Surviving the holidays...

Well, today is the first day of the summer holidays and we managed to survive it with a minimum of argument. After a small lie-in (not by Sarah, who stayed with a friend last night and apparently, got up just as early as on a school day) and some boring business, like hanging out wash and putting away the grocery delivery, we headed out to Hampton Court Palace (collecting Sarah on the way) to meet up with Helen for a coffee. She's down in London briefly before heading out to points abroad and she and her DH Dennis took a bit of time from their tourist schedule to meet up with me and my passle of rowdy urchins (well, one was more sulky than rowdy - you can guess which one!). So, here we are in the Tiltyard garden in front of a nice border - we are both squinting as the sun was very bright - about which I am not complaining, not one bit! Helen made a little trip to Creative Quilting first, as it's just over the road, and brought me some lovely lime green buttons. Which will get put to good use, I'm sure.

After we met up I took the kids off across the road (in the other direction) to Bushey Park, which has a lovely playground with an enormous sandpit - we had a few hours picnicking and playing in the sand there, before coming back to the house and getting out the paddling pool...



Despite all that activity I did manage to do some quilt related stuff today. This morning, I got the thin cream border attached to the group 9 patch quilt - looking good, isn't it! Next, a narrow border of little squares and then, onto the quilting - they are talking about doing it by hand - good practice for me, perhaps...

And this afternoon, I managed to find time for two ATCs, to the theme "B is for Bird" - one to swap on the Textile Challenges group and one for spare. With the gold background, they are a bit difficult to photograph, but I think you get the general idea.