Snow day!

Finn was a bit baffled by the cold,wet, white stuff!

Well we all excitedly listened to the radio for the list of schools closed in the area and Chloe's wasn't mentioned until late so we were just about resigning ourselves to going...when the list was updated! So today we made a snowman!

Putting his nose in!And taking it out again when Finn decided that the guinea-pigs would appreciate it more than the snowman, lol! We all wore masses of warm things but still got chilly hands so we didn't last long - and we thought making biscuits would warm us up so we're off to try the lavender biscuits recommended by Rae at the Green Parent Forum :-)

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to everyone! We had a lovely evening, started with a family meal of 2009 pie (I know, I know, but it was spontaneous as we had leftover pastry - I'm not really that sad!!):Then Finn went to bed and slept until 2010! It's very rare that he sleeps all evening so we're hoping that'll be more common this year... Then we played board games with Chloe and did a lovely resolution ritual that was mentioned on the Green Parent Forum. We all wrote down something we were thankful for or had really enjoyed in 2009 and something we hoped for in 2010, then folded our papers up and put them in tin foil boats. We sailed them across our biggest mixing bowl and set light to the papers inside, which was a really special, symbolic ritual that I think we'll do again. Of course, I forgot to take photos :-( Then Chloe went to bed and we played Trivial Pursuits, stopping to watch the New Year fireworks at midnight - so rock and roll!!

Today we had some friends and family round for drinks and made a resolution tree for everyone to hang their resolutions on. It was really good fun and the resolutions range from 'cycle from London to Paris', to 'dance like no-one is watching at least once a week'. Our family resolution is to be less wasteful - inspired by Rae's family at http://myzerowaste.com/ - and my personal one is to be more organised. That one is multi-functional, as I intend to be on time for things, feel more calm and have time to write and craft as a result. I'm being ambitious here, but it's a long overdue commitment to myself and I really want to keep it. I really love the tree though, and the family are keen for it to be a fixture - but it's huge so I've no idea where to put it!

And a funny picture, because this little boy has learned to climb up on everything, which is handy for stealing totally unsuitable party snacks...Happy New Year to all of you, may 2010 be peaceful and productive for us all.

Our Christmas Day!

Christmas at our house felt very civilised this year - Chloe came in at 7am and woke Finn up! Last year we had a collective 3 hours sleep between us all, so this year was a very pleasant surprise! The children opened their stockings in bed - Finn got the hang of opening presents quite quickly! And then we came downstairs and allowed them to open a present each before breakfast - which was necessary because Chloe's main present was a huge bike, which was rather obvious, despite my fabulous wrapping!

We had a lovely breakfast together and then Phil's dad, stepmum and two sisters arrived and had mulled wine (Phil's Christmas speciality!) and more presents with us. It was lovely but Finn was exhausted and went to bed when they left, to recharge before Phil's mum, stepdad and grandma arrived for round two (or three, or four...?).

We had a delicious Christmas dinner, if I do say so myself! We had a mushroom and nut wellington ring:
And a stuffed Salmon - look away now if you don't eat fish! This is before it was cooked, but I was really pleased with it - it was much easier than I expected but still felt fairly ambitious!

Followed by a huge array of desserts, of which the roulade fell apart and the trifle had one bite taken from it, lol! A tired and full girl shows how big the trifle really was...! And a tired little boy in a Christmas hat provides a musical interlude:

And that's that! I took the children for a very short walk in the dark because we hadn't been out all day and Finn waved "hello moon" all the way, until we got home and said "night night moon" instead. We were all tired out, but had a really great day and then went up to spend a few days with my parents on the 27th. Happy Christmas to everyone!

Our crafty Christmas presents!

Wow, Christmas is over! That was a marathon, trying to get everything finished and wrapped in time. I've learned lots about planning, organisation and my own ability to cope (or not) under pressure, but I was really pleased with the presents we ended up giving. We had lots of false starts and some ideas we thought were going to be great ended up not quite making it under the tree, but all's well that ends well-ish. So I wanted to post some pics here to remind me of what we (finally!) achieved.

This is a technique we learned at the Art Cafe in Exeter. Decoupage - sticking teeny bits of pretty paper onto boring things to make them into pretty things! We bought plain hardback sketchbooks in a discount shop and decorated them and added 'Journal' or 'Sketchbook' labels cut from magazine letters. They actually looked really nice and were very simple, Chloe did this one herself - although it took many sittings to get it finished as she has a very short attention span at the moment, lol!

This was a necklace experiment! I wanted to see if I could make one of these necklaces with the crystal in a wire cage, so I played with some thick wire, and was delighted that this only took 15 minutes!! I made another one and they were some of the best received presents of all, and definitely the quickest to make!
An ideal grandparent present - we painted two charity shop frames with white acrylic paint, embroidered a sickly quote (well, grandparents love them, lol) and added a photo of some beautiful children...

An embroidered bag, which we filled with a pre-loved unicorn toy and a fairtrade game - this was the only thing we spent money on at Christmas apart from some photo frames (excluding presents to our children)!

Chutney, for the dads - mine, dh's and dh's stepdad. They were all delighted with their baskets, containing a jar of chutney, a jar of caramelised onion chutney and a bag of truffles. I forgot to take photos of the finished baskets, which was silly because they looked really nice and I was so proud of them!

We played with lovely smelling ingredients and created these gorgeous potions, all made from recipes in the 'Grow Your Own Drugs' book. We made bath oil, bath salts, lipbalm and bath bombs - and we didn't include the soap we attempted because it went a hideous green colour and is still not set, two weeks later -not sure what happened there!
All wrapped up and ready to give. We were really pleased that none of the people who received these realised they were homemade until we told them!
And probably our best received present of all this year... we made this collage for my brother, embroidering little squares for two of the spaces. He's at uni and spends his holidays in America with his girlfriend so only sees us a few times a year but rings all the time and adores his niece and nephew. We were thrilled that all our presents went down well, but I think this was the only one that actually produced tears...!
All in all, I really enjoyed the challenge of making Christmas presents for everyone, and will definitely do it again. BUT I nearly killed myself trying to get everything done at the last minute and the Christmas Eve dash to buy photo frames which had suddenly become vital will definitely not be repeated! I developed a stress-induced coldsore on Christmas Day and Boxing Day was a horrendous panic trying to make truffles and fudge for the relatives we were visiting next. Next year, we won't be giving anything with such a short shelf life (long-life recipes would be very much appreciated...) and I'll be starting in about February, rather than December! The children ended up without any homemade gifts so I need to finish the trousers and MP3 player case before I start planning for next year though ;-)

Stupid things happen in threes...

So maybe I can work out how many more we're due this weekend to stop myself from going insane!

This week, we got locked out, had no sleep and Phil has been in a horrendous mood since Friday morning. He's having a lie-in now so perhaps that'll help.

Yesterday I went to a horrid supermarket to get all our christmas preparation ingredients. Finn refused to go to bed and just clung to me like a koala for two and a half hours so I was still making the red onion marmalade at 11pm last night - but it's absolutely gorgeous so that's a good thing!

This morning I had to get up with Finn at 6am, although I'd expected him to sleep a little later as he ended up not falling asleep til 8.30pm and woke hourly for nightfeeds. So I was really proud of myself for wanting to get on and not waste that time. Pride comes before several falls, apparently... Chloe joined us (despite also having a late night - I predict her mood will be in decline by about 9.30am) and we decided to make the chocolate roulade to freeze for Christmas Day. As I mentioned, I bought all the ingredients yesterday. Except we didn't read the recipe properly and when Chloe had broken six eggs beautifully into the bowl with the sugar, not a trace of shell in sight, we realised the eggs needed separating and we only wanted the yolks for that bit. Which obviously meant the whole lot was useless for the roulade, and because I'd bought only the ingredients we needed (of course, who'd be so stupid as not to read a recipe properly?), we didn't have anymore eggs or sugar. And it's sunday, so the shops don't open til ten. So the melted chocolate will be hard again by the time we get to that stage again.

So, I took a calming down break. Which was interrupted by the cat doing an enormous poo, so the calming down break became a clean out the cat tray break. Not quite as relaxing, somehow. And then Finn poured a glass of water over the computer keyboard. Which was annoying but doesn't seem to have caused any permanent damage. So we gave up for a bit and had some more breakfast, then decided to make three sponges with the useless roulade mix, two to make a sandwich cake for my next training weekend, and one for our christmas trifle. So that was good. Until we came to put the mixture in the tins and realised the marg was still sitting in the scales. So we mixed it all again, and finally got the cakes into the oven. When Finn again sensed I was on the verge of feeling calm and filled the biggest nappy ever. And Chloe wanted to have an argument about unsuitable tv programmes. And the cat escaped and raced upstairs miaowing - although Phil seems to have slept through that too.

And there we are. The last of the sponges is cooking now, the children have both had breakfast, Phil has had a long lie-in (I know, a student would find that hilarious but 9am is a HUGE treat here!) and we may have time to dash to the shop before Chloe's riding lesson. This has been a ridiculous morning but we're all still standing, nothing has happened that isn't fixable, and I think I'm learning to cope a little better with stressful situations. A little. And I've lost count of how many things that was - definitely more than three. Can we get a break now?!

More photos :)

Although I can't actually find the ones I want, which are of some little baby toys I made recently I'll have to take some more of those! Anyway, this is a felted purse that I knitted, sewed together and then added a zip to. I've always been scared of zips (sewing them, not just zipping them, lol!), so it was a good challenge. It's a bit wonky, but I'm pleased with it anyway!

And some saltdough hearts I was really pleased with until they went soggy! Everytime we make saltdough, the things look gorgeous but then go soft. This time I thought we'd cracked it by painting them quicker, but we made these and some beautiful Christmassy star shapes for Finn's little friends, and they were soggy within a few days. I think my recipe must be wrong, it's from a craft book but says 2 cups flour to 1 cup salt - the kid's cookbook says 1 cup flour to 1 salt, so I'm going to try that next time.

And a picture of my lovely littlies - Chloe's got Victorian week at school this week so they've all dressed up for the week and rotated to do different activities with each teacher - yesterday was making scones, today is printing. And Finn at his favourite toy - he adores the piano and is already starting to pick out notes rather than just bashing at it. He's always singing and often drags one of the guitars onto his lap and sings along to his strumming. He's very musical already so I'm interested to see how much he'll teach himself just having the instruments around and copying daddy!

And I think Finn's about to wake up and the kitten is driving me insane by dive-bombing my fingers as I type so that's it for now. It's so lovely to be back!!

Introducing our new member!

Well, here's our new girl:

Clover the kitten - she's a black tabby but you can't really see her gorgeous markings here. I'm getting used to the new camera!! I had a funny revelation today. My new camera (birthday present! Hooray!) arrived today and I instantly got excited about blogging again, and about crafting again! I've been doing little crafty bits but not felt really into it lately - partly because of the bugs we're all snivelling with again, but also I think because I couldn't share it. The crafting and the blogging has become a part of my social interaction and because I couldn't take or share photos of crafty things, I felt a bit left out and down about it! I feel bad, too, because I've been reading other people's blogs but not posting on mine. Taking but not giving. So I'm giving again now, and I hope I'll be able to find the time to keep it up properly again. It's all been really manic with my training, ill children and christmas planning, but I feel so much more grounded if I check in here and analyse myself for a while, lol!

So, here's some of the wrapping paper we sponge painted today - we had tonnes of this paper from a delivery and I'd been waiting for a good day to start decorating it, so Chloe was off school with a heavy cold and today was the day. We did about ten sheets the size of this and we've only done half of the paper we've got, but it was great fun. Finn loved playing with the sponges but went for a nap after doing a little bit, which was lovely as Chloe and I got to spend an hour and a half playing with paint :)

So it's great to be back, I'll share more asap :)