Scented Sweetpeas

Sew crazy :-)

2012-02-10T14:00:00.000Z

Thanks very much for all your get well wishes on my last blog post. My arm is getting a bit better sometimes and then worse others but I am sure with time it will heal. I suppose it doesn't help that I can't just sit down and do nothing - if I am watching tv I have to be creating at the same time.

One of my creations this week includes this little lovely which was designed by Lili Popo. Quite a few of us are taking part in her princess embroidery group. We all get sent the same design and then add it to flikr to see how we all interpret it. This is my little princess:

I really enjoyed creating her and the creative paths it took me down in my head :-) She just had to have some daisies somewhere and some Mary-Jane shoes.

I also created this brooch for me last week. It took a while cutting out all the felt shapes which then sat there for a while whilst waiting to have time to create it ....

I added beads in the middle to add some sparkle to it :-)

I also had a go at free-style embroidery on the machine recently - oohh what fun it is, I did manage to break one needle though.

I was rather pleased with the result of my first attempt until I looked on the reverse ......

I then thought I might be because I had the hoop the wrong way up for this technique but it didn't make a difference when I tried again. I tried to tighten the tension but think I may have to play a bit more to get it right.

With my love of sewing at the moment I invested in a thread sorter - it is so much easier finding the exact thread I need for a job now and all the colours look delicious in their little box.

Whilst on a sewing frenzy I also created some new hairclips - I have wanted to create some butterflies for some time but wanted to make them look like they had just landed on the clip. This is what I came up with. I was really pleased when I listed them on my facebook page and they went within a few minutes of me putting them on there :-)

As my page is getting more busy I ordered myself some Moo Cards - I have seen other peoples cards and just had to have some myself :-) I ordered quite a few designs - I love the way you can upload so many images to the site to get them printed off.

The only draw back of facebook and blogging is that you find so many tempting things out there. I am trying very hard to be good as I really want to get rid of my mortgage before I am 40 having had one since I was just 19 but some things just keep on calling me ! Luckily with Christmas I got some money so I bought myself a lovely new Amber necklace from Giraffe Jewellery. Actually this was Bears Footprints fault as she had one of these and I fell in love with it, luckily she gave me permission to get one too :-) It came packaged in some lovely giraffe print paper and a cute little box.

I also bought this lovely keyring for my eldest Sweetpea. He is getting into beekeeping so I asked Pippa to put a little bee on it. This is his first house key, now he is at secondary school he can let himself in when he gets off the bus - oh how he is growing up :-( It has been quite hard seeing him go off on the bus in this snowy weather we have been having here. I have always been the one to look after him and keep him safe and now I have to trust a stranger to drive him to school on a big bus safely - all part of slowly letting him go I suppose.

Talking about snow, we have had lots of the lovely white stuff.

The chickens weren't sure about it at all ! It took them days to come out of their shed.

The children loved it and I am so glad it fell on a Sunday here so they could play in it all day long. They made a snowman with the traditional carrot nose .........

But then Charlie took a liking to it when my back was turned for 20 seconds :-)

We were snowed in so I couldn't get to work either which was lovely (although I love going to work so missed my usual Sunday fun at the same time).

Better be good and go now I suppose as my arm is aching - little Sweetpea has fallen asleep in it :-) Thanks for popping by and all your lovely comments x

Keeping cosy but still having fun outside :-)

2012-02-02T13:54:00.000Z

It is chilly here in the UK at the moment (well not as chilly as over in places like Russia or Canada but chilly for our standards :-)). This week the temperatures have been going down to -10 degrees in some areas so I have been keeping the woodburner going non-stop and to save a few pennies I have been popping my kettle on top and enjoying waiting for the whistling sound to call me.

Now I don't usually like cold weather but I have been looking forward to some frosty weather so I can have a play with ice :-)

Some time go I saw an idea for making your own ice art. As soon as the icy weather was upon us I rummaged through the cupboard for a nice flat based dish and rummaged through the garden for some arty items :-)

I chose some lovely fennel seed heads and holly berries. I popped them out over-night and waited until morning came to see if my creations had been created for me by Mother Nature.

They look so pretty swinging in the gentle wind - like rubies set in glass.

I love how they look against the sky and with the sparkle they create when the sun reflects off them. Little Sweetpea has loved this experiment too, she has bought them in and sat then near the fire to see how they melt slowly. She then popped bits of ice on her hand and is amazed by how it melts because of her body temperature. She turned to me and told me how it was 'magic' - she is right :-) Obviously I told her why it was melting and how but I like the idea of it being magic. PS if you are doing this with your children please be careful which berries you use, I was very careful to keep an eye on my little one as I didn't want her eating holly berries and being sick.

Another thing making me smile this week is Eldest Sweetpea running past the window with batons of wood. What was he up to? When I asked he told me he was making a bee hive. He is hoping some of Mr Sweetpea's honey bees will see the new home he has made and move house :-) I went out to the shed and this is what I found. He has even carved an entrance hole out for them and put wire mesh on - oh how I love his DIY ways - it makes up for his hormonal outbursts :-)

Middle and little Sweetpea have been busy looking after the chickens. The chickens are still enjoying pottering around the garden, I don't think my hellebore's are enjoying them being out though :-( We had one chicken jump up at our dining room window yesterday, goodness knows how it got there as it is all locked off. She was so happy to be re-united with her mates and they were very happy to see her too - you could hear them clucking about her arrival.

I had better be off , I am afraid I am not allowed on the pc as much at the moment due to being diagnosed with tendonitis :-( I have been told to take ibuprofen 3 times a day and to limit things that exasperate it. I will keep reading blogs and love reading your comments too but please forgive me if I don't respond or comment as much as usual.

Take care
Zoe
xxxx

Goodness me .......................

2012-01-27T13:15:00.001Z

Goodness me, can it already nearly be the end of January? It seems that in a blink of an eye we have shot past from Christmas and a whole month has nearly past by :-( I have also realised that it is 2 years since I started blogging! oohh I do love this blog world, full of inspirational people - thanks for being here and reading my little blog , it really does warm my heart when I read your comments. Hhmmm I think I will have to have a little giveaway soon to celebrate :-)

So what have I been up to the last few weeks? Well ages ago, October in fact, I bought some tulle to make little Sweetpea a tutu for her birthday. October came and went and on Christmas Eve I decided to create her tutu for her. It turned out really well and she loves it as you can see :-)

Little Sweetpea mid-jump :-)

I created it with white tulle, sparkly glitter tulle and bright pink tulle. I then added some apple green ribbon and a bright pink ribbon bow at the back.

She loved modelling this on my bed, leaping all over the place and dropping sparkles everywhere. I went to work the next day covered in glitter, no one was really surprised though as they are used to me now :-) She is such a girlie girl which is rather lovely after having an older son and daughter who only wears trousers. If you want to make one I used this tutorial and bought the tulle from here.

For the Making Winter project this month I thought I would share something I made a little while ago to use up my glut of tomatoes. The recipe came from the River Cottage Handbook no 2 of Preserves - I love this book :-) I made my tomatoes into roasted tomato passata.

Basically I roasted the tomatoes with garlic, shallots (so many that I wore goggles when cutting them all up :-)), rosemary, salt, pepper, sugar and oil and then took the skins off the tomatoes (they just peeled off when they were cooked). I then popped it all in the blender to puree it and jarred it up in sterile jars.

It made the most lovely pasta sauce and was also fantastic as a pizza topper. I will definitely be making this again next year !

Talking of tomatoes, I miss my little veggie patch and can't wait to get out there in the Spring. I have been letting the chickens roam free in the winter sunshine. They love pottering around the garden (I just hope my hellebores aren't to their taste !) and I do love going outside and them walking around with me :-)

A week or so ago we had gales here and my garden looked a little worse for wear! Luckily the fences just missed our little stand alone chicken run - the other chickens were also safe and sound in their shed.

I have also been busy in my little facebook shop. I now have over 1000 likers which I am really chuffed about - I can't believe so many people like my little creations :-) The above creation is a hairclip holder custom made for a customer - it is nice when people push you to create new things, it pushes you out of your comfort zone a bit :-) Do pop over and say hi here, would love to see you there if you are on facebook.

By the way, talking about the joy of blogging, if you used to follow my sons blog, just to let you know, it is no more :-( Blogger took his blog off him as apparently he is too young!? It was wondeful for him as it was a way of him creating a little diary and helped his literacy and IT skills but for some reason you are not allowed one until the age of 13 - not sure why. He was so upset poor dot. Thanks to everyone who took the time to visit him and comment though. xxx

More Christmas Creations .......

2012-01-10T21:39:00.000Z

Apologies if all this belated Christmas blogging bores you but I want to document it for the children when they grow up :-) I had wanted to blog sooner but as all of you lovely bloggers keep adding wonderful new blog posts I get carried away reading and then run out of time to write one myself.

The Christmas trees went up in our house a little sooner than I wanted this Christmas as the girls really wanted to put them up (eldest Sweetpea wasn't really interested this year :-(). I usually put off putting up the trees for some reason but then hate taking them down - I miss all those twinkly fairy lights :-(. I put the lights on and then let the girls freestyle it :-)

They really enjoyed themselves ...... of course there was a breakage or two but that is all part of it isn't it :-)

They did a really good job and I did my best not to re-arrange anything.

Mr Sweetpea had a real urge to buy a real tree that he can plant out in the garden and then bring in again each year so we also had this tree:

Now I must confess to finding it hard not to re-arrange this one but I kept my hands to myself :-)

We lent our coloured lights to the cubs tree in the Church's festival of light this year so these came back to us after the trees were put up. Middle Sweetpea asked if we could have them over the fireplace and they looked lovely, in fact so lovely I have only just taken them down.

One thing I haven't taken down is the pom pom garland I made, ooohh I love it :-)

On the run up to Christmas I did quite a few creative things with the children to keep them entertained. Last year I bought a gingerbread house kit for us all to make. Before the children devoured the gingerbread I drew around the shapes so we could make a gingerbread house this year from scratch. I found a wonderful recipe here and it worked really well.

We added a stained glass window by cutting a hole in the gingerbread and putting a boiled sweet in it. I also had to add a little birdie sitting on the roof :-)

Carrying on our creative week we made my Grandad Pete (the sweetpeas Great Grandad) some gnomes out of Fimo. Grandad loves gnomes and still has some of my old fimo creations from when I was a child so I thought he may like some of the children's fimo creations :-)

Here they are:

these two are middle Sweetpeas creations - love the one holding the flowers. Eldest Sweetpea made the toadstool and axe and wood block to go with his gnome below:

Eldest Sweetpeas in on the left and little Sweetpeas on the right (loving the extra long arms, she went a bit white spot crazy too, oh and that pink on the front is his beard :-)).

Of course then I had to make one too :-)

Here they are in their new home. I popped them into one of my trustee coffee jars and needle felted them some grass to sit on. Little Sweetpeas had to sit on top as the gnomes long arms would't fit into the jar :-)

For the great Nannies little Sweetpea got to work and planted some hyacinths for them. We are very very lucky that the Sweetpeas have 4 great grandparents living locally. It is always hard to know what to buy them but I know the Nans all love flowers - here is my lovely Nan gardening with the Sweetpeas earlier in the year (I hope you don't mind me popping this on here Nan but I did love this photo of you gardening with the Sweetpeas xxx - Nan is high tech you know and reads by blog and e-mails me :-)).

Here is little Sweetpea hard at work, she loved planting these up :-)

Whilst creating and looking for gifts I got a little side-tracked and bought myself something. I just had to share these with you as they are so gorgeous! I had been wanting some of these little birdies for ages and talked myself out of them until I could resist no longer. They came beautifully packaged in a little box.

Just look what was hiding in the green tissue paper......

Such cute birdies which I can hang around the house ....

With gorgeous ribbon tails .....

They came from the lovely Linen Cat, do pop over and see her shop - she makes the most amazing things, not only birds but other wonderful things like a Fox in a Dandy Green Suit - just stunning. See that extra little pink bird, that little birdie was a lovely surprise which now lives with my Mum. I showed my Mum these lovely birds when they arrived and she ooohhed and aahhhed over them as much as I did so I gave her one to have in her home as she loved it so much.

Sorry for such a long post, I have got a bit carried away as I had to stop and start it a few times today and then added more. I will show you what happened to those pieces of linen hidden in my bedside drawer a few posts back in my next blog post :-)

Wow we are in 2012!

2012-01-03T10:39:00.000Z

I can't believe another year has gone past, time really does seem to be speeding up and I can't find the pause button!

We had a lovely Christmas full of love, laughter and creating things. I must confess to not being a lover of Christmas, I usually find the run up to it rather stressful and I get annoyed about the commercialism of it all. I am not particularly religious but I really do think that Christmas should be about the meaning of Christmas and not about buying huge mounds of food, buying hundreds of pounds of stuff that people may not want and buying a new sofa (what is it with all those sofa adverts?) :-) There is so much pressure when you turn the radio on, the tv on or even via schools to spend spend spend - why?

With this in mind I tried to avoid the shops at all costs this year. This meant making more items or buying from artists who put love into creating what they sell. I didn't get away with buying all presents this way however :-( Eldest Sweetpea wanted a TV which we all clubbed together to buy him (although he doesn't watch it as much as I thought as he says he gets lonely otherwise - that solved my worry about him hiding away in his room :-)), middle Sweetpea wanted a Hamster (she cried when she realised what was hidden under a blanket as I had insisted no more animals in the house) and Little Sweetpea wanted a scooter (so now I only see her in a blur scooting past me most of the day). Also for my music loving Dad my sister and I got him a deck which you transfer your vinyls onto your pc - I am sure he will have hours of fun with that (he has hundreds of vinyls). Unfortunately all of these items are beyond my creative skills :-(

I did however manage to make a few things shown below:

From this felted wool jumper ...

I created a purse/make up bag for my Sis, she loves anything with a tash on so I added that on it for her :-)

This was quite hard to create being my first attempt at making anything with a zip and also the wool for very thick so I couldn't manage to line it. I filled it with some orange hairclips that she 'liked' on my facebook page and a pair of turquoise earrings made by Red Bird Jewellery.

For my Mum I made a linen lavender pillow for her bed:

It obviously had to have the 'I love you this much' tag added to it as that saying comes from her :-)

I backed it with Amy Butler fabric. I also had some earings made especially for her by Red Bird Jewellery following a conversation I had with Mum re some earings she saw that she liked last year - she couldn't find those particular earings again so I had them made for her instead :-) ohh and I found her some wine glass holders that you can pop into the grass so your glass doesn't get knocked over - perfect for our Friday afternoon wines with the children running around us :-)

I will share our (I got the children involved too) other creations with you in my next post as the children are now calling me :-) I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and I would like to wish you all a very happy, healthy 2012.

Take care
Zoe
xxx

More creating and a new member of the family

2011-12-20T19:49:00.003Z

We have been creating in the Sweetpea household again over the last few days. I find that if I keep the children busy making things there is less time for them to wrestle with each other :-)

I thought I would share some of our creations just in case some of you wanted to have a go. Firstly we made bird feeders in the form of pine cones covered in lard and seed. Firstly we melted some lard.

oohh that stuff smells so yucky when you melt it ! We then tied some raffia to the tops of the pine cones to form a loop so they could be hung up.

I poured the melted lard into a cup and we dipped to pine cone into it.

When the lard had built up after a few dips we rolled them in bird seed - didn't get a photo as it got a bit messy at that stage (the kids really loved that part as you can imagine :-)).

We then hung them on the trees, they look really pretty hanging up, we hope the birds love them.

I also cut some strips of brightly coloured paper so that the children could make paper-chains, they love making these.

They really enjoyed this and spent ages sticking them together - even little Sweetpea created one (although it was a slightly different design to the traditional style paper-chain bless her).

They look lovely stuck up around the house.

Another item that is now hung up over the fire place is a pom pom garland. A friend of mine lent me her pom pom makers, wow these are fab! They make pom pom creating so much quicker, they might not be as full as the original style pom poms but they still look great.

I love our new fluffy garland !

Just had to pop this picture in too as I love the coloured lights over our other fireplace, they let off a lovely colourful glow :-)

And now for the new member of our family, here is Spike the hedgehog. He was found on a dog walk the other night and when we weighed him at home we realised he was too small to be out in the cold. We are feeding him slugs and snails which he pounces on (I never knew that hedgehogs pounced!). Eldest Sweetpea is out most mornings looking for slugs for him. He is putting on weight and seems very content. Unless a hedgehog does look too small to be out or is out in the day I wouldn't recommend moving them. We only picked up Spike as he couldn't get up a curb and looked far to small to be out and about.

Just in case I don't get to blog again I would like to wish you all a very relaxing and lovely Christmas and New Year. x

Oohh I nearly forgot to leave you with a festive photo of me ........

Little Sweetpea wouldn't wear this for the nativity party at 'Little Lambs' so of course I stood in :-) Do my ears look big in this photo ? :-)

Luckily my mates are just as crazy, we were the only ones dressed up (BearsFootprints is below if you read her blog - oohh she will love me for this :-)).

Creating during winter ...... Quince and Felt

2011-12-15T18:52:00.001Z

I thought I would take part in Thrifty Household's and Silver Pebble's Making Winter. I too am not really a winter lover, I hate the pewter grey skys and the cold, I hate that I can't get out into the garden to potter and earth myself and what I hate most of all are the dark mornings :-( So here goes with a bit of creativity to see if that helps lift my spirits :-)

A month or so ago I took advantage of my neighbours Quince tree and made some Quince Jelly from the book below. I love this book, it is full of wonderful recipes ....

Image taken from Amazon site

I started off by roughly chopping the Quince. This fruit has the most wonderful smell, it smells like flowers until you cut it and then it smells like pineapple. When you stew it it then changes to the scent of apples.

I then stewed them ....

I hung them to drain off over night, I was going to make a net fruit bag but got this off e-bay for cheaper than I could create one in the end :-)

You then re-boil the liquid with lots of sugar until it becomes syrupy in consistency . I did find I had to squeeze a lemon into it to get it to change more quickly although Quince are meant to be high in pectin.

I then sterilised some old coffee jars and jarred the jelly up.

It is a really lovely taste, sweet with a summery flowery taste .... hmmm I can't really describe it. It goes really well with strong cheese or pork. Here it is on a plate with some of my friends piccalilli :-)

I think I will make smaller jars next year as less is more with Quince Jelly.

I have also been playing with Merino wool with the children and had fun wet felting and needle felting with them.

Here are some little felted acrons I made :-)

Here are the children's.

After chatting the a lady who created gorgeous felted scarves about creating a tortoise in a walnut shell (she must have thought I was a little bonkers :-)) she suggested a pin cushion would be great too - she was right, I love this little pin cushion :-)

And then of course there are my son's (right) and my tortoises made out of walnut shells :-)

There is something else I am creating but that will have to stay secret for a little while longer .... this is the scene in my sock drawer (away from prying little eyes :-)).

A big smile on my face ... :-)

2011-12-10T12:51:00.000Z

This morning I woke and decided to sit with a coffee in bed and catch up on some blog reading. I was happily reading away and then noticed a blog update with the above image in my feed. OOOhh I recognise that, I thought.

My darling son was down stairs creating blog posts selling his fimo creations :-) How sweet is that! I think I might have to buy one :-) Just had to share that moment on here as it really did make me smile :-)

Pop over and have a nose at http://spontaneous-science.blogspot.com/ x

Thanks and Happbee Birthday....

2011-12-08T14:53:00.001Z

Thank you for all your lovely comments on my last blog post, it is so nice to know I am not alone in needing space sometimes. I have started digging in the garden in preparation for a hobbit house - well I can dream can't I :-) Oohh just think how cosy it would be ....

This week seems to have been better, I went to work on Sunday which helps I think as it gives me some space to be me. It was rather a sad day in many ways at work with death all around me (I work in a hospital) but also nice in a way that I could help just a tiny bit by listening to peoples worries and be there to hold a hand or two (the power of holding someones hand is amazing - it always surprises me just how much comfort someone can get from that simple human gesture).

Well back to this blog post, went off an a tangent then :-) Mr Sweetpea was a whole 40 years old the other weekend so I took Sunday off work (hence my need for space lol). We went out to Ely to potter around as a family which was lovely. We had wanted to go to Spain but at £2000+ for last min tickets that idea went out of the window.

I made him a belated birthday cake due to a silly cold I had. He wanted a bee cake to go with his new hobby of beekeeping. Can you see middle Sweetpeas Queen Bee on the right ? It was fun to make if not a little stressful with the eldest Sweetpea deciding to throw freezing cold water over the girls in the bath whilst I ran down to pop a couple of the flowers I had cut on to the cake. Yes I was cutting icing flowers outside the bathroom so I could keep an eye on them in the bath, I left them for about 30 seconds and it all kicked off - Mr Sweetpea was on lates at work :-(

Here are the bees, I thought you may like an update on them. In the winter you have to give them sugar water to try and keep the hive numbers up as there is not much nectar and pollen around in the garden.

Mr Sweetpea then put a hive top feeder on so they could stay in the warm hive and feed in there. This meant going in to the hive ....... eeekkk. He got his kit on and got the smoker ready .....

When it was smoking enough he went to the hive .....

He then puffed the hive with smoke and stood back for a while. He learnt a valuable lesson from last time he went in to the hive - slow and steady wins the race :-) You have to smoke the hive and leave it for a few minutes, re smoke and do that until they all calm down. The reason for this is that if they get smoked they assume there is a forest fire, they rush in to the hive to suck all their honey up and then they get a sugar rush which makes them dozy. I always thought it was the smoke creating a lack of oxygen that did it but you learn something new every day !

He then went in and took the current lid off and replaced it with a feeder lid. We knew the hive numbers had grown but look what they had created on the lid - isn't it wonderful.

So pretty to look at! We have yet to open it up for its honey :-) Some of the bees have already died away due to the cold weather, this is quite normal but still rather sad seeing them dead in front of the hive :-( I hope the winter isn't too harsh for them.

Thanks for reading my ramblings, sorry they have been rather moany of late - parenthood is hard sometimes isn't it. I know where I am with babies, I find them so easy but this hormonal time the kids are going through is a whole new ball game :-s

Take care
Zoe
x

Looking for a hideaway .....

2011-11-28T18:58:00.000Z

Image from http://www.littlehouseinthevalley.com/recycled-residences

Thanks for all your wonderful, supportive comments on my last blog post. It seems a lot of us Mums could do with a bolt hole away from the madness of family life :-) I have therefore been looking for a property for us all :-) Just think how wonderful it would be to hide away in one of these places. Love the hobbit house (or cob house as they are known) above.

http://justbesplendid.tumblr.com/page/8

Or how about a little Gypsy Caravan ....

http://www.shedworking.co.uk/2009/04/strawbale-garden-studio.html

A cute little garden studio, we could use a hammock as a bed :-)

http://www.ecofriend.com/entry/archipod-s-garden-pod-serves-as-a-sustainable-office-in-your-backyard/

A cute little pod that looks like some sort of bird creature .....

http://vintagerosebrocante.tumblr.com/post/5490921564/livethekingdomlife

Or a converted, very pretty garden shed .....

http://shropshirescrappersuz.blogspot.com/

Or maybe a Camper just like the ones shown on Suz Place's blog ....

We could all club together and buy somewhere where we could run away and just be 'me' for a while. We could do something creative, read books, potter around the garden or even just snooze without interruption :-) We could have a rota so that we all got away for a couple of nights every few months. Oooohh what a dream (this dream is taking place whilst Eldest Sweetpea is asking me a mathematics equation :-S)! One day, one day I will have a little space of my own but I probably won't NEED it then :-)

Sorry for all the dreaming :-) The Sweetpeas were meant to go to their Nan and Grandads this weekend just gone but none of them wanted to go in the end :-( Mr Sweetpea was 40 so we wanted some very rare time for ourselves but that all went out of the window. They don't often sleep round their Grandparents so we were looking forward to it , hey ho. I have also had a bad cold for the last few days (11 days and counting) which seems to be getting worse rather than better - grrr I spent last night from 1.30 am - 3.30 am watching tv because of it, just when I don't need to lose any more sleep. I have therefore been grateful for little things that make me happy :

My wool stash has arrived :-) I am not sure about the turquoise just yet, some days I love it against the other colours, other days I don't.

I received a lovely soap from Handmade Haven , wow it smells nice and was so nicely packaged :-)

I have also been enjoying creating felted things for my facebook shop and for home :-)

I hope you have a fantastic week free from germs and horrid colds. xxx

Trying not to feel exasperated .....

2011-11-21T13:40:00.000Z

I was recently lucky enough to win a complementary ticket to the Country Living Fair in London which was running the other weekend. The lovely Mary Kilvert sent me the ticket - pop over to her blog and look at the lovely sheep she created !

I was so excited at the prospect of going plus a little nervous at the same time. When I used to work full time I didn't think twice about getting on the train to London for conferences but since having children it isn't something I do. I worked out that Saturday was the best day to go due to train prices, school runs and work (it would cost £40+ if I didn't go during off peak times in the week :-o). I went on Google map and walked down the road from the underground station I would stop at so I knew exactly where I was going to go. I was going to take little Sweetpea and it would have been her first train ride.

Wednesday the tickets arrived and I did think of going on Thursday but school runs put a stop to that idea. As Saturday approached , my gorgeous little Sweetpea decided to go back to waking 3+ times a night for a couple of nights :-( Saturday morning arrived and I was exhausted, having my usual dizzy spells bought on by sleep deprivation (I even become dizzy just sitting still when I have had a few really bad nights) and generally felt terrible with no energy to go to London :-( I was gutted!

To stop me feeling annoyed by the circumstances that had arisen I decided to drive up the road to Blackthorpe Barn (near Bury St Edmunds), I am so glad I did - what a joy that place is ! It was full of local artists showing and selling their creations. Eldest Sweetpea came along with me and we had a lovely time looking at all the gorgeous creations. I had a lovely chat to lots of wonderful creative people and Eldest Sweetpea was given a bookmark from a lovely watercolour artist, Katie Millard, and a felt bead from a lady call Cathy who creates gorgeous things out of felt - it was so sweet of them to give him a piece of their artwork. I even bumped into a lady who had a stall with the most gorgeous silver work (click link to see scrummy buttons wrapped in silver) who lives in our village. I had heard her name mentioned in magazines before but had never put a name to the face so I was surprised and happy to see a familiar face there.

I came home with two lino-print cards created by the artist Penny Bhadresa, she had some lovely prints on show and Eldest Sweetpea really wanted one for his room (one day we will save up for the real thing for him :-)). I also got two other lovely postcards created by Abigail Mill, she created the most exquisite creations out of fabric, silk, lace - the original images look 3D and her use of colours is gorgeous. 3 little ceramic spotty egg cups also launched themselves into my bag, one for each Sweetpea - they are so sweet.

I must still admit to feeling a little annoyed at having missed the Country Living Fair and a little trapped with the life of being a Mum 24/7 but that trip made me feel a whole lot better! Having been ill for a few days has again made me feel that way, I went to work on Sunday just to have a break from the 'madhouse' when really I should have been in bed getting better (but then the Sweetpeas would have joined me in bed and probably had a pillow fight over my head!).

Don't get me wrong, I do love them all dearly but sometimes a little space is nice, oohh how I would love my own little flat somewhere, where I could escape for a few days rest every now and again......... dream on Zoe :-) Mind you then I would probably miss them all too much :-)

Moan over :-) x

Easy Skirt Tutorial

2011-11-15T22:02:00.001Z

Thanks for all your helpful comments on my last post re the crochet urge, I am now picking colours and will blog as soon as some wool arrives :-)

Now this blog post comes after chatting to a friend some time ago about a skirt I made little Sweetpea. I promised to do her a photo tutorial of it but as always it has taken me some time to get around to doing this. I made this skirt back in August - how does time fly that fast!

I saw this lovely skirt design on Patch Fabrics site and just had to buy the fabric to make Sweetpea one - she is still in love with ladybirds so she loves this skirt.

So here we go. You will need some fabric of your choice, 1 1/2 meters of ribbon and 1 1/2 meters of ric-rac.

First measure the length you would like the skirt to be and add 2 " to that for the seams. Lay out your fabric - you will be using the whole width of the fabric selvedge to selvedge (this is the part of the fabric where the manufacturer prints the fabric info on). Measure the length you want the skirt to be and cut along there.

Now get some lovely ribbon and pin it along the bottom edge of the fabric on the reverse side.

Now sew along the top of this ribbon all the way along to fix it to the skirt.

Now you need to fold the ribbon back over so it faces the right side of the fabric - didn't take a photo sorry :-( Your sewing will be along the bottom edge of the ribbon now. Sew along the new top of the ribbon, this will lock in the edge of the fabric and stop any fraying.

Now sew the ric-rac into place, I popped it a couple of inches about the ribbon but you can pick where you want it. It may be an idea to pop it in place with a few dots of fabric glue to make it easier to sew.

Now fold the fabric in half so that the right sides are facing in (e.g. your pretty pattern is not showing on the outside anymore) and pin along the selvedge. Your ribbon should be along the bottom on the inside. Sew along the pinned area with roughly a 1/2 inch seam - make sure you sew so that no selvedge is showing.

Now make sure your seem is open to make for a neater finish (it isn't the end of the world if you forget though :-)). Now for the waist. Keeping the skirt facing wrong side out fold over the top edge 1/2 inch.

Fold it over again 7/8 inch (or just over 1/2 inch in English :-)) This will seal in the edge again to stop fraying and make a nice hidden area for your elastic. I iron my seams into place to make it easier to sew.

Now sew along the bottom edge of this seam but leave an area where you will be threading your elastic through.

This is where you will thread the elastic through. Now measure your child's waist and take off a couple of cm's for the elastic measurement - I always test the length whilst it is on her too (be careful to avoid bungee episodes though :-)). Now pop a safety pin on the end of your elastic and feed it through the the hole and around the seam. I pin the other end to the skirt too so I don't end up taking the elastic all the way through and out again :-)

Now whilst doing all this remember to keep an eye on the future owner of this gorgeous skirt, if not you may find this sort of thing happens .....

Yogurt everywhere, apparently she became suddenly hungry and helped herself !

When you have threaded the elastic through sew it together and then sew the hole shut - yey one new skirt!

I have an urge .......

2011-11-07T13:41:00.000Z

First thanks for all your lovely caring and complimentary comments on my last blog post, they made me feel a lot better :-) Mr Sweetpea is nearly better now and is back to work with his sore foot - just hope he can drive home again! We buried Petal under Eldest Sweetpeas oak tree behind the beach hut - I hope she likes it there.

Now I have to share with you an urge that I have. Is the urge to bungee jump ...... visit faraway lands ....... learn to fly a helicopter ..... do a degree in astro-physics ... buy a Camper van and pootle off around the country in it .... ?

Nope it is none of the above, my urge is to create my very own crochet ripple blanket (well to be honest the last thing on the above list is also an urge but I need to save up for that one for some time first :-(). This is where I need your help :-) I know a lot of you are very good at the crochet thing, can you help me with the following questions:

Do you know of a good yarn that doesn't cost a lot (as I want to save for that Camper :-)).
Does anyone know how many balls I may need for an average sized blanket?
Anyone know of where to buy yarn at a good price?

Thanks very much for reading about my urge :-)

Take care
Zoe
x

Halloween and a sad loss .....

2011-11-03T13:41:00.000Z

It has been an eventful week so far in the Sweetpea household. We had fun at the beginning of the week creating things for Halloween. Instead of just going trick or treating I asked the children if they also wanted to decorate our car-port and turn it into a spooky barn for the trick or treaters.

In preparation the children did their pumpkins on Saturday evening. They had 4 pumpkins, 3 bought locally and our largest one was given to us by our allotment neighbour - he is so sweet!

I think they enjoyed squidging the contents as much as they did carving the pumpkins!

We created a cat, a bat and two scary faces - wwaaahh ha ha ha - scary aren't they :-)

We then had fun with some with our old milk bottles - I saw this idea on Pinterest and couldn't resist!

We decorated the car-port to make it look all spooky ....

And had a bucket for apple bobbing and a bowl with homemade slime in it for people to put their hands in and get their treat. The slime was a great hit and was easily made from cornflour, water and green food colouring.

Above is eldest Sweetpea testing out the apple bobbing , it is amazing how many of the children had never tried it before. A lot of fun was had by making our trick or treaters work for their treats :-) It was such a hit we are going to expand it next year even if (as eldest Sweetpea reminded me) I did say 'never again!' whilst preparing it all, mind you to be fair Mr Sweetpea did have to be taken to A&E by my Father-in-Law with a suspected broken foot whilst I was trying to arrange it all. Luckily my Mother-in-Law stayed behind and helped to create the slime (Mr Sweepea's foot was thankfully not broken but he has torn a ligament in his foot) :-)

We have had a few sad things happen this week as well. We lost poor little Petal (our chicken in the photo below). She died in her sleep with her head still tucked under her wing - she looked so content and sweet :-( She was the most lovely chicken, she was disabled and couldn't cluck (she just made a little squeaky noise) but she was still a very happy chicken who liked to be stroked.

We also lost another chicken too, we had an old chicken which I re-named Battle-axe as she was a big bully really. She started to sit for quite a while this year but I think she was too old for all that really as they lose a lot of body weight when sitting. She was found dead this morning in the other chicken pen :-(

Mini Beach Hut ......

2011-10-26T22:18:00.002+01:00

Thank you for all your comments on my last couple of blog posts, I really love reading them and appreciate the time you take to post them. I will try and reply back if you have an e-mail when time allows and my stupid RSI stops playing up (really must go to the Drs about it but keep putting it off :-(). Regarding the comments section, have you tried turning off your spam protection password on your blog? I did a while ago to make it quicker for people to comment here and have hardly had any spam issues at all, I think I have had one spam that got through the system in the 6 months I have had it turned off.

Anyway enough of my tech talk, back to the little beach hut :-) A little while ago I showed you some curtains I created for a very special house that arrived in our garden. I have been wanting to get the kiddies a little playhouse for years but put if off due to the price of them but recently saw an offer at B&Q for one that was £99. Nearly £100 is still a lot of money but I know that if I buy an outside toy for the kids they will spend hours playing with it. Over the years we have bought them a sand pit, a trampoline and and little water/sand table and they play with these items for hours and hours plus keep the kiddies away from the TV and out in the fresh air - bonus :-)

This little hut was originally plain wood but I wanted to create a mini beach hut for them so I got my paint brushes and paint out. I bought some cream wood paint and to save money on the blue paint I bought a little tester pot of that and added the cream paint to it.

I have planted some Sweet Williams around it so they can cut their own flowers in the summer and I carpeted the inside to make it all cozy. I will show you the inside after a few more of the creations in my head come to fruition :-)

I got this cute little door sign commissioned, it was created by the very talented Handcrafted by Picto. This is just so cute and perfectly us with the toadstools, daisies, dragonflies and a little ladybird and caterpillar pootling (love that word at the moment for some reason - not even sure if it an actual word) along the bottom. What made it even more special is that I bought it from someone locally, she only lives down the road and I met her at a local supermarket to collect it - we had a lovely chat, she really is a lovely lady. I found her on a group I created on Facebook for local artists to network. The group is called East Anglian Artists, pop in if you are local and would like to join and share in the fun :-)

Little Sweetpeas hand-made gifts

2011-10-19T13:42:00.004+01:00

Thank you for all your lovely birthday wishes for Sweetpea, I will give her a kiss from each of you (any excuse to smother her with kisses :-)).

Little Sweetpea was very lucky to get such a lot of wonderful presents, she was also overjoyed (and so was I) that she also received some gorgeous hand-made presents. I made her a little nature satchel bag for her to put all the wet leaves, conkers and pine cones she finds in :-)

Here she is modelling her bag, I think she is in love with the little ladybird. I was going to put a bumble bee on it, as if it was flying away from the flower, but Little Sweetpea had other ideas :-)

She has already been using it on our walks and many treasures have been put into it. Would you like a closer look ........

Here is her little pet ladybird scurrying off ... oohh and one of those cute little labels that I used on my sisters heart.

I appliqued a flower onto the bag flap ....

My friend told me not to just stick with a running stitch when making things so I tried out another stitch for the strap, really happy I did ....

I lined the bag to protect the linen from all those soggy leaves .....

I embroidered her name along the front .....

And here is a full frontal shot :-) I was really happy with how this turned out especially as it is my first bag. I made some funny mistakes on the way like thinking I could sew the strap on the reverse and then turn it inside out - hhhmmm never going to happen. You have to turn everything inside out to sew it together and then pull it all through, I sewed along the top of the bag but then had a flap of lining, flap of outside fabric and the lid flap lol :-) You learn from experience !

The bag is made of 100% linen and lined with oil-cloth. With linen being £25 a meter I decided to buy a large pair of linen trousers from a charity shop and recycled them, the oilcloth is from a tablecloth that was too big for the table - I do love a bit of up-cycling :-)

Little Sweetpea also got a lovely hand-made necklace which was created by my wonderful friend Lorraine. Here it is modelled by my one eyed childhood Bunny.

Ohhh I do love this , so many lovely glass beads, Little Sweetpea is having to keep a close eye on this one so that I don't wear it :-)

She also made the cutest little bracelet which is the perfect size for Little Sweetpeas tiny wrists. Love love love those polymer clay beads.

And look what we have here, a gorgeous little ladybird brooch just for Sweetpea, this will be popped on her coat or bag. This was made by my fab mate Helen from Bears Footprints.

Oohhh how I love having creative friends. It is so nice that we are all inspiring each other to create such lovely things and it is even better that we are giving the kiddies hand-made gifts - there is something so heart warming about it :-) xxx

Little Sweetpea turns 4!

2011-10-18T14:44:00.000+01:00

I can hardly believe it, little Sweetpea is now 4 years old. It only seems like yesterday she was using my ribs as her own personal exercise machine (oohh she was a good kicker!) and now she is 4. It is not only me that is shocked by how quickly time is flying by, she got several cards with 3 on them and that made Mr Sweetpea and me make sure that she really was 4 :-) I still remember so vividly this precious moment in time just hours after she was born ....

So what cake did my little princess ask for this year, well this time round it was a sweetie bag. I thought it would be easy to create but it wasn't as easy as I thought.

It came out OK and the Sweetpeas had great fun getting the pick and mix sweets to fill it with :-) I got slightly stressed when making this - well to be fair I was stressed about several things that week - my own fault for trying to make too many things whilst also helping at pre-school. One of the reasons I got stressed is that I had to make it when all the little ones were awake and wanting to help as I had to complete a pressie whilst they slept.

Eldest Sweetpea made a mini version from the left over icing and sponge - I like his better than mine - so cute!

oohh and this is the other reason I was slightly stressy, when I put a jar slightly heavy handed on the shelf ..... this happened .... yep the whole shelf fell down! Eldest Sweetpea whisked everyone out of the kitchen at this point saying that he thought I was getting rather angry - bad mummy moment :-( I blame the full moon and my hubbys horrid shift work which meant he wasn't coming back until late every night :-(

All the stress was worth it seeing her blow out her candles and her big smiley face when the cake was all light up.

She got some lovely gifts from her friends, grandparents and auntie. I thought I would photograph them all so she can look back at them when she is older. Loving the flamenco outfit!

She also got a new furniture set for her house which her and her Auntie played with (not sure who is having more fun here lol). Auntie Sweetpea got her a ladybird money box, a labybird wand and also a trip to the Zoo which they all really enjoyed.

We got her a wheelbarrow as little Sweetpea loves the garden. She has been collecting leaves in it already.

I also made her a nature satchel which I will share more photos with you next time as I want to photograph some other lovely handmade gifts she received.

As I couldn't muster the energy to throw a full on party for little Sweetpea this year we took cakes to each of the groups she goes to during the week. I batch baked a lot of cupcakes last week and froze some ready for icing the day before we went.

Middle and little Sweetpea loved decorating them, not sure how many cakes actually managed to leave the house :-)

Oh little Sweetpea how I love you so. You have only just started sleeping through but I still love you with all my heart even after all the sleep deprivation. You have made me laugh and smile each and every day since you were born. I hope you grow up to love life as much as you do now , even when you are as big as the clouds :-) xxx

Walnut Warning ......

2011-10-05T13:31:00.000+01:00

Thank you for all your lovely comments on the Cosmic Playdough, I hope some of you try it out :-) I have been trying to reply to comments via e-mail but as some blogs don't have an e-mail attached I can't always reply - I appreciate your comments though and wanted you to know that.

Little Sweepea and I have really enjoyed harvesting walnuts and other things from the garden recently. I was chatting to a friend about how the walnut tree looked ready to harvest and about how I wanted to beat the pesky squirrels this year :-)

So we set about getting them off the tree and breaking open the skins. If we waited for the skins to release the nuts I knew the squirrels would have them all before we got to them :-)

We really enjoyed ourselves, especially as we didn't get to pick any blackberries this year due to them all getting mildew and shriveling up :-( I find something very relaxing about doing this sort of thing with the kiddies (or on my own), it is earthing somehow.

Now what my friend forget to tell me was how much these walnuts stain! This is after I washed my hands a couple of times - it, in fact, got darker the more I washed them :-s Not fab for someone who works in a hospital - luckily a lot of the patients know me well already so aren't too surprised about me picking walnuts and having stained hands from it :-)

Even little Sweetpea was stained but she didn't seem too worried - the stains didn't go until about 7 days after we picked the walnuts :-) hhhhmm I wonder what it is like for dying material ??? .........

Cosmic Playdough :-)

2011-09-30T17:24:00.000+01:00

I recently posted a blog about how I am really enjoying creating gifts rather than buying them now which a lot of you seemed to enjoy. I thought I would share a quick post about a gift I created for a friends little boy, this is quick and easy to create, some of you may like to try it out.

My friend has 4 kiddies so I know she doesn't want toys/gifts that fill the house :-) I had a little brain-wave (very rare in my brain and I was surprised it didn't hurt :-)) to use 1 of the many coffee jars I had been saving for something (not sure what but they are too nice the throw out) as a jar to keep some sparkly playdough in.

Some time ago I posted a tutorial on how to make playdough. You can follow the link here to view it.

This dough is really easy to create and when stored in an airtight container it lasts for ages. I made two balls of this sparkly playdough for my friends little boy and then decorated the jar with stars. I added a little label in the shape of a rocket with a note on the back saying 'Arthur's Cosmic Playdough'. You could give this gift on its own or with some cookie or playdough cutters and a bit of oilcloth as a playdough mat. You could also adapt it for girly girls with pink playdough and a girly theme.

This was a real hit, he really loved it and his Mum was chuffed too as it doesn't take up much room and keeps him amused for ages :-)

New Toy :-)

2011-09-24T18:09:00.001+01:00

Yey I finally chose a sewing machine to buy with my birthday money (my birthday was back in March!). A lovely friend lent me her Janome machine around March time but I thought it best I gave it back now :-) I looked around on the internet and found this fab Janome which was only £10 more than the basic model but seems to have loads of extras on it.

I got the manual out and threaded it up - ooh that was slightly daunting as it was a bit different to how you thread up my friends Janome.

I worked out how to wind the bobbin and pull the thread up from it. Love this see-through bobbin case :-) Then I just had to pluck the courage up to actually use it lol. So a few days later I made these cute little curtains for the kiddies new playhouse in the garden - well I say it is the kiddies but I love it as much as them! The machine sounds lovely whirring away.

I remember having an old garden shed that my sister and I played in when I was little and I used to love pulling the curtains shut in there. I got the fabric from e-bay and it was only £3.50 per meter and about £1.50 postage. I was hoping to use some up--cycled material but couldn't find any big enough or that I was brave enough to cut into.

I like the look of the gathering at the top - I saw the idea of adding an extra sewn line at the top in a book to make it look prettier.

They can now shut their little curtains and be all cozy inside.

I was on a roll then so finally, after many, many years made this cross-stitch pattern into a cushion. I started this when eldest Sweetpea as in my tummy and then finished the pattern a couple of years back. He is now 11 so I thought it a little childish for his wall but he still loves the design (probably because I was making it when he was kicking away in me :-)) so I thought a cushion would be a nice idea.

Here is the back of it - loving the green spotty material.

And of course I had to add some of that special ribbon!

oohh look what else I got free with my new sewing machine, loads of gorgeous thread. They looked so scrummy that I had to pop them in my new glass jar - I found this jar in Wilkinsons for £5 - I knew I would find a use for it :-) It now sits on top of my dresser looking very pretty with all those lovely coloured threads in it.

Well I hope you all have a wonderful weekend, I am off to work tomorrow for a rest lol. x

Edit: Nothing to do with this post but I just opened a fortune cookie and it says ' Calmness is the cradle of power' - loving that little bit of wisdom, I think I will keep that in my head as a mantra when things get a bit frazzled here :-)

Gorgeous Cards and Felt Creations :-)

2011-09-22T18:47:00.000+01:00

Thanks for all your comments re the bees, I will keep you posted on what they are doing and how we get on with them :-)

Some time ago I received a lovely parcel from Andrea at the blog Fin and Gabs. I was going to do an interview with her but what with me being very forgetful and Andrea being a busy Mum it hasn't happened so I thought I would do a post about her lovely creations.

Andrea is one very busy women, she not only creates these gorgeous cards but also runs a shop based in Hanover Road, Scarborough, writes articles for magazines whilst also looking after her lovely children Fin and Gabs. How on earth she fits it all in I will never know!

Just look at this lovely bunch of cards (minus one or two as I have used a couple already).

Andrea makes the original cards with fabric, ribbon, buttons and line drawing. They are then printed by Creatives Inc and are fantastic quality. The embossing of the cards really makes it look like they are still made of ribbon and fabric! The only problem with them is that they are far too nice and I am having problems sharing them :-)

You can also buy original cards, lovely covered books etc from her on-line shop or in her real life shop below :-) Click on the link or pop in to see some scrummy looking things.

She not only stocks her own items but many other items in her shop and she now stocks some of my creations too:-) How fantastic is that - I was really, really chuffed when she asked if I could send her some stock ! oohh if only I lived closer, I have a real urge to visit this shop!

Here is an idea of some of the things I sent Andrea:

I hope they sell well for her. I have been selling a few things via facebook here Scented Sweetpeas. I couldn't make a living out of it but am really enjoying creating for others and getting some lovely feedback. It is so nice knowing people are enjoying my little makes :-)

Other news this week is that Eldest Sweetpea had his cast taken off. It was a cast that can be removed yourself which was interesting.

We peeled off the blue cover and then had to cut down the soft part whilst avoiding the hardest part of the cast. Slow and steady won the race - it was a bit scary having scissors so close to his skin without being able to see what we were doing ! Look at Ted looking on anxiously :-) He has been really good the whole time the cast has been on, not once has be complained.

Better be off now as the kiddies are all kicking off - take care everyone and I hope you have a fab Friday. x

We don't live on a farm!

2011-09-16T23:02:00.002+01:00

Before I start my babbling I just wanted to say thanks so much for all your lovely comments on my blog post about hand-made gifts. I am glad you all loved them and your comments really do make me smile :-) Ever since I have been reading blogs I have been so inspired and it has really helped the creative side of me come out again which in turn makes me feel very happy so thank you all very much. x

'We don't live on a farm' is a phrase I often have to use in our house. You see, my husband seems to think we do. Not only do we have the gorgeous chickens ......

This is Petal our rather scruffy looking chicken.

Who are really cute pets, in fact too lovely as I would never dream of eating one (wouldn't make a good farmer's wife would I!). We even have a little disabled chicken who was found limping (think of the ministry of funny walks from Monty Python) down a street in another village.

Here she is after a bath. She had to live outside the main coup as the other chickens bullied her :-(

Little Sweetpea loves looking after her and after months of tender loving care she laid her first egg - she must be happy :-)

Sorry I digress ... but then Mr Sweetpea started talking about honey bees. So look what he has now down the bottom of the garden !

I must confess I am rather fascinated and taken with them even after being stung by one. Mind you if I had been trodden on I would sting too!

They have a little motorway over into the field next door and zoom in and out of their hive. Here they are having a drink after a busy flight. I have been amazed how placid they are, they are quite happy to zoom round me to get into their house, and also by how horrid wasps are trying to get in and kill their grubs and eating them if they get a chance!

And this is the field the bees zoom over. As you can see the kiddies love it a lot too :-) We are so lucky to live next to a lovely large field, I do hope it never gets built on, I would be heartbroken!

the kiddies watching the combine at work

It creates hours of entertainment for the kiddies .......

and the dogs :-) Well I am now hoping Mr Sweetpea will be happy with the 2 dogs, parrot, chickens, snake and bees! He has mentioned pigs and goats but I have reminded him again that WE DO NOT LIVE ON A FARM! I am hoping he reads this :-)

I love having lots of animals but it does have its drawbacks. Not only do they take time to feed and care for but you also get surprises like the above sock. Little Sweetpea and I went to 'Music Mayhem' recently and she had forgotten her sockaroo. She popped her shoe off and I went to put her sock on her hand to make a sockaroo only to see the above little footprint on her sock! She had had that sock on for about 1 hour. After a bit of questioning she told me that she had been to see to chickens in the morning, obviously with no wellies on :-) Sockaroo got no kiss that day from the Music Mayhem leader :-)

Talking about chickens and farms, I recently got contacted by Al from All the Tea Towels to ask I could review some tea towels for her.

So I went to her site, wow what a choice! There are so many lovely designs it was hard to pick.

I chose these designs as they were on Linen towels which I believe is a more eco-friendly material than cotton at the moment. One is a garden scene and the other had to have birdies on of course :-) Ali sent some great instructions with them on how to get the best out of my towels so I steeped them for a couple of hours and washed them with no conditioner to help absorbency. They were such a joy to hang on the line and use. Thanks Ali :-)

Creating birthday gifts

2011-09-10T19:11:00.000+01:00

Recently I have been trying to make a lot of presents or buy them from artists rather than buying from shops. I don't know why but I don't find much excitement in high street shopping anymore (unless it is whilst pottering round just looking at things whilst chatting to friends or family).

With my ickle Sister's birthday coming up I had to put my thinking cap on as to what she might like. She recently popped over to give us a training course on how to ice cupcakes properly so cupcakes was one idea. In fact she had bought me a day out with her in London to decorate cupcakes with her but I chickened out :-( I don't know why but my confidence levels drop sometimes and the old shy me re-appears for some things - my sis is really understanding and let me chicken out - I love her so much for loving me for who I am (oohh soppy moment there lol). Isn't the brain a funny thing - there are so many things I am confident about and people who know me probably wouldn't believe how shy the inner me is sometimes (especially when sleep deprivation takes hold) - I have to fight her quite often :-)

The kiddies loved their Auntie showing them how to ice with a piping bag and we made some funky retro cakes.

Here they are next to our retro phone which we are still loving.

So a little box of cupcakes it was. I had a little brain wave to add love hearts on the top of them and some pink sparkly sprinkles. I had to go through all the love hearts though as some of them were mean and not nice with things like 'grow up' written on them - when did that happen?

I then found some wonderful little cupcake boxes in Sainsburys to set them off nicely.

Now as you will know if you read my last blog post, my Sis loves tashes! Not sure why but she does so I set about making her a key ring of moustaches that she could use for any occasion :-)

There were curly ones, little ones and long ones ......

I then I added a cute little heart with some ribbon on that I bought a while back especially for my family. My Mum always tells my kiddies that she loves them 'this much' with her arms out so when I saw this ribbon I had to have it :-)

Just look at that cute girl in her hoody with her arms stretched as wide as they can possibly go :-)

Some time ago she asked if I could make her one of my daisy chains for some festivals she was going to so this was another pressie. There is something lovely about making something for someone when you know they are going to get so much joy out of it - you smile all the way through making it :-)

Last but not least I ordered her a Scented Sweetpeas bath bomb box from Caroline's Creations, it must have been the best smelling item I have ever received through the post!

Thanks for all your lovely comments on my last post, I really do love reading them and they always make me smile - thanks for spending your precious time doing that. x

Yey I am back :-)

2011-09-06T14:41:00.003+01:00

The bonkers Sweetpea family :-)

Wow that was a bloggy break I wasn't expecting, it seems like ages since I have been able to do a blog post :-( It has been rather hectic here in the Sweetpea household with a family wedding, 3 birthdays and also making some more creations since I have been away - oh that is on top of the school hols :-)

A few weeks back my cousin got married, goodness it made me feel a bit old, I remember the day he was born and when he was little attending our wedding in a cute little suit. Now I am not really a fan of formal events like weddings, christenings etc as I am more of a welly wearing lady rather than a posh shoe lady and I am not really into all the pomp and circumstance of it all (it makes me feel uncomfortable for some reason). I got a bit stressed on the run up to the day frantically trying to find outfits for all the kiddies as all the bloomin summer clothes had been removed from the shops but it was worth the stress as it was such a fun day. Oh how I hate clothes shopping - I only really like charity shop shopping now, probably why I haven't bought myself clothes for ages.

This is me and my gorgeous little sister - can you tell she is wearing heels!

I asked her to do a 'Versace' pose here lol - she is so beautiful but doesn't know it!

This is my parents with my sis and I. I think we all scrubbed up rather well - especially as after all the looking for clothes for the kiddies I just grabbed stuff out of my wardrobe for the day. At the beginning is a blog of the Sweetpeas.

Now I am not sure why I was worried about this event being very formal with my family involved in it, we are not renowned for being the most sensible family :-) Above is a photo of middle Sweetpea and Great Grandad Sweetpea with my Sister's tash bag, this went round the room for everyone to have photos taken with it. There was also a pair of plastic glasses with a willy nose doing the rounds too - goodness knows who bought that with them but the photos are very funny indeed :-)

The next day was Eldest Sweetpea's birthday. I was off work as I was feeling ill (not drink related I might add as I was the driver back from the wedding) so we all chilled out for the day. I hadn't planned a party for the day of his birthday as I was meant to be at work so we were going to have a party later. Well Sweetpea got bored and was playing up a bit so I said he could go out with his mates (rather than sending him to his room on his birthday) and this is the result, a broken wrist! I wish I had sent him to his room now :-(

Poor dot was in goal playing footy with his mates, a ball was kicked at him to save only to push his wrist right back. We were called from his mobile and rushed to get him, we initially thought he has pulled a muscle but then when he went into shock I drove him to A&E (well two A&E's as one didn't have the x-ray machine on !) as there was obviously something more wrong. He had a buckle fracture on his wrist and now has a funcky blue cast on which we can take off ourselves in about a weeks time so he needs it on for 4 weeks all in all which isn't too bad.

I finally got to make his cake quite a few days after his actual birthday and he didn't have a party in the end :-( He did however love his fishing cake complete with his dog ted in the back of the boat and he got enough birthday money to buy a really good BMX bike that he wanted.

He has gone off to secondary school today - this boy is growing up far to quickly for my liking. How can I have a child who is at college when I am so young myself (I am 25 in my head :-)). He seemed very happy going off, not too nervous at all which is wonderful, I hope he loves his new school. I managed to sneak a little kiss on him before he ran off for the bus, he is nearly too old for kisses :-( Little Sweetpea and Middle Sweetpea are under strict instructions not to grow any more :-)

Homemade Puffy Paint

2011-08-09T21:29:00.000+01:00

I recently saw an idea on the Internet for making your own puffy paint at home and just had to give it a go with the kiddies.

We tried two recipes out and found this one from Play at Home Mom worked best.

You need:
1/2 cup of flour
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp salt
food colouring or coloured paint

Put the flour, baking powder and salt into a container and then add some water to make them into a paste. Then add your colouring.

Now get your brushes and have fun - it works well on cardboard :-) Pop it in the microwave for 10 - 30 seconds and voila, puffy paint !

The kiddies loved this and spent ages creating puffy paintings.

Other art that has been happening here which is quite interesting is little Sweetpea's drawings. She has been drawing little people for some time now in quite some detail but she always creates them upside down.

I am not sure how she does it really as it is quite hard to do when you are used to creating them the right way up :-) I am not telling her to create things any differently as this is the way she does it and is happy doing it but it is rather unusual.

This piccy is of her Auntie and Uncle, Mr Sweetpea asked if I had looked in detail at this piccy then I realised she had added some personal anatomy down below lol. When I asked how I knew which was her Uncle she exclaimed 'he has a willy!' - well really :-) They have sad faces because Eldest Sweetpea said she was drawing them the wrong way round and moved the paper round for her - hence smiley faces are showing as sad faces as she draws up-side-down.

Thanks for all your lovely comments, I have been trying to message each of you back personally unless you have no e-mail attached to your bloggedy blog. x

Truly Scrumptious Cupcakes!

2011-08-08T12:56:00.000+01:00

I thought I would share a recipe that I tried recently for some very scrummy cupcakes. Not only do they have strawberries, cream and sponge but there is also a hidden area of strawberry jam in it :-)

A friend of mine gave me one she had made recently and after getting home and eating it I NEEDED the recipe :-) Luckily it was in the local Summer Spark mag that is given out at schools at the end of term which I had at home so I gave it a whirl.

Ingredients:
110g softened butter
110g caster sugar
110g self raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 large free range eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

Topping:
300ml double cream
1 tsp to 1tbs icing sugar to taste
Strawberries
Strawberry jam

Pre-heat the oven to 160 deg C fan oven/Gas mark 3/180 conventional oven or 350 degf. Pop 12 cupcake cases in a 12 hole tin.

Put the butter in a mixing bowl and beat until smooth then sift in the sugar, flour and baking powder.

Add eggs and vanilla extract and beat until smooth.

Pop the ingredients into 12 cupcake cases, they suggest using an ice cream scoop so they are all the same amount.

Bake in oven for 20 mins or until golden and springy.

Whilst you let them cool start on the topping. With a whisk whip the cream and icing sugar (I think less icing sugar is more with this recipe otherwise they become a big sickly) until the soft peak stage. Be careful not to over whip.

Now your cupcakes are cool get a knife to cut a little scoop out of the top of them (as you would with fairy cakes), pop some jam in the hole and then pop the sponge back on to hide it.

Take your cream topping and spoon some on your cake, then top with a strawberry.

Get a cup of tea, a fav mag and a quiet spot and enjoy your scrummy cupcake :-) x

Tandem Reveal ........

2011-08-02T20:38:00.002+01:00

Thanks for all your lovely comments regarding little Sweetpeas skirt, if any of you have any good book or website recommendations for learning to sew I would greatly appreciate them. Oh and also any recommendations for equipment like scissors etc (I used kitchen scissors for the skirt, not the best for cutting). We have one problem with it however, it is now day 4 of the new skirt and she won't take it off! I think I will have to make another just so I can wash that one lol.

Now back to this post's title, some time ago some of you may remember that I was given a lovely 1964 Hercules tandem by my Nan and Grandad. When we got it it looked like this, not the cleanest of bikes but in great working order.

Well we sent it over to a lovely chap across the road who loves restoring and doing up bikes. Whilst it was there I rummaged about on the internet to find its original colour and I also looked in family albums for the photo of my parents sitting on the bike on their wedding day, my Mum was only 18 in this photo :-) I am loving the fact that their wedding reception was in my Nan & Grandads garden along with tents put up for the party and guests to stay in afterwards.

Well a few weeks later here is my gorgeous grandparents with their done up bike! My Grandad was particularly chuffed, he was like a kid at Christmas, his face just lite up and he couldn't stop looking at it. I was a bit worried that they may be upset that I took it to do it up as it has been used a lot by them and all of us in the past so they have many happy memories of it. As I walking them over to see it I found out that they didn't have it from new but had swapped it many years ago for a record player :-) They then used it to cycle to France with all their camping gear on the back and all our Aunties and cousins also remember the bike very fondly.

This photo was taken in our neighbours garden (the chap who did the bike up for us) - what a fab garden and just look at those smiles!

There is a little speedo on it but it gets stuck at 7mph - I am sure we go faster than that lol.

These photos are back in our garden again, the bike looks great now and certainly makes people smile as we bike past them. Mind you they may be smiling as my socks are tucked into my trousers and Mr Sweetpea and I are giggling away whilst peddling around the village on it - this bike just makes you have a huge grin on your face :-) I still have to master starting off without wobbling around on the back for a few seconds and Mr Sweetpea telling me to stay still but I am sure that will come with time.

We have only managed two bike rides on it so far as obviously we can't leave little Sweetpea on her own (or the other two as they may kill each other lol) but here is to many more years on this fab bike :-) x

Yey I did it!

2011-07-30T21:25:00.000+01:00

Back in May I was lucky enough to win a meter of fabric from the lovely Claire's Patch Fabrics facebook page. As I am still borrowing my friends sewing machine I really wanted some fabric to make little Sweetpea a skirt out of. Claire was not only kind enough to give me the fabric (click the link above, she has some scrummy fabric) but she also gave me a link to a skirt tutorial that she said was easy - click here for info.

So the fabric arrived and it was gorgeous, in fact it was too gorgeous as it has taken me this long to pluck up the courage to cut into it :-) Well last night was the night I decided that yes I could cut the fabric and yes I could get that sewing machine whirring !

I printed off the instructions, read them, re-read them, tried to make sense of some of the sewing jargon and got on with it. It was quite easy, I think the hardest part was trying to get everything straight and then adding the ribbon at the end (which I would personally add at the beginning in future - not sure if there is a reason why it is added at the end as I am no seamstress :-)). Also another hard part was getting little Sweetpea to stay still to check the elastic was the right length for her ickle belly - she ran off when I was trying to do this and nearly bungeed back down the corridor whilst nearly breaking the stitching I had just done!

It came out really well (well for someone who has never sewn a skirt before), and I love the ribbon detail at the base of the skirt.

My sewing was pretty straight but I do need to work on those endings where you have to go back and forth to lock in the stitches, they are rather hard to get perfect.

This is where the elastic went in and the bungee incident happened lol, not easy holding an excited youngster still whilst checking the elastic length.

But this is one happy little girl. Last night I finished it at about 10pm, first thing this morning she was up with her jim-jam top on and her new skirt, she had to put it on right away! :-)

I am really chuffed that I finally did it !

They just keep on growing :-(

2011-07-26T20:06:00.001+01:00

Well it is the end of term here and the end of an era with Eldest Sweetpea moving up to Secondary School in September. We had end of term school productions where he played an entrepreneur and then he had his cycling proficiency test in the last week too (he passed unlike me who must be the only person in Britain who didn't much to Mr Sweetpeas amusement for many years!).

We also had SATS results and school reports sent home. I was incredibly proud that Eldest Sweetpea did really well in his SATS especially as I didn't send him to any of the after school classes he was asked to attend. I must say the SATS process really did annoy me, we were told that the children were not going to be put under any pressure for these tests and then came letters home re parents meetings regarding them and extra lessons for the children after school. I stuck to my instincts (which is really quite hard when you get all these 'no pressure' invites from the school) and didn't go to any meetings or send him to any extra lessons. I knew that if I had attended meetings I would have accidentally put pressure on him for a test that really is to do with how the school is performing not him, also the extra lessons would have put pressure on him too and then he would have frozen when the tests did take place. In the end he was very chilled out about the tests and did his best and did very well indeed, especially in his favourite subject Science :-) Middle Sweetpea and Little Sweetpea did very well in their reports too - one chuffed Mum !

Thursday night there was the School Disco and I went to help, goodness I nearly cried several times watching all the Year 6 kiddies together - thank goodness it was dark! Eldest Sweetpea's year has been a lovely year group, nearly all have them have known each other since Pre-School and I know them very well. Friday then saw his last ever walk to school so we all took a trip there together ....

In the afternoon they had a last assembly which was held in the village Church, I really was in two minds as to go or not as I knew it would make me upset. I asked Eldest Sweetpea if he wanted me to go and he said 'I am not bothered really' so I asked him again telling him the only reason I didn't want to go was that it would make me cry and he then replied 'Oh, if you are going to cry then I want you to come, I never see you cry' ...... well really, what a loving son I have lol.

Well I got over my own feelings (after feeling low all morning, blimey I didn't know it would upset me that much) and went along to the Church. Thank goodness for little Sweetpea, Bear and their little mate Harley for distracting me with their giggles, cushion arranging and dancing to the Year 6's songs.

Above is a photo of Eldest Sweetpea being presented with a RSPB book that he had picked as one he liked - he was really happy with it as it also had a CD with bird songs on it :-)

It was a lovely event and I am really glad I got over my worries and went along. I held in most of my tears and only became dewy eyed for a little while. Luckily I had these lovely and rather apt tissues in my bag that Emma Bear Forever gave me some time ago - see bloggers to the rescue :-)

Still addicted to Crochet!

2011-07-21T15:05:00.000+01:00

Thanks for all your comments on my last blog post, I hope you all get to see the butterfly life cycle, it really is amazing. If you only want to see one or two caterpillars turn into butterflies you can always potter around the garden and collect caterpillars, make sure you check what food you took them off and feed them until they are ready to turn into cocoons - they will hang in a J shape when they are getting ready for this. Eldest Sweetpea has done this a few times but as this project is for a pre-school and has to run in term time so all the kiddies see the magic we buy the kits.

As you may know from reading this blog I recently wanted to learn crochet. I bought this book to start me off:

and created quite a few things from it whilst learning the stitches ...

Above is me learning a chain, single crochet, double, half treble and treble crochet. The circle is to learn increases in stitches and the wavy one is a pattern in the book that could be used for edging.

I then gave granny squares a go, loved making these.

And here are a few flowers and a pattern that started as a circle but ended up looking like an Ammonite (see the one of the right - eldest Sweetpea's fav as it looks like a fossil lol). A lot of mistakes were made on the way, a lot of growling at the wool not wanting to do what I wanted it to do but slowly and surely I got there.

I then went to our local library to see if there were any good books there and wow was I amazed! There are loads of fab crochet books there and if they aren't I can look them up on the Library stock list on-line and search for a book I want and order it - how fantastic is that!

I picked this book up from there, it is full or lovely flowers and ideas.

I then created these cute flowers from a pattern in the book ..... well actually you won't find this exact flower pattern as I made a mistake creating the flower (due to getting muddled with US/UK crochet terms) but then preferred my bodged flower design so kept going with it :-) You can see a bigger photo at the top of this post of the flower ...... hhmmm I might do a tutorial for it as it is my own bodged design :-)

I have made a few of them now, not sure what to make with them but I love them.

I also got this book, it has some lovely throws in it.

I especially like this one:

Not sure I am quite up to that standard yet but practice makes perfect I suppose, I just have to get my head round the more complicated patterns :-)

I hope you are all well and life isn't too hectic for you all - thanks again for your comments, they really are appreciated.

x

Butterfly time again :-)

2011-07-15T13:34:00.000+01:00

It was that time of year again recently when I buy little tiny tiny caterpillars for the pre-school so the children can watch them turn into butterflies.

Every year this project makes me feel like a child again, I get so excited when the magic box arrives in the post :-)

We all got busy and popped the food into separate containers and then added 2 baby caterpillars to each little pot.

We then pop tissue paper over the top and then put the lid on, this is so that the caterpillars have something to make their cocoon on.

They really are so tiny when they first arrive, here is a photo of one on my finger to give you an idea of scale.

After a couple of weeks watching them eat and grow they turn into cocoons. They then stay in there for another couple of weeks before they hatch out in all their splendor to reveal their new body shape - it is so magical. We keep two at home and pre-school have the rest - theirs always seem to hatch a little earlier, not sure if it is the temperature of the pre-school being a bit higher than our home or that the noise levels in our house make the butterflies want to stay hidden for that little bit longer lol :-)

Then comes my favourite bit, letting the children release them into the garden and watching where they go ........

Nature really is rather amazing! To see photos of the full life cycle click here - Butterfly life cycle.

Swept away by time ....

2011-07-09T16:06:00.001+01:00

Well goodness me, I do apologise, I didn't realise I had been away for so long :-( Time really does seem to be going incredibly fast and I can't keep up. I thought I would do a little catch up with what we have been up to in the Sweetpea household.

Well as you will see above I have turned my cute little crochet hearts into bunting for my bookcase, I popped some beads on the end of the bunting too for a finishing touch. In fact I loved this bunting so much I made some for my friend's little girls first birthday a couple of weeks back :-)

We have also been strawberry picking a few times , here are some that are from a local farm and also eldest Sweetpeas patch.

Of course that meant we had to have some scones and cream with them as well as jam. I made the scones without raisins in them as eldest sweetpea hates them for some reason. This all lead to a picnic in the garden :-)

My friends have been rather busy too over the last few weeks so little Sweetpea has had the pleasure of some playmates coming round whilst their mummies are busy bees. Here is little Sweetpea with her mad hair and one of her best friends James. I just loved how they held hands on the way home.

And then we had little Sweetpeas other best mate round that week too, this is the gorgeous Bear, is he going to melt hearts or what!

They had a lot of giggles.....

Then Bear had to sit and watch one of little Sweetpeas dance routines lol..... If you pop over to my friend's blog here you will see piccies of Bear and Sweetpea Strawberry picking, excuse the photo of me in my scruffy clothes :-)

In the garden Scented Sweetpeas have been flowering, oohhh one of my fav flowers, I love cutting them and bringing them into the house. They don't seem as prolific as previous years but we still had enough to receive 2nd prize in our local Gala competition.

Talking of the Gala, I spent many an hour last week down the local Strawberry farm helping to create our Cubs gala float. Middle Sweetpea is the only one left in cubs of my brood at the moment and the only girl in the group - she always was a tomboy :-) We had to create a float with the theme of Dennis the Menace as it was his 60th Birthday this year. I had great fun creating bunting for the whole float - Helen (Bear's Mum mentioned above) also came to help.

One of my friends dressed up as Minnie the Minx, we all thought she looked rather fetching in her red wig :-) She seemed to enjoy that role far too much lol. Middle Sweetpea was also a Minnie the Minx.

I also went into pre-school and helped the kiddies create items for their float too. It is a shame more parents don't help as although I found it very tiring with all the extra things to do last week it certainly was a lot of fun :-) Unfortunately poor little Sweetpea couldn't go on the pre-school float after all as after going to do some more work on the Float the other friday she became sick and was sick from lunchtime that day until early evening on Saturday - it wasn't much fun taking her around the Gala (she didn't want to stay home with her nanny as she didn't want to miss the fun) with a bowl poor thing.

Whilst there Middle and Eldest Sweetpea joined the fun run (why on earth is it called a fun run - can't see anything fun about it myself lol). I was really proud of them as Middle Sweetpea came 2nd and Eldest Sweetpea came 9th in their groups - goodness knows who they take after as I run like Phoebe out of Friends!

Before I go I just wanted to say a thank you to the lovely Harmony and Rosie. A long time ago I took part in something called PIF, in fact I think I took part in it twice. Well I posted off a few parcels as a random surprise for people and then when I returned from holiday recently I was greeted with a surprise package. 'Oooohh what could it be' I thought to myself, on opening it I found a gorgeously soft crocheted cuff and a very cute notepad with birdies all over it, they were all wrapped up in some lovely blue tissue paper. Thanks very much Harmony and Rosie.

Also thank you for all your comments, although I can't comment quite as often as I used to I am really enjoying catching up reading all your blogs and also reading your comments here. Take care. xxx

Chickens and Tandems ....

2011-06-24T20:01:00.000+01:00

Well two of the girls got re-homed recently. These cute little chicks are now growing into lovely little ladies so we took 2 to our grandparents the other week.

My gorgeous Grandad Pete (the Sweetpeas Smashing Super Great Grandad) has recently had a hip op. It hasn't been easy for him getting used to the fact that he can't go skiing down the black runs any more so I thought the chickens would be a great distraction. My Nan Glynn has always been maternal so she can mother them whilst Grandad looks after them :-)

Daisy and Gert as they are now called settled in really well and had a potter around the garden ....

They said hello to the gnomes and pecked around the apple trees ......

Before snuggling up in their new home, grandad even cut some lino for their bedding area, what posh chickens they are lol (it was really to make it easier for him to clean them out but I have never heard of chickens having a nice kitchen floor before :-)). As I left them Grandad had popped out to check them several times and Nan was cutting up little bits of food for them, I think these chickens are going to have a very happy life :-) We are all hoping that Gert doesn't turn into Bert as it is rather hard to tell at this age but we have another girl at home if that happens

We have also recently been to my Nan & Grandads to pick up their old tandem. oohh this has some very happy memories attached to it, we have photos of my parents biking off on this on their wedding day in full wedding gear and I fondly remember my aunties sitting on the front and back seats whilst me and my sister sat on pillows which were tied to the cross bars :-)

I hope you all have a fantastic weekend and thanks for all your lovely comments which always make me smile :-) xxxx

Gorgeous Crochet Buys

2011-06-20T21:29:00.000+01:00

I have really got into buying direct from artists in the last couple of years. There is something really lovely about buying from someone who you know has put their own time, effort and love into creating something gorgeous. When I saw these ickle scrummy shoes on Jacey's Blog Coffee 'n' Crochet I fell in love with them. Luckily in coincided with a friend having a new baby and another friend's baby turning one very soon so it gave me an excuse to buy them :-)

Aren't they just the cutest little baby shoes you have ever seen! They are even ok for babies who are a little older as I have read that you can pop puffy paint on the bottom of them to make them non slip, what a fantastic idea for babies who are at the cruising stage. The recipients of these little shoes have told me they have had many an admiring comment about them on their little cutey kiddies feet.

Of course then I popped into Jacey's Folksy Shop and just had to buy the above little hat for little Sweetpea, oh and of course a rose brooch for me :-)

The package arrived a few days later and was wrapped in the most lovely birdie tissue paper! In the parcel was the most wonderful surprise for little Sweetpea, just take a look at that fantastic crochet bag!

Little Sweetpea has adored her hat and bag, here she is watering in seedlings with her hat on , not sure there is any water left in her watering can with the angle she is tipping it in this photo :-)

Another hand made shopping experience that re-confirms why I love buying direct from the artist! Thanks Jacey :-) x

Who stole time ...............?

2011-06-16T16:59:00.000+01:00

Thanks so much for all your comments on my last post, I am glad you all loved my crochet hearts :-) Some of you wondered what yarn I used, I used several but mainly Patons Cotton Twist which has a lovely texture to it and is a pretty good price :-)

This week has been quite emotional in the Sweetpea household as our eldest child has been to College for two induction days. As he is one of the youngest in his year and our oldest child it has been quite a wrench :-( Above is a photo of him the day he was born with Mr Sweetpea, just how has 10 years 10 months gone past so quickly, it only seems like yesterday that photo was taken!

Helping Daddy make him a new bedroom when his sister arrived :-)

He had a couple of nights beforehand of finding it hard to get to sleep so that made it hard for me to sleep as I was worrying about him worrying :-(

The day came and he seemed fine, a little nervous but I sat with him and watched some science programmes on tv (his fav) so that seemed to distract him. He had to go on a bus to college as it is a couple of villages away, I was fighting back the tears as it drove past (we looked out at it from our house as of course it is rather uncool for Mum & Dad to take you to the bus stop :-)) . It looked like he went to wave and then decided that was not cool and put his hand through his hair instead lol (he insists he did wave and this wasn't the case :-)).

A nature lover from the start, here he is with a 'pet' snail :-)

He really enjoyed his first day , made new friends, wasn't phased by it being such a huge place.

With nanny (my Mum) at a 60s/70s fancy dress party.

The second day was harder work as they did sports all day and he did have an encounter with a couple of feisty boys but he seems to have taken that in his stride.

I just can't understand how he has gone from being this little 4 year old above to a College lad, they really do grow up in the blink of an eye.

I just hope he still loves cuddling up with me, chatting to me (sometimes non stop) and still loves his nature for a few years yet ... oh how I love this boy.

To tell you the truth I will be glad when this week is over , Mr Sweetpea has been on a late shift, we have had college and the usual clubs plus little Sweetpea has been a bit full on and not wanting to go to bed until 9pm - I am shattered!

Hope you are all having a fab week. xxx

Edit - he just called me up the garden to help him save a baby blackbird who got stuck in his strawberry net so the nature loving boy is still there , oh and he resuscitated his gold fish the other day - never have I seen a fish be bought back to life - this kid has talent lol :-)

I am an addict!

2011-06-09T16:54:00.001+01:00

Oh dear ...... what shall I do ....... I think I may be addicted to crochet! I can't stop making these cute little hearts! As soon as I wake I feel the need to make one even before I get out of bed! I keep buying scrummy coloured wool whilst thinking how lovely a little heart would look like in that colour. Why did no one warn me of the dangers of getting addicted to this lovely new craft I have just learnt :-)

It is all your fault - you know who you are - I blame you entirely for putting too many gorgeous crochet photos on your blog and making me NEED to learn :-) This pattern came from the lovely Attic24's blog if you want to give it a go.

All those scrummy colours ........

Gorgeous textures ........

So many possibilities ........

Gorgeous equipment to work with .....

And so many lovely things that I want to create. I think these little hearts will become some bunting, oohh I can't wait :-) I have now bought The Happy Hooker book and borrowed some more crochet books from the library, I just now need to find more time to create some more gorgeous wooly things.

As a thank you to you all for your inspiration I have made the bloggers who love crochet a little bloggy button. Feel free to pop it on your blog and show your love of crochet. Just right click on the piccy below, save to your hard drive and then upload it as a piccy into your blogger template. I hope you like it. xxx

Happy days and holidays ......

2011-06-03T13:10:00.000+01:00

It has been a bit quiet on my blog for a little while but I have a good excuse honest :-) I have been away on holiday, I promise not to bore you with all 230 photos I took whilst I was away ........

The sweetpeas love our (well it is my parents really but I have adopted it :-)) hideaway in Mallorca, they love the outdoors so the place is just perfect for them.

We spent many a happy hour looking for treasure on the beach. I have fallen in love with seaglass and bought back a big bag of it :-)

Little sweetpea tried out her new UV protective swimming costume, if only they had invented those when I was a child!

The villa's garden was blooming, this gorgeous smelling broom was one of my particular favourites.

The boys had a little helper whilst fishing, this Cormorant was sitting right next to them and so tame, this photo was taken with hardly any zooming in.

The beach was as perfect as ever and the only real place Mr Sweetpea and I got to chill out so we were there every afternoon :-)

Snow angles in the sand ......

The track to the villa has been tarmacked, we were quite sad about this at first as we loved the bumpy old track but it is great for cycling along with the children in the evenings if it was cool enough. Mind you the weather got up to 39 deg C towards the end of the holiday so cycling was off the menu then !

My Dad has always loved recycling, the bike above was found in a dump (Middle Sweetpea was riding it in the last photo) as was the wheelbarrow (which is now a planter) I think :-) The car was bought many moons ago and is now a house to some lovely rock mice and geckos.

With no TV there it is lovely to see how creative the kiddies can be with their time - they spent the hotter mornings sitting at the table doodling piccies and making books. The table was covered in felt later in the week by me :-)

Being at the beach provided time for me to delve head first into crochet, I borrowed The Happy Hooker book from the library as recommended by Jene and it is a great book to learn with (thanks Jene :-) x).

Mr Sweetpea also taught little sweetpea some swimming, she loved it! She had great fun when we remembered we had some arm-bands back at Morca (this is what little sweetpeas called the villa, we thought she was always talking about the Island until we got there and she insisted the villa itself was called Morca :-)).

I have now had the Sweetpeas all with me for 3 weeks, I do love them all dearly but must admit to craving a little time away from everyone now. Morca is gorgeous but as it is a one story building and surrounded by hills you do feel a little on top of each other after a while until you adapt to the new way of life. We had no fridge for the holiday - my poor parents spend 600 euros on a new fridge freezer a few months back but we couldn't get it to work, I hope they manage to work out what is wrong with it :-(

Until next year my gorgeous Playa, I will be back .....

Catch up .......

2011-05-12T14:17:00.000+01:00

Thanks for all your lovely comments about my 'Creative' post, I am glad you liked all of our creations :-) Now I apologise in advance as this is rather a photo heavy post as I wanted to do a catch up with what we have been up to for the last few weeks :-)

The weather has been glorious here for weeks now, in fact I don't think I have ever wished for rain so much :-o We have had around a month and a half of no rain here so our gardens and farmers fields really could do with some now. This has however meant we have had loads of fun outside :-)

Above and below are photos of the Marina which we are lucky enough to have in our village, this is the one place where my kiddies never argue so we spent quite a lot of time down there ......

We went to Scotsdales (a large garden centre) in the holiday too, I know how to treat my kids lol, mind you they love it there :-) Middle Sweetpea couldn't help but give the bronzed chap a kiss, you can't take her anywhere! Little Sweetpea wasn't so sure about him and kept chatting about the 'man with no eyes' all the way home.

The kiddies have been playing in a den they have created in the field bank. They have since made a little picket fence along the bottom of it and they spend a few hours together making a flag for it.

Much fun was had with the amazing amount of dandelions that popped up this year. Little Sweetpeas hair even seemed to be trying to get in on the dandelion act :-)

They spent ages picking and blowing them. I had to refrain from pulling up in the car near roundabouts as I had a real urge to photograph the hundreds of dandelions surrounding them - I didn't think the general public would like a view of my backside up in the air taking photos of them :-) Luckily we found a field full of them !

We popped to my grandparents (the sweetpeas great-grandparents). I couldn't help but take photos of my Nan Glynn an Grandad Pete's fab gnome filled garden .....

And we all just love their retro caravan ... in fact my hubby and I have lived in this caravan for a few months in my parents yard when we were buying our second house so it really is like home for me. I think all my Aunties (my granparents daughters) have lived in it too at some point

Later in the holiday we had more fun down the marina, this time with lots of extra kiddies. Eldest Sweetpea is at that age when he wants to go out on his own with mates so I have been having to let him go. He will be off to College in September so I know the time is right but it doesn't make it any easier.

One way round it was the Marina, this did mean I ended up with a few more kiddies (9 one day) but at least I could keep an eye on them all and know they were safe. We did have a scare with one of my Nephews who came to ours to stay as he nearly drowned, luckily Middle Sweetpea saw him, his big brother was sent to fetch him back and Eldest Sweetpea pulled him to the bank. Scary stuff and that showed them why I was being boring and telling them all to stay in sight and not jump off the bridge etc! I was just about to jump in myself but then realised Little Sweetpea would follow me if I did so it would have caused more issues, all was safe and well in the end - phew.

Little Sweetpea has loved it down the Marina too, it is so relaxing there.

Another thing she has loved is dancing, she insists I pop music on for her to have a quick boogy. Goodness knows where she gets her moves ....

For the Royal Wedding of William and Kate (now the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge just down the road from us :-)) we went to Swaffham Prior street party. I haven't been to one of these since I was about 3, it was great fun.

A whole road was shut off and everyone came out to celebrate ....

Even the phone box got in on the act :-)

And my Dad here is chatting to a mate who is trying to look serious even though Dad was wearing a funny hat :-)

Then I saw this gorgeous Camper Van there, oh how I want one. One day, one day you will be mine ....

Then on May Day we did our annual pilgrimage to Reach Fair where we met my parents (Mr Sweetpea had to work yet again - in fact both of us worked most of the bank holidays :-(). We had a lovely time but it was a bit nippy, tea and scones soon sorted that out, they were being served in the little local church and we ate them whilst sitting on the church pews.

Eldest Sweetpea managed to win a goldfish whilst Middle Sweetpea got in a mood as she didn't :-( We went out and bought a friend for this little fella the next day to cheer her up. After winning him Eldest Sweetpea wasn't sure it was a good idea to win him as he was upset for all the fish left behind. Dart & Spark (the fish) seem happy in their new home.

A gold star for anyone still reading and who hasn't dropped off :-) x

Creative fun .....

2011-05-06T20:21:00.001+01:00

Hi everyone, I am sorry I haven't been here for a while, where on earth does the time go? I am sure the earth is spinning faster making time go quicker - even eldest Sweetpea commented on how fast time was going recently and kiddies usually think time goes slowly so it must be going very fast! I seem to find that I can either spend time reading blogs or writing one, not both. All you bloggers write such lovely blogs I have been too busy reading them :-)

I thought I would update you on the creative side of our family tonight. With Easter recently and our Sweetpeas getting lots of chocy I thought I would make the girls some little felt bunnies, I also made my ickle sis one too :-) I popped some lavender in them to make them smell yummy. This design was inspired by The Linen Cats gorgeous bunny purses - so lovely.

Chocolate nests are a must in our house at Easter so we HAD to make some - so scrummy! I make ours with shreaded wheat to give a real nest look.

I have also used a sewing machine! Wwwahhooo! If you have only recently joined me you will wonder why I am so excited :-) One of my New Years targets (I don't do resolutions as I always break them) was to use a sewing machine, I haven't used one since College.

Well a lovely friend of mine lent me her sewing machine after reading my blog and then it sat there for a couple of weeks and another mate then came and threaded it up for me. I had to break the fear factor of it so it sat there for another 2 - 3 weeks until I finally plucked up the courage and got a few moments of quiet in the house.

I made some little bags for the kiddies Easter egg hunt in the garden. Nothing too big but great fun learning to make them. I even had to learn to wind the bobbin up whilst doing it as that ran out of thread so that took about an hour lol.

Eldest Sweetpea wanted a more manly bag so he went for some owl fabric with a leather strap. I was really proud of them and really enjoyed myself.

Little Sweetpea won a colouring competition at the local Library, she was really chuffed about it :-)

Middle Sweetpea did some hand sewing and made a lovely lavender pillow with a chick on the front, I must blog a piccy soon as she did really well and I was amazed how quiet she was when she was making it (she is not known for being quiet :-)).

And eldest Sweetpea made a tree house - I was gardening and then suddenly heard hammering and drilling and there he was up a tree creating a house. He even has a pulee system to pull his dinner up there.

He also wanted to sleep there the night but we did say no to that just in case he fell out, we did let him stay out there for a while though.

He also made a fab go cart at the beginning of the holiday , I think engineering might be his thing :-)

I have also been creating more things for my little shop and am loving making things, in fact I get rather frustrated if I don't get to make a little something each day.

Chick up-date - they are growing so fast!

2011-04-28T20:02:00.000+01:00

Hi everyone, I thought you may like an update on how the gorgeous little chicks are getting on, wow they grow so quickly. They are now nearly 4 weeks old and we have 8 out of the original 9 that hatched (the poor little one that was having problems had to be put out of its misery :-().

They stayed in their brooder for the first 3 weeks to keep them warm at night and to check they were all happy and healthy. Here is a piccy of them all crashed out under their heat lamp, they used to all run around cheeping, eating and drinking and then all crash out 10 mins later.

We then started popping them outside for a little while in the day to scratch about in the grass.

I find it amazing that without a Mummy hen as a teacher they still know what to do e.g. scratching around, having mud baths etc - instinct is an amazing thing.

Inspired by Myrtle and Eunice (pop over there for a fab felt chick tutorial and a giggle) here is a piccy of the chicks doing a little dance:

Doing to do-si-do...

And a little Flamenco ...

Put your beak in, your beak out and shake it all about ...

And I am sure they were listening to Groove Armada here , I see you baby, shakin that ass lol.

This is them another week older as they look today - wow they look grown up but are still as cuddly :-)

The kids and their mates have been loving cuddling these cute little chicks and I think the chicks love it too :-)

Giveaway

2011-04-23T18:13:00.001+01:00

Sorry, this is just a quick bloggy post - life is a bit manic with school hols and both Mr Sweetpea and I working over the bank holidays but I will be back soon :-)

Just a quick note to say that I am having a giveaway over at my blogshop as a thanks to all my loyal followers. Pop over here and see how to enter:

http://www.scentedsweetpeas-blogshop.blogspot.com/

I hope you are all having a fantastic Easter break.

Take care
Zoe
x

Pinata Tutorial - How to make your own Pinata

2011-04-16T20:28:00.000+01:00

A few weeks back I decided to make a Pinata for my little girls birthday. I thought I would write a little tutorial as it was fun to make and a hell of a lot cheaper than buying it from a shop :-) Be warned though, you will need to do this a few days before the party (rather than 1 day before like I did lol) to let it dry thoroughly.

So, what will you need?

Newspaper, ripped up in quite large strips.
A balloon.
A small bowl to hold the Pinata as you make it.
A large bowl to make up in the glue in.
Tissue paper to decorate.
Some string.
Water.
Flour.

Make up the paste that will hold the newspaper together, for this you just need 2 cups of water and 1 cup of flour. Mix it up until there aren't any lumps.

Blow up the balloon and then pop it into the bowl for support. Start dipping the newspaper stips into the paste mixture and then layer it on the balloon until it is all covered but leave a hole large enough to put sweets in, this is where the balloon is tied (this should be sitting in the bowl). As you can see from the above photo this is quite messy so make sure you either do it outside or on a surface that is easily cleaned or thrown away.

Make about 3 layers and if possible make the top a few layers thicker (the top of the Pinata so the area that is nearer the bowl as when you take it out of the bowl that will be the top of your Pinata).

When it is completely dry make two holes near the entrance, thread some string through this . Now cut up some tissue paper and decorate the Pianta however you wish, we used strips of tissue paper in various colours. I glued this on with PVA glue but double sided sticky tape would work too.

Now fill the Pinata with sweets or treats and some cut up tissue paper to add to the effect when it explodes :-)

Hang it up and have fun!

Remember it is best that the children do this one at a time to lower the injury risk, we used a wooden spoon to smack ours :-) Here is a good video link for more info on how to make one - click here.

Little Quakers visit from America..

2011-04-15T22:34:00.000+01:00

Here in the Sweetpea household we were recently contacted by the lovely Blueberries in the Fields as she had a duck called Quakers visiting her. She went on to explain that Quakers really wanted to explore the world a little more before returning home to America so could he come and stay at ours for a while, well of course we said yes :-)

A couple of weeks later we heard a teeny tiny ratter tat tatter on the door, on opening it we saw a tired Mr Quakers and his very large suitcase :-) We invited him in and helped him un-pack his little suitcase (which contained mainly scraps of bread and a spare little neck tie), offered him and cup of tea (very English of us lol) and then showed him around our home. We knew that where he lived he had friend chickens so we introduced him to our newly hatched chicks, he felt far less home sick after that ...

After a good nights sleep little Sweetpea insisted on showing him around Ely, Mr Quakers was so excited! Of course the first stop was outside the magnificent Ely Cathedral, Mr Quakers was in ore of the size of it.

He really wanted to fly up to the top but he was too little and only managed to get half way .....

Little Sweetpea suggested that maybe they should go through the door like everyone else ... even the doors to the Cathedral were gigantic (you can just see Mr Quakers to the right of the door little Sweetpea is standing at) !

Mr Quackers let out a big quack of shock at how pretty the inside was ...

He had a little rest on a statue half way round ... luckily the statue didn't seem to mind and was happy to hold him.

As they left the Cathedral Mr Quakers was very excited to see some fellow ducks hanging around a really old cannon, he just had to show off his balancing skills by sitting on top of it (he is the little yellow speck at the front of the cannon). Little Sweetpea chatted to his new friends telling them all about his adventures.

We then walked back past all the lovely old buildings in Ely on the way back to a backery .... it was surely snack time after all that adventuring ....

Of course Mr Quackers had to check out all the old doors to see where they went before we got to the backery.

We all sat outside the Cathedral enjoying some cakes in the sunshine ... hhhmmm what's in your cake bag Mr Quakers ??

Yum those cakes were scrummy ! On the way home little Sweetpea explained that we were going to go to the garden centre to find a new tree for the allotment, Mr Quakers certainly loved the ride in the plant trolley.

Then it was time to go off to the allotment to plant the tree. Mr Quakers thought it would be fun to play a little game of hide and seek so whilst little Sweetpea ran around looking for him he hood and waited for her to find him ...

We certainly have enjoyed having an American duck here to stay and I hope Mr Quakers enjoyed his time here too. He has to return back to America now to be with his owner Ethan whose Mummy has this blog, he will tell him everything he saw in Canada and then England. What a brave young duck to travel all that way on his own :-) xxx

The gorgeous Monique also sent some goodies for the Sweetpeas with Mr Quakers, all these and some sweets (which seemed to disappear before I could photograph them) - you are such a sweetheart Monique. xxx

Little Sweetpea has been loving the lavender bag, in fact I now have to rub all the Sweetpeas pillows with it every night as they love it so much!

Pop over to Blueberries in the Fields Etsy shop to see the most gorgeous Muffinpie dolls, we have several living here who we love dearly.

More blogging about the chicks and how they have grown in the next few days :-)

Cute, cute and more cuteness!

2011-04-08T21:44:00.000+01:00

Thanks for all your lovely comments on my last blog post, I do hope we get some proper sleep here soon :-) Harmony and Rosie, I am afraid our African Grey hasn't returned home, thanks very much for asking. x

This week has been a rather cheery week in the Sweetpea household which has mainly been due to the arrival of some gorgeous new arrivals. Last Friday night we all went to bed excited knowing that some of the chicks were trying to hatch from their eggs :-) When we awoke little Sweetpea ran into our bedroom exclaiming that two Sarah's (the name she picked for her chick) had hatched and that they were playing hide and seek!

Little and Eldest Sweetpea watching the chicks hatch (middle Sweetpea was at Nanny's house)

Chick hatching and another chick flashing her little cute bot bot (the big fluff ball in the image) :-)

When they have just hatched they look rather sorry for themselves until the warm air in the incubator fluffs them up a bit and their energy returns. They can take up to 24 hours to hatch.

This is Sarah playing hide and seek :-) They were then popped into a brooder with a heat lamp, some fresh water and some chick crumbs to build them up.

The Sweetpeas kept watching them all day and middle Sweetpea was so excited when she returned home from Nanny's house.

At just a few days old they are growing little wing feathers and start to lose their little egg tooth on the end of their beak, they use this to chip their way out of the egg (you can just see this little ones egg tooth as the white dot on the tip of her/his beak).

They have been enjoying lots of cuddles and have melted our hearts - they are such cuties! We had 9 hatch from 14 eggs, I am not sure 1 little chick will make it as we had to help it hatch and it isn't growing, it just wants cuddling all the time poor dot.

I will leave you with one of our cute little chicks modelling for you :-) xxx

Birthday, swaps and life in general :-)

2011-04-02T13:54:00.004+01:00

Well it has been a bit of a manic week here in the Sweetpea household with yet another birthday! Our family birthdays all seem to have clumped together with March having my birthday, my Mums exactly 1 week later and then my daughters exactly a week after my Mums :-)

The week started off wonderfully with me having Sunday off work due to the clocks going forward. I love going to work but having the day off gave me the opportunity to go to a car boot with my mate Bear's Footprints. By the time I got out of bed at about 10am (9am old time) she has already texted an hour earlier to see if I wanted to go - mad woman :-) I will show you my treasure on a later blog.

Monday however it went downhill a little when I got some sort of bug which made me feel very tired and sick indeed. I managed to lay down for about 1 hour before the school pick up but that was it so I have been battling it all week really. For the rest of the week I ached all down my legs - so much so that I wondered if I had done a marathon in my sleep. Not great timing as I had to prepare to the party queen's birthday party.

She wanted a monkey cake originally but thankfully she saw a chocolate one in a shop so requested one of those instead. So I started baking and made her a chocolate one with cream and jam filling - scrum. We decided little mini eggs and chocolate curls would set it off nicely. The curls were made by popping a chocy bar in the microwave for a few seconds and then using a potatoe peeler to peel little bits off the chocolate.

We prepared the dining room with decorations and her party food .... (this photo is to prove to Bear's Footprints that sometimes my house can be tidy lol - she popped over the other day to find buttons and felt all over the table!).

Middle Sweetpea usually has an Easter egg hunt for her birthday but as the weather forecast wasn't too good I set about making her a Pinata. Not sure why I did this when feeling ill but it didn't work out too badly - you can see it in the top photo. I will have to post a tutorial of how to do this for you all soon as it was quite easy.

Middle Sweetpea thought it made a fantastic hat after it fell down - she looked like Jamiroquai :-)

The girls had a fantastic time and played happily together. After the Pinata and food they decorated cupcakes and had fun creating wonderful colourful art on them. Instead of party bags which I am trying to move away from for eco reasons I made up their decorated cupcakes in tissue paper bags to take home.

My gorgeous little middle Sweetpea is now a whole 9 years old! I still remember the day I had her, she took twice as long as her brother to arrive, so much so I insisted my waters were broken as I was getting bored of waiting for her (it was only 8 hours but felt a lot longer :-)). I remember at one point in labour sitting on a bouncy ball to try and help ease the pain when having a contraction but then I got really angry with the ball and I kicked this large ball across the room, it then ricocheted off the walls and Mr Sweetpea and I had to miss it lol! I also electrocuted myself on the tense machine - that made me forget about another contraction lol. She arrived exactly on her due date and appeared at around 2 pm, when I took her to look out of the window the next morning little baby bunnies were hoping around on the grass.

She was quite a vocal little one from the moment she arrived - I remember wanting a bath whilst in hospital and I couldn't fit her cot in the bathroom so I popped her in the nursery next to a couple of other babies, she was fed and changed but she having a little moan. I lay in the bath listening to her calling me and when I returned after a super speedy bath she was still there but the other babies had been taken out to somewhere more quiet :-)

Oh how I love my headstrong, full on, no fear Sweetpea. She is so caring and thoughtful and will become a wonderful adult I am sure.

Swaps

I recently took part in my first ever organised swap which was the Spring Swap. I was paired with the lovely Kathy from Postcards from the PP who sent me the most fantastic parcel! Just take a look at the gorgeous packages below wrapped in ribbon and tissue paper - she thoroughly spoilt me.

And just look at the goodies inside:

There were candles, ribbons, a cute owl, a wonderful chicken tea towel, some gorgeous napkins and cards and some lovely flower seeds. There was also a cute sheep cancer research badge and some card crafing items.

This is what I sent Kathy, now I wish I had sent more than the 5 items listed on the swap - you live and learn!

A hand made lavendar pillow with beaded lavendar cross stitch.

An egg masher, I have one of these and it makes me smile each time I use it :-) Some chocy eggs - you can never have too much chocy.

I little notebook with a gorgeous bird print on it and some ribbons and buttons.

Here is the inside of that cute pad, it keeps shut with a magnet and then opens to reveal more gorgeous bird drawings....

Lack of Sleep

Mr SweetpeaSweetpea still won't sleep through a night. We had a weeks worth of sleep the other week but she is back to her old tricks :-( I even had to go in her bed one night this week for poor middle Sweetpeas sake.

I must confess I am now thinking of asking for outside help as I think I am now reaching my sleep deprivation limits after just over 3 1/2 years of broken sleep. It doesn't help that Mr Sweetpea was on earlies this week, that seems to tip me over the edge a bit. I just want me back, the old me with a bit of confidence and a lot more energy :-( I popped out to the pub with friends the other night and had to really physic myself up for it, I felt quite sick with worry about going but I got there and had a fab time. I know that this is due to lack of sleep and when I do get normal amounts of sleep I do have to battle the shy inner me a bit but not to that extent :-( Here's to more sleep!

Highs and lows ......

2011-03-25T21:36:00.004Z

Hi everyone, I do hope you have been enjoying the last week and have had some sunshine where you are. After another week of grey the sun is finally shining and the flowers are showing their lovely faces :-) Little Sweetpea above has been wearing a little daisy chain I made her as she wanted to be a princess in the flowers - oh the joys of being 3!

I have really enjoyed taking photos of flowers again this week, I have missed it during the winter months. I took this photo in our local grave yard, I am not sure what flower it is (does anyone know?), but it is stunning with it's tissue paper like petals. It is such a simple looking flower but it captures my heart every morning when I walk past it, there is a whole group of them clumped together. When I took this photo I did scare another local mum on her walk to school as I popped up out of the flowers in the grave yard - luckily she knows I am slightly bonkers lol.

I have also ventured out in a skirt this week :-) I found a lovely 'White Stuff' skirt in a Charity shop and have been wearing it this week, I only knew who 'White Stuff' were when a mate told me, it looks like I got a real bargain! I am not sure however if I am very good at being a skirt wearing girl, around 30 minutes after putting my new skirt on I decided to go to the allotment to cut some dafs and as you can see from the photo below I ended up with mud everywhere lol. A friend of mine also joked that I would have to invest in an iron if I were to wear skirts, I can however confirm that with a slow spin and my shake and hang method it did pretty well on the wrinkle front - bonus !

I wore it out with a long spring coat I have, I was feeling pretty good until my middle Sweetpea said 'Mum, you look like Mary Poppins in that coat' , I smiled, feeling happy that I looked like her, I like her style, but then she said 'or .... a witch!' to which I replied 'hhhmm, I think I will go for the Mary Poppins option'.

Also this week I have been busy cutting felt and creating things, oh how I love felt, buttons and thread, you can create such pretty things with simple items.

I also did a swap with the lovely Kazzy recently, she sent me one of her gorgeous drawings, a lovely little robin for little Sweetpea, a gorgeous rose scented pillow and also a little notepad, it was such a lovely parcel! I feel very honoured to have one of Kazzy's amazing works or art.

In return I sent her some little flower hair clips for her little Sweetpea, a button heart, a vintage pill box and a Little Bear Lost book (I love the illustrations in those books).

Pets, Highs and Lows :-(

We are all rather excited in the Sweetpea household as our lovely cockerel went off on holiday to my Father-in-Laws recently to meet the Light Sussex ladies there :-) Well we have popped the eggs they have laid in an incubator, the eggs are turned 3 times a day, the temperature has to be kept between 37.5 - 37.7 deg C and the humidity at 45 - 50 with a little water trough (wow those hens do more work than we think when sitting on eggs!). We checked the eggs by looking through them with a strong light and they are all dark so look fertile :-) It takes roughly 21 days for them to incubate, the kids can't wait for next week :-)

On a sad note one of our African Greys escaped this week. My husband has had him for around 24 years so he is really upset and we are also worried for his mate who he left behind. He had eaten his way through a wooden door frame and some wire, walked through to the chicken run where we saw him when we returned from the school run. We tried to catch him in a net but he then escaped and flew to a nearby tree. What was really sad is that then a couple of crows started to mob him and call their friends in, then over 50 crow mobbed him until he flew away, you could see him trying to fly back towards us but they scared him away :-( He still hasn't returned ......

Birthdays, gardening, cakes and makes ...

2011-03-18T13:31:00.000Z

Hi everyone, I hope you have all had a fantastic week. This week in the Sweetpea household we had a birthday, mine ! :-) As I have said before I like to buy a pavlova for my birthday every year but this year I thought I would try and make one. It was a lot easier than I thought and was great fun to decorate. I got the eggs off my friend Helen as our chickens are not laying as much as they used to and used blackberries which I had frozen from the Summer (I bought the Raspberries and blueberries but hopefully we will have homegrown this year :-)). It could have probably done with a bit longer in the oven as it was a bit gooey on the inside but then again I like gooey meringue. My parents popped over in the evening and bought a chocy cake so this pavlova was only eaten by me and my parents and the kiddies and Mr Sweetpea wanted chocy cake :-)

I popped to the toddler group today and my friend Kathryn gave me a lovely card with a crochet hook hidden in it, this then gave it away that it was my Birthday this week (she saw some Birthday messages on Facebook).

Now I don't mind getting older at all but I am not a fan of fuss so try and skip past my Birthdays with little fuss if possible. The lovely Bear's Footprints had just shown me a gorgeous crochet mini cushion she had made which has lavender in it, it smells devine. This was her first make of this kind and she then decided to give it to me as a birthday present! How sweet of her, it must have been so precious to her as it was the first time she has made one and it is so lovely - if only we had smellyvision as it smells so yummy!

As the sun came out late last week (none this week I am afraid, just grey, grey, grey :-() we all got out in the garden and planted some seeds. The kiddies and I really do love being outdoors in the warmer weather. Little Sweetpea got busy with her new watering can that she got from Father Christmas :-)

And I had to find ways to label my seeds so I decided to use those old CDs you get with internet software or children's sample programmes on to label some up. They also act as a bit of a bird deterrent.

oohh and I have been creating more daisies, I decided to make a rainbow of colours :-)

I have also been thinking about Easter so have been making some felt pouches for the hairclips for my little Facebook Shop :-)

ooh before I go, can I pick your brain??? If you are into sewing can I ask what machine you would recommend as I really want to buy one with my Birthday money and try my hand at sewing?

xxx

Random goodness ....

2011-03-09T11:26:00.003Z

Wow it seems like ages since I have been able to post a blog :-( Time seems to be rushing by and I can't seem to slow it down!

So what have I been up to ??? I am still in my tidying/de-cluttering mood so the ribbons were the next to get it :-) I bought some pegs for the washing but then thought they would be great for storing my ribbons on, I rather like them wrapped around their little wooden pegs ...

I have been to a WI jumble sale with my mate Bear's Footprints ... wow what an experience ! She did warn me it would be packed but I didn't believe her until I drove up there and found a rather large queue. When I got in there I had to literally be pulled into the crowd by Bear's Footprints to see the clothes etc. I came out with several bits including some lace curtain, a woolly jumper and some cord trousers all for about 40p each - bargain :-)

I also popped to a charity shop in Bury St Edmunds called Open Door, that place is like Aladdin's cave full of treasures - I spent hours in there (much to Mr Sweetpeas dismay lol).

I am going to felt these jumpers and will let you know the result. I also got some more lovely ladybird books for my collection - ooh these take me back in time ...

I fell in love with these vintage curtains, love the colour and pattern.

We have been watching a little field vole (or mouse) feed under our bird feeder, a whole family sometimes arrives, they are so cute!

I have been buying hellebores for my collection and planting them up, a local nursery sells them for around £2 - yey! How I love these flowers, they are like jewellery with their gorgeous flower heads.

I have been planting up primroses for my windowsill and popping dafs in vases - if I can't have sunshine naturally I will make it in my house instead :-)

I accidentally made the most humongous cake the other day .... it was meant to be a little sponge cake as I had an urge for a cream cake but then the cake tin was tool large so I had to make two large layers and this is the result! Mind you we still managed to eat it all :-)

I have also painted this door in our room and the window etc with cream paint. I painted them yellow and long time ago and have grown out of that colour now, mind you I do miss it a bit.

Oh and I have been creating more hairclips , I had a lovely large order for daisy clips so have been busy making them up and other new ones.

Phew, I think that is it for now! I hope you have all had a fab few weeks. I better be off as this bloomin blog post has taken me ages and now little sweetpea is getting rather annoyed with me and she wants to plant up some cosmos and marigolds .... now I feel guilty! Motherhood hey!

Crafting and sorting

2011-03-02T15:05:00.001Z

Hi everyone, I hope you all had a fab half-term week last week. Ours was a lovely chill out week (well once the older Sweetpeas got used to being with each other all the time again :-)). I really must make sure we enjoy the next break too as Eldest Sweetpea is getting to the age where he wants to go out with friends so we may not see so much of him in the Summer term :-( He is then off to College in September and I am hoping I don't lose him completely then :-(

During the last couple of weeks I have had a little play with knitting, my work mate decided I should learn knitting before teaching me any more crochet - not sure why but it has been fun. This form of knitting is different from the UK knitting technique, I had thought it was Russian knitting but then talking to another work friend who is Lithuanian I now think that it must be a wide-spread version of knitting and maybe the UK uses a different technique to everyone else? Basically you have the loop on your knitting needle and hook through the wool from the back and pop your new loop on your other needle. I will have to try and blog some piccies of how you do it. It is quick to do but I am not sure if the knitting is more loose with this style , it may however be due to my lack of skill :-)

I got going and made little Sweetpea a scarf - she picked out the colours she liked and away I went :-) As you can see it is not fantastic but she seems to love it. It looks a bit like Bagpuss wrapped round her neck lol. On finishing it I realised I didn't know how to get it off the hook so my Mother-in-Law taught me along with the help of You Tube :-)

I have stalled slightly on my Crochet. This little square was created with a lot of help from Bears Footprints the other Friday. I really must try another one as I am sure I have forgotten it all already :-(

Middle and eldest Sweetpea joined in with some felt fun during half term. They made their own little brooches and hairclip designs.

We have also been painting. I got the watercolours out, lots of lovely vibrant colours and this is what little Sweetpea above created - hhhhhmm a lot of black!

Eldest Sweetpea then bought the above painting home from school, should I worry about my children and their fascination with black lol :-) They reminded me of the comedy Spaced where Brian the artist is inspired by black and of the comedy below:

Spring Cleaning

I have been in a real de-clutter mood lately, most cupboards have been pulled out and most things put back in again. I do think I have a bit of a problem with saving too many things - just take a look below at some of the things I have saved from things I have been posted over the years !

That is just some of it :-o I just can't bring myself the throw things away if I think I can re-use them, the problem is where to store it all??? Any ideas?

Spring Time Swap

2011-02-23T09:34:00.000Z

Just a quick bloggy post , I have just signed up for my first ever organised bloggy swap, how exciting and scary all at the same time :-) It is being organised by Sew Special Bears and the deadline for entering is the end of today so if you want to enter pop over to hers now.

Oohh this swap is just what I needed on a grey rainy day like today - roll on Spring !

xxx

Featured Artist - Julia Crossland

2011-02-21T17:48:00.000Z

After my last post full of sadness I thought there was no better time to blog this interview I did with the fantastic artist Julia Crossland. Her images are pure joy! So here is my interview with her, I hope you enjoy it :-)

Hello Julia, tell us a bit about yourself ...

My name is Julia Crossland, I am a 37 year old artist and illustrator and I live in a small village just north of Sheffield. My house is very old and very small and it sits by a river, I live there with my other half and our daughter. I also love to crochet when Im not painting, and baking/cooking, gardening, walking and being by the sea are other favourite pass-times of mine.

I know you create the most fantastic paintings, how and when did you start painting seriously?

Ah thank you! Well it was around 2006; I had been working as a freelance signwriter for several years and working away alot in Ireland. I felt that particular lifestyle was becoming pretty draining so we found a house to live in and I gradually began to find more local work which meant I could find little pockets of time to paint too. It all started quite gradually in the beginning and I started off with a small website which led to my first overseas commission and a few sales. I then discovered I was expecting my daughter, and after she was born the painting took a back seat again. I've started painting more again now she is a little bit older.

So, what is your favourite medium?

I am absolutely smitten with acrylic paint. I love that it drys fast and you can work in layers - you can also thin it right down with water for a lovely transparent effect, a bit like watercolour. The colours are bright and I enjoy the texture of it too, on both canvas and paper.

I really must try out acrylics! Are there any other crafts you enjoy?

I really like freestyle machine embroidery work, and of course crocheting! The sewing is something I would really like to devote more time to in the future as I miss it, working with fabric is a really tactile way of creating something which I love.

Crochet is something that relaxes me at the end of the day but I have way too many projects on the go - and didn't I just see the most divine crocheted waistcoat in a magazine this morning...Im thinking - yep, I could do one of those (along with my shawl, my two blankets, a cushion...list is endless).

Yes, as a beginner I am rather jealous of your lovely Crochet :-) When did you start selling your stuff - where do you sell?

I think it was about 2001/2 when I sold a painting at the Great Sheffield Art Show. Today I sell my work through my website: www.juliacrossland.co.uk , my Folksy Shop: http://www.folksy.com/shops/Jool and I also have work for sale at the 20-21 Visual Arts Centre in Lincolnshire, Andrea Willis Designs in Scarborough and Abercorn & Co in Yorkshire.

Do you also have a day job, or is this your main job?

My main job is being Mum to Carys, and painting is my other job.

Where do you get your inspiration from?

I am inspired hugely by the coast, by people, nature, children. Things like islands with lighthouses on them in the distance, rows of ice-cream coloured beach huts, sea birds, harbours, boats, hares, moonlit skies, flowers, sunsets - I could go on and on! I'm also inspired by other artists and crafters.

You say you are inspired by other artists, who are your favourite artists/crafters e.g are there any great folksy/etsy/artists blogs or shops you can tip us off about :-)?

I really like the work of the following people:
Kirsty Elson Designs (driftwood and textile artist), Penny Bhadresa (lino print artist), Babette Cole (illustrator), Karen Davis (illustrator), Brenda King (artist), Dear Emma (textile artist), Andrea Stokes (artist), Catherine Hyde (artist).

Oooh fantastic, I am off to check them out now :-) What is your favourite music to craft to?

It all depends what mood Im in as I have quite a diverse taste in music, but you can catch me listening to anything from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Take That, Jack Johnson, JJ Cale, The Beatles, Abba and Ben Harper to a spot of Eric Clapton, Simply Red and even classical!

You create so many gorgeous paintings, which is your favourite piece?

That's a hard question because I have a small love affair with most of my completed work!! I think right this minute, I would have to choose Harbour.

So, where do you do your crafting (specially built studio - sofa) ?

I am very much a woman with a Table for a Studio. When we are not eating at it, I transform it into organised chaos with paint tubes, palettes and other mixed media everywhere. I long for the day when I can have a special work space of my own, the luxury of closing a door on it all and not having to tidy it all away in time for tea would be just lovely!

You can find Julia's work in the links above, be warned you will want to buy some of her work, it is all so lovely :-)

I hope you are enjoying my little bloggy interviews with artists :-) If you want to be featured send me a message - go on, don't be shy :-)

xxx

You are all so lovely, thank you. x

2011-02-21T16:39:00.000Z

Just a quick message to everyone who commented on my last blog post to say thank you so much, they were all really lovely and much appreciated. We still obviously miss our old man Skibby (he was 18 years old) and our chicken but it really did warm my heart reading all those lovely comments.

Thanks again.

Love
Zoe
aka ScentedSweetpea
xxx

Sad week in the Sweetpea Household

2011-02-18T22:08:00.000Z

Thanks for all your lovely comments on my last blog post and well wishes for Skibby. Sadly I had to call my Dad over to put poor Skibby to sleep last night. His breathing became very laboured and he was sick and wailed a few times so was obviously really scared :-( It was a hard telephone call to make but I really couldn't see him die slowly in front of me, it just wasn't fair. Dad came over and agreed that he was leaving us but it could have taken hours if not days for him to pass away. I felt sorry for my Dad, it must be hard to have to put your childrens pets to sleep, I remember begging him to do something for our last pet Ernie when in my heart I knew it was too late - poor Dad had to tell me gently that nothing could be done. Mum was fantastic taking the children out of the way until they could come back and give Skibby another kiss goodbye. Poor Mr Sweetpea was at work so didn't get to say goodbye :-(

It is strange without him in the house, although he didn't really do much more than sit on a chair snoozing his presence is missed :-( It was also really weird not hearing him meow constantly when Mr Sweetpea got home from work today as he used to ask him for dinner as soon as he walked in from work. The dogs Charlie and Ted miss him too, they used to be great mates.

Middle Sweetpea was particularly upset and little Sweetpea wanted me to make her a magic wand so she could make him better. He is now laying next to our dog Ernie in the garden and he has a little letter with him written from middle Sweetpea so he has company.

We also lost our lovely brown chicken shown above yesterday too. That is so strange as she had a lovely day in the garden a few days back so really can't understand why she suddenly died :-(

Well I am off for a nice big glass of wine now, what a week!

xxx

Recycle your roses, chickens, Skibby and sewing - random post warning

2011-02-17T12:00:00.000Z

Firstly thanks for all your good wishes for Skibby. He is still with us and has had an antibiotic injection, is on antibiotic tablets and also has local antibiotics which we have to pop in his eye. He has a abscess on his eye (probably scratched it on a twig in the garden) and if it doesn't heal and goes through the eye he will have to be put to sleep as that could lead to meningitis :-( His breathing is a bit laboured today so I am hoping that won't get worse - he is too cute to leave us even if he is an old man.

Roses

Mr Sweetpea bought me some roses a couple of weeks back and now they are coming to the end of their life it reminded me that many others may have roses that may be thrown out soon. Instead of throwing them away why not recycle them? Last year we went to a wedding in June and instead of buying confetti I got some rose petals off our roses and dried them, I put them in a cute little paper bag and they worked wonderfully as confetti (if you buy that sort of confetti in shops it costs a fortune!). Not only did it look lovely but it bio-degrads after a little while so is a great eco style option.

You could also dry the petals and pop some rose oil on them for a lovely potpouri.

Chickens

We have had a very rare couple of lovely sunny days here in Cambridgeshire. Oh how I love to hang my washing out on the line and potter around the garden. This week I was joined by our chickens, they absolutely love the sunshine and sit basking in it. They also had great fun having mud baths together, Mr Chicken was making sure the girls joined in :-) Ironically they do this to clean themselves and get rid of any mites that might be on them.

I flung the doors open to let the fresh air in but I did have to keep an eye out for unwanted guests arriving (although they are great company they do tend to poo on the carpet!) :-)

The two old ladies of the group weren't so interested in going out, they were enjoying some peace and quite indoors.

Even the African Greys were loving the sunshine and wolf-whistling the day away. My husband bought these when he was in his teens and thought they were a pair (both male and female of this species look nearly identical). We sent a blood sample off for DNA testing some years back now as they do a mating ritual but have never settled down together, it came back that they are both males :-) They love each other so much however that they have stayed with us as a pair.

Sewing

I have managed to get a couple more sets of hairclips made recently which I really enjoyed doing. They seem to be very Spring like - Spring is in the air yey! I have popped them in my bloggy shop :-)

Middle Sweetpea has been creating with her felt and sewing kit that we bought her for Christmas, I just love the bright colours she used :-) The frog is a little pin-cushion, so sweet!

I hope you are all having a lovely week.

xxx

Random acts of kindness and poor Skibby

2011-02-15T12:09:00.000Z

Thanks for all your great comments on my last post, I hope I will master Crochet at some point. If anyone has any good links where it has a list of both UK and American Crochet terms it would be much appreciated :-)

I have had some lovely gifts given to me recently just because someone wanted to be nice or due to a lucky giveaway win in bloggyland. Due to this I decided I wanted to re balance my karma by making some random gifts for people :-) I have done the PIF that was happening in bloggy land but wanted to do something more local too so I made some friends some yummy cookies just because they are lovely people.

If you fancy doing a similar thing or making yourself some cookies here is the recipe:

Mega Chip Cookies taken from the 1 dough, 50 Cookies book by Love Food.

8oz/225 g soft butter
5 oz/140g caster sugar
1 egg yolk (free range of course :-) beaten
2 tsp vanilla extract
8 oz/225 g plain flour
2 oz/55g cocoa powder
Milk choc or dark choc chips (or chunks as I used) - I popped a generous amount in.
White choc chips (or chunks as I used) - I popped a generous amount in.
Pinch of Salt

Preheat oven to 190deg C/375 deg F/Gas Mark 5
Put butter and sugar in bowl and mix together with wooden spoon.
Beat egg yolk and vanilla extract - stir into mixture.

(loving my new bowl that middle Sweetpea bought me. I used to have a lovely retro one handed down through the family but she accidently broke it :-( She then saw this one and bought it for me because its looks the same - how sweet)

Sift both flour, cocoa powder and salt into the bowl (it looks like a mountain!) and slowly stir into the mixture. Before completely combined add the choc chips and then mix until thoroughly combined (I found it easier doing that bit by hand).

Line two baking trays with baking paper and then roll the cookie dough into balls and pop on the tray with a good space between them. Pop in oven for 12 - 15 mins - take out and leave to cool before moving off the tray.

Then try and give some away, that is the hard bit :-) In fact the Sweetpeas couldn't understand why I was giving them all away but I did make them another batch the very next day so they didn't miss out :-)

When they were cooled I wrapped them in baking paper and then tissue paper with some string and lace to tie them up. I love the way the looked, I was inspired by the lovely wrapping that Emma Bear Forever used on the giveaway prize she sent me.

Just before giving these away I suddenly felt a bit shy about doing it and worried my mates might think I was more bonkers than they do already :-) I overcame that feeling and really enjoyed doing this, I made a point of telling the recipients that they were gifts to re-balance my karma so they don't feel they have to do anything in return. I wish you all lived closer so I could just randomly give you some cookies! If you are a 'live' friend reading this and suddenly find/get given some random cookies you know why :-)

I will definitely be doing this sort of thing again soon, not only is it nice for the person receiving them but it makes you feel great too - try it yourself and see what I mean.

Poor Skibby/Biddy (as known my the little Sweetpeas)

Our poor old cat Skibby isn't too well. His eye has suddenly really swollen up, he has had glaucoma in it for a while which can be painful but it suddenly flared up yesterday. I have called Dad (who is a vet) today and we are taking him over this afternoon. I am hoping he won't need putting down as he is 18 years old now so too old for an operation to take the eye out :-( I really don't want to make that decision and know that Dad won't even suggest it unless he feels it is in Skibby's best interest.

Hasta luego
ScentedSweetpeas
xxx

Learning Crochet and More De-Cluttering

2011-02-10T20:59:00.002Z

Well as many of you may know I didn't have any New Years Resolutions this year, instead I decided on what I wanted to learn this year, one of them was Crochet. There are so many wonderful photos out there of peoples gorgeous Crochet creations.

So off I trotted to the local haberdashery and got my hook. I was advised there to get a large hook but this wasn't great advice, I am now finding a 4mm metal hook that a friend Kathryn gave me much better. I had this bright yellow wool left over from Middle Sweetpeas birthday party last year when we made pom pom chicks so I was ready and raring :-) My friend at work taught me to chain and then I found these great videos to master some other stitches. Kathryn who gave me the hook also gave me a great DVD which came with a magazine called 'The Art of Crochet', I have found that really useful.

So only knowing the chain and single and double crochet so far I made the two girl Sweetpeas some cuffs.

Little Sweetpea wanted a Daisy on hers, of course I made her one :-) Now middle Sweetpea wants hers updated with a Daisy.

Oh how I love toddlers cute little chubby hands :-)

I think they look rather cute on, and little Sweetpea seems very happy with hers. I have had to mend little Sweetpeas one already as these aren't quite as sturdy as the hairclips I make and she pulled it off rather than unhooking it from the button :-)

Now I have hit a little brick wall with Crochet as several things I have learnt which I thought were called one thing are called another on the DVD. I think I have come across an American tutorial (on the web) and the DVD is English. hhmm not sure what to do now. I was off work this weekend due to little Sweetpea being sick all Saturday night, I thought it was due to her really chesty cough which she still has but I think it may have been a separate bug as her best mate was sick too. I awoke with the most fantastic thumping headache so had to call in sick so my break time Crochet lessons weren't going to happen :-( This weekend I hope that my work mate can teach me more crochet, although I am not sure if I will end up more confused as she is from Estonia - not sure what stitch terms they use :-)

I am still de-cluttering the house and it seems it is effecting Mr Sweetpea. We have had this dresser holding tools in the shed since we moved here 12 years ago, we didn't want to part with it but it wasn't our style anymore. Well Mr Sweetpea suddenly decided that is must be sanded down and bought back into the house - I must say I like it a lot now it has been sanded down and it provides us with much needed storage. The only problem we have is that the tools that were in it are now all over the floor of the shed and the table that used to be in that corner (our season corner) has now got to find a new home in the house and I am really not sure where.

I have been ploughing through my old cassette tapes the last few weeks. Oohh it has been fun listening to the music on them, what flash backs they bring. We have been listening to the likes of The Cranberries, a-ha, Suede, Madness, Another Man's Poison (my hubbys mates Ska/Punk band), the Trainspotting soundtrack, Garbage just to name a few :-)

It is quite funny how the children haven't really seen tapes before so they had fun trying them out. Also the vinyls have been listened to too. I got a bit of a shock a while ago whilst listening to one of them and then hearing it scratch only to realise that Eldest Sweetpea was trying to change the track on it :-o I have now trained him up on how vinyls work :-)

By the way, does anyone else feel like they are living in the series of Outnumbered? I am sure we are all being secretly filmed for the next series lol.

Wonderful Raffle for the Alzheimer's Society

2011-02-07T17:39:00.000Z

I was just reading through my blog lists and was tipped off by Annie The Felt Fairy about a fantastic raffle taking part to raise money for the Alzheimer's Society. Tickets are £2 each and just take a look at some of the gorgeous prizes (I hope you don't mind me borrowing these Tinyholder). Click here to view more info.

My husbands Grandfather passed away from this horrid disease a couple of years ago, he lived with it for over 10 years :-( It was so sad seeing a man who had just retired going from a gorgeous gentle man who loved life to a man who had to be fed with puree food, my poor nan-in-law had to look after him 24 hours a day. In fact only last night I watched Wallander on BBC 1 and was blubbing away due to it portraying this disease so well - it bought back many sad memories. I was particularly taken with the fact that they showed the aggressive stage of the illness. The most gentle of people get aggressive whilst Alzheimers takes hold, they must be petrified as to what is happening to them and what they are becoming :-(

oohh better be off, I am welling up again .....