The Baynhams

Why is my spare room looking like this...?

Why is my kitchen a mess?

Why is the laundry mountain getting higher instead of lower?

It's all Lucy's fault.

...and her three sisters Alice, Mia and Phoebe, not to mention their friend Grace.

No they didn't come around and trash my house. I would love it if they could but they all live in the UK and were friends to our kids before we emigrated. It can be hard to keep in touch with everyone when you have not seen them in many years. 5 years makes a huge change in little kids lives but they still write to us and send presents on our kids birthdays and so we too send parcels back to them when their birthdays come around. Posting to the UK from Australia means thinking about a month in advance. Something that does not come naturally to me. I need about a week to find a free day to go shopping, the next week I will hopefully get that present wrapped and a card written and if we post within two weeks of the birthday then it should get there in plenty of time. That's the theory. My reality is different. So often I find myself sending an email to the birthday child on their birthday to tell them that their present will be on its way to the post office any day now...

And so to why Lucy caused this mess.... It's her birthday coming up in March. I decided this year to take inspiration from a great bog called Skip To My Lou. I saw some beautiful crayon rolls and thought I might make modified versions of them with crayons for the youngest through to pencils and gel pens for the oldest. I also made space for a little pad of paper too.














The end result is that I have had a great few days and evenings completely trashing the spare room and using all sorts of pieces of lovely fabric I bought from a local sewing shop. Each roll needed three distinctly different pieces of fabric to contrast. For the four sisters I wanted not to duplicate any of the fabrics. Do the maths: 4x3=12 different fabrics. I realised mid-sewing that I was short one piece of fabric so I went searching and finally (being too impatient to go back down to the fabric shop) I chopped up a polka dot pyjama top from my wardrobe for Mia. Mia darling, I promise you the pj's were spotlessly clean! Polka dotty spotlessly clean!

And so I proudly present the result of a week of sewing. Five presents for five beautiful girls that have made a great effort to stay in touch with us despite being on the other side of the world. (Ok, so their Mums Cathy and Zoe probably play a huge part in that! )

Watch out for your parcels coming through your door over the coming weeks girls...!