Play and problems.

We had Harvey come to visit us again today, so we made more play dough (see earlier post for how to do it) they spent hours playing with it. Here they are enjoying making rabbits and biscuits etc, 

You also get two updates of 'The Wedding' cross stitch, I missed an update yesterday with it and so I am doubling up today as I got quite a lot done over the last two nights. On the left, is last nights update where there is around 1000 stitches, and on the right is tonight's with just over 2500.

Told you I'd managed to get quite a lot done, tomorrows update might not have as much done as Saturdays is my cleaning day, and I generally end up with just an hour or two to stitch at the end of it lol.

It may be just me, that I have been looking at it so long that I see things that aren't there, but I can see the brides hair and neck Her face is yet to be completed, but I am not sure which way to go with the pattern, Page 1 of the chart is now almost complete. So, my question to you is should I go across the image, which would complete both the bride and grooms heads, or do I go down, and start work on the flowers and the dress??

If I go down I will feel as though I have gotten more of the picture completed as there is a lot of block colour on both the background and the dress, with a little colour alteration for the flowers. If I go across, it will take me longer to get a 'result'. I know that I will have to do the exact same stitches to complete the full piece, but do I do all the colour changes and detail now and get it over with but feel I'm making slow progress, or do I save it up to do at the end when I am getting ready for the piece to be finished, and then maybe getting frustrated as it is taking too long to do the final bits. Does this make sense to you?? Any advice will be appreciated :D

Anyway, to bed with me now and speak to you all soon. I will be waiting for the emails to come through about which direction I should take lol. Signing off now xxx.

Long walk home

I took the girls to my mums yesterday, thinking we could walk it home and give the dog a good run while we were at it.

Never again lol to be fair the girls did fantastic walking the 3.4 miles it took us. Here we are walking

This is the route we took, like I said they did very well.

We stopped off at MIL's for a rest stop and the girls ended up playing for an hour outside with their cousin Harvey.

With regards to my cross stitch, I have finally finished the polar bears, here is the final result.

I have also made a start on 'The Wedding' here is my preparations I have set out my area to stitch, I have also put masking tape all around the edge to protect it from fraying (left), you can see on the right how large this piece is as you can compare it to an A4 piece of paper. Below is the whole 9 page chart. Each of those pages are also A4. 

I have also had a day of stitching (well a little more than a day) on it too here is where I am up to.

It doesn't look like much but there is around 500 stitches there, so it will take me a while to get this one done. Though I do have a little help as I am getting the kids to do some stitches too so it really is a gift from the family. here they are doing a couple of stitches each.

 I will get Alan and Jade to do some at a later date too, in the meantime I'm going to get some more stitching done speak soon xxx

Come shine and rain

 

I had an amazing lay in today, (this section has been removed as it mentions my OH)

When I eventually woke up we decided to take the girls and the dog to the park. 

We had loads of fun playing and sliding. 

 

 Here are the girls enjoying themselves with their cousin Harvey.

Even Benji joined in the fun by having a go on the big swing, his tail was going ten to the dozen once the swing started moving lol.

 

 

Jessica wasn't so keen on the zip line though as it went too fast and scared her a little. She was fine as soon as she got off though so don't worry.

 When we got home it started raining and so we decided to make some play dough. Emiliy wanted green and Jessica wanted blue, so we just split the dough in half before we put the colour in. Here's how we did it.

You will need, (I used one of my Pampered chef prep bowls as a measuring guide, which works out at one American cup size)

1 cup flour

1/2 cup salt

1 cup water

2 teaspoons cream of tartar (get it from the baking aisle in the supermarket)

2 tablespoons cooking oil

gel food colours of your choice

  

 Put all ingredients into a pan (I have one we use just for crafting so I don't ruin my cooking ones), cook on a medium heat stirring all the time!! (that is important!!) 

It is not far off being done at this point, so be careful. it took about 5 mins to get it here.

put the dough on to a floured surface we chopped ours in half at this point and add a small amount of food colouring, the more you add the more intense the finished colour, but you run the risk of the dye being transfered to the kids hands and/or clothes.

Then knead to spread the colour throughout.

You might want to wait a little for it to cool before giving it to kids to handle!!

 

If like today the rain stops while you are making it then send the kids out to play with it in the garden (save extra clean up in the house lol)

 I have also been doing some more of my cross stitch, OMG today is the first time I have used light shades. This is a type of thread that reflects light, but it is bloody awful to work with. It feels a little like plastic but snags like it has glitter attached. I must admit though it does look pretty good. You can kinda see the light reflecting in these pics.

Because I have done the light shade (which took so much longer to do than normal stitching) I haven't done much else on the rest of the pic but here is my work so far.

Not looking too bad, if I do say so myself lol. Anyway, time for me to go to bed, who knows what the kids will have me doing tomorrow, though I have a sneaky feeling Kerry will want to make more play dough, as she missed out today. Speak soon xx.

Busy Day

We have had a busy day today making some games for the girls to play. They have gotten very messy making and creating.

Today we made a ball game, it is not finished yet as it is yet to dry, but here is what we have done so far.

You need a box and some arty and crafty supplies and some willing helpers in old clothes.

Seal up the box, and cut some holes out one on the side to retrieve the balls, and six or so on the top to aim at.

We have covered the holes with masking tape so there are no cuts or scrapes

Then let loose with your creative side, painting sticking and making merry with the glue lol

Make some card cut outs and paint them in bright colours and add scores on.

Glue these into place on the box like this.

Now all you have to do is wait for it all to dry.

In the meantime, we created a ringo game. All you need for this is some paper plates, scissors, plastic cups and paint.

I had some old Halloween plates which were great as they were very colourful already cut out the centre of the plates.

Then paint some scores on the cups, wait to dry then its playtime.

If you want to play this game outside I would suggest weighting down the cups with sand or rice by making a lid for the base of the cups.

We have also been doing cross stitch too. Emily started hers today and is making good progress. Here she is giving it the old college try.

I haven't done any stitching yet today so there is no update on my piece today, so tomorrow will have a definite update.

We are all looking forward to the opening ceremony tonight, we are ready to cheer on Team GB, with our flag out flying.

Good Luck Team GB, we are rooting for ya.