Butcher Boy's Christmas Fayre

Are you in Glasgow and free on Saturday 11 December? Beat the usual festive rush at the shops AND get to see one of Glasgow's finest acts at the gorgeous surroundings of the Mitchell Library.

My friend (and former DJing partner in crime, fact fans) Alison has organised this event showcasing her band at the Mitchell in a couple of weeks. I'm going to try and make it over there, snowfall permitting, and the full details are as follows, below.



Time Saturday, December 11 · 11:00am - 4:00pm

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Location The Mitchell Library
North Street
Glasgow, United Kingdom

Join us in the beautiful Jeffrey Hall (top floor) for arts and crafts, home baking, face painting, raffles, and music from Butcher Boy and the Power Cut Choir.

The Fayre runs from 11am til 3pm.

Butcher Boy will play from 3pm til 4pm.

Entry is £1 for the Fayre only or £5 for the Fayre including the gig. Under-10s get in free!

All proceeds will go to the Beatson Institute and the Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice.

A long weekend at Craiglush

Every year around Thanksgiving time, I get away into the Scottish countryside for a long weekend together with my closest group of friends. This year we stayed in a lovely house with floor to ceiling windows over both floors, right on the banks of Craiglush Loch, near Dunkeld. For those of you who know your Shakespeare, we were right near Birnam Wood.

It was lovely to involve Amelia in our little annual tradition, and we managed to go the whole weekend without keeping everyone awake at night!

This is the view from our bedroom terrace every evening at sundown...

If anyone is interested in spending a weekend or a week at this lovely private location, drop me an email and I'll put you in touch with the friendly owner.

With all the extra hands available, I'm also delighted to report that I managed a little bit of knitting - it's a secret Christmas present project that I'll share with you all soon.

Just like Christmas

Oh I love receiving parcels from Haunt! Haunt is my favourite supplier of bathtime goodies - even more vital now that bathtime is my only me-time! Due to the immense popularity of Erin's wonderful shop, it now opens at limited times during the year, and I like to stock up while I can.

Haunt goodies are such a treat, you can smell the rich autumnal fragrances before even opening the package. To add to the Old Cidermill Glossing Oil, Golden Pumpkin and Coffee Scrubs, and Pumpkin Lavender soap I currently have lined up next to my bath, I picked up some of Erin's newer products.

Each product was individually wrapped with such attention to detail - even down to a wax seal on a sample of fragrance that Erin so kindly included as a gift. And of course the packaging is all on my favourite Autumnal colour spectrum, lots of lovely brown!

The soaps look good enough to eat, don't they?

And of course the joy of buying handmade is that everyone is just so lovely - as a repeat customer I love to be remembered, and as a mum, I love it when the littl'un is remembered too. Thank you so much, Erin!



I'll be back with some in-depth reviews of these products as I break into them - they are too good not to share. Bookmark Haunt's shop on Etsy now, so you don't miss out next time the doors creak open...

Glasgow Craft Mafia at Inver Cottage this weekend!

Read all about it over on the Glasgow Craft Mafia blog. It's a great place to visit - Inver Cottage is in a beautiful location and makes the best food ever - and getting a chance to do some early handmade Christmas shopping is a fantastic bonus!

Supermercado

I was so excited to go to the launch of Supermercado yesterday, bundling Amelia into the car in the hopes of catching up with some familiar faces and getting a head start on the Christmas shopping, too. Sadly it wasn't to be, and turned into a bit of a catalogue of disasters.

We set off on our girly shopping trip and headed for Glasgow's East End - I wanted to nip into our flat, and also had to visit a shopping centre to pick up a specific thing I'd meant to get on Tuesday and totally forgot. We checked the weather forecast and the football schedule before setting off at noon - kick off was 3pm and and it was supposed to be dry. The plan was - flat, shopping centre, park up at Glasgow Green and hit the Barras.

Halfway towards Glasgow, the rain started to descend by the bucket load, and I decided it was going to be too much of a pain to nip and in out of the flat - a five minute job had turned into a twenty minute pushchair/car seat rigmarole. So we headed straight for the shopping centre, did what we needed to and hit the road again. We eventually got parked up at the partially flooded Glasgow Green and right on cue, the rain started to let up a bit and I grabbed the baby backpack to save putting up the pushchair again. And then Amelia did a major technicolour yawn all over her clothes. There was no way we could continue shopping, and I learned a valuable lesson about keeping a spare change of clothes in the car for in future.

I briefly toyed with the idea of heading back to the shopping centre to pick up a spare outfit for Amelia, but it was five to three at this point, so instead of having a lovely walk and shop while the traffic cleared away, we ended up heading in the opposite direction, back onto the motorway and decided to make the trip to Supermercado another day. Possibly with back up in the form of Daddy, as our former local, West, is only across the way.

For more information on Supermercado, check out the Made in the Shade website, or visit the Barras!