More Christmas Creations .......

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!

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

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

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 ... :-)

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....

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