Let the fun of the school holidays begin!!!!

Or how long until the first fight breaks out?

Well am I prepared?

 To be bluntly honest with you, no I'm not ready I could do with another six weeks of preparation before I'm any where near ready

So what are my plans for the summer holidays then? 

 1. Try and not spend a fortune keeping them entertained, weather take note! 

2. Make sure they don't have too many fights, my husband (dh) is also off for the first two weeks of the holidays, which will cause some friction between them.

 3. Try and do plenty of cheap days out, we have got a family and friends railcard which saves a fortune on rail fares, it has been the best £30. I've ever spent!

And this is the summer holiday box that I've done for them it contains:-

2 sketch pads, 2 notebooks (one each), lots of stickers, a large box of chalk and a water balloon pump, with plenty of water balloons. Hopefully they will be entertained and give me some peace 

Must go as youngest daughter is currently planning world domination in the back garden again!!!!

X

Project secret knitting and other things

This is as much as I'm going show of my secret knitting project at the moment,

I will reveal all when it is finished 

The reason why it is a big secret is that it's a pattern that I have designed myself, I'm still at the stage of is it going to work or not? If it turns into a big disaster it will be sent to the to be frogged pile, I've got one of those piles too!

Moving on

I've started to make a top for a party we are attending in a couple of weeks time, it seems like an appropriate type of summer top to wear in this weather at the moment. But I have a feeling that when the girls finish school on Friday we're going to get six weeks of rain, which usually happens when the schools finish. 

As for keeping the girls entertained over the summer holidays I'm doing an activity box for them for the rainy days or days that we don't go out. Of course there will be days out, but some days it's nice to stay home and do things like reading, baking and making things, as well as normal housekeeping chores which don't go away for the summer holidays.

X

Trying to get back on track again

Hello again! This must be the third or fourth blog post this year? But there have been many more attempted tries at writing a post.

Well what has been happening since I last posted? Well a lot some good and some bad which may explain my absence, let's start with the good bits we've had a new bathroom roof, along with a new bathroom suite fitted, which were needed and a new boiler finally, we now have a boiler that is not living on lifesupport (hurray!!) Don't ask me how good the heating is because we haven't needed heating for quite a while, as you can see from the above photo which is the current state of my lawn, a combination a lot of sun and no rain!

Well after the very cold winter (see photos below) we get blessed with the hottest driest summer in a long long time.

My poor primroses took a severe battering 

The slight calm before the beast from the east struck 

So what has been happening on the craft front then? 

Not a lot 

 I Started this granny stripe blanket, but it got too warm to have it anywhere near me, so it is now currently in hibernation for the summer.

Made four pairs of pyjama bottoms for the girls (no photos) that were badly needed. Tried to make myself a top which went wrong, so that is now sitting in the sulking pile, defiantly no photos of that one and yes I do have a sulking pile. 

The only successful sewing project I've done recently is this small knitting/crochet project bag, I know you can't see much of it but currently it contains a secret knitting project that I'm working on at the moment, enough said about for that for now.

Well I suppose I'll have to talk about the bad bits, which I'm not going to dwell on too much, I will say I've had a lot of stress with the work we've had  done on the house. But also with the builders who have been working on the house next door for over 18 months and are nowhere near finished. I've had to put up with a lot noise and mess (dust) from them, the weather at the moment is a little on the warm side to keep the windows shut, so the house is full of brick dust, which makes me feel like giving up on doing any housework, the knock on effects of that is the decluttering is at a stand still and I'm not doing much crafting either, because everything  is covered in dust.

Well that's enough of my little rant, I'm off to make a cup of tea and see if my washing is dry yet, it's great weather for drying washing! x

Just keep going

I think this has become my motto for January this year

I'm still here, I've just got over the post Christmas cold, the girls are well and truly back at school and already looking forward to February half term. 

I've have finished the blanket that I started to crochet when the boiler was broke and well ahead of schedule, the original completion date was end of February. I haven't taken any photos of it yet I want to do it outside, but the light and weather isn't very good at the moment, it is really wet and dark here this morning.

And now this is my next my project some knitting, I really want to do some sewing but there is too much junk in the dinning room at the moment. All the yarn I'm using is from my stash it's a mix of Rowan and DMC yarn for this project I've given myself the completion date of of mid March, I've already frogged it once so what you see in the photo will not be the actual finished project, but we will see, oh and it is a shawl/scarf that I'm knitting if you are wondering. 

More about it next time x

Where do I begin?

Yep that is the question! 

Normality is slowly returning to the house, my girls went back to school yesterday, in a way the whole house feels calmer.

I spent most of the day picking up the sea of Lego off the floor, every time I moved something  I kept finding more.

I started to tidy my craft table as well, what helped with the process was actually doing all the repair jobs which have hanging around on there since before Christmas.  My table is not perfectly tidy yet, but I'm starting to find space where I could actually do some work.

Also I've decided to keep a project (journal/log) book of all my craft projects, up to now there is only one project in, which is my current crochet project I daren't put any of my hibernating UFO's in yet, as think I would need another book!

X

Waiting to for normality to return

Yes it's that time of the year again! Christmas has been and gone in a blink of an eye and now new year has arrived. The whole house is mess (as usual), it currently feels slightly worse than normal. Not only is my craft table mess, but what is annoying me more is that I can't actually get to my craft table without nearly breaking my neck in the process, because of all the Lego, boxes and other miscellaneous bits of junk that seems to be living around there at the moment.

Chrismas was quiet as usual, the only thing that happened that was out of the ordinary was the boiler breaking down on Christmas day, which was a bit of a pain having no heat or hot water for a few days until it was repaired. I got so cold at one point that I started to crochet another blanket, just to keep my mind off the fact that it was cold and I could snuggle up under it as it gets bigger,  well the boiler has been fixed and the blanket isn't big enough to snuggle up under yet, but I am using up some yarn which has been sitting in my stash for over four years! 

So this is my first project of the year, I have decided that I am going to do more finishing and less abandoning of projects and also I'm going to not buy any yarn and fabric until I've made a serious big dent on my stash. But when I start a new project or get one out of hibernation I'm going to set myself deadline to finish the said project, so for the current blanket project the deadline is the end of February which I think is a realistic deadline than saying next weekend.

And Happy New Year to anyone who might read this blog x