We went to the London Textile Fair on Wednesday because my mom wanted to see what it was about. There were tons and tons of fabric!!! They had bright colors and dark colors, sparkly and dull, big and little, patterns and plain, after seeing a lot my eyes started to hurt. They sell swatches of fabric so that the mills know what to make, then make the fabric, they make the clothes, by then a year and a half has gone by and the clothes are in stores. My favorite part was when I saw some amazing outfits. For a nine year old rows and rows and rows of fabric where not much fun, so I probably wouldn’t go again.
Me by a sign that says The London Textile Fair.
The view of fabric stalls from above.
They do stuff like this to show what their fabric can do.
Don’t you just love the steamy pile? Giggle, gross, giggle, gross. 🙂
Dog Poop – for the first time in 14 years I don’t have a dog, so you may wonder why I would write a blog post about Dog Poop.
I do not understand why people do no pick up after their dogs. Now I will admit to having missed a poop or two in the years a dog shared my life. My kids will tell you I missed a lot more than that, as they had to pick up the back yard. However, on a rare occasion while with the 4 kids and 1 dog at the parks the dog, Cali, ran ahead and did her business and before I could get there to pick it up, she’d run off sniffing new territory, I may have missed one. I felt guilty. I would regularly pick up an extra poop for good dog poop karma. Hummmm, this brings to mind that Eliana is an absolute dog poop magnet. If there is a dog poop within 3 blocks of where we are, she’ll find it quite by accident. I wonder if she needs to pick up a few poops here in London to improve her anti dog poop karma? Perhaps she is just a kid too distracted with running, jumping and goofing around with her sister to watch for the messes beneath her feet.
Anyway, I digress. I was going to tell you about how I was so disgusted with Paris when I was there some 20 years ago. There were so many dog messes on the sidewalk that people would literally hose down the sidewalks every morning. Having come for drought riddled California, that was obscene water abuse. I feel another tangent, but I will refrain.
When we went to Paris in December 2011, I had hoped to find the dog poop problem resolved. It was not. We could not stroll the streets looking at the beautiful historical buildings because I had to watch where Eliana and I were walking. I had thought this was primarily a Parisian problem.
However, now we live in London. With much sadness, I must say that either an awful lot of people have dogs or there are a few very negligent dog owners. In fact, I think it is both. Apparently I am not the only person in London who finds this disagreeable. Here are a few pictures to show you some of the efforts that various Councils (like a city within a county) have put in place.
London’s incessant rain has one redeeming factor. It washes the sidewalks of the dog poop, so I guess I will have to be thankful that it rained yet again today.
I haven’t gotten a pictures of my favorite sign yet, which I will try to add.
It says, “The Poop fairy doesn’t visit here, please pick up after your dog.”
So I was at home one day, really bored because my mom was talking about something I really just couldn’t get myself to care about… Now if you heard your self saying that in any way: I was at_____ one day, really bored because my_______ was talking about something I really couldn’t get myself to care about… or you like doodling, math, fun stuff, funny stuff, and finding that 2 things seemingly arbitrary are related then watch this video, or even if not watch it any way. Click Here (Sorry to my mom, first you are rarely boring.)
This Year the Queen and all of London celebrated the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. She has been the reigning Queen for 60 years. The longest reigning Monarch in England was Queen Victoria, 64 years.
The Jubilee was the topic of nearly every conversation, shop window display, Brownie and Guides activities…. you get the idea. The girls and I attended a trade show called the Spirit of Summer. We were able to take a 1/2 hours lesson on cake decorating. We got the recipe for a very simple cake and frosting recipe. You know those recipes that can scale easily. Anyway… someone offered that we would bring cupcakes for the Guides Jubilee celebration. I thought you’d like to see how things turned out.
Eliana designed our decoration to look like a crown. Emeline and I thought her design was great and much easier than our original idea to make it look like the union jack (the flag).
As you might have guessed, we over did it a little bit. We had enough to take into Jeff’s work to share. We’ve has several requests to bring more to work.
Since our cupcake success, we’ve made a carrot cake/bread and a banana bread (2X). Emeline has also experimented with just mixing stuff up in the kitchen. I have to say that she did pretty well considering she didn’t use a recipe and did use the blender to chop up and mix all kinds of things into her cake.
The Olympics are just around the corner. It is a busy summer for London. Now if it could stop raining for a little bit, that would be nice.
We’ve done and seen so much. We’ll see if I can get a few short blogs up.
MAKING SANDALS
We had a terrific time making sandals, now if the weather will cooperate so we can wear them regularly.
It was fun to see the totally different styles that each person designed and made. Yes, we got to make our own design for the sandals also. We got to pick the colors and fabrics. I am sure we probably killed a few brain cells with the super stinky glue, but it was worth it.
Eliana made a two strap sandal with a cross and a wrapped ankle in tan and red leather. Eliana wore hers quite a bit.
Emeline’s was a black strapy number with a silver buckle at the ankle. Emeline’s are very fun.
Mine have the gladiator look. I have worn them a couple of times and I’d like to wear them more if it would stop raining!
Several years ago I found my favorite sandals. They always fit, socks or no socks, puffy hot feet or cold. They would pack absolutely flat in my bag so they were easy to take when I’d travel. One very sad day, they broke. I have passively looked for a pair like them every year as sandal season begins. No luck. So I’ve now made some. There is room for improvement, but I love them.
I true Leanne style, I have now bought some more materials to make the bottoms, a book on boot & shoe making, some wool to experiment with, but apparently it is going to be a little difficult to buy the stinky glue. Some how it is restricted because of the glue sniffers. You know what else we can’t get, isopropyl alcohol (aka rubbing alcohol).
Upon reflection, or from a strangers point of view last week, was pretty terrible. Let I still count it as one of my very favorite weeks here in London, even though we had one VERY big set back! The stomach flu! I had it first on the night of the 3rd I pukedand day of the 4th I was sick but didnt puke then it was gone phew! but oh no. On the way to pick up the boys from the airport in a taxi Eli puked this was on the 10th. On the 13th Mom was sick, and that was the day we planned to go to the Les Mis. Then on the 16th the day Eli had her birthday planned for Anton got the flu! Then yesterday the 17th Andreas had it too! Now I said Mom had it the day we planned to go to Les Mis, we still went just without mom. Then by the time Anton got it we knew it was highly contagious so Eli was bummed , because that ment we couldn’t have Eli’s birthday party at home like we planned, luckly after a hour to two of calling people and places, Pizza Express said they could have our party in the back of the restaurant! Well the party wasn’t exactly as we planned mostly because it was extremely winding and Eli’s birthday had lots of ballon chasing involved. So you might say “That sound like a terrible week!” But I got to enjoy the company of my brothers and my dad scince he took sevral days off works, and I got to go to Eliana’s 9th Birthday!
Horrible history is a show that is GROSE and tells you about the worse side of history and it will make the history funny for some kids to watch you might find it on BBC, YouTube or PBS
so without a car you do a lot of walking and bike/tube riding, we got bikes yesterday, used hoping that no bike theif would want used bikes! WRONG today between 1:30 and 3:30 some one stole eli’s bike
So since I home school we often go days without going outside, we couldn’t run or jump of do had stands any were in the house except of a 4×6 foot mat, and I remembered how much I loved using Anton’s door way pull up bar, so I put 1+1 together and asked for a pull up bar 1 and a half weeks later after some web searching we order a Iron Gym Door Way Pull Up Bar! It arrive on tuesday now two day late and at least 200 negatives and attempted pulls, I am slightly stronger and ALOT MORE SORE!
Me by a sign that says The London Textile Fair.
The view of fabric stalls from above.
They do stuff like this to show what their fabric can do.
Fabric!
More Fabric!
And More Fabric!
