I have an urge .......

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 .....

 

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 ......

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

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!

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 ......

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 :-)

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 :-)