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.

Kerry's turn to copy Mummy

Today Kerry has been doing a cross stitch. She needed quite a lot of help and ended up doing quite a lot of frogging, (frogging is when you make a mistake and have to undo your stitches and you ripit ripit get it??) Here she is concentrating hard.

She is making a picture of a dancer for Jade (who loves to dance) so she is begging me to help her to get it done before Jade arrives.

My stitch seems to be taking forever, I feel as though I'm not getting anywhere with it then I look back on here and see significant improvement at the end of each day. I think having this is definatley spurring me on to better things, I honestly do feel that if I didn't have this, I might have given up on it by now. But here is the latest.

Anyway that's it from me tonight, I'm feeling very tired and want to get some sleep . Speak to you all soon xx

Oh P.S I have ordered the fabric for the wedding stitch. Getting quite excited to start it now.

Children really do copy Mummy

Kerry went to sleep at my mum's house for the night and Emily went to my MIL's for the night, which left me and Jessica home alone together. We had great fun, playing different games, cooking a basic pasta bake (she got to do a lot of stirring), doing a bit of cleaning and doing a bit of cross stitching ;) I gave her a bit of scrap aida and showed her how to hold the needle adn fabric and away she went. Here is Jessica concentrating on her stitch.

She was really proud of the result, saying over and over "I love cross stitching I'm good at it aren't I Mummy?"

She had to keep asking me whether it should go in the top or the bottom, and I lost count as to how many times the thread came off the needle. But she did have a load of fun doing it, and it was lovely to spend time doing it with her.

Here is the finished result. Look at that smile. Such a proud girl, such a proud mummy.

I haven't done as much on my stitch as I was busy helping Jessica with hers but this is how far I have gotten with it.

Had a lovely suggestion for a craft to try from +Hugh Edwards, I am going to put it on my wish list and will get my self a kit, so thank you for that.

Anyway, time to sleep for me. Speak soon x

Quick Update

Well what a weekend, I forgot that Saturday was Saturday and had it in my head that it was Monday. I blame the schools breaking up, there I was thinking it was the first day of the school holidays when really it was just the weekend lol. I blame it on a blonde moment ;)

So, I took a break from my cross stitch on Sunday wanting to give my hand time to recover a little but got straight to it again on Monday here is where I got to on Monday.

I then continued on Tuesday, and got this far,

This stitch has a lot of block colours and is very boring to do, I really want to get it finished now just to have it done.

I have chosen the photo for my SIL's wedding stitch, this one 

I have also been on Ebay (this section has been removed as it mentions my OH) and have bought the software to convert it into a chart. The software arrived yesterday and so I have made the chart up. I need to check my stitchy stash to see what threads I have and which I need, I also need to buy the fabric this pic is 128x192 stitches which those maths boffins amongst you will have worked out is almost 25,000 stitches. I have worked out that so far on the stitch I'm working on at the moment I have done roughly 1800 stitches and it has taken me 4 days to get that far, and so that's roughly 450 stitches per day. On this basis it will take me 55 days to complete the Wedding one. This means I should get it done for Christmas. But OMG it will be hard work. 

So I would say I have 4 more days on the pic I'm working on already before I can start on this one. I think I will have to take my mind off it by doing a few smaller pieces every now and again, I also have family life to fit in and the council business to do, and now the children are off school I don't think I will be able to do 450 stitches per day :( Ah well you will just have to keep tuned to see if I do manage to get it done lol. 

I'd better get on with it speak to you all soon xx

Nails and day 2

 

Well the girls had their nails painted last night as promised. Only Jessica and Emily had theirs done because Kerry stopped at her cousins house. they thoroughly enjoyed picking out their colours and having the paint put on. Emily had to have hers done twice as she scratched her leg and ruined the first coat lol.

And as promised here is my update on my work in progress (WIP).

Can you tell what it is yet?? Answers in the comments section please x

I have also finally gotten the picture I need for a very special cross stitch. My lovely sister in law (SIL) got married last year and I am going to cross stitch one of her wedding photos for her. I am just waiting for the software to change the photo into a chart and then I can get started. Woo Hoo. Very excited about it and will of course keep you up to date with it. I know my SIL doesn't read this so I am safe sharing it with you. 

We had a lovely Sunday lunch at my Mother in laws today. Most Sundays she does one but on the days she doesn't myself and my SIL fight over who get to cook it. Call me mad, but I love doing Sunday dinner. I must admit, it does help that I have all my Pampered Chef stuff to cook it in, making it super easy. I also love making things like sage and onion stuffing from scratch using the recipe that has been passed down five generations the first I know to pass it down was my Great Great Grandma Churms, and that I am teaching my girls now. When I next make a Sunday dinner I will post up the recipe with the step by step instructions on how to do it.

I also love going up to my MIL for dinner as we get to ride our bikes up there. I bought a Trailgator which attaches Jessica's bike to mine so we can all travel together. It took Jess a long time to get used to the 'bar' as she was used to riding on her own with stabilisers, but now she loves it. I am hoping that when she starts to ride on her own she will be able to balance better on her bike to start with as she will be used to how it works being on the back of mine. Hopefully this 'training' will get her off to a faster start when she does get on on her own. 

Will update on the cross stitch later xx

Christmas bunny in July??

Well I have completed my first cross stitch, and it is as the title says a Christmas bunny. Many people would be saying but it is July, but all you crafty people out there know that really you should be thinking about your Christmas crafts just after New Years. This bunny will be put on to a writing book and will be given as a gift to some one (not telling who so don't ask lol). Here is how it went.

 Day one I started by finding the centre of my fabric and working out from that. Using the colours I had, as I was five short of the colours needed. I went online to order the ones I needed on Wednesday which was the day I started this stitch, they arrived in the post on Thursday, super fast delivery from sian2407. 

 By the end of day two this is how far I got. Jessica kept guessing what it was we had bears and dogs and for some reason a dragon, bless her.

This is the completed cross stitch without the back stitching. I think it looks quite cute as it is, but next comes the finishing touches.

How cute is this bunny?? The back stitching really brings it to life and makes you want to say awww! I think this would look great on a note book for one of mt nieces (I can say that because I have seven of them and they will never be able to work out which one of them gets it lol)

This is the chart I used from an old copy of Cross Stitch Crazy if you want to give it a go.

I have also started my next cross stitch this one is a lot bigger 99x72 stitches. So this one will be going on a photo album me thinks, here is how far I am so far.

Looks spectacular so far doesn't it lol. But bear in mind there are 385 stitches in that border and bit of purple in the corner. My hands have frozen up holding the fabric in place so long.

I'm not going to tell you what it is a picture of you will just have to wait and see any guesses are welcome just pop it in the comments section underneath :)

So, in other news, the girls teachers were thrilled with their body scrubs. One teacher saying she would use it tonight as she wants to prepare her body for her holiday (I'm paraphrasing here), another thought it smelled really nice. Hoping for some good feedback from them after the school hols hope they liked it.

The girls have asked if tomorrow we can paint nails as I don't allow it during school term and they love having it done and practising on each other, so there may be pics on tomorrow to show you how they did.

Yesterday I bought some M&Ms to make some muffins with but the girls snuck in and ate them before I could so need to go get some more and will post up how we make them tomorrow.

We tried to go puddle splashing today but the rain stopped and most of the puddles had dried up by the time we were on our way home from school. I don't know, we moan when it rains and moan when it stops lol.

Anyway, off to bed for me now, speak to you all tomorrow

Teachers gifts and getting back

Well I managed to get some of the ingredients for the teachers gifts, and I had to improvise on some too. The recipe I have uses coconut oil, but I could not find any locally at all and so I decided to try olive oil with flavouring instead, I will tell you in the recipe.

I suppose I should tell you what we made... All natural vanilla body scrub. It should have been coconut (I should have used coconut oil) but as I said earlier I couldn't find any. 

The kids had great fun making it, I had to try to keep them from eating it though. They thought it was delish lol.

Any way, here is how to make amazing body scrub. I will tell you the recipe I used but I will tell you we made two huge batches (quadrupled it both times and it made enough for 8 jars) this recipe is enough to fill a Kilner jar, there is nothing on the jar or the information on the jar to say how much it holds so use this recipe wisely lol.

You will need

1/2 cup demerara sugar

1/2 cup golden granulated sugar

1/2 cup white granulated sugar

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence

2 tablespoons of honey

put the sugar into a bowl and mix to distribute the different sugars evenly, 

add all the other ingredients and mix to coat everything evenly, don't worry if you get a few clumps it adds to the effect but you don't want them too big. 











Spoon into the jar and seal.

We then made labels to put on the jars, 

I wrote all the wording but I got the girls to write their own names onto the labels for a bit of personalisation.

They chose the yellow colour, not 100% sure why. 

  

We then added some ribbon to the tag and tied them to the top of the jar. The girls were so proud of themselves bless 'em.






We will wrap them in tissue tomorrow ready to give to the teachers.

Today, I have also been getting back my stitching bug, I used to love cross stitch with a passion and today I decided to start on some stitching for Christmas. 

I chose my design, out of my thousands I have, and chose a small one to start me off (I don't count the bookmark). The design I chose has only ten different coloured threads and guess what I only have five of them in my stitchy stash. So before I could change my mind about getting started I went straight onto Ebay and ordered my missing threads, (this section removed as it mentions my OH) but I also bought myself some more fabric. I am going to start stitching again and I have set myself to do one hour each day. I can post pictures on here of my works in progress and you can even rate them for me :) Here is what I have done so far today.

You can't really see the white stitching I did but that is because it is on white fabric, which by the way is super difficult to do without daylight, so I gave it up as a bad job lol. I think I haven't done too bad for the first proper stitching session I have done in a while. What do you think?