Sadly - No / Treasure

Ok so here is my first post for the Monday Project.

June's theme is 'Sadly-No' I decided to post what automatically popped into my mind - which was the amount of times I have to say 'No' to my cheeky little monkey who turns one very soon. And it is very sad saying no to some of his explorations as he has such a wonderful and curious nature, at present he is very keen to:

• Eat cat food
• Post all manner of things into the DVD player.
• Torture the cats.
• Turn the tv, dvd, digi box, stereo on and off, on and off, on and off.....
• Learn about gravity by dropping all manner of things off the side of the high chair and bombing the cats with his food bowl when they come to investigate.
• Open the kitchen cupboards and empty everything out and then generally post it into the washing machine... now I understand why I keep finding Tupperware in my wash pile!
• Eat fluff, mud, cat fur, grass, rabbit food, fish food, mobile phones, generally anything he can get his mits on.
• Hide the remote controls - today I found a bouncy ball in the remote control holder - and am still searching for the controls - I found them posted into my sewing machine case the other day.
• Unpack the boxes packed for moving
• Unpack my make up bag
• Scramble my necklaces
• Pull Daddy's ears when in the back pack

The list goes on. The photos are of him 1. stealing my make up brush from my wash kit and 2. having just been lifted down from climbing the stair case at Granny's looking a little sad because I told him no :-( I loved capturing the pictures for this post and it gave me lots of time to monkey around with him.

Treasure
The second half of this post is in response to the Monday Project treasure theme. It made me realise how much I have my very own little stash of treasure. Here are a few select pieces:

1. Bird box - bought when I was ten it contains a precious stone I found washed up on a beach in Turkey a year later.
2. Muscle shell - collected from the beach at Staithes where I grew up. Beach combing is one of my favourite hobbies.
3. Catholic rosary pouch. I bought this at a car boot antique stall. I'm not religious but I love the way this has been lovingly hand stitched and cherished. I added two of my favourite buttons to the empty pocket.
4. Silver cat pill box. My granny bought me this when I was a little girl. I've kept a tiny key, that I found in the house we moved into when I was seven, inside it for years, and of course a tiny shell button.
I've got loads of bits of treasure like these - I like to have them all around me when I do creative stuff they make me feel inspired. I loved the treasure box in the film Amelie, she is very much a girl after my own heart :-)

Discoveries

I've recently stumbled across the following blogs wish jar and the monday project.
I recommend a perusal of both! Keri on wish jar also recommended imaginechildhood which is pretty cool too :-)

The Lost Tribes of New York City on Vimeo

The Lost Tribes of New York City from Carolyn London on Vimeo.

This is great fun - just stumbled across it :-)

My first etsy purchase.. so exciting!!!!

key bottle 2, originally uploaded by stripeymonkey.

Thank you to the Lovely Linda of Stripeymonkey I am now the proud owner of this fab necklace. I just had to buy it after seeing the cool vintage button and key.... I LOVE IT!! Linda packaged it so cutely as well - complete with little box and ribbon, and she also sent me these gorgeous stitch markers complete with my initials engraved on, also wrapped really sweetly. Its so lovely to have surprises! Thanks Linda :-) You are a star! (P.s Hope you don't mind me using your photo - I've been trying to take a good one - but realised your pics show it off much better!)

Teeny Weeny Otto and Daddy Otto

Teeny Weeny Otto and Daddy Otto, originally uploaded by Emz :-).

Hooray! Teeny Weeny Otto bear is finished and I fully enjoyed making him. I just need to make a Mummy bear too and then we'll have a bear family living at our house!

All in the balance!

Not getting much creative stuff getting done at present :-(

Going back to work, preparing nice meals (which OK is a little creative) and trying to buy our new house seems to be eating up my time! And yes ... we are buying the quirky house... its fab and we couldn't stop thinking about it, it's funny how sometimes something grabs you that is totally different to what you thought you wanted - but totally amazing in so many ways - bit like when I met my hubby ...! Ha Ha!

Anyway aside from exciting house moving there has been far too much sensible and orderly behaviour around here since going back to work. I therefore declare a war on the mundane and vow to make some creative time!!

In the mean time we have managed some lovely weekend picnicking again... here's what we got up to on Saturday:

And here's what we caught Otty doing when we came back from the park:

Saturday Pootling!

We had a joyous day out today car booting and picnicking in the park ! I love walking through York so I added a few picks of my favourite sights along the way. I love quirky buildings and doorways.

Here are some of the cool things we saw at the car boot::Here are some of the cool things I bought! ::

This collectors ash tray is going to be a saucer for my cat Otty! We often joke that he goes off to the 'Pussy Cat Swingers Bar' on an evening and smokes kitty cigars and dines on fine mice! It seemed appropriate that it advertises 'Players' cigarettes! I don't think the antiques dealer would be too happy if she knew I bargained her down so I could make it a cat dish!

I found these quirky stamps on a very cool vintage stall. The stamp on the far right is very very fine in detail - I've never seen anything like it before- it stamps well too - I think it might be one that has been used for a detail in a book. It pictures a building - possibly St Paul's cathedral.

I couldn't possibly come home without at least one set of buttons!This is one of my favourite buildings in York. I love the sand blasted red bricks and the blue windows. I have no idea how or why my computer has decided to underline the last three sentences and no idea how to undo it so please ignore!

Somebody had such a lovely day that he didn't want to go to bed! oh and a quick knitting up date ... have been so busy with returning to work :-(, buying new a new house and trying to stay on top of my current one that knitting has been very slow, but Teeny Weeny Otto bear is coming along - here he is so far (please excuse the rubbish photos the light is rubbish in our house on an evening) ::