3 in 1 Update

We have all been busy with our cross stitches. I was right, Kerry and Emily both wanted to do more cross stitching while Jessica was away at my Mums.

And of course when Jess came home all she wanted to do was stitch. Love the highly contagious stitchy bug lol. Here is the latest on their work.

I'm sure you would like to see how I'm going too with 'The Wedding' well here is update one

Update Two

Update Three

I love being able to see the progress like this as when I'm actually stitching I don't feel like I have got anything done. But I can clearly see on here where I have gotten to. Does that make sense to you??

As you can see I have started on the flowers, this part is becoming a pain in the butt, as there are so many colour changes in them. I will get there with them though, and I am actually really excited to see how they will turn out.

Did I tell you my Mum got herself a puppy?? Well he is called Monty and looks like this.

He is such a cutie.

Mum is very happy with him.

While I have been absent I have created a to stitch list by going through all my World of Cross stitch magazines. I have worked out that if I stitch one of each design, and stitch everyday for 3 hours, it will take me 2.2 years to complete it all. That is working on the estimated hours stitching the magazine recommends. I know I stitch slower than what it says in the mags so, so far I have aroung three years of stitching to do lol. However each time the mag comes out my to stitch list will grow bigger and bigger. 

Have you got a to stitch list?? If so, how big is it??

Speak soon xx

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.

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

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

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?

Money, the bane of my life

Well what a day I have had. I have been trying to sort out my mums claim for ESA but my goodness they don't make it easy do they? After 3 months and a further hour on the phone then waiting for a call back then a further 1/2 hour on the phone (someone at the call centre I went through to collapsed and because the person I was talking to was the first aider he had to go deal with that) we are still no closer to getting it sorted I am getting very stressed with it all and that's not to mention how it's affecting my mum. But I will get there (hopefully soon).

I have managed to sort out her housing benefits and they will start to make payments now which is a huge weight lifted. 

Mental health issues really do suck the life out of those around the person affected don't they? (Not to mention the person affected)

Well in other news Jessica has been a real madam today, I think it is mainly because she is over tired but wow can that girl scream lol I'm sure the neighbours thought she was being eaten alive or something. Hopefully tomorrow with and early night tonight will see a much better little girl.

Kerry has today started playing netball at school hoping to get into the school team. She had lots of fun and has asked if she can do it for ever so watch this space a future Olympian in the making (maybe) lol.

This section has been removed as it mentions my OH.

But during all this I have managed to catch up with my laundry, just got to iron it all now :( 

talk to you all tomorrow hope your day went better. x