One year of little bean

On Saturday my daughter Reegan turned one, my little baby bean, no longer a little baby. I still don't know where the time has gone, I am in awe of the transformation she has gone through in just twelve short months. She is now a functioning human being, a real tiny human! I mean she has been all along, but she is nowhere near as dependent on me as she once was. She can just about walk now, she says lots of words (her first was "dog", how could it not be!) she can use a fork without too much difficulty and she loves books.

I'm very proud of her, especially over the books part, when she brings books to me and asks me to read them too her it makes my heart swell, and I hope when she is older she will still love books as much as I do. I practically worship them, so I will be teaching her always to respect and take care of them.

I've also found myself going through a rollercoaster of emotions throughout the weekend, revisiting all the memories of that night one year ago, both the highs and the lows. I have nothing but positive and fond memories of my labour and her birth, but the following day in the hospital I didn't have such a good time at all. After five days cooped up in hospital I wanted more than anything to go home to my own bed and sleep. That night I cried and cried until they let me go home at 10pm, where Rob and I spent most of the night trying to get Reegan to breastfeed from me, with more tears and lots of anxiety over everything. I don't think anyone in our house slept that night. Rob's brother wanted to go and stay in a hotel. I wish I could go back to that night, and hug my former self, tell myself everything would be ok, because I am strong, we would persevere because I am stubborn, I would face my parenting battles and I would win.

In this one year, everything has changed, and yet it feels as if this is how it always was. I feel very lucky to have a daughter like Reegan, being her mama has taught me so much about myself and about life. I have grown. I know now what I want out of life and being a mother has given me the drive to go out and get it.

Weating her Ladybug hat crocheted by an old friend of mine.

I FOUND THE HAT!

I think I may have tempted fate by saying British weather was on the turn towards Autumn now, because we seem to be having another last little blast of sunshine this week. For once I'm hoping it holds out just one more week because we are having a barbecue for little R's birthday on Saturday and it would be nice to have the pool out for the little ones like we did this afternoon. But the main part I'm ok with the hot weather still is because I actually found a decent sun hat that I LOVE and don't feel silly in.

Today we went to look at prospective wedding venues (although we only looked at one because we fell in love with it and now it's settled!) and had a snacky lunch in the car, so I wore smartish casual with an emphasis on staying cool.

So as you can see, its a large floppy black hat, 100% cotton, with a little wreath of roses around it. You would think that a hat so seemingly simple would not be hard to find. But no, I have been searching for a hat such as this for a couple of years now with no luck. Yet one day I stroll into Primark with no intention of buying anything, and find this beauty. There was no way I was leaving without it. The only thing is that it is quite thick, and it takes only the slightest bit of wind to pick up for it to be blown away, so I think I may attach some crocodile clips inside to keep it in place. Woohoo! Finally a sunhat that is in keeping with my style and that I feel comfortable in!

Outfit rundown:

• Hat - Primark
• Strappy vest - H&M
• Velvet mini skirt - H&M
• High waisted lace bustle overskirt - Necessary Evil
• Shoes - Ironfist
• Bag - LoungeFly 
• Sunnies - Primark

What kind of sunhat do you like best? 

Tiny Tophat Fascinator Tutorial

As promised, I am posting a how-to for the fascinator I wore to the Mad Hatter's teaparty last week. With a just two rigid elements already at my fingertips, some cardboard and a whole tube of superglue, here's how I did it:

What you will need:

• Scissors
• Superglue
• Paper or fabric glue
• Double sided tape
• Small glue dots
• Some fabric
• Cardboard
• A small plastic pot (shape of your choice, I used the container from my Method laundry liquid because of it's large bottom and small top).
• An Alice band
• A black felt pen
• A small selection of adornments (I used feathers, ribbon, a pocket watch charm and some brown card with 10/6 written on it)
• Possibly a needle and thread if you are stretched for time

So firstly I removed the label from my detergent bottle, marked the desired length, and used a serrated knife to cut the bottom off (the bottom is the part we need). Make sure you cut off slightly more than you think you want, just in case. 

Next, I made two circles from cardboard, one slightly smaller- to glue to the top- and one slightly larger for the bottom, which will be the brim of the hat. After this step, it is time to cover all of your parts in your chosen fabric, which is where you may need to do some experimenting. Don't just go straight on in there with your glue, because (as I learned, thankfully on a practice piece) your glue may just soak straight through your fabric and leave an unsightly sticky splodge when dry. So for the plastic part I wrapped it completely in double sided tape, with each piece on a slight diagonal slant, making sure to overlap so that the fabric adhered to the plastic the whole way around. 

I then folded the excess tape over the top and bottom edges before peeling off the non-sticky coating and rolling it carefully across the fabric to stick it down evenly.

So here you can see all three of the hat-parts are now covered in fabric, and if you look closely you can see a white splodge in the middle of the larger disc, but this is fine because that side will be adhered to the bottom of the hat. Be sure to cover both sides of the larger disc in fabric because the underside may show.

The next part was somewhat tricky, and to glue the top disc to the hat I used copydex in the middle, and then went around the whole edge squeezing superglue into the gap and holding it down until it was dry, I did this about an inch at a time and had to squash thr whole thing down firmly throughout whilst trying not to get superglue on my skin. But the results were good because it pretty much closed the gap and made it look neatly finished. To attatch the bottom disc, I used some tape running from the inside of the hat body and folded it down at the bottom to secure it to the disc whilst I used the same superglue-the-gap-and-press method as before.

Once all of the glue was dry and sturdy, I decided to decorate straight away as I only had a few hours to go until the party and had to get it done. So I used glue dots at either end of my red ribbon to secure it around the bottom of the hat, and made sure to line up the join of the ribbon with the join of the fabric so that my embellishments would disguise them. I used another glue dot for the feather, another for the pocket watch on top and went in with some more superglue just to make sure. 

Luckily I already had an alice band covered with black satin, or I would have had to make one to match myself, and used another small disc of fabric covered card to stick the hat to the band, but this time it was oval shaped to ensure maximum surface area for gluing. After gluing the disc to the alice band, I used a needle and thread to stitch it on for further stability and finally glued it onto the hat (with yet more superglue). 

Tada! This is the only closeup I could get of me wearing it so sorry it's so blurry. Anybody else tried making hats before? How did you find it?