Shall I Tell You A Secret?

A really BIG secret?

Are you sure you're ready????

I'VE JUST HANDED IN MY NOTICE AT THE DAY JOB!!!!!!!!!!!

J

Can you tell that I'm pleased and rather excited?!

I've got a million and one things to do before I go at the end of December but I just want to dance about and sing!

I was planning to leave in the Summer as that'll be when Seren's gearing up to go to school and it'll be all change, so it seemed like a good time, but I've been getting more and wound up and stressed about not having enough time for every aspect of my life, so we've managed to work the finances out so that the kids can carry on at their nursery (with slightly reduced hours) and I will have 3 days a week to dedicate to the business come the New Year.

I am really looking forward to it as I get very frustrated to have so many ideas and not enough hours in the day to achieve even half of it!

Sorry for the lack of pictures and lots of waffle!

Happy Birthday to Me.....!

Morning campers (have various old Hi-de-hi lines going through my head today for some reason!)

So, today is my 1 year anniversary of selling on Etsy! I've had an incredible year and it has been getting better and better!

Here are some pics of the last year in the Grace's Favours household:

1st item made & sold - thankfully my photography's improved a bit since then!

The 1st campervan - now our most popular item!

1st attempt at a fascinator

A handmade birthday present

Kids modelling their crowns for the Jubilee

Learning to make fascinators properly!

New bear is MINE!

The latest campervan

I am part of some wonderful teams on Etsy, which has meant I've met some wonderful people along the way, all of whom are really supportive and friendly, which is invaluable when you're working on your own.

There is one person I couldn't have done any of this without and that's my lovely husband Brian, who not only provides all technical and graphics advice & support, but who also has taken on a much greater role in looking after the house and children - thank you Gorgeous!!

To celebrate Grace's Favours being 1 year old not only am I giving away a gorgeous Christmas Wreath but I'm also offering 20% off any item in the shop today only... so any early Christmas shopping you wanted to get started on will save you money too!

Updated Website

I've been trying to decide how to go about posting when I've not got much new to share with you... no-one likes a boring blog post, but I've realised it doesn't always have to be about new things that I'm making.

Today I thought I'd share with you my updated website:

I am so much happier to have pictures of all the things I've been creating over the last 10 months as opposed to the old holding pages I originally set up and never got round to changing!

I will probably need nudging though to keep the images fresh, so you'll have to shout at me if I don't do it from time to time!

London Bus – 3D and Cuddly!

My 21 month old son, Patrick is currently obsessed with Buses – from our kitchen windowsill he can be entertained for (what feels like) hours waiting for the next bus to go past, and then hollers at whoever is nearest that he’s seen a bus. This can be very entertaining (and noisy!) and it’s just as well that Gloucestershire County Council have just laid on a new bus route through our village!

We're actually heading up to London this weekend to stay with family, so a trip on a real London Bus is definitely in order, but in the meantime I decided that I would make him his own bus to play with. Given that he’s also very into cuddly toys (we have a collection that have to go to bed with him every night!) I am attempting to make it a 3D cuddly bus! I’m not quite finished with it yet, but here’s a couple of work in progress shots. 

If it works well, I’ll list it in the shop should anyone require one for their little motoring enthusiasts!

Easter Egg Hunt & The Gruffalo Trail

I hope you all had a lovely Easter weekend - we kicked off Easter Sunday with an Easter Egg Hunt (in our jammies of course!). Seren & Patrick LOVED their Easter Bunny Bags to put all their loot in, they REALLY LOVED all their chocolate and they were surprisingly impressed with Mummy's quickly made Easter Bunny Masks:

Then after plenty of chocolate had been consumed (or in Patrick's case, smeared all over his face, very enthusiastically!) we went off to the newly opened Gruffalo Trail at the Dean Heritage Centre and we all loved it:

 'Oh help, Oh no! It's a Gruffalo!'

  A lovely day out - definitely worth a visit if you are anywhere near the Forest of Dean!

Owl Brooches - a cute gift for Mother's Day

Hello? Is there anybody there?

Okay, well I'll assume there's hundreds of avid readers already (hey, a girl can dream, right?) and plough on! So for those of you who know me you'll know that Grace's Favours started last August (2011) and whilst it has not quite gone viral in that time (we've ascertained that I'm prone to the odd daydream already!), it's not doing badly at all and I thought a blog would be a nice addition.

So for my first post I thought I'd tell you about these owl brooches, which are a new line for the shop, just created this week and about to go up onto the etsy shop www.etsy.com/shop/gracesfavours and I think they would make a fab Mother's Day gift, which is of course just round the corner here in the UK (18th March)

What do you think of these little fellas? They can be made in any colour scheme, I think of the 3 so far the blue one is my favourite!



I created them because I needed a thank you present for a lovely member of staff at my childrens' nursery, who left on Wednesday and another lovely member of staff at the nursery who turned 21 at the weekend (so young... I think I vaguely remember turning 21!!). They were really fun to come up with and I love the way they each seem to have their own little personality!

Okay, I suppose now I'd better get on with listing these little critters onto the shop and try to stop my 3 year old daughter (Seren) from emptying out the entire contents of my sewing box onto the floor in an attempt to find something interesting to play with!