Monday 28 April 2014

A Trip to Furzey Gardens

Hello!

Thought I would post up some photos of the beautiful Furzey Gardens in the New Forest! A friend of mine introduced me to the lovely gardens a few weeks ago and I've got to say I'm pretty hooked! The gardens are just breathtaking, I've never seen so many gorgeous wonderful colours!! Add to that the attraction of finding fairy doors which are all hidden around the garden it's a place where you can just wander and enjoy both as an adult and as a child! 

Here are some of the photos I took yesterday, although the weather wasn't the best so I don't think my photos do the colours much justice!! 

 

 

 


 

 

 

This is the wonderful building created for the Chelsea Flower Show.  The roof is made of beautiful colourful glass leaves! 
We had such a lovely day there and the beautiful colours and flowers were really inspiring! The children loved exploring to find the beautiful little fairy doors hidden at the base of trees, it really is a lovely place to go.  

Now with regard to jewellery I am busy creating at the moment in readiness for the Art & Design Market in Winchester.  I shall be there on my stall on the 18th May in Winchester High Street! Very exciting but it means I really need to make sure I have enough stock as the majority of my jewellery is held at SeaSkyArt Gallery in Hamble.  So on that note I must pop off and get some work done! I shall post some pictures of my newest pieces soon! 

Take Care
Heidi x


Trinkets Update

Hi Everyone,

How are you all?!? I was really under the illusion that Spring had finally arrived, but today the cold weather has returned and as I write this in my workshop I can hear the rain pattering on the roof! Oh well, hopefully it will return soon!!

Things at Trinkets HQ have been a bit slow lately, what with the time of the year and colds hanging around me and my family I haven't been creating as much as I would like.  I have done lots of designing but not so much actual making of jewellery.  Today after a spell of time sat on the sofa trying to get rid of my cold I have actually made it back out to my workshop and whilst working on a few orders I have also finally got some designs underway.  I shall be posting some photos when I've finished the latest designs.

In the meantime I have been having lots of fun with my little Bonnie and I promised you I'd post up the details of our Foamy Fun we had the other day!!










First of all make the foam using a couple of tablespoons of washing up liquid, a few drops of food colouring and about 1 cup of water.  Then whisk with a handblender for a few minutes until it starts to expand and get thick! It's easy peasy!! We used pink and blue food colouring.










Add a child .........










..... and toys, fish, dollies whatever you like and play play play!














Bonnie seriously enjoyed playing in the foam and getting all her toys involved! Needless to say she was soon drenched and all manner of things had been put in the foam, stones, shells, leaves and basically anything she could get her hands on!! Good cheap fun though!!

Hope you all have fun trying this out with your little ones!!
Heidi x

Monday 20 January 2014

Hello Sleep - Hello 2014!!

Hello!


I hope you all had a very lovely Christmas and have fallen back into the daily routines nice and easily! 

As with every New Year I write a blog about how I'm going to do this that and the other, going to blog much more regularly blah blah blah! Well this year I am not going to make any promises as to be honest I seem to blink and the years gone!  I know I can't blame everything on sleep deprivation but I'm going to.  The last few years have honestly gone by in a complete blur!!

So talking of sleep deprivation, after visiting a homeopath and getting them to prescribe some remedies for my youngest we have finally been getting sleep!  It's like a miracle, a real real miracle.  This is a child who would wake for hours on end, every night without fail screaming blue murder until we gave her milk.  She has one meeting with a homeopath, we receive the remedies which she takes before bed and piff paff poof she's sleeping through the night! It's amazing! We actually get to sleep now, like real proper sleep, like real normal people! I can't even describe the effects it has had on us.  I feel revitalised and my head is spinning with things I want to do and changes I want to make.  I can honestly say the most shocking thing I have noticed is when I look back on the last few years how blurry everything feels.  I have real trouble remembering really what went on and however I can remember some of the thoughts i was having back then and now I find it hard to believe I would think like that. I really believe I was irrational and it does worry me slightly at how off balance I must have been.  We have friends who we just haven't seen for years that have just fallen by the wayside, they've given up asking, we always would refuse so why wouldn't they?  The pure exhaustion of sleep deprivation had put us in a place where I really think our bodies and heads were verging on hibernation!! Our social life was non-existent, the thought of holding a conversation with someone and having to find something to say other than screaming "WE HAVEN'T SLEPT FOR YEARS!!!!!" was exhausting in itself, and we knew on our return the kids would be up all hours whilst our lucky companions would go home to a restful nights sleep.  I can only see this now that the fog has lifted, I feel like I can see things just a bit clearer now!  Sleep deprivation really does effect every fibre of your being, emotionally, physically, socially. So please please please, if anyone ever knows of anyone suffering with sleep deprivation due to a restless child or just because they suffer from insomnia or any other sleep problems please send them to a homeopath or at least give them a hug and offer them a night off!!


Whats happening at Trinkets HQ!

Anyway needless to say all my plans for last year never happened, but this year with my sleep filled nights i am determined to experiment more with my jewellery, I already have some new projects underway and some designs which are in progress.

Other than my plans for jewellery I am also planning to start the 5:2 diet next week.  Ummmmm... .we'll see how that goes! It just sounds so great from a weight loss perspective as well as the amazing effects it can have on you medically.  I'm not getting any younger and whilst I'm still (just about) in my thirties I feel I should be showing myself a bit of love!  I shall let you all know how it goes!

This week my family have also started our '100 Acts Of Kindness' challenge.  A friend has put this idea up on Facebook and I thought it was a really great idea!  You have 26 days to do 100 acts of kindness, every week you get set a challenge, it started today and the first challenge was to cut out 10 hearts and write a brief note on them and leave them in unexpected places for family members you love.  I really love this idea, such a simple way of encouraging the kids and us to remember to be kind in a really simple but effective way.  Every week it will be something different like making a bird feeder to be kind to the environment or doing something nice for a neighbour.  If you want further information just follow this link: - http://www.coffeecupsandcrayons.com/100-acts-kindness-project/

Right I'm going to go and get some more work done on some designs I'm trying to get ready for Valentines Day! These are my latest! 





Hope you like them! Heidi x

Wednesday 3 July 2013

Sleep Deprivation - The Worse Type of Torture?!?

So I haven't blogged for a while but today I feel compelled to!  It's not even about jewellery but about the exhaustion I'm feeling due to the sleep deprivation my two year old is causing.  People who know me know I'm always harping on about my lack of sleep (my five year old only started sleeping through when she started school!) but I wonder how much people who haven't been through this sort of sleep deprivation really understand.  I'm not talking about waking once in the night crying for 10 minutes then going back to sleep, or even a couple of weeks where the kids are up at night, I mean up and down any hour and every hour for the last 5 years!  Our house is as busy throughout the night as it is during the day!  As a result I am just so tired! By that I mean the sort of tiredness which eats away at every muscle, joint and bone of my body, every part of me feels like mush, every movement takes a huge effort. When I look in the mirror I don't see me looking back I see a blotchy skinned, grey, worn out version of who I use to be.   My eyes are no longer big and bright but small grey circled eyes squinting as if trying to tell me they want to close.  Some days are better than worse but today my eyes are definitely saying "close close close".  Today I found myself driving down the wrong side of the road (thinking it was two lanes going the same way) I realised I'm not just a danger to myself but others!!!  That was the second of my car incidences this week, the other involving reversing into another parked car!! ummmm... .time to leave the wheels at home I think!!

When you are in this torturous cycle of no sleep the simplest conversation is hard work, the thought of seeing people is stress in itself, I find it hard to hold a proper conversation and afterwards you find yourself analyzing what you've said, have I said something strange, did I remember to answer their question?!?  You get paranoid about making a fool of yourself by saying something stupid so sometimes you just try not to talk at all.  This makes being a sleep deprived parent a very lonely place where your normal relationships with people, friends and family suffer.  First of all you have limited energy and are far too paranoid to try and hold a conversation so you try to avoid people,  secondly you're generally too tired to leave the house anyway so it feels a safer option to just stay at home with the door shut and phone off the hook and thirdly you don't really feel that people understand you and how the sleepless nights are effecting you so this makes you resentful.  I may sound dramatic but it's true and I think anyone who has suffered with sleep deprivation would agree!  You get people who try to help with suggestions to help our little party goer sleep through the night but believe me we've tried everything and anything!  Black out blinds, routine, less sleep, more sleep, going to bed earlier, going to be later, lullaby's, stories, warm milk, lavender and of course the crying it out technique! Wow crying it out - that was a fun technique!  What you need to understand about my little one is she has stamina and volume, not a great combination when you also have a five year old in the house who needs to go to school the next day.  She won't just cry for an hour, she can go all night!   When we were trying out the cry it out technique I would end up back downstairs doing jobs at ridiculous hours because for anyone who hasn't tried it, lying in bed listening to your little one scream your name makes you feel like you are going against every natural instinct you hold as a mum.  I understood the technique though and would busy myself downstairs so I could try and ignore it!  We've tried this technique several times for a long period of time and she just doesn't get the message!  Friends tell me to toughen up and not faff about but that's easy to say when you don't have your baby screaming every night! And to top it all you reach such a state of tiredness you don't know whether you are coming or going!!  The worse times are when you drag your lifeless bodies into bed ready for the night and as your head hits that pillow you hear the stirrings coming from the next bedroom and you know that you're not even going to get in a few hours before your called for and it all starts again.  It really is torture, especially for me who is well known for loving her bed! Ironic really!

Then the other side of the coin is the guilt, guilty because you are so tired you can't bear to go the park, or get all the paints out for my little one to spend 5 minutes painting and 1 hour for me cleaning up, guilty because you don't have the energy or inclination to sit and play peppa pig, guilty because all you want to do is sit your little one in front of a dvd so you can sit still without talking or moving, guilty because your eldest is always being snapped at, guilty for screaming at your baby in the early hours of the morning like a lunatic, guilty because you and your husband only manage to get a couple of hours together where you sit like zombies too tired to talk!

But what are the options?  Sell her on ebay? Leave her on a friends doorstep with a little sign saying I'm all yours? Let her sleep in the shed?  No of course not, I pick her up, we have a cuddle, we get on with our day (in the hope we can play doctors so I can lie down) and it's all forgotten about, until about 11pm tonight when it will all start again!  After all that's what motherhood is about isn't it, getting on with it, no matter what comes your way!


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