Something pretty special happened...

his mum, my dad, me, him, my mum, his dad. 

On Sunday 21st October 2012, my incredible boyfriend proposed to me outside Shakespeare's Globe Theatre on the south bank of the River Thames. I don't think I actually said yes, I was too shocked, but had I been able to speak I would have done, it's all a bit of a blur really, a wonderfully happy blur.
The surprise didn't stop there though, with the promise of champagne my new fiancee led me to The Swan bar where we were greeted by a wall of cheers from all our family and friends who had been waiting with baited breath to celebrate our engagement with us. It was the most overwhelmingly special day. Chris is the best person I know and I can't wait to be married to him. And now, because I'm feeling super loved up and mushy, here are some more pictures of us...

Cheeky trip to Paris

The train gave us free ice lollies, it was awesome.

Dressed as cats for our friend Kat's birthday!

Thoughts on Inspiration and Productivity.

I am a planner and a list maker, the trouble is I'm not so good at ticking things off those lists. I find this problem is even worse when it comes to craft projects. I have endless lists of clothes I want to make and crafty things to make for our home, and I think part of the problem is the huge amounts of inspiration that is available out here on the internet, in blogland. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about all you wonderful, inspiring, creative lovelies, I think you're great, but the wealth of sewalongs and challenges and inspiring makes can be pretty overwhelming sometimes. I imagine for some, super organised people, this wealth of inspiration is an incredible thing, but I am not organised, I am a scatter brain and, sometimes, downright lazy!

So, what is the solution to my never ending lists and projects that never end? Firstly I'm going to have two lists, sounds crazy I know, how can more lists help? Well, one will be for all my ideas and will probably go on growing forever and ever. The other will be a few projects I must complete before I can start ANYTHING else, well anything crafty that is! This is my current 'shortlist':

1. Christmas quilts
2. A small art project to hang in our bedroom (I've already started this and will be posting about it soon)
3. A Christmas gift for my sister, which will probably be a quilt, I am really enjoying making my Mum's quilt at the moment.

Finally, just to prove I haven't been completely un-productive over the last few months, here's a sneak peak of something I made quite a while ago but STILL haven't managed to photograph properly!

Can you guess what it is?

How do you keep on top of all your projects and ideas?

Alice x

Quilts By Christmas.

Thanks to Elise for the great logo.

I'm joining another sewalong/sewing challenge. I found being part of Karen's Pyjama Party such a great motivator and I'm hoping Elise's Quilts By Christmas Challenge will do the same. Elise's Blog is choc full of inspiration, I constantly marvel at how productive she is and when I saw this beautiful quilt I knew I wanted to make one myself and when Elise posted a brilliant tutorial I knew that I could make one myself! I now have plans for two quilts; one for our bedroom and one for my Mum for Christmas. If I get those finished before December I will also make one for my sister but I don't want to bite off more than I can chew, I've never made a quilt before! I made digital plans for my quilts because I don't have the space to lay out the real pattern pieces and get a nice random pattern. These are my proposed quilts. 

This one is for our bedroom, the representations of the fabrics I'm using are pretty crude but this will be so helpful when I'm putting it all together.

This one is for my mum. I've got all the fabrics for this one chosen and I've started cutting the patterned fabrics (I'm waiting for the block colours to arrive in the post) and I'm really excited to start putting it all together. 

Have you started any crafts for Christmas yet?

Alice x