Sarah's Blog

Hoppity-Hop!

Easter is coming! Yippeee!! Chocolate!

I do love Easter - for me, it's the start of spring proper (although with the weather we've had recently you'd be forgiven for thinking we'd skipped spring and gone straight into summer!) I do my Easter bunny bit (no, not the Bridget Jones bunny costume although I'm sure Tim would love that!) - I just get up at the crack (ha ha) of dawn and go outside in the garden and hide eggs for the kids to search for. I ADORE doing it - so much so in fact that I believe I shall still be doing it when the kids have grown up - Tim will have to look for them instead! :D

Anyway, to celebrate this forthcoming holiday, April and I decorated the seasonal table with Easter stuff. We now have cute yellow fluffy chicks, an Easter "tree" (branches decorated with paper eggs) and even a small Easter bunny popping out of an egg :) Here's a piccy:

We've been taking a bit of a break from homeschool work for the Easter hols but I've still been working hard! I've finished my first curriculum book! Yay! It's now available from my home education pages (link in sidebar) and is on the theme of "spring" ....... I shall start work soon on the June/July book which will have an ocean theme to it.

Other than that, not much to add ... other than Floyd diving down by the side of the cooker this morning, rummaging around, backing out very suddenly closely followed by (I'm fairly sure) a large hairy housespider. He then pounced on the hideous arachnid and ATE IT!! Mmmm! Crunch, crunch, squelch, squelch ..... *barf*

Whilst I applaud Floyd's efforts to save me from 8-legged monsters I wish he'd not done it just as I was about to eat breakfast! Blleeeurgh!!

"dem bones, dem bones"

We started getting "How Your Body Works" for the kids. It's a weekly magazine that tells you (surprise!) how your body works and lets you build a 110cm tall skeleton called Billie Bones. He's also got other "bits" - brain, eyeballs, intestines, lungs etc.

Anyway, we've got the first 2 parts so, today, we started building:

First we put his top set of teeth in (mega fiddly) and then propped him up on some scissors while we assembled the bottom jaw

Having got the jaws together (they do open and close) we added his brain and eyeballs - Billie Half-Brain *laughs*

"Alas, Poor Yorick!" .. or should that be Billie?!

Next time we get to add his neck bones and sternum and ribs :)

Other than schoolwork, we've been totally enjoying the gorgeous sunshine - I got to wear a springtimey frock today with SHORT SLEEVES! Woohoo! April and I went out to our favourite spot - the front porch step - it's an absolute suntrap and SOOOO warm - check out our toes :)

Tim came home from work with a load of new uniform - it's actually pretty nice and will certainly save his own clothes from getting ruined. The only downer was the reflective thing he has to wear which has "Tim" plastered across the front in fairly large letters. Most unfortunate. *laughs*.

Giving winter the elbow

What an absolutely gloriously fabulous day! It was very misty this morning but that eventually pretty much disappeared leaving warm, hazy sunshine.

I do love days like this (the sort when you kind of wished you'd planned to do some spring cleaning!) - spring really does feel like it's got it's toe in the door! So, we've officially given winter the old heave-ho - no matter what kind of night-time freezing foulness gets thrown at us for a while longer yet - for us, winter is over.

To celebrate, we cleared our seasonal table of all it's winter stuff - packed the holly and mistletoe fairies away with King Winter, shook out the beautiful rose pink silk and welcomed a new season. Now we have a daffodil and blossom fairies and the roof garden of the gnome house has been planted. Well, kind of :)

April and I decided to plant some cress seeds in an old jam jar lid and used the plastic lid from an empty tub of cotton buds to make a little greenhouse. Blossom fairy is very kindly keeping an eye on them for us :) D'ya know, those cress seeds are ALREADY sprouting!

I can't wait to add some real blossom from the garden to the table - it still looks a little bare!

A melting pot of "stuff"

No one thing springs to mind today so here is a mish-mash of bits and pieces.

Floyd. Moulting. Big time. He has very thick fur and, clearly, he has decided that spring is springing and that thick fur is starting to fall out. I brushed him today (or, rather, I chased him round the kitchen TRYING to brush him while he rubbed up against me, the comb, the washing machine ....) and a HUGE amount came out. He was purring so I guess he enjoyed it thoroughly.

Tacos. Had them for dinner last night, now the house REEKS. What is it with tacos?! Nothing else we cook has that affect and we cook some pretty pungent food sometimes!

Crafts. I have works in progress - so many in fact that I am starting to get slightly panicked every time I look in the direction of my craft box. To name but 2 - a tiger for April (I've made the head and made the body but the 2 have yet to join happily together) and a crocheted spring bag for me which needs to be felted in the washing machine and stitched together.

Homeschool materials. Rosie and April are about to start new topics and this resulted in me spending most of yesterday printing, laminating and cutting out Montessori materials to go with those topics. I was fair sick of it by the end of the day.

Builders. Of the annoying variety. I can do no better than to copy and paste exactly what I put on my facebook page: "Another day with the builders next door making on helluva racket. They've been here for WEEKS and are likely to be here for many more .... I'm sick of their noise ... I'm sick of the fact that they keep dumping stuff in our garden .... I'm sick of the scaffolding that's been put up that is partly IN our garden ... I'm sick of them listening to Radio 1 (which I LOATHE) .... I'M SICK OF THEM!!! Do you know what I want to do with one of those scaffolding poles? Do ya?......." Nuff said.

Rosie being silly about a scotch egg. Again (and I apologise for this laziness - I should re-write using different words) I shall lift from facebook: "Tim picked up Rosie from guides last night and her first words after coming in were "shall I tell you today's GRIPPING news?!" ... ok, sure ...... "there was a GIGANTIC scotch egg in one of the car parking spaces at the Guide hall!!" ...... riiiiiight...... Apparently, she wanted Tim to drive over it but he wouldn't ... the spoilsport!"

New car. Gorgeous. Going well. Love it. The lovely clean floor mats have already been christened with dirty footprints from our boots after being at the stables. Tim had a bit of an issue with the lights the first (early!) morning he went off to work. He couldn't turn some off (normally, he backs out the drive with the lights off to avoid disturbing the neighbours too much but he couldn't!) I pointed out that maybe the lights are on all the time like a Volvo. Anyway, he contacted Mazda who told him they are day running lights and are on all the time .... like a Volvo. EXACTLY. :)

Bye for now :)

Swings and Roundabouts

Well hello there :)

Another update for you - stuff has happened of recent days so here goes.

First, regular readers may well remember me mentioning a mole on my face (ooo! back in about November of last year). At the time, I'd been to see a cosmetic surgeon with a view to getting it removed but, being an absolute wimp when it comes to needles/blades/blood/doctors-in-general, I decided to try a more natural approach first. I'd been recommended castor oil as a way of getting rid of moles (even the fabulous lady I get my essential oils from recommended it). So, I got some and started religiously applying .... did it work? Well, yes and no. Initially, it really, really did! Within a couple of days it had started (yuk, sorry) crusting over and flaked off! Wow! I thought, this is going to be easy! Only it wasn't because it just refused to budge after that no matter how much stuff I put on. Oh drat!

So, after Christmas, I admitted defeat and made an appointment with the lovely Mr Tiernan at New Hall Hospital (Salisbury) and then fretted and chewed my nails off until the day of the appointment which was this Tuesday just gone. I can honestly say that even childbirth wasn't this scarey - the thought of having something cut off ANYWHERE is terrifying enough, but my face .....?! Yikes!

To cut a long story short, it's gone :) Mr Tiernan was fab and kind and reassuring. It was all numbed up with a local and then he shaved it off level with the skin and then burnt out the roots. Admittedly the sound/smell effects were pretty awful but other than that it was fine. After it was done, he said "do you want to look at it before I dress it?" To which I replied "no!" Uuurggh! I can just imagine it being like that scene out of Batman where Jack Nicholson becomes the Joker ... looking in the mirror and bursting into manic laughter while the poor surgeon frets "... but these instruments I have to work with ....!"

*Bursts into manic laughter*

Anyway, I can take the dressing off on Saturday then it's just a case of waiting for it to heal which can take a while.

What else? A silly little thing - April wrapped Floyd in a blanket when he was asleep on her bed - aaah! :)

My lovely, wonderful hubby brought me some new nature table stuff namely, a house, silks and fairies (there is 1 silk and 1 fairy for each season). I also made some little Valentines decorations for it - here are some piccies - still wintery at the moment - can't wait to change it for the spring one :)

The spring, summer and autumn fairies/silks that are not in use yet

Anything else ... hmmm, let me think .... hmmm .... oh yeah ....

Oh. Dear.

Tim got smashed into in Sainsbury's carpark (while he wasn't even moving!). The car is gone - at the assessors .... being assessed ..... probably won't get it back as it's getting a bit old. He, fortunately, was ok and not injured which is the main thing. However, since he had only VERY recently spent about £300 getting it serviced and having new tyres etc, his was the best example of "contained anger" I've seen in a long time.

He WAS angry but, if the car is written off then, he just said "oh well, it was getting on, might be good to get something newer". How he can shrug these things off so easily is beyond me ... I just explode *shrugs*. His self control is masterful :)

Oh, and finally, we've booked our holiday! Yay! There was a bit of hoo-haa when Tim found out he couldn't have the time off from work that he originally wanted, but we got there in the end. We're going to Centerparc again only staying in a posher villa this time *laughs* - with safe (which I was determined to have this time because I was always worried about leaving our valuables lying about) and en-suites and maid service. Nice :)

Photo heavy!

Helloooo!

I thought I'd be reappear before everyone thought I'd gone for good!

Ok, quicky update on the website. I have added another craft to the crafts page and I've got several recipes that I'm in the process of writing up to add to the food page. There WAS another page that I was umming and aaahing about doing but I've decided to put that on hold for the time being. This is largely because I don't ever seem to have the time to sit down and do it! It's one of those projects that I'm hoping to work on over the next couple of months or so.

So what else? Here come the pictures!

There has been .....

Work on projects - this is something April did for her animals in winter project. She made a folded book ....

Ploughing through GCSE maths (with the help of the very splended CGP video lessons)

Baking of glittery cupcakes (yum yum) by my good self

Crocheting of dusters (again, by me)

I also made April a fun bunch of stuff about alliteration :)

The first crocus of (early!) spring ... more please!

... and, finally, April doing some really funny daddy-related things. Firstly, paper dolly daddy! Can't say I entirely like the thought of him wearing an orange and green stripey skirt but hey-ho *laughs*

.. and this is really funny - daddy at work!! Stick man daddy shown doing various things (that actually did happen!)

Top left: Daddy driving the van (although it looks, for all the world, like he's crashing into a tree!)

Top right: Daddy twisting his ankle jumping clumsily out of van (and that facial expression is probably fairly accurate...)

Bottom right: Daddy in the New Forest being greeted by a 3 legged cat giving him a dead mole. Yes, that really did happen!

Bottom left: Daddy delivering stuff to a VERY grumpy, nit-picking chef. Mentioning no names obviously. Readers of this blog probably wouldn't know who it was anyway but the mushrooms being delivered by stick daddy are significant ..... *laughs out loud*

Love the way she always gives Tim incredibly curly long hair! His hair isn't this long OR this curly - he looks like Charles II!!

That's all folks!

Cake heaven

Unashamedly "housewifey" post today - all food and craft!

I've dug out my Christmas cake stand (what with it being soooo close to Christmas day!) and have been making yummy teatime treats to go on it. Here are some recent choccy chip muffins - very gorgeous - I PROMISE I am going to get my recipe page up in the new year and start adding these things!

The other thing I did a couple of days ago is marzipan my Christmas cake - heavens! It smelt boozy when I unwrapped it! We'll be getting squiffy on it *laughs*.

I always have this "issue" when it comes to marzipan-ing and icing my cake because I get really irritated with trying to get the bottom nice and even. Before, I've always tried to cut the bottom while the cake is flat on the worktop and it's never worked very well and I've ended up doing a patching job with bits of marzipan/icing and got cross.

This year I had a lightbulb moment (quite why I never thought of it before, I don't know). I looked at the cake and looked at a dinner plate ... hmmm ... the central, slightly dipped part of the plate was SLIGHTLY larger than the circumference of my cake. Hmmm. Aha! Put the cake on the plate, cover with rolled out marzipan (clearly - not going to just stick a slab of marzipan on top!), grab sharp knife and cut round the bottom level with the edge of the dipped bit of plate. On removing the spare marzipan, smooth down the bottom and it's PERFECT! No patching!

Sometimes I surprise myself ....

Mmmm! SMELL the alcohol!

Bingo!

Away from food, I've been crocheting (generally only when the heating has been on because otherwise my hands are too frozen!) I'm waiting for same yarn to arrive in the post (absolutely GORGEOUS deep plum colour) so that I can start a nice warm shrug to go with my dresses but in the meantime I'm doing squares. I decided, on impulse, to use up all of my scrappy bits of pastel coloured yarn and make granny squares. Eventually, I'll piece them altogether and make a throw or something - given the colours, it will be nice for the spring .... so I've got a project to keep me busy over the winter :)

That's about it for today folks! :)

Slip-up socks

Made these for April ... slipper socks (slip-UP socks because there are no "grips" on the bottom and the kitchen/bathroom tiles can be pretty slidey places!) I crocheted them - they can be worn top up or down :)

Feeling vaguely out of sorts today - woke up feeling a bit bleuurgh and, frankly, need to head to somewhere wide open and breezy. I feel Hengistbury Head calling ....

Wash out

We were planning on going into Christchurch this afternoon and feeding the ducks and having a walk but, sadly, the weather had other ideas. It really has been horribly windy and rainy .... oh well, another time.

Instead, Tim to Marks and Spencer for lemon cake (I ADORE their lemon cake) - he came back with 2 bags of shopping (!) - and I settled down with my knitting loom and made this for April:

Snakey! Here he is half finished

... and done :)

I haven't done any loom knitting for AGES so it was nice :) Now I'm using up all my wool oddments to make a crazy coloured shawl. I'll probably end up giving it to the kids to play dress up with but I'm learning new techniques so it's worth doing.

Got to go now ... in the middle of making pear and apple crumble (to have with Greek yoghurt) for pudding :)

Mostly April

April has been a busy, busy little girl today :)

She has crafted a tree from a kitchen roll tube and tissue paper:

She has weighed stuff:

... and she has been given a lesson (by her lovely mummy) on vertebrates/invertebrates. This was a fun presentation - I gave her a load of pictures of x-rays (I just Google pictures and made the cards) and asked her to see if she could sort them into 2 groups with each group having a certain feature about them. I gave her a little hint in the fact that they were x-rays for a reason - we needed to see their bones ;) She was there for about 10 minutes, sifting through the pictures in silence and then suddenly "I know! Some of them have backbones!" Well done that girl! :)

Here she is pondering .....

Ahhh! got it!

Taa-daa!

Next step in this work is to give her 2 heading cards (vertebrate and invertebrate) and a load of photos of animals (we have a great set from Montessori Print Shop) and she can learn which ones are which. After THAT we take the vertebrates and start working on the 5 main animal groups, parts of etc.

Finally, non-April related ..... Autumnwatch starts this evening! Would not miss that for ANYTHING! :)

W..w...w..windy!

Wow! the weather's terrible here today - very, very windy and rainy. I don't like badly blowy days - I get a little scared and fear for the roof tiles!

I think Tim is pretty glad that he has the day off today - his job is ok normally but not on a day like this - battling all the way along Bournemouth Pier in a howling gale, (SEVERAL times), with a trolly-load of boxes is NOT fun by any stretch of the imagination.

Anyhow, we have no reason to go out today and I, for one, may get on with some crafting :) I thought I'd share a couple of my favourite sites for getting craft ideas - particularly if you enjoy Waldorf-y type things - here goes!

Twig and Toadstool - gorgeous, seasonal ideas - perfect for getting ideas for things to make for the nature table. Sadly, no longer updated but still plenty there.

Rhythm of the Home - one of my favourite sites - updated every season. Not just craft ideas either, there are also games and learning experiences to do with your kids, cooking etc.

Rosie's book is now available

In happier news, Rosie's book is now available on amazon.com (unfortunately not UK yet) for the price of $16.50 (about £10.00). Link is in the sidebar.

If you do buy a copy and decide to leave a review, please can I ask one thing - please remember, she is only 13 - still a child - please be kind and gentle. I personally think it's wonderful but then I'm biased! :)

PS - my crafts page is now up and running but you'll need to get to it via my index (home) page as I don't have a topbar yet ..... :)

Books, blankets and butterflies

The other day I mentioned some exciting news regarding Rosie and here it is - her first, published book :) This is being published through Create Space and will be available there and through Amazon, very shortly. In the picture is the final proof copy which we are just working through and making a few corrections/alterations before it finally becomes available. This has taken a lot of her time and, for a 13 year old, she has shown remarkable dedication to getting it finished - she even drew her own cover picture! Aimed roughly at 9 to 13 year olds, it's a great story for kids who love dragons, magic, knights and battles. I've read it and it's fabulous :) The knights and the land they live in all have pudding related names which is amusing! Will post a link in the sidebar when it's properly available - it's "print on demand" (so, no, she's not getting paid a fortune up front for it!) and I'm sure she'd be thrilled if it sold :)

Here's a little sneaky snippet :)

In the top picture, you can also see my current work-in-progress - a crocheted blanket in autumn/winter colours. I swear I can tell when the seasons are changing WAY earlier than anyone else in my family and so it is now. Something in the air, the leaves just LITTLE less vivid green .... everything is on the turn already even though it might only be the beginning of August. So, I've been working like mad on this blanket (almost feverish desperation to get it finished!) Got a way to go yet - it's going to be a sofa throw when it's done.

Finally, the butterflies. Cabbage Whites to be precise - here's what's left of my broccoli with the largest of many, many caterpillars:

Having given up on the broccoli, I've now gone all maternal over this little caterpillar and even moved one of the decimated plants nearer the one it was on so that it had plenty of food! If it gets to pupa stage we'll bring the whole thing in and put it in our butterfly home and watch it hatch into a new butterfly.

Bye bye broccoli!

My lovely broccoli plants were doing brilliantly but we noticed that cabbage white butterlies LOVED them! They were, in fact, laying their eggs on them! Now those eggs have hatched into caterpillars and I'm afraid they're munching their way through my broccoli at a great rate of knots. Of course, although very sad that we won't get to munch my delicious vegetables, we are having fun watching this life cycle open up right in front of our kitchen window! :)

What else has been happening?

Well, I'll have some very exciting Rosie-related news in a couple of days (fingers crossed!) My clever, talented girl! Apart from the news-soon-to-be-revealed, she's also been continuing to enjoy her riding lessons. She went yesterday and, as usual, came home caked in mud and horse-poo but did she care? No! Every week, she gets to ride a little black pony called Star and she absolutely loves him. I can see riding boots/hat/gloves being on birthday/Christmas present lists this year! :)

Last night there was the most dramatic thunder/lightening storm! There were some huge lightening bolts coming down and, I've got to confess, I was scared. I find them dramatic and thrilling but I do worry ..... "ooo! maybe we should put the telly/computer off?!" We didn't put the telly off as we were in the middle of watching The Proms and it was Bolero .....

Recently finished things

It's all kinds of hot here on the south coast - ALMOST unbearably so .. that kind of sticky, no-air type of hot. Apparently same tomorrow and then chucking with rain on Thursday - just when Tim has to go to work ... bwa-ha-ha!

In between all the new blog/website setting up, I've also been continuing with a few crafts. Here's a couple of things I've done (the hat I just finished today).

First is the bag I mentioned on the old blog - this was loom knitted (on a round loom but as a flat panel). Just did it to the length I wanted and then folded the bottom up and sewed and then the top down and added buttons. I think it turned out pretty ok - not perfect but it is only the second thing I've made on the loom!

This is the hat I finished just this afternoon - this time crochet. I did make it for me but April stole it! She has to wear it pushed quite far back on her head otherwise it covers her eyes :) I think she probably looks way cuter than me in it anyway! Oh, and she looks SO much like her daddy these days!