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| Mummy Nina Fox by Una Mummy Jackie Fox by Eve |
Mrs Fox is actually 2 people; Nina, mum to Una (10) & Louis (7) and Jackie, mum to Jackson (10), Eve (9) & Tom (7). Based in the UK we love creating things with and for our children.
We take commissions and sell our handmade creations at Mrs Fox's Handmade.
We create kid's craft boxes called Mrs Fox's Crafty Boxes to share and encourage creativity and develop crafting skills in big and little foxes alike.
We also create beautiful crafty parties for children through Mrs Fox's Party Boxes.
We are active members of the UK's parent blogging community. We write regularly on crafting with children for My Baba and are happy to honestly review products that fit with the style and ethos of our blog.
Email us if you'd like to get in touch; info@mrsfoxs.com.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF NINA 'FOX' AND ME
by JACKIE ‘FOX’
The first time I remember seeing Nina was when my primary school played rounders against her primary school. I don’t know why either of us should remember this but we do and when we started at senior school, I knew I recognised this girl.
We weren’t real friends for many years but had enough friends between us that I would smile ‘hello’ when passing in the corridor my way to a class.
We took O’level history together and I think we were seperated for having too much fun. But, it wasn’t until sixth form that our friendship really developed and I put her forward to model in a fashion show for the shop me and my sister worked in after school on account of her big shoulders! I’m sure I considered her to have a decent enough face and body but it was her shoulders that most impressed me. She became Saturday Girl at this shop and every Saturday, I would meet her for ‘lunch’ and we would sit in the park and eat M&S lemon and raisin cheesecake. We were very healthy back in those days.
After a year, I left sixth form for college and Nina stayed on but we carried on meeting for cheesecake and sometimes (though rarely) we went out together with mutual friends on a Friday or Saturday night.
Nina did well at sixth form and set off for Exeter University and we would write to each other with PEN AND PAPER (gosh!). When the holidays came around I would go and visit her at her Grans flat to have tea and talk rubbish while she stitched away, endlessly it seemed to me, at her patchwork quilt. I used to save scraps of fabric for her to cut up and include in this work, which she still has to this day.
Then one day, I borrowed my parents’ car to pick up Nina and off I drove to Heathrow – or was it Gatwick? – to get rid of her for a year or so. She had taken a ‘swap’ and was to spend a year at UC Berkeley. ‘Ta ra Nina!’ I stopped off there to stay with her for a month on my round the world travels and for several years thereafter, we were purely pen pals.
Although she spent 8 years in California after her degree, working and living a different life, we kept in touch and when she finally decided to come home, I and a load of friends just happened to be moving house and we added one more bedroom to the search.
During all this time, neither of us ever stopped making ‘things’. I was always making things – large papier mache animals, draught excluders, cushion covers, my own cards, etc. and so, it appeared, was Nina. She had been decorating boxes, hand making photo albums and customising clothes and so the list goes on.
She soon got a job producing at the BBC and I was working in the music industry, and we carried on house sharing. It was at the BBC that she met her Mr Fox and he moved in with us all too before the pair of them left to make a home together.
Some time later I found my own fantastic Mr Fox and one day during work hours, we were confiding on the phone… ‘Guess what? ‘What?’ I’m pregnant!’… ‘No way! So am I!’
We had our first ‘cubs’ a week apart. She had a girl, and I, a boy. I managed to pop another out between Nina’s first and second but her second is just 11 weeks older than my third – and all too perfect as it may seem… it actually is. Our respective Mr’s both get on brilliantly and we have spent and continue to spend, many weekends out on walks together and having sleepovers, not to mention the odd group holiday here and there.
After Nina’s second and my third, over the course of a year or two, we would churn ideas around, trying impossibly to think of a business that we could develop that would work around motherhood.
Most were utterly unrealistic but incredibly, on the same weekend, we came up with an idea each that might just work perfectly together. Just two ideas that seemed to marry well, just talk at first…
Working together could drive a wedge between old friends but the reality is to the contrary and being such old friends plays to our favour. We both understand the pressures and stresses of juggling the lives of often rotten little taskmasters and keeping the house a home.
We know each other well enough to vent off about things external to Mrs Fox’s and to allow each other some space in our working time together to get these things out and aired.
In short, we understand each other very very well. We know each others faults only too well (except I don’t have any!) and we recognise each others strengths. We can pick each other up when one of us is feeling bogged down and we can pull in the reigns when one of us gets carried away.
We are committed to doing the best we can for each other and Mrs Fox’s and ‘we’ are Mrs Fox’s.
PRESS:
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| Evie & Rex in Mollie Makes Issue 41 June 2014 |
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| Mrs Fox's mentioned in Sheerluxes.com |
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| Mrs Fox's Fergal Fox featured in January 2014's magazine |
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