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 ......

Random goodness ....

 

 

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!

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

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