Getting Prepared

Jessica has had an accident this weekend :( She was playing in her Grandmas garden when she fell down some steps and did this.

My poor baby, apparently she barely cried, my kids are hard as nails lol.

I also had the shock of my life the other night too, now my pets can not stand each other well Ceefer the cat hates the dog, Benji just wants to play. However in a first ever they spent 4 whole hours like this

I was happy they were so comfortable together.

I have been looking in to what gifts we will be making for the adults in the family. I have now decided what we will be making. I have also been looking up options to help etc. I have found a recipe for home made glue stuff, which I have made up a batch and will see how it works.

One of the gifts (2 people are getting the same gift) require 5 glass bottles and so I have been searching all over for glass bottles as I will need 10 altogether. I need a size 250ml one and so I have been looking on Amazon and Ebay and all blooming over I also went around all my local shops to see if anyone sold something like what I wanted. So after killing 3 hours in this fruitless task all the ones I found were too expensive for my tastes I struck upon an idea. Asda sell bottles of olive oil, in the size that I need. So I have decided to buy 10 from there. Not only does this work out cheaper than buying empty bottles but I also end up with loads of olive oil :D I have decided that this extra oil I will now have will be the perfect gift for some foodie friends, as I am going to infuse them with flavours and put them into bottles as gifts too. (I know I will have to get more bottles but I think I will use the Asda bottles again and use that oil in my cooking) OK OK long winded way of doing it decanting oil from here to there and back again but I know what I mean lol.

So, now in my head I know what is being made for whom and can now get a calendar organised for getting everything done. Woohoo, I'm much more prepared this year than any other year!!

Ok the meeting season has started once again and so many of my evenings have been taken up with council business, (tonight being a highlight for me as it was with a rather handsome police officer, yummy, no officer I don't mind at all that the meeting ran over, now what were you saying before I lost myself in your eyes??lol) but I have managed to get some stitching done too. Here is my day by day updates.

Day 29

Day 30

Day 31

Day 32

This is as far as I have gotten, as you can see it is almost finished now another week or so and it will be done yay me!

It is also TUSAL time again so here it is

Anyway time for bed for me speak soon x

Sunday Dinner yummy

We went to MIL today for Sunday dinner on Monday, as she wasn't here to do one on Sunday. We didn't know this plan until I was half way through cooking mine so we have had a Sunday dinner two days in a row. I can tell you I didn't eat much today as I was still stuffed from yesterday. My SIL then decided to 'do' a barbeque and so we went there for our tea. I managed to eat half of a hot dog and I was stuffed. All I really wanted to do was get home and get stitching, how sad is that lol.

Well as promised, here is my Great Grandma Churmes stuffing recipe.

4 slices of bread made into bread crumbs

one onion finely sliced

fry off onion

in a large mixing bowl add bread crumbs, sage and the fried onions mix well.

add two eggs and mix until all is combined

spread flat and bake until golden brown

I must say it is delish!!

My yorkshire puddings came out amazing as per usual. Here is my method.

 Equal amounts egg, flour, and milk.

I use one of my prep bowls full to the top.

Whisk until smooth (takes about 1 min for me)

full each well in your stone muffin pan to 1/3 full. With the stone you don't need oil or to heat it up first!! do it from cold.

This is what they will look like when cooked. 

I forgot to take a pic of our cheesecake and of the meat so I won't put them up till next time I do them :)

I haven't done much on 'The Wedding' at all really as I have been cooking up a storm, and I got a migraine so went to bed early :(

Here is where I am up to

I know it doesn't look like much has been done, but here is the chart before and after the stitches I have done.

As you can see the one on the right is coloured in more in the top right corner than the one on the left. As  (this section has been removed as it mentions my OH)  and Jade were stitching more on 'The Wedding' I decided to make a start on one of my Christmas stitches. I am starting a Margaret Sherry design of a mouse and robin. Here is where I am up to.

I am going to get a bit more done now so speak soon x

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.