Recycling, Up-cycling, Making do and Mending

It has been a mad week or two here.  I have had a load of theatre work on, which has meant busy days, long nights and working the weekends, and of course the promise of some pennies.  My poor little man has had to put up with a lot of "in a minute" and "not right now sweet pea, mummy is working", on the positive side he has enjoyed lots of fun trips out at the weekends with his Daddy.  There isn't a train or tram related attraction in the area that hasn't had a visit from my boys in the last few weeks.

In between all the hard work i have managed to get in a bit of creative stuff.  I found this rather groovy cloth kits style toy in a local curios shop.  Victoria Giraffe was still in her packet, pristine and un-cut.  Purists may have kept her this way, but not me.  At the orders of my little one i got out my shears and started chopping.  After a couple of hours stitching and stuffing she was done, she is a bit wobbly on her pins, as all new Giraffes are i'm sure, but i am a little bit in love with my £8 purchase.

 I have been making bits and bobs for a Christmas Fayre coming up and in true up-cycling fashion i have re-purposed this quirky poodle pinny into a useful messenger style bag.

 My other half has been spending his free time sorting out a window in our larder which used to be on an outside wall pre-building work.  he likes to do a proper job, so this has involved a lot of restoration work, sanding re-painting re-puttying etc.  This doesn't provide very exciting photos, so instead i thought i'd share our pics of our new kitchen light restoration.  We have had a set of the rather grubby looking spots in our kitchen since we moved in a good 10 years ago.  Apart from the fact that they have gone that funny yellowy white that all aged white items seem to go, they are also unbelieveably mucky.  I have tried to clean them, but the years of built up dirt dust and grease have made this an impossible job.  Were it not for the fact that one of  bulbs seem to blow every week we may have just continued to put up with them.  However, i found three lovely old bulk head lights for sale at the Fair on the green in Southwold over the summer, for the very reasonable price of £6 each so the 1980s spots have gone.  Mr Lulumama set about cleaning them up, sanding them down and giving them a new coat of paint inside and out.  They give off a much better light and look sooo much better than their predessesors, and its nice to know that we are re-using something that was made here(well in Scotland) possibly 50 years ago.