Feeling Frazzled, plus: a Fire

Today I have been sitting open-jawed and staring at images of the fire ravaging the pier at Weston-super-Mare. Just awful. This time last year (literally a year ago this week) here in Gloucestershire we were in the midst of serious flooding, power cuts, and 10 days without running water that had a huge impact on our local economy (tourism in particular) & I really feel for the business owners in Weston. The boyfriend and I had been thinking about a trip to the English seaside this summer anyway, so a visit there may be in order later in the summer...

Aside from thinking about fires and flooding, I've also been feeling a bit frazzled today thanks to not sleeping very well (seagulls having a party on our roof last night), getting up early (working a different shift today) and the crazy weather. Most of the day it was roasting hot - gorgeously, luxuriously, meltingly hot - and then this afternoon the heavens opened and we had a proper summer rainstorm, with thunder aplenty.

Yesterday though I was quite efficient: tidying up lots of stuff, making lots of lists, and beading lots and lots of poppies ready to make hairbands like this one In other news, I recently found the most fantastic poster for the days you just don't feel like keeping calm and carrying on:
Entitled "Keep Calm My Butt", these posters are the creation of Etsy seller Pearliemae. The Keep Calm phenomenon is an interesting one, I do love the original poster design dearly but it has become such a decorating cliche - especially now you can buy them all over Etsy and the rest of the internet and in colours to match any decor scheme, and attached to t-shirts, bags, mugs, hats, etc. Part of me was clearly longing for a poster commanding me to "panic and run away" so Perliemae's poster really made me smile. She's even got those modern ElleDecor-ish colours spot on. I think they'd make for a fab notecard set...

UPDATE: My poppy design is now available as a sewing pattern! Visit my shop to see all my printable PDF patterns