’t many visitors this weekend but we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves nonetheless.

Images above taken on iPhone 4 with cross process.

Almost all others taken with a Nikon D2X with 50mm fixed lens.

The first thing we did, after putting on our wellies, was to get lunch. We were all starving and am I glad we waited till we got there. The food, yes expensive, but well worth it we reckon. The hub had steak and ale pie and I treated myself to the veg hotpot with cauli cheese and honey glazed carrots. YUM. I couldn’t move after!

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Easter thrifted & gifted (KARMA!!!)

Easter, like Christmas and other kiddo friendly events, is getting more exciting as our spud pot gets older.

There is a definite change in how we do things and we are tending to venture out more and visit friends with kids too. To be honest I’m the kind of crap mum that has no idea how to do Easter… yeah i know buy chocolate eggs dummy, what I mean is egg hunts and nice stuff like that. My hub, being the creative control type freak would have designed every bloody sign and thought up a whole mapping satellite system to follow. What we needed was experts! Cue a visit to our friends the Trevaskiss’. They live in a lovely part of Sheffield which is almost 2 hours away from us so we don’t get to see them often.

I adore their company because they have 2 amazing little people and they themselves are pretty amazing peeps too! When we arrived we had belated birthday gifts, God I hope they didn’t feel a personal attack from my previous post?! Ooops! Guys it wasn’t intended to make you feel any guilt… I promise. Gifts very gratefully received. I love fabric and Fi gave me some offcuts to get me inspired to make something… she hasn’t seen my stash cupboard : /

Next stop… kids and big kids went to do dam building and cycling and ice cream whilst mummy’s went to 2 really cool retro/MCM vintage shops. Oh my days! I could have bought everything in both of them… fortunately for my devoted other half I really like a bargain and struggled to find something that wasn’t over priced. After a good hour this is what I ended up with. Pretty nice huh? Well I love them. £4 each the label said well the nice lady gave them both for £4 the pair. Still don’t know if that was intentional. The way I see it, it was a bargain. This is what they looked like once I’d purchased them:

and this is what they looked like 2 minutes later… shocking

Lots of rain whilst in the shop and lots of shit falling off trees… yes I slipped and ended up on my arse and bruised the hell out of my knee, I ripped the pants I was wearing-GUTTED-and threw the bloody glasses across the floor. NO it wasn’t on purpose it was just that I decided not to put them in my hideously large bag to keep them safe, I was too excited and kept hold of the flimsy arse plastic bag. After checking I was ok, my friend laughed her face off and said well that’s just KARMA! Damn you rain and certain chain of events that led us to said car park accessed by slippery bloody path. I HATE YOU!

SO basically made a tit of myself and it cost me in the end anyways. DAMN if only I’d purchased those retro curtains they would have surely cushioned my lovely glasses and I wouldn’t be sat here now trying to find a replacement glass. Hrumph!!!

Apart from that little episode we had a great Easter with lots of delish food , done on the dual BBQ combo, cheers Bri. The big boys were up till midnight making signs for the Easter Bunny and drinking copious amounts of red wine, so that’s the way it should be done?!

Maybe we’ll do the signs a little earlier in the day next year but what a brilliant sight to see the 3 of them so excited that the bunny had been and left eggs for them all. Unfortunately, well I feel it was fortunate, Lucas hates caramel in his chocolate so he gave them to the other 2. He has enough eggs and will still be eating them next Easter!

Thanks for a brilliant weekend guys, can’t wait to do it again soon!

P.S. Thanks for this special offcut I feel I need to search and buy it for making curtains in our bedroom. It’s just sooo perfect.

Birthday weekend treat

Mothers day present from the boy

Birthdays are really not my favourite thing. Now that we have our own little family, my birthday just doesn’t feel that special anymore. It’s the hubs on the 1st and mine on the 3rd and we frequently get lumped in as one, now I know how people with birthdays over Christmas must feel. This year my birthday happened to also land on mothers day.

My 38th birthday, last year, was pretty much a non event…no-one but my hub and mum remembered and yes I was a little pissed off disappointed. I don’t care how sad or self centred that makes me but I’m pretty damn sure that my birth was a big deal in the day. No? maybe that’s just me then.

This year I decided that I wasn’t going to be bothered and that I wasn’t going to make any special plans for my day as I didn’t want to make such a big deal of it. My hubs however took his birthday off work and because of this he felt we needed to ‘do something’. It was almost a disaster. We had planned to spend the day in Morecambe  but our sister in law and niece turned up so we didn’t head out of the house till almost lunch so we had a change of plan and headed over Lytham way. It was freezing and no-one was about by the lake so we carried on driving…where too? Pizza express for lunch…yippeee, the day got better as we just chilled and went with the flow. I think he had a similar day to that of mine last year…bless him. The photos below were taken first thing in the morning, after the boy peed all over the hubs birthday cards. He got a little over excited carrying daddies cards up the stairs that he couldn’t contain himself and dropped the cards and peed and it dribbled down the stairs all over them…April Fool daddy, couldn’t have dreamt up that one if I’d tried!!

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I lost my son to the devil (i-pad)

We have a rule in our house that, the boy, can only play i-pad and i-phone games over the weekend.

We have become used to the frequent phrase, ‘is it the weekend mummy?’ usually from Monday till Friday and even Saturday and Sunday.

Being a terrible parent, we used it as a baby sitter this weekend to enjoy some peace and quiet. He’s only 3 nearly 4 and he uses it more instinctively that I do!

Note the crossed legs…very casual

Inevitably the boy struggles to do something in the game and daddy or mummy must come to take over ‘help’. Daddy to the rescue!

39 today!

This is me taken around 1976. Ahhh the good ole days.

Today I’m 39. It’s also mother’s day. I’m a lucky girl…am I still a girl? Or am I a lady? Nah definitely a girl.

I’m very different now to when I was a child. I’ve had a wonderfully unique upbringing and had an interesting childhood.

Teenage years where full of awkwardness and angst.

My twenties I spent trying to get the attention of my dad and learning about myself.

My thirties have thrown some stuff at me which I feel I have dealt with well. Most of all I found the man I married, although I actually first clapped eyes on him when I was 16. I married him and had a son with him. They are the two most precious things in my life.

Happy Birthday to me and to everyone who shares my birth day. x

Sunny days I love you!

Light through the blinds

In the garden

Buds entwined in the garden

Him and us

Sanna Annuka in the kitchen

I don’t know how true the SAD condition is but I certainly don’t have the same energy when it’s cold and once the Christmas period is done so am I with winter!

There is something that makes me feel warm on the inside listening to the birds sing and the murmur of traffic, on a hot, dry road, going by and the movement of the sun through the clouds. I think it goes back to childhood and times when I had no real pressure or responsibilities. It’s scary to think that I will be 39 soon and although I know I’m an adult, whatever that actually means,’ I’m still scared of making some life changing decisions. I still feel like the kid who needs a little encouragement and guidance into making the right decision. Truth be told the decision isn’t really mine to make but that of my hub. We’ve been forced into a situation to make a possibly life changing decision and it could be the making or breaking of us. I’m not going to go into any detail as I just need to clear my head. I think in reality that I may be thinking about it WAY too much and that whatever decision we will make will be the best decision for us at that time and that we shouldn’t regret it, but there are a few moral issues linked in with this too.

All of this will mean nothing to anyone except those in this situation with us and for those people I’m truly sorry for the past but we are looking forward to the future. The sun may bring warmth and comfort to me but I hope that I can be part of the sunshine that brings them a little warmth and comfort too.

Here’s to sunny days ahead and may we have plenty of them to come.

(Just as I post this it’s started to hail stone!)