Hello

So here I am. Right at the beginning. A blank page. A vast empty void ready to be filled. But what to fill it with? Well how about I start by introducing myself?

Hello, I'm Kate. I used to work in fashion but I decided to give that up five years ago when my son was born. I loved my job, production manager for a small designer. It was a small group of lovely people, interesting work that changed throughout the season, and I enjoyed going in most days but it wasn't flexible. I decided when I had children I actually wanted to spend time with them, and that just wasn't going to happen with a demanding full time job that on a good day would mean getting home at 7.30! Also the cost of childcare really didn't make any sense- why would I slave away all week, not seeing my child for, what would amount to a few pounds a month- maybe enough for a takeaway? Nope I'm sorry but that just wasn’t going to work for me. I was lucky enough that my partner had a good enough job and an even better attitude that meant I could do work on bringing up our children. And I do mean work! I didn’t realize how hard it would be but I now look back on the baby days with rose tinted glasses. Hello, homework and playdates, stroppy bedtimes and reluctant school runs.

I love being lucky enough to spend time with my children, I have made so really lovely friends but it has also been quite lonely and hard sometimes. I do envy daddy going off to work to talk with actual grown-ups about grown up things. But I wouldn’t change it for the world.

So now my daughter is at preschool I have a bit of time to myself. I started to think about what I wanted to do with my life. Going back to being a production manager wasn’t an option- as much as the school run drives me crazy, I want to do it. I want to be there to pick them up. I want to spend time with them whilst they still want to hang out with me! I thought for a long time that I wanted to do something fashion related but then we were planning my son’s party and I had an idea.

My son is a pretty demanding party planner, he knows what he wants and it has to be perfect. For his 4th birthday he wanted a shark party and he wanted a shark costume so I looked online, showed him pictures but none of them matched the image he had in his head. He wanted a shark head bursting through his chest and the tail coming out of his back! So I bought a shark soft toy from ebay, unfortunately he spotted it before I cut it in half. He guarded that shark with his life, there was no way that damn soft toy was going to be his costume. So I took a pattern from it and made the shark body out of fleece and attached it to a t-shirt. It actually worked out pretty well because the front of the shark ended up being a puppet. But I digress.

The day after the shark party he started planning his next party- a whole year in advance! It was going to be a Lego party and that Lego party had to have a Lego brick shaped piñata! And so it began…