Sarah's Blog

Pictures

Some random pictures from the last week or so, including a craft that I've done ... I will get the photography and craft pages done ... I WILL .....

Jeffy the bun ..... he's getting on a bit now ... he's also ENORMOUS - that's April's little arm next to him!

Floyd .... I iz on ur keyboard, messin' up ur Google searches ....

Another bun - one I made for April from a free pattern at Allsorts

... she has a reversible dress ... and lopsided ears but we won't dwell on that :)

The first leaf buds of early spring on a tree in our garden

... and the first crocuses on our lawn

Have a good weekend

Planning ahead

I so need it to be spring now! I can tolerate winter - I don't get S.A.D or anything but, towards the end, it really starts to wear thin. It gets especially bad when you can start to see the very first tentative signs of spring - we've got snowdrops popping out and actual leaf buds on one tree. Yet, we're still getting frosty mornings (and probably will do for a good month yet!). So near and yet so far.

Anyway, we having been planning on all fronts. :)

Floyd is having his last week of being made to stay indoors and then, on Saturday, we're taking him outside for the first time. The Cats Protection said to do this (3 weeks in followed by a "guided" trip outside) to help him settle in and accept this as his new home. He really wants to go outside - he keep sitting by the back door and gazing wistfully out!

Another bit of planning is the garden. I've been mentally putting together what I'm going to grow and where (got in mind spring onions, lettuce, tomatoes, some herbs and, perhaps, runner beans. I'm also going to give each of the kids a trough type planter each and let them choose what they want to grow on the understanding that it's entirely their responsibility to keep it watered and weeded! They both seem keen to do this so it might be fun.

Finally (and, ooo! this is a biggy!) - we're going to take a trip away for a few days - Centerparc. Not sure when exactly yet (could be soon, could be in a few months) but we are definately going. We've been wanting to go for a long time and, what with all the horribleness at the end of last year (Tim's mum being ill and me being ill), it would be definately nice to get away for a break. We're going to go to the nearest Centerparc to us so that we don't have to spend hours driving there and then just CHILL for a few days - swim, play adventure golf, do some archery, perhaps go riding .... aaahhh! Bliss! I just ... cannot ...wait.

and so ........

HAPPY NEW YEAR! :) XX

Nearly ready!

Tim went out yesterday morning and did some banking, came back and announced that the car should probably be abandoned for the day. So, we walked to the local shops in blizzard-like conditions to get some MORE christmassy bits - it was fun really (and felt very festive), trudging through all that snow! Today, we HAD to go out in the car because we needed to go to Castlepoint - had to look in M&S and Lakeland for a pressie for Jill. I also got the last presents I wanted to get for Tim which I then had to hide under my coat (and freeze on the way back to the car!) because the shop gave me a see-through carrier-bag and I didn't want him to know what I'd got!

Anyway, this will be my last post this side of Christmas day so I just wanted to take the opportunity to wish all my readers a happy, happy day and (if I don't blog before then!) a brilliant start to the new year. Take care all ((huge virtual hugs for everyone)). I made you a little Christmas card :)

Nearly Christmas!

Nearly! Nearly! Just look at this - our Christmas tree with the snow outside (and only a few days from Christmas day!) ........ I know some parts of the country got this last year but we didn't. In fact I can't rmember the last time I saw this .... beautiful!

Talking of beautiful, I saw a Bullfinch today! I've not seen one of these in our garden before (although I'm sure they must have been there) - blackbirds, bluetits, dunnocks, green woodpeckers, magpies, robins a-plenty - even a ring-necked parakeet at one point (just the one mind you), but no bullfinches. He (she?) sat there patiently while I took a TERRIBLE picture (several in fact) - look at that front-view - how fat! *laughs* BAAAAD blur going on....

In the run-up to Christmas there is always plenty of good stuff to watch on telly (I have a VERY sad habit of going through the Christmas Radio Times with a red pen marking everything I want to watch heehee!) - last night Tim and I watched Blackadder (the one with Kate/Bob) and followed that with Bridget Jones's Diary. Tonight, it's The 100 Greatest Toys with Jonathan Ross and the NEXT Bridget Jones film. Looking forward to them :)

Christmas begins here

We were going to put up our tree today but, due to being very sad over the weekend (for obvious reasons), decided to go ahead and do it on Saturday to try and cheer ourselves up. It did kind of work and made us smile.

Tim and I had a nice meal Saturday night (a late Birthday meal!) and watched The Matrix (I got him the trilogy for his Birthday. Yesterday we went over his mum's for dinner again for his birthday and, again, put off from Friday for obvious reasons!

It's weird without Hemmy .... he's been with us for EVER and I still keep expecting him to come strolling across the garden or scrape madly on the back door to be let in or do his level best to trip me up when I get something out the fridge! It's also the first time, since we got together, that we haven't had a cat at all and that's weird too. One day, maybe in the spring, we'll get a kitten (I'd love a Silver Tabby but no way I could afford one!) ... a new "baby" for our family. Right now though, I couldn't even THINK about replacing Hem. Don't want to.

I've been "pottering" today - wrapping a few stocking presents, glitterizing fircones for a hallway shelf display I'm doing, making lists of presents I still need to get and food we need to get! I'm going to do one last REALLY BIG tidy up before Christmas but am going to wait until Tim is at work because I get on so much better without his lanky frame in the way heehee! Any case, it will be nice for him to come home to :)

We also promised the kids we'd take them to see the insane "road full of Christmas lights" in Poole like we did last year. Last year we did a little video of them which we won't bother with this year so if you want to see the insane "road full of Christmas lights" go here .... go on, you know you want to ....... *laughs*. Watch the video - it's at the end of it.

PS - Talking of insane Christmas lights you HAVE to watch this! Apparently, it's a charity thing which is just as well because otherwise they're neighbours would just LOVE them. House christmas lights set to some VERY irritating techno "music" (so brace yourself) - very clever though

Happy Birthday!

xx To Timofee xx

38 Today!

I'm SO lucky :)

.... and I did make him a cake .... and it was a Victoria Sponge!

Festive stuff .... mostly

Have been quite caught up in general "getting ready for Christmas" malarkey recently! We've been doing very well with our present buying and are nearly done - just waiting for a couple of bits to arrive from Amazon and Play and need to scoot to the shops for a few little things (stocking fillers mostly). I've also marzipand (marzipanned? marzipaned?) .... put marzipan on the cake! Oh, it did smell good when I unwrapped it! My cards are finished and just need to be distributed and I need to put the finishing touches to April's pink bunny toy puppet that I started AGES ago.

On Thursday it's Tim's birthday (me and the kids rushed around making cards this afternoon while he was out). I'm going to bake him a cake of his choice (probably Victoria Sponge I bet) - I do this on everyone's birthday now ... but no-one bakes me a cake on my birthday! Boohoo!

Anyway, after his birthday fun, it's time for a mega clean up and then ......

.... up with the pretties aka Christmas decorations! We're doing them next Monday .... so love the decorations going up! :)

Oh, and on a slightly LESS happy note, Hemmy's off to the vet on Friday ..... he's nearly 16 now, getting so old and, well, sad to say I think his days with us are numbered. He's still eating and stuff (JUST - his teeth are knackered) but ... I don't know, he just seems like he's fading :( Anyway, we're taking him to see if they can do anything about his teeth and just check that he's generally ok. We're giving him lots of loves and he doesn't go out much so he's got a nice blanket to sleep on in the kitchen (he likes to be near the cooker I think!) Lovely old cat .... insane, but lovely :)

Sweet 6

April Honey turned 6 today .... aaah! Time flies! She's such a cutey - capable of throwing terrible wobblies when she wants to and does a pretty good line in being a bad loser in games but you can SO ignore those things! This is because, on the flipside, she's massively caring (when I was ill a while ago, she comes up to me and puts her arm round me and rests her little head on my arm and says "why mummy sad?" She'll just sit there and hug you on and on. She'll draw you the cutest pictures, tell the daftest jokes and is always, always full of sunshine.

She did enjoy herself today I think - she had balloons, pass the parcel, books, DVD's and Zhu Zhu Pets (oh how she has longed for Zhu Zhu Pets!) I even made her cake to her exact specification - pink icing with Zhu Zhu Pets on!

Happy birthday little Honey-bunny ... Happy Birthday!

On a different note, a couple more snowy pics for you (are you bored yet?). First, Tim's TINY snowman - wheelie-bin-man! This poor thing got crash-landed on by a pigeon this morning and squashed!

Icicles! It was so cold that we actually had icicles hanging off our roof today ALL day!

Footprints in the snow. This is gorgeous .... April coaxed Tim outside to play yesterday afternoon and this is his big boot-print next to her little wellie print... so sweet :) As an added bonus we also got bird prints!

Wow! It did snow!

Well, we got ours at last :) It said on the weather last night that there was going to be a very heavy snow but, to be honest, there didn't seem to be any signs of it. I was a bit worried because Tim had to go to work this morning - our drive is on a steep slope and, in previous years when it's snowed, he's had terrible problems getting out. I said "baby, perhaps you should park on the road?". So he did and good job too because this is what we woke up to! The tracks on our driveway are actually where he put salt out the night before but ended up deciding not to risk it! The salt obviously worked to keep the snow off anyway :)

So, while he was at work (slip-sliding around in his van!), me and the kids played outside .... here's a very silly little video I made of just that. Rather jerky in places due to the fact that I was having problems keeping my footing and the kids kept chucking snowballs at me! Check out April throwing herself to the ground .... needless to say she came in SOAKED and had to be plonked straight in the bath to warm up! After I'd finished filming, I put the camera indoors and joined in the snowballing .... and tried to make a snowman but it was a bit bish and fell apart :( Oh, and any Nintendo fans, see if you can work out the daft tune playing in this ;)

Advent calendars, snow flurries and ginger biscuits

Tim went out to buy Advent calendars today but, apparently, there wasn't much of a choice in our local Tesco. He came back with 2 Winnie the Poohs and 2 Hello Kittys. He fully expected that I would have a Hello Kitty (yes!) and that April, being a kitty fan, would have the other. Uh-oh! April discovered that the Winnie the Pooh calendars had not just chocolate but also stickers and magnets and she HAD to have one. Rosie, who wouldn't go near Hello Kitty if she was paid to, chose the other W-the-P which left poor old Tim with Hello Kitty! Ha! Ha! Ha!

They do looked cute all lined up though :)

We finally got snow today although not much. It just "flurried" on and off all day - didn't settle but it did make a nice view out of the kitchen window as I got on with some baking. I made ginger biscuits and they are JUST perfect with an afternoon cup of tea.

Ingredients:

120g softened butter

120g caster sugar

1 dessertspoon golden syrup

1 egg yolk

200g plain flour

1/2 teaspoon cream tartar

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 heaped teaspoon ground ginger

pinch salt

pinch mixed spice

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 170c/gas 3 and grease a large baking sheet

2. Cream the butter and sugar together

3. Add the syrup and egg yolk and mix well

4. Sieve in the flour, salt, tartar, baking powder and spices and mix to form a stiff dough

5. Take small pieces (about the size of a walnut), put on tray and flatten slightly into a round. Don't put the "rounds" too close together.

6. Bake for about 12 minutes until golden.

Yum Yum!

Rosie has also been doing some baking - at Guides - they made little itty-bitty mince pies and very nice they were too :) They were still warm when she got home so we finished cooling them before eating.

PS - and, yes, Tim and I DO have advent calendars along with the kids - why not? I know a lot of grown ups would think it childish and silly - I just call it fun. There is no rule ANYWHERE that says the fun has to stop once you reach adulthood. I firmly believe the world would be just a BIT happier if people retained a sense of playful, child-like joy as they got older.

Easy Peasy Christmas Decoration

This one is great for the kids to do (but I can't resist the glitter so I do them too!)

You will need:

White card

Ribbon

Stickers/transfers/card toppers/pictures cut from old wrapping paper or cards

Glitter/glitter glue

Regular glue

1. Draw round something to create 2 circles

2. Cut them out and put glue all over 1. Stick together with a short length of ribbon sandwiched between.

2. Stick on chosen picture - we used glittery transfers

4. Add any additional glitter you want (the more the merrier!)

5. Finished! Here are some we did

I really must be getting old!

Aaaah! Sunday! At one point my most hated day of the week (school on Monday!) now .... I'm starting to feel a strange contentment when Sunday rolls round. We've got the radio on (Nicholas Parsons doing "Just a Minute"), the gentle hum of the washing machine, April quietly playing Starfox Adventures on the Gamecube (a game I love as much for it's atmospheric music as much as anything), slightly steamed up windows because it's a cold day and the smell of Sunday lunch cooking (roast beef and yorkshire puddings). It's all "nice" and reassuring and gentle and homely and ..... right.

I need reassuring and gentle at this moment in time. Had to make an excruciatingly difficult decision about a member of my family (my brother) today that filled me with sadness. Not a decision I really wanted to make but one I felt I HAD to make based on circumstances and what is best for me and Tim and the kids. I found out something yesterday that made me feel like I was being sucked back into a whirlpool that, a few years ago, I climbed out of and felt relief. Yesterday I felt panicky and stressed again ....... the decision had to be made, however painful.

Tim and I are a lot different from pretty much everyone else in my family (although, thankfully, not HIS family). We're terribly old fashioned really - keeping to "traditional" routines, joining in with our kids and getting madly excited at Christmas and birthdays, bringing them up on a diet of "family traditions" (like me going out at the crack of dawn EVERY Easter to hide eggs for them to look for!) We try (go out of our way) to bring up our kids in a way which is peaceful ..... childhood is short, fleeting, it shouldn't be anything less than idyllic (or at least as much as we can make it) - the kids deserve nothing less. More than that though, LIFE is fleeting - I want MY life and Tim's life and the kids life to be HAPPY and relaxed. It can't be that way if things are stressing us and, so, hard decisions have to be made.

We've got our "way" of doing things and we're happy with that ... Nicholas Parsons and steamed up windows on a cold day and roast beef and all that ............. today is a little sad but that shall pass ....

Seeing spots

Today was the Pudsey Party at April's Rainbows group (in aid of Children in Need). We had 2 instructions - bring some cakes and make sure April wore something spotty. First request was no problem - behold spotty cakes :)

The second request wasn't so easy because april owns not a spot (ha ha) of spotty clothing apart from her wellies which would have been too hot (in any case they were caked in mud from bonfire night). Hmm .. what to do? what to do? Being ever such a resourceful mummy I came up with the idea of a big floppy spotty hair bow! Two strips of white fabric, sewn together and hand painted with spots!

April has fallen asleep standing up by the looks of it, but oooh! she's such a cute babba with her hair up like this :)

So, we all trundled off to the Guide hall and spent lots of money on cakes and putting coins on the cut-out Pudsey and watched April take part in the games (which were very loud!) Our favourite was "Beans" which we actually play at home sometimes and is SO funny. Maybe I'll video the kids playing it one day to show you the game in case you want to know .... SURELY you do?! *laughs*

Oh and don't forget, tomorrow night - Children in Need on telly! Tune in and donate if you can!

We had weather in our house

Oh my god what a couple of days! Never, if you can possibly help it, have your windows ripped out and replaced in November. It's been positively freezing over the last 2 days and, today, windy and pouring with rain as well and THIS is what our living room looked like earlier:

*shudders*

The wind howled through the place, the rain made the carpet wet and, basically, we froze. We are, however, SO pleased with the end result:

Quite WHY there is a need for obscured glass in the bottom of the lounge window we'll probably never know .......

Compared with the rotten old mouldy things that went before these are gorgeous. Every window in the house has been replaced ... no more tatty, damp wooden window frames .... no more draughts! Yay! I keep walking round the house looking at them and sighing with happiness *laughs*.

Anyway, one very good thing that came out of the window malarkey was that we went out (due to not wanting to be here!) and Christmas shopped. We've pretty much got all the kids stuff, (and came out of it about £200 poorer eeek!), apart from stocking fillers. Tim's got one of mine and I've got one of his (or it might be for his birthday which is on the 9th, haven't decided yet).

Now we're going to chill out for the evening (or rather be warm and toasty thanks to NO DRAUGHTS - did I mention that? heehee!) and, tomorrow, I'm going to start pre-Christmas mega-cleaning/sorting .... I find that very fun :) Oh, and we have to go to a Pudsey Party at April's Rainbows group tomorrow - get this, we have to take cakes which they will then SELL back to us! Rotten cheek *laughs* ... I jest, obviously, happy to help them raise some money :)

Operation Christmas Cake Phase 2

Uncooked

Some 4 1/4 hours later ..... lovely colour .... mmmmmm! Christmas cake! :) This was crazy - the cake wasn't cooked until fairly late in the evening which meant by the time we went to bed it wasn't cooled properly (went to bed early because Tim had to get up for work at 4.00 the next day). Soooo, I had to get up with Tim and put extra brandy in my cake, wrap it and put it away. At 4.00 in the morning! 4.00!!!

So, cake gone away now - wrapped up securely in greaseproof paper and tin foil and sealed in a cake box. Will have to briefly unwrap again towards the end of the month to "feed" with more brandy, otherwise it will be left until the first week in December when it will get covered in marzipan.

A hotchpotch of stuff

Firstly, I feel the need to apologise for the dreadful quality of the pictures you will view today - I don't know what's wrong with me but I haven't been able to take a good picture for days!

Anyhow, first a few from Halloween:

Rosie in the witchy dress she designed and (more or less) sewed by herself. She did it out of a couple of Tim's old tshirts and put gold glitter-glue bats on the front. Turned out pretty good I thought!

I woke up on Halloween morning to find this on my toilet .....

..... and this in my kitchen! Rosie had been busy before we even got up!

April made (with a little help from her mummy!), orange jelly pumpkins

.... and played a yukky Halloween game Rosie invented which involved pulling plastic spiders out of a cup of gunge (flour and water coloured blue!)

I made cupcakes and the kids helped me decorate them

.... and we all had tea by the light of the pumpkin :)

So that was Halloween :)

Yesterday I finished a sewing project I've been working on. I had to cross stitch a heart onto gingham - I've never cross stitched gingham before so it was a bit weird! More tricky than sewing onto Aida but it turned out ok in the end. I sewed the whole thing into a heart shape stuffed with toy stuffing and dried lavender (picked back in the summer) and hung it over the door leading from the hall to the living room. Cute :)

Finally today ........

What can this be all about?

.... of course! Operation Christmas Cake Phase 1! Soak the fruit in large quantities of brandy - phase 2 tomorrow :)

Happy Halloween :)

Halloween Comments

BOO!!

Well, here's this years effort! The kids and Tim think it looks like it's singing - I am more of the opinion that it's a shocked, "oh-my-god-would-you-just-look-at-my-badly-carved-face!", expression. I like it though, I always like our Halloween pumpkins :)

Today Tim managed to get home from work early enough so that we could go to Liberty's (instead of going tomorrow). We were pretty lucky with the weather - there was a downpour but we were in the reptile house at the time so it didn't matter. We saw a fantastic bird display ... ummm... let me try and remember .... there was a Hooded Vulture called Sly, a Harris Hawk which I can't remember the name of and a Siberian Eagle Owl (my favourite!) called Pipsqueak. They had lots of birds out on display today (more than the last time we went) and it was fantastic - thank you so much for the tickets Amanda! :)

We got home from that, I made some scones for tea and then we set about hacking a pumpkin to bits to create the masterpiece you see above. Tomorrow we have costumes, sweeties, pumpkin (shaped) jellies and pumpkin cupcakes ...... we always do, it's our yearly tradition.

Beautiful walk

We enjoyed what is probably going to be the last REALLY nice, warm day of the year (apparently the temps are going to drop a fair bit by the end of the week), and went to Avon Heath for a walk through the woods. We do love it there and it's really convenient - less than 5 minutes up the road and we're in gorgeous woodland. It was just perfect in the gentle autumnal sunshine .... I can't actually put it into words! We spotted LOADS of different types of mushrooms/toadstools, collected some fircones (which we put away to decorate at Christmas) and just enjoyed the peace (we didn't see another person for the whole walk!)

Here are some pictures - look at that gorgeous light :) I love the second-to-last photo, it looks almost magical!