A post from our international correspondent, Meghan.

Please tell me I’m not the only one that had a moment of heart stopping panic while dropping her daughter off at school for the first time.

Amid my delight at seeing her shining with excitement at the prospect of a proper ‘grown up’ adventure, there was a moment when I wanted to scoop her up and run for the forest. For a split second I had an alternative vision…far away from the real world, I would raise my kids in a cabin and we would live with simple authenticity. They would emerge as adults, full of wild beauty and quiet confidence to live whole and fulfilled lives having skipped all the crassness, the anxiety, the peer-pressure pit falls that the world throws at us from an increasingly early age, steadily replacing our wonder with hollow desire. My child would not be queuing up in front of Hollister, thinking her self-worth was to be found in a pair of jeans. My child would not be smoking behind the dustbins, vacant-eyed and nihilistic. My child would retain the wonderful vibrancy that I have cherished over the last (almost) five years. We would escape.

But of course I didn’t. Instead, I helped her hang up her coat on her peg and waved as she took her first steps into the world.

Anyone?

Ok, maybe I’m exaggerating a *tiny* bit, but still this milestone has hit me harder then I thought it would and has really left me questioning “The System”. Could those home-schoolers have been right all along?!

On the flipside, if she hadn’t started school, I couldn’t have made this!!

I didn’t grow up wearing a school uniform, but in Ireland/UK everyone does and there are some major benefits, namely, no arguments in the morning and a serious cuteness factor. So I made her school pinafore with this fabric and this pattern (view B).

Once again I can’t say enough about Oliver + s patterns. After tracing and cutting all the pieces it took me one evening to put together and it is full of little touches that give it a really professional finish.

But here is my favourite part.

It’s not a cabin in the woods, but it’s something.