It is the time of the year when I start to get in the mood for tidying and making changes to our life and home. Every year I do a clear out of my sewing shed, last year I painted the exterior too.

I love my shed. This year is it's 7th birthday! Can you believe it?

It is a little weatherbeaten and has a few multi-legged residence which I regularly vacate. But, it's had a few coats of paint inside and out and still looks bright and welcoming to me.

You can see it brand new here and in it's second home here. It now resides in it's third and final home on the Isle of Wight.

I really enjoyed having a day to myself to clean it out and rearrange it a bit. My lovely new shell picture from Everly Vintage is a new addition.

My philosophical looking hare, has been watching me these last few years but I can't bring myself to hang anything on those ears!

I'm also rather fond of my 1970's bamboo cocktail trolley 😂 Makes a nice spot for my fabrics and wool. By the way, I have moved all my fabric into storage tubs and keep them in the greenhouse to give me extra space (my fabric stash is ever growing!). I'm going to use these plain fabrics next, linen, double gauze muslin, canvas, jersey and vintage cotton sheets 👌

And a different chair! We found a stack of four at our last trip to Kempton market.

My bumblebee door knocker is the home to a happy spider, so don't knock it!

Next door is my mister's shed

and beyond that is our greenhouse!

You can see it new here.

We have just fitted in a little jewellery making bench for making samples for our company RUST Jewellery

Our main workshop is in London where we both go every two weeks, but sometimes I'd just like time to work on some ideas at home too. So this is a sort of scaled down workbench for light soldering and such. It is such a nice place to work, the light is very uplifting!

I had to put up some blinds so that the sun over heat anything. The wooden lamp stand is the mobile stand that both my children used on their cots!

I have my desk space for designing (and for cutting fabric too).

So that's the end of the tour 😂 Having extra workspace is perfect for us because we have a lot of different interests and love making things. And it's good to have some time by yourself too eh!

I have been a tad busy of late, I guess that has been reflected in my absence blog-wise. One of the reasons was because we have been working on our new garden studio greenhouse which we are all a bit over excited about! 

So the story is... we had a huge massive bush type shrub thing that we inherited from the previous owner. It was too big for us to prune, and it cast a big shadow over the bottom half of the garden (we have one of those long, thin gardens). We thought about a better way we could use the (valuable) space, and we also needed a nice place to work on designing jewellery and working on computers (my mister and I already have our own workshop sheds here and here).

We went to our local garden building place and had a look at what they had...then we saw this greenhouse and we ordered it straight away (we had a small 'windfall' of available cash at the time ; )

Their builders came and installed it for us, with a concrete base and gravel around it, all we had to do was lay a wooden floor (Nao did this) and just move in.

We added some shade for the ceiling, and power sockets via an extension lead so we can have lights, fan, heater, radio etc... The roof vents open automatically via a thermostat, so when it gets hot they open by themselves! so clever innit.

I put in a few toys so that when I'm with my kiddo, I can still attempt to get some work done. I generally try to avoid this, but sometimes I have to work suddenly, without notice.

I had a lot of fun collecting nice storage baskets and bits for my desk. my mister did the same ; )

I do have to have some boring things in there, like a printer, but I hid it under the desk.

The only problem we have are insects. At the moment it's fine but I know that in late summer we will be engulfed by crane flies, and I find them repulsive! (sorry crane flies, but it's true). I have some insect screening to put up, so i will see how it goes.

It's nice to have a desk next to my mister for a change, although we rarely will be working together, as we take it in turns looking after the nipper, so unless she can amuse herself with her toys, there will probably be just one of us at a time in here.

I love to look at it all lit up at night. It reminds me of a bar on some tropical island...pina colada anyone?