Friday after the storm

Phew, what a week! I want to send big love to every parent with a child who found out this week where they are going to secondary school. Its such a tough process, full of fraught feelings, big stress & emotional roller coasters.
Finally we got our letter and divine inspiration came to our house. My daughter has a place at her second place. I am so so proud of her, she will be going to The Latymer school here in London and about 200o children tried to get into the schol(180 places only) and she did it!!!!!
Truely amazing achievement. Only it didn't seem as great a success as I had envisaged (don't get me wrong, I also worried that it would not work out at all). Her best friends are going to a different school and she is the only girl going to the school from her class. A bittersweet day with more tears than laughter. So, although hours spent working on papers and exam skills did pay off, I still feel it is an unfair process. All the able students who didn't quite make it. The refusals along the way were painful and hard to explain. I know, I too realise that learning to take refusals and rejections is a life skill and paints a realistic picture of real life. It is just so hard to watch your beloved child ache with regret and experience doors shutting in their face at such a young age. After all, you are a child for such a short period of your life. And let's face it adulthood is overated in so many ways.
I am one of the lucky parents and my daughter has the luck she deserves, she worked for it and sacrificed so many sunny afternoons, and snowy days but today finally when she looked at the school website she jumped up and down with glee and had moments of appreciating what a special school it promises to be.
I am filled with gratitude x

Well no post today (another night of worry to follow), dang the government for not investing in new schools so that all local schools are oversubscribed and those remaining are either church schools or selective schools where 2000 or more children are vying for 94 or less places. My daughter is coping with the stress of anticipation quite well, but thank goodness it is all nearly over. This process all began back in 2007 when she started preparing for exams and we visited the first schools. We finally applied for four selective state and two selective private schools. She has already been refused places at the two selective private schools & one selective state. She passed the first exams at the remaining state schools but we have hedged our bets and put down a total of 5 more choices because you just never know. Its all crazy if you ask me, she deserves to go to a very local good school. Plain and simple, but because of catchments and lack of being affiliated to a church, this is a nightmare. So, again, unti tomorrow. & so thoughts turn to the farm. Farm? I hear you say. Ok, calling it a farm is slightly ambitious as its actually an allotment. I have had the allotment for about 6 years now and this is the first year I am ahead of the game. I actually prepared quite a bit of ground and put several areas to sleep under groundcover and I will upload some pictures so you can see what it looks like. So I am busy as a bee checking out my seed packets and drooling over produce yet to come ;)

Make, sew, sow, grow

I am so excited. Having seen so many beautiful blogs, I am having a go. Todays the 1st March, St. David's day. A good beginning day, I think? Currently I have at least ten making projects on the go, more about them later.
Its a beautiful Spring day and here in Finchley its a very lazy Sunday. Talk about calm before the storm. We await a really important letter from Barnet Council to tell us which school my daughter has a place at (nail biting tension, gnash, gnash).
So to keep us calm, we have spent the afternoon cutting out cute rabbit patterns and developing ideas for our blogs, (yes, one each).
Next we have to work out how to put links to each other's blog. And how to add photos and things. We are still in love with cupcakes and trying to perfect the best cupcake frosting-so far, cream cheese and lemon zest takes some beating!
Until the big day!!