pretty paper. true stories. {and scrapbooking classes with cupcakes.}

ten more school days. it’s to so-close-you-can-taste-it level. next week is all workshops and trips and special guests, and then i have just one final week of regularly scheduled lessons to get year 9 to do something coursework worthy on wuthering heights. then it’s summer. {which means i need to do the lesson planning for summer school, but let’s not talk about that right now. it’ll ruin the mood.}

this week we discovered there is a very sensible reason for the rejection of july as national frosting month. wednesday night was exceedingly hot and the butter kept splitting from just stirring it. now i understand why there is crisco in kansas. this was the third try, with much refrigeration and an ice pack under the mixing bowl. sheesh.

purple because we were finishing this year long leadership course that is so corporately branded in purple, it’s just amusing. the course has been worth it just for the entertainment value—it was a lot of familiar american total quality management theory and analysis of emerging styles of leadership. the reading list included 7 habits and that book i can’t remember the name of that is all about a family owned coffee cart chain in seattle. at the start of every course workshop, we had to go through our ground rules. these started with everything is confidential and nothing leaves this room. it’s probably a good thing i was never called on to review the ground rules, because i don’t think i would have had the will power to say anything aside from the first rule of fight club is you do not talk about fight club, and the second rule of fight club is you do not talk about fight club. this was immensely funny between two of us on the course and no one else even pretended to get the connection. as part of the finish, we had to present our work, and my work included cupcakes, so i brought evidence. evidence is important when giving a presentation, right? and it’s better when the audience can eat the evidence quite happily. oh yes, and the other part of the entertainment value? it’s not a presentation, it’s a learning conversation. yes, a conversation in which one person must speak for ten minutes from their own outline. i can see so much conversation in that.

actually, it wasn’t as rubbish as i make it sound…but i did find it comical from start to finish. and now i have a certificate to prove i made it through. it’s purple, of course.

plus, i need your help
i’ll be in atlanta from the 25-30 of july.
tell me where i need to shop, please.
thank you.

and this is especially for cheryl:

and here i was, still believing that elvis lived in salina. turns out he emigrated. and he had a girlfriend! i’m sure the presley girls would not be impressed.

xlovesx

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i’m still not too sure where last week went. but that is okay once in a while. saturday was a bit more civil, as we trucked off to leeds castle for the open air concert they do in the summer. it was surreal to see it from this side of things…the last time i went i was singing with the brighton festival chorus who i dearly miss but then again i don’t live in brighton anymore! we had a divine picnic including these cupcakes {click through for recipe info} and butternut quiche and pimms. there were hot air balloons, fireworks and spitfires in the sky to join up with the 1812 overture and a very pretty sunset.

all these things are silly but lovely and pretty much i just wanted to say hi.

and there are now just four more weeks of school.

xlovesx

this is ugly steve.

steve is very, very ugly, but he has a heart of gold. and he is something both red and blue to end colour week. he also makes sure i have nothing in my wardrobe should i be asked to become a spice girl at any time in the future. these are all good things.

this has been a lovely weekend. and that means a lot.

and just because i didn’t say hello on thursday, i’ll show you this, which isn’t ugly like poor steve.

cherry brandy cupcakes. {& for ariel, the frosting is like this: let butter go soft. mix in a bunch of powdered sugar. add a little bit of cherry juice – the brandy is in the cake, not the icing – and some food colouring. then go shop for insulin!}

xlovesx

you know, i did warn you about the epic proportions of the log cabin issue. so don’t be all surprised that they keep cropping up. this one is going overseas to live with a very tough critic in topcity, kansas.

her name just might start with the letter b.

{also, since the rest of, well, england was watching the england match, we went to the gorge. it is beautiful tonight. locals: go for a walk!}

xlovesx

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So i may not have a blue room, but i do have a room that is sometimes pink and sometimes black and white. and it has room for pillows.

all the glory of having last week off from school, away from stress and free to make stuff and read books, came crashing down on monday in the most royal fashion. i am down staff for september and they are unlikely to be replaced. i had the option of hiring a temporary teacher who has never been to england and is actually a history teacher who has never taught below age 16 (we are 11-16) and i chose not to ask her for an interview. some people thought this was very stupid of me and i should have just hired her, but i have no interest in returning to the rotating door this place once was. so i had many a demanding meeting, left the room on a few occasions when patronised and generally had to remind people that i don’t settle for rubbish. i still have many a task left unfinished for the week (namely proofreading the team’s year 7 reports and reporting the year 10 exam grades) but by today i seem to have people back in my corner, or at least admitting that i am making sense. this is all good.

exam season is also over for me now! the last year 11 paper was thursday afternoon. for some reason, my year 11 boys came to class today anyway. when i was out of the room they left me a goodbye note on the board and i kept it there all day. they have been an amusing class and taken a lot of sarcasm from me—including one boy in the front row who now answers to ‘weasley’ because he could be any of ginny’s elder brothers—and i do regret that i only had them for one year of the two year course. they had the revolving door the first year and when i took them over it was pretty much starting from scratch. one loaned me a copy of big fish on dvd last week because it is his defining film. i tried and tried to think of what would be a reciprocal defining film of my life at sixteen—beks still has my copy of reality bites and rocky horror didn’t seem quite right—so i told him to watch benny and joon and make a toasted cheese sandwich. apparently he didn’t like the idea that the waitress was clarice. i had never thought about that.

so now the weather is shockingly summery (though last week i wore a million layers every day) and at least the weekend is stress free so now i can start my first commissioned pillow. it’s pink and purple and should be up tomorrow—so jen, don’t let bailey look, ok?

xlovesx

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i don’t even think i went long enough in between for this to be considered a relapse. so i’m just going with it.

i started out with blues because i had someone in mind for this pillow…if i could get it right enough to gift away. but i think it ended up too contemporary for the person i had in mind…so i’ll need to rethink. i don’t have a blue room in my house. but i think my experimental phase is ironing out some kinks…no bubbles in the quilting, the finishing is generally better than the first one. so it’s all good. i hope…giftable, you think? if the recipient has a blue room? got to come up with a more classic combo for the original giftee. but this one has a poly pillow instead of the feather ones i have…it is so much lighter, so now i don’t have to worry about putting them in the post.

xlovesx

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my name is shimelle. and i am a log cabin pillow addict.

{go on. wave and say hello. you know you want to.}

see, i only just to the realisation that i am a log cabin pillow addict. {clap. or at least nod your head and smile.} because before today, i’d never made one. so surely i could not become an addict in the course of just one day. no, i couldn’t.

it came from months of watching beautiful log cabin pillow posts by lisa, queen of log cabin pillows. seriously lovely stuff. i had to check every day to see if there were any new pillows. and then she stopped making pillows to prepare for her art exhibition. i kept checking, thinking she would relapse and make a pillow just for fun. she didn’t. so today, as her exhibition opens, i decided i was so in need of log cabin goodness that i would just have to make one.

and that is why i am here today.

the back is solid purple and tied with sage green ribbons. i like the badges so much i am considering making them for every soft furnishing in my flat. except they aren’t that comfy really, but i still like them. and anyway, i realised about half way through why i love these pillows so much: they are sewing with maths. putting the pieces together was like a geometry proof. seriously, i would make round ones just so i could sew with pi.

{and in all seriousness, the pillowsanonymous malarkey was a signal to marianne that i have finally finished reading dry, which she finished in like two days. hurrah for pighead. pighead is the best. ?}

xlovesx

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i was working on anne’s ‘self-portrait’ journal when we spent an art-girl weekend at sherwood forest. this was just past my just started phase—when i’ve got the main stuff where i want it and take the time to figure out what details i want elsewhere. except anne was THERE. and she loved it just like THIS. so to me, it’s still unfinished…but maybe that’s quite appropriate for a self-portrait?

interestingly, this is much more like my style of years ago, when i was in love with white space, except what isn’t white isn’t quite so minimal as it was then. never know what this is going to cause.

photos by tami – december 2004. if you live in that lovely suburban mecca that is kansas city, you should have your pictures taken. she’s amazing, she is.

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