8.23am

And all my parcels are done – very odd, my customers seem to regularly desert me when i have visitors, only to return in force when they leave. I’m convinced people who come here think i’m faking my claims of busyness! The weekend positively rocked with orders and i’ve just put 4 Royal Mail sacks of them by the door. Glad there done, it is worth sitting up in the evening and doing them, rather than ruining the morning for the children. I’m about to go and get dressed and then i can start haranging them 😉

Sunday was lovely though, it had the feel of autumnal snuggling down together and whereas in the old house i used to feel very trapped and hemmed in by the space we had – and how dark parts of the house were – here it feels pretty much fine. Max played Blackjack (Maddyismed to Flapjack!) with the big two, which definitely ticks some educational boxes somewhere and supervised them playing Chess a bit (though i did laugh when i heard the chess set tranforming into a complex family game, given that is exactly what i used to do with my dad’s chess set!) and then he took Amelie out into town to do some odds and sods that needed doing.

We took that as our cue to put Josie down for a nap, but her cot was still in the bead room and she expressed her displeasure by pulling every block of Fimo she could reach off its stand. We were sat underneath listening to “thump..thump…thump…” Still i don’t suppose very slightly squashed blocks of Fimo are a major potential customer issue 😆 🙄

The big two and i then sat at the table for a couple of hours, listening to ‘The Horse and His Boy’ and playing with Fimo. I bought a great set of books when i knew it was coming, which i must put up a shop page for somewhere, Clay Characters for Kids and it has a set of good simple starter animals to make that introduce all the basic shapes. So we all did those, one at a time, together and it was great. I’m generally far from creative, but i do have a reasonable knack when it comes to modelling and it felt really nice to have a skill that i was genuinely teaching them and helping them improve their abilities. By the time i’d got them thinking about kneading it well, blending colours, making shapes that were pleasing and even and not split, washing their hands inbetween colours and putting things together without squashing, they’d really come on. Was great.

Max and Amelie came home, bringing with them a bag from Mnsoon just for me, with a beautiful silk calf length dress in navy and a gorgeous striped ’80’s-meets-the-21st-century’ top – both size 16, both fitted (snugly but acceptably) and both are just gorgeous. The dress is exactly the length of my school uniform skirt and consequently made me feel about 14, which is increasinly are rather pleasing notion 😉 😆

Finished the day with Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (and some rather essential elocution lessons!) and a delicious roast dinner, courtesy of Max and i managed some bike rides too. All feels very autumnal now and cycling round the lakes with the odd orange leaf falling and a nip in the air made the bits of my day that hadn’t already been made 🙂

Sure the kids learned things too, always good.