Garage Flowers

Me: You haven't bought me flowers for years. Not since I had Miss T.

W: Yes I have.

Me: No you  haven't. At least, not without me telling you to.

W: What about the daffodils I bought you last month?

Me (foiled): Hmph. Apart from those.

W: And the Amarylis I bought you at Christmas?

Me (feeling daft): Well, and those too. But it had been a while before then. (Thinks) And I had to tell you to buy me flowers when I had Mouse and Custard. (Plumbing great depths here. Five and four years is too long to hold a grudge).

W: That is just not true.

Long pause.

Me: I think it is true. (I don't)

Next day, W arrives home from a morning out with the boys, bearing a bunch of flowers:

Me (thrilled): They're lovely. Garage flowers! (Laughing)

W (mock outraged): Not garage flowers...I stopped on the roadside for those. They're from the back of a van in a lay-by.

I am very pleased with my flowers, not least because my husband has braved a lay-by on a dual carriage way in Essex to buy them. Flowers with a whiff of danger! And I do love a gerbera...x

Easter catch-up

Well hello! It is the Easter hols here and what with work, the bears home from school and general life (cleaning/gardening/boring chores) type stuff, it has been pretty hard to find any time to sit down and write a blog post. Come evening time I just curl up on the sofa- maybe with my hook, maybe not.

Anyway, this here is a bit of a catch up post. I have had my sister-in-law and her brood staying too these hols and before work one day managed to snatch an hour or so on the beach with everyone:

It HURT having to present myself in theatres at 12.30, that's for sure!

Then, later in the hols, this is a snap of our dining room table:

The bears have been entertaining themselves. FHB has been writing Star Wars magazines in which he stars as Luke and/or good Anakin and Custard stars as Bad Anakin and/or Darth Vader. (The timeline is a little nebulous in these things). There has also been a great deal of pirate/Harry Potter/Merlin action and Mouse, bless her, has been trying to potty train Miss T. She has had as little luck as W and I.

Mouse has also been learning to weave and has made a beach scene. This morning Custard ripped the whole lot off the loom and I couldn't face restringing it all, so we declared it to be finished. I spent breakfast time knotting all the ends and threading it onto a chopstick, while Mouse chose some shells and sealife to attach to the fabric. Then I had some fun with my hot glue gun...Ta-daaaah:

I love it! Mouse loves it! We are all happy. FHB has decided he would like to learn to weave so that he can make a dinosaur scene. I think I may need more glue.

Meanwhile, W has done a load of work in the garden; we have shuffled and sorted and recycled all sorts of Stuff and cleared some of the teetering piles of Stuff from around the house; I have added a few stitches to my lion (not many, sadly) and have stared longingly at my sewing machine. There are cushion covers to be made and every day they go on the bottom of my to-do list, never to be reached. Never mind, there's always tomorrow.

Actually, there's not. I'm going to the beach!  x

Quick camping

Doesn't the week fly by when you're doing a proper job? Sunday night already- I can't believe it! I've been filling my few quiet moments with crochet. A bit of one WiP here, a bit of another there. I need another big project to sink my hook into so sometime this week I will probably start my Summer Breeze cardi. I've been looking forward to it for so long!

The bears have been away at Papa and Toot's for the last few days, so W and I have caught up on sleep and relaxed a bit, whilst seriously missing them. The house feels far too big and quiet without my noisy, sticky children haring around.

Anyway, they got back yesterday and have just been pinging off the walls ever since. Today was beautiful and sunshiney, but W and I had quite a few jobs to do, so it was a housey day. I decided the bears should be outside, so I made them a tent.

For ages I have had grand plans of sewing them a lovely lined tent or teepee, all very complicated and unlikely. Today I seized the moment and grabbed an old duvet cover (W's sister's college one, it turns out), split the long seams and hung it over the washing line. Job done and a quiet afternoon followed during which all of my kids and then all of my sister-in-laws kids too, played and picniced merrily in the tent.

Splendid!

Hope you had a fab weekend too...x

Coming Home

It is kind of enjoyable being back at work for a protracted stretch, but I do so very much prefer being at home. This week, these are a few of the sights that have greeted me upon my return:

I have also come home to:

:: small, hot, sticky children being gratifying pleased to see me and thus dispensing kisses with abandon
:: a clean bathroom (Yay!)
:: some proper good dinners
:: a husband who misses me
:: a HUMUNGOUS bottle of ketchup in the middle of the living room floor. (It's still there. I'm waiting to see how long it will be before W notices)
:: small lego and playmobil persons in unusual places
:: a crunchy sofa
:: crushing tiredness brought on by not having done full time hours since I went on my very first maternity leave seven years ago, coupled with a lowered threshold for tolerating leaky anaesthetic gases. SLEEPY! Oh yes! I reckon in about three weeks I'll have shouldered it all and Normal Service will be resumed.

Hope so anyway...x

Yesterday we took the bears for a day out to the country park.

20 yards from the car Miss T stood in dog poo. We discovered this 40 yards from the car when W lifted her onto his shoulders and wondered what the cheesy smell was.

Meanwhile, I am attempting to have my usual pre-day-out talk with the big ones, which goes like this: Don't run off, walk with us, don't go around any corners without us, if I can't see you, I don't know what's happening to you...

They run off.

100 yards from the car Custard gets stranded in the middle of a muddy boggy bit. Mouse sinks up to her ankles in it and starts sobbing. FHB goes at full speed to help his brother, slips, skids through the mud and ends up top to toe brown. W, who has now finished cleaning Miss T's shoes, strips FHB down to his pants and gives him his tracksuit top. FHB now looks like he is wearing a dress.

I am laughing so hard I think I may have a problem.

We decide to give up on the walk. W insists we have our picnic, so we sit on the nearest bench, kids on a blanket on the floor. We are then bothered by a large, off the lead labrador. Mouse screams and runs away.

Oh, she's fine says the owner, helpfully.

Your dog might be, but my daughter is clearly not, I say, irritated.

At this point, Miss T starts eating crisps off the blanket like a dog and we decide to go home.

What fun!

Day off!

Hello! Even though I have had a busy week doing a Proper Job this week, I still managed to have a jolly nice jaunt out with W and Miss T while the others were at school. We went to our local country park for a wander, sank up to our ankles in the saltmarshes then had prawns and a shandy on the beach. We just had a fab time in the sunshine- makes up for being stuck with no sunlight when I am at work, that's for sure!

Look:: a SNAKE! W and I were mega excited! It's not often you see a snake in the wild in the UK, is it?
Miss T brought home a selection of grubby fevvers (feathers), a mangled daisy or two and a beautiful yellow buttcup (buttercup, thankfully), so she was happy too.

I hope we have more of this lovely weather to look forward to. What do you reckon- school holidays and good weather? 

Don't get my hopes up right?!

x

Blah

A tired Hello to you this evening. I have decided that W should go back to work and I should go back to being at home with my babies.

Gosh I miss them during the day. Especially Miss T. About four o'clock I get a bit maudlin without them all.

It is not helped by the fact that W has everything at home merrily in hand with ease, including broadening the bear's diet ten-fold and going for jolly nice jaunts along the beach. And making fabulous bread.

I feel a bit out of kilter.

Hummmm.

x

Blossom blouses

I have been at work today and rather unexpectedly found myself staying an hour and a quarter late, having not had anything to eat or drink for eight hours (Such are the hazards of being a theatre nurse working with a cack-handed general surgeon). Anyway, I was so tired on the way home that, walking up our road, I noticed a small dog infront of me. Ooh, I think to myself, what a tiny dog. And from the back it really looks like a cat.

Guess what...

It was a cat.

I have had two cups of coffee, half a litre of water, an apple and a slice of homemade bread and butter, followed by an hours sit down. W is making me dinner. I am feeling more human!

***

(This, now, is the post I had intended to write):

A couple of weeks back Mouse and I had a sewing day. I made this:

for myself. It is the Blossom Blouse from this book. An excellent pattern, it knocks up in an hour if you apply yourself (and remember, I am Not Great at sewing).

Mine is made from a bit of cotton I got for 50p in a charity shop, and some Ikea calico leftovers. I did it as a trial run and made a few alterations as I went along- shortening the sleeves and gathering them, lengthening the body and flaring the hem a little more. I really love it and definately see more in my future, though I must add that this one did look better before I washed it and neglected to iron it!

Mouse saw one in her future too and presented me with her kitty fabric. She has been hoarding it since her birthday, waiting for the right moment.

As we had the machine out, I made a pair of pyjama bottoms for FHB too. He is always badgering me to make things for him, but the truth is that I am not an accomplished enough seamstress to make complicated boy things. I guess I shall have to practice! In the mean time, nice simple elasticated trousers seem to have pleased him. And just so he was not left out, I mended Custard's Darth Vader cloak and have promised him some shorts. It's great- he's four and still doesn't mind elasticated waists.

I guess I'll have to make something for W too. Hmm. Thinking....

x

Busy Bee

In among the lovely things we did with the bears this weekend, I managed to get a few hours at my sewing machine and with my hooks. Bliss!

I made the Trapeze Dress from this book, with a charity shop duvet cover:

I made a little pillowcase tunic for Miss T, from this excellent book by Soulemama. Though next time I would make it a lot longer and put in much chunkier box pleats as Miss T is such a slight little thing.

(Rubbish photo I know- She's two and won't stand still).

And I made another slightly tweaked pillowcase dress for Mouse, with the proviso that it is for beach and height of Summer wear only. So naturally she will prance around in it on windy, rainy days as she is incapable of dressing appropriately. I shall tell her off whilst being ever so pleased that she likes it. That is how it works!

I am really pleased with my weekend makes, especially my dress as I have never made anything that complicated before. And W says I do NOT look like a bag lady dressed in a duvet cover in it. So I think that is a success.

Hooky-wise, I finished my pouffe! Turned out I only had another couple of rounds to do on it. Typical. so have lopped the buttons off the pouffe and made a mental note to acquire some duct tape for a little rudimentary repair work, then I ran some elastic through the bottom of the cover and knotted it really tightly underneath the pouffe.

And there you have it:

Easy peasy! Though I think I will probably make a fleecy jacket to go under the crochet cover. We'll see- much depends on how destructive my dear children are feeling.

So I end the weekend with the happy feeling of having Finished something, and the promise of being able to wear something I have made.

And I have finished the first sleeve of my green cardi too! Very Pleasing Indeed.

x

The weekend challenge II

Hello! Hope you have had a wonderful weekend. We did this:

Good kids=a challenge mostly met. Given that it was Mothering Sunday I pulled rank on the kids and we went back to the beach again in the morning- it seemed a waste not to make the most of a beautiful sunshiney day. We have promised them the park on Thursday, with bikes. Hope you had a wonderful weekend too!

x

A weekend challenge

On Friday I wrote this on the wall:

I wonder if we'll achieve them...x

NB: I wrote this on Saturday morning and meant to post it yesterday, but frankly ran out of steam!