Pretty in Pink

Our local school has some lovely raised beds which have been left untouched for quite some time.  To be honest, every time I walked past them to collect little Sweetpea I had to fight the urge to go and weed them.  So , rather than be annoyed by this I decided to take action, after chatting to the teachers I was given the go ahead to do a little make over.  Little Sweetpea, Middle Sweetpea and I dived into two of the raised beds, weeded them and planted them up with things like Cosmos, Sunflowers, Beetroot, Onions, Marigolds, Tomatoes etc.  

Here is a before shot for you, although the poppies looked lovely, it was nice to revert the beds to what they were made for.

This is after an hour or so of work, all planted up. I am hoping that the school keep watering everything after all our hard work.  I have had to remind them a couple of times already but we will have to wait and see.

Anyway, I digress from the original title and photo of this blog post, sorry about that.  I have never been one to keep exactly on track in conversation, I tend to spark off along different paths , but hey, that makes chatting all the more fun.

Whilst eyeing up the veggie patches and wanting to weed them, I noticed a nice large patch of chives in full flower.  Well this reminded me of a lovely photo I saw on Pinterest of some chive flowers that had been popped in distilled white vinegar.  I just HAD to give it ago ..... surely they couldn't turn the vinegar that pink???

So I got picking (with the school's permission of course :-) ).  I filled the jar with chive flowers after checking them all over for bugs etc, then poured in some distilled white vinegar.  Liteally in one day I could see it turning pink, a lovely shade of bright megenta pink!    It looks stunning, so so pretty.  You then need to remove the flowers after roughly 7 days and you are left with a lovely pink, onion tasting vinegar which can be used for salad dressings etc.  I think it needs to be kept is a shady area to keep the colour.  

Wow , isn't nature just wonderful !

Keeping cosy but still having fun outside :-)

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

More creating and a new member of the family

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 :-)).

Walnut Warning ......

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 ??? .........

Highs and lows ......

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 ......

Eater Holiday Ideas Part 3 - Create a small pond

We created this pond about a year ago and whilst cleaning it out today with the kiddies I thought it would be a good idea to share with you.  It is a fab little pond  and works really well in small spaces and seems to keep lovely and clear.

All you need for this pond is:
A big glazed garden pot
A slab
A bit of cement or waterproof filler
A pond plant
A water pump
Some pebbles

First pop some cement on the slab and put your pot on it so it is secure.  Then fill in any holes in the pots base with the left over cement or a waterproof filler.

Next pop some pebbles in the bottom of the pond.  I also put some slate in to balance the plants and pump on.

Put in an aquatic plant, this helps keep the water clear and creates a great hide for any fish you may want to put in.

Fill up your pond with new water.  Little sweetpea loved this bit :-)

Put in a pump if you have one and there you have it, a lovely little pond!  I am going to place pebbles around the base of ours but I was pondering on blue mosaic stones - let your imagination run wild.

If you do add fish make sure you put them in the pond whilst still in the bag you transport them in.  After about 20 - 30 minutes when the water has changed to the temperature of the pond you can add them to their new home.  This is so they don't go into shock with the temperature change.

I have also seen this style of pond recessed into ground which is a nice idea as then frogs can hop in and out.  As we have little sweetpea we decided against this idea otherwise she would swim in it.

Sweetpea and Pebble Fun and a craving for all things birdie.

A few days ago I had a visit from the Pebbles.  Mummy Pebble came round to drop off my latest bit of treasure and we decided to coincide this with a cup of tea and some Raspberry and White chocolate muffins :-)  I thought I would share some of the photos from that lovely afternoon with you all so you can see the little static pebbles and sweetpeas.

'I am just loving this new hairstyle, aren't you little pebble?'

'If your name's not down you're not getting in!'

We tried to get a group photo but it was a bit like herding cats :-)  As you can see most of the afternoon was spent on the trampoline and even Mrs Pebble couldn't help herself :-)

One of the reasons for the Pebble visit was to drop off my lovely new necklace.  I also ordered 2 smaller versions for my little sweetpea girls for their birthdays.  As soon as I saw this cute little bird in Silverpebbles shop I knew I had to have one (or 3 :-) ).  Luckily I had some Christmas money left over so this is what I bought with some of it. 

At Christmas my hubby also bought me another lovely necklace from Silverpebble.  It is the finger print from each of the sweetpeas and the beading contains a pearl from my wedding tiara.  I must admit to ordering it myself and my dearest hubby paid for it :-)

 

Isn't it just lovely!  I seem to have been drawn to all things birdie at the moment, I wondering if it is because Spring is in the air?
 

 

My bird lantern from TK Maxx.

A gorgeous bird scene, this is a card from Phoenix Cards that I have framed.

An angel with bird in arms, bought this a few years back .... hhmmm maybe my bird craving started before now.

I even had to buy the girls new bird bed linen.

Hey ho, I can think of worse vices :-)