Another Sunday another family bike ride

As it is Sunday, we all went to MIL's for our dinner. Once again we rode our bikes, we started off as a family but soon became two parties as Emily's front tyre got a flat.  (this section has been removed as it mentions my OH)  took Emily home and sorted out her tyre. They arrived 15 full minutes after us, ha ha slow coaches. At least we got the ride home all together.

I was looking through some of my stitchy stash that had been squirrelled away. I found some great stuff, and am excited to get going with it again. Here is what I found.

I also found some finished stitches that I had forgotten about have a look at these.

I can't remember who I did these for originally, so I will have to think of someone to give them to and get them cleaned and framed up.

Nice when you have a find like this, don't ya think??

Once I found my stitchy stash, I got started straight away on this one.

First person to tell me what this will be when it is finished gets to have it!!!

Get guessing in the comments box!

No update on 'The Wedding' as I was busy with the prize stitch, I will do some more on it tomorrow though I promise lol.

Off to bed now for me, speak soon x

Update from the week

Well, it has been a while since my last post, but to be fair I have been very lazy lol.

The girls were taken away for a few days for a little holiday. MIL took them to a friends caravan where they went on a pirate ship (according to reports, the girls were singing all the way 'when I was one, I ate a bun the day I went to sea. I jumped aboard a pirate ship the captain said to me, 'We're going this way, that way, forwards, and backwards, over the Irish sea. A bottle of rum to fill my tum, that's the life for me.' and so on and so on for the whole hour out at sea lol), they went to a circus, where the high light of the show was where 'a baby was crying and the mr picked it up and it wee'd all over everyone.'

Although I knew where the girls were going, we kept it secret from them. I gave them a few clues as to what was happening, but made them so vague they couldn't work it out, though Kerry came close (A police officer in the making I think).

Here are the clues given. 

1. G.G.A.S is taking them. (Kerry came up with well it can't be Grandma Gill because she is at work, I didn't tell her otherwise, she went through everyone she could think of, she even thought that Great Grandma in Spain could be the one coming bless her.
2. They are going on the train to Doncaster, and then somewhere else. Kerry was coming up with all sorts of destinations.
3. They would be visiting family, Kerry thought that they could be going to Thetford, as my MIL's sister lives there, she then discounted this as Grandma Gill was working. She forgot that her cousin and aunt and uncle had gone on holiday a couple of days earlier.
4. They would have buckets of fun. Kerry came up with going to the seaside. But she couldn't work out how visiting family and the seaside would work together.
5. Fish and chips. They thought they would be going to a fish and chip restaurant for a meal, as this is one of their favourite treats.
6. They needed their toothbrushes. They were thinking they were having a sleep over somewhere.

I can honestly say they had no clue as to what they were going to be doing it was great. This is the moment the discovered where they were going. 

They had a great time, I'm just sorry I missed it.

I have been doing a little work on 'The Wedding' cross stitch. I really didn't like the way the faces were coming along and so I tried making some more charts, hoping to make it look better, but no matter what I did the faces would look off. I decided to try to use some backstitching to make it look better, which it does so I am going to keep on it. Here is where I am up to.

From a distance it does look OK, but close up no so great but hopefully when it is done I will be happy with it.

Because I was so disheartened but the progress of 'The Wedding' I did another little stitch to get my mind off it for a while. My World of Cross Stitch mag came through with a small card kit. So I completed that. Here is the result at the end of 4 hours or solid stitching (well the kids were away I had chance lol)

I completed the stitch the next day with a further 2 hours of back stitch. Because this stitch has most of the backstitching going between the stitches it made it very difficult to do, even though I had a very sharp needle to do it. Also because it was so small my rings didn't fit it properly which meant I was holding the fabric awkwardly and so I got major hand cramp. But here is the finished result.

Isn't he cute? But you can see here especially the importance of the backstitch. He really does come to life. I will not be doing this stitch ever again though because of that horrible backstitching.

Well, I think I have updated you with everything I have been doing and so I am going to bed. Speak soon x.

Colouring in is not just for kids

(this section has been removed as it mentions my OH)

Are you jealous?? I would be lol.

Today has been an exhausting day of tidying. I decided to tackle the girls bedroom, including the toy box. Now I know normal toy boxes are only big enough to hold a few toys, however our toy box was made by my hubby and is bigger than my bath and holds loads of stuff, they also have a second box that is a normal sizes box. The girls boxes were over flowing and I decided to streamline them. I got the girls to help me but boy I wish I had done it myself lol. Everything I got out seemed like a new toy to them as they hadn't seen it in so long, or if one wanted to get rid of it the others didn't and vice versa.

In the end we managed to donate 3 black bags of toys and a 2 foot pile of books to a local charity. They now have plenty of room to put their toys away and they get to play with all the toys the have so everyone wins. We now only have to go through the cuddly toys to see which ones can be donated now, really not looking forward to that as they do actually play and cuddle them all. I will be happy if just 5 go.

I have managed to do some cross stitch today, here it is, 

As you can see I have basically coloured in the hair. It seemed really easy and quite fun to do actually. The hair isn't the only thing I have been colouring in though, because the chart is so big I have been colouring in the chart as I complete stitches so I can keep track of where I am. The exciting bit is... almost one full page of chart is now coloured in woo hoo. See...

I have worked out that there is now around 3200 stitches done yay me!

I have also worked out which direction I will be going when I have completed the page... I will be going across. I have decided to do it this way because as I have been 'colouring in' the face area I found I don't like it so I am going to complete the face and see what it looks like to see if I want to carry on with it or redo the chart and start again. If I decide to start again I will not be happy with all the frogging I will have to do, but as I have been doing this stitch I keep thinking I should have done this or that to make it look better etc. If when the whole face is done, I actually like it I will leave it as is though. Stay tuned to find out what I do lol.

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

Pyjama days are the best.

The girls decided that today should be a pyjama day and so we did not get dressed. It was lovely, we got all snuggled up together and watched a movie.

Emily is curently obsessed with the word caboose. I don't know where it came from but she has to use it in nearly every sentence at the moment. I encouraged her to write a story about a caboose and so she made herself a little book, and got to it. 

This is the first page.

It says "This is a story about cabooses.

This story is med (made) by Emily Walker." 

The picture at the bottom is a caboose.

This is the second page, it says, 

"A coboose goes on the back ov(of) the train and the caboose is far apart because the caboose is at the back of the train and the train is at the front of the train"

On mickey mouse goofey rided in the square caboose, caboosees are at the very back of the train and there is another name for caboose and it is caboosey"

This page says "caboose is at the rear of the train and caboos are after"

not a bad little story lol.

I have completed all the cross stitching on my piece now, I only have the backstitching to do now. 

The pic on the left shows a before the white is added and the right after, I wanted to show the difference in the two as you can't really see it in the photo's of the whole stitch.

And here is the pic of what I have done so far. The next one will be the whole completed one woohoo.

Speak to you all soon xxx

Not so lazy Sunday

We went to my MIL's again today for our Sunday dinner. The girls and I rode our bikes again. (this section has been removed as it mentions my OH) This is them working on it together.

Kerry wanted to help out but Jessica..... well she wanted to sing and dance.

The finished truck looked like this.

Emily so far has not stopped playing with it.

While they were doing this I was getting on with my cross stitch, I am quite pleased with myself as it is now nearly done woohoo.

I just have a day left of stitching the white of the polar bears bodies and then a day or so of backstitching and it is then done. Here it is...

The only problem is, with all the rest being white you won't really be able to tell when I have done it :( I will still post it just in case, well I know how riveting it is to read this trying to keep up to date with what I'm doing lol.

The first week of school holidays is now over and so far we have spent a grand total of £0.50 on entertaining the kids. Everything we have done has either been free or we have already had the stuff in the house to do it with. I am a firm believer in not spending on your kids but instead spending time with them. This week my girls have learnt a great deal (even though they didn't notice as they were having so much fun doing it.)

For example, they have been measuring ingredients for the play dough, they have let their creative side out making the ball game, they have been practising with their hand eye co ordination by playing the games we made, patience, counting, hand eye co ordination and using their fine motor skills with the cross stitch. They even got plenty of exercise playing on the park.

I would much rather be doing this with my kids than allowing them unlimited electronics time. Don't get me wrong, they love to play on the computer, watch T.V and listen to music. I just make sure they have plenty of other stuff to keep them busy and their minds engaged.

Sorry, that sounds a bit preachy, but I am very happy with my lot.

Any way time for bed again speak to you soon xx

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.