In which Lulu goes to nursery and her mummy has a wonderful day pottering gently and photographing new stuff for mirror mirror (including these wonderful new retro-patterned stacking eggcups from young designer Hannah Tofalos which make me feel happy inside). 
Not entirely sure what nursery is doing for Lulu’s future sanity, but it sure as hell is doing wonders for mine…
The Minx started nursery school this month. Two full days a week when I can focus properly on mirror mirror and have a bit of ‘me’ time.
Well in theory. I never once dreamed that my self-confident, independently-minded baby would object so strongly to being left in a big room full of fabulous toys, interesting babies and lovely carers.
Or that she would prefer the company of her frequently distracted and inevitably grumpy mother, who occasionally fits in a bit of absent-minded childcare between urgent emails, urgent phone calls and swearing at the buggy.
But object she does, and each day I’ve taken her to nursery she tugs at my heart-strings by weeping inconsolably and stretching her arms out for a hug before being carried away by the girls who look after her.
So my glorious, wondrous hours of time to myself come heavily tinged with guilt, even though every time I go to fetch her, I’m told that she’s had a wonderful day and has played happily after I’ve gone. Today, just to make me feel even worse, she sat in my arms when I collected her, looked around in solemn, somewhat bewildered, and slightly tearful fashion and then, very clearly, said ‘mamma’. For the first time ever. Minx.
Stuff I noted at Top Drawer…
Colours for Spring/Summer are beautifully clear and bright – coral and candy pinks; turquoises, teals, aquas and clear bluey greens; sunny yellows, lemon yellows; clear apricots and tangerines and touches of lilac
Loving it all. Need to shop.
Last week I pulled on my extremely filthy and decrepit-looking ugg boots – needed to wear the comfiest footwear possible – and made my way to Top Drawer, the big Spring trade show for high quality fashion accessories, homewares and gifts.
I was able to leave the Minx with her father on the Monday afternoon so could whizz round about half the show fairly efficiently. However, the standard was sufficiently high this year that I decided to return again on Tuesday, this time with a grumpy baby girl in tow. Who absolutely hates being in her buggy for any length of time and who had resolutely decided that an afternoon nap was not required. So I spent a large part of the show carrying a howling and snotty baby on my shoulder, while trying to talk to potential suppliers – the very picture of calm professionalism. Not. Embarrassed apologies once again to all those potential suppliers who had to put up with a shrieking child grabbing at the shiny jewellery on their stands (my daughter is definitely a ‘mirror mirror’ girl…)
Usually when I go to trade shows I gather all the bumpf together and then don’t look at it for several days in order to see which products stick in the mind and which I therefore MUST have. This past week I seem to have been thinking most about the gorgeous bags and small leather items from Angel Jackson and stunning crystal earrings from Darling It’s Perfect (just loving that name), so really hoping to be able to get them on the site soon.
The above pictures are from the Angel Jackson website and in no way represent what I looked like while walking round Top Drawer. Sadly.
Had the best possible start to the week with the Daily Mail featuring one of our gorgeous pistachio green Sage candles in its LIFEstyle pages. The not so good news was that the hosting company server crashed for part of the afternoon meaning that the website was down. Grrr….
I would so much love to move to another hosting company, but that would mean upgrading to the latest version of our shopping cart software – which would be a hugely complex (and therefore costly) technical exercise given the amount of customisation we have done. But we will have to bite the bullet and do it sometime this year as outages are immensely frustrating and I do hate to let down customers. Still, we did end the day with lots of yummy site traffic and some nice orders, and hopefully there’ll be a continued positive effect over the next few weeks – Daily Mail coverage tends to be pretty good for us.
One thing that came from the article was an invitation from the iTV daytime programme Loose Women to donate some candles as gifts for its celebrity guests. It’s the sort of PR which I’d love to do if there was more cash in the kitty – you never know what might come from something like that, but I’m not sure it makes financial sense this time round.
Sometimes I do think it must be nice to be a celebrity, to be inundated with gorgeous gifts just for doing one’s (not terribly onerous) job – maybe I should get some hair extensions and freakish plastic surgery and apply for this year’s Big Brother?
I’ve been thinking of doing this for some time, but have finally bribed the mirror mirror technical team (aka. my husband) sufficiently (don’t ask) to get this blog up and running.
It’s meant to be a place where I can ramble on about my darling business, my darling baby, the trials and tribulations of trying to run a darling business while looking after a darling baby, my style inspirations, my secret pleasures and just things which generally take my fancy. Which means it will probably end up being full of in-depth discussions of Strictly Come Dancing.
Of course it could also be the place where I reveal myself to be terminally uncool and tremendously dull, with a stilted and mannered written ‘voice’, and a sense of humour that no one understands.
Which actually, now I come to think of it, makes this whole thing rather daunting. Anyway, here’s a nice mirror-related picture to get things started.