Things to warm the heart

so recently we have nestled in to the season of winter. lit a candle at tea time (these are the ones we had in the summer from bees wax and oyster shells)

today i finished off the cookie kits for the school christmas bazaar. Each jar has flour, sugar and grated chocolate and then you simply add butted and use the cookie cutter to make cookies! simple! delicious too!

Yesterday i took custardy of this suitcase from my uncle David. It came from my nan and grandads house and contains all the love letters they wrote to each other while my grandad was in the navy during the war.It is truley amazing. i sat for about an hour last night reading though some and it was just so beautiful. They had not been married for long before he went into the navy and so were looking forward to him coming home and spending the rest of their lives together. Reading it hnow, i know they were lucky and did get to spend the rest of their lives together, they were married for 60 years before my nan died. I cant wait to read some more, they wrote everyday, mundain things often but so different to now..... just beautiful it really took my breath away!

Developing!

My girls are growing up and developing before my eyes, without me even realises from day to day. Lucy is a real chatter box now. She copies everything her big sister does and repeats ever word you say. She came up to me earlier with a forlorn look on her face, pointing at a sheepish emily saying "she push"!!! oh dear emily your in trouble now she can talk! Amongst other words Lucy now says breakfast, drink, that, tea (she loves to finsh off my cup of tea), puzzle (of sorts), trousers, nappy, poo, pwooor (these two are linked!!), nana, nanny, grandad (of sorts) park, and this afternoon she did an amazing twit twooo when emily asked her what an owl says!

My other little baby, who is knocking on the door of four, is learning to read at the moment!! i  know i am going to sound like a pushy teacher mum but Emily is genuinely leading this one. She has known her initial letters for a year or more and now she is starting to say the sound properly and recognise what objects / things begin with. So i thought i would try and see if she could read a few words by sounding out and blending them back! not quite but she is really good at working out what the word might say and her memory is amazing.we have started using readingeggs which i found on another blog. it is not perfect in terms of phonics but she loves it. It tests where she is and then she plays games to learn the sounds and read words! She loves it!

so as we start to look at schools for my little baby i am noticing the passing of time. Where does it go? but how exciting is the journey?!

sewing bug is back!!

So i have finally freed myself enough time to let my creative juices flow and i have started making things for christmas in ernest. Trouble is you cant photo your works of art as the people who will recieve them might see them!! so today i had a parcel of beautiful fabrics from fabric rehab ready to be made into exciting things. I have so much to do and so little time!!! Ha!

The 1950's caravan material is for my dad who i know does not really read this. think i will make a tidy pocket thing for their caravan!! The christmas trees i think will partly be personalised christmas stockings for my girls and the pretty pink bird material is for some bedding for a second hand wooden crib i got the girls for £3!!!. not sure about the mulitcoloured one, i just liked it!!

my pen friend came to stay

My pen friend from Birmingham came to stay for a few nights this half term holiday and it has been really lovely. We have kept in contact since we were about 15 and she has come to stay a few times in the past, when we were younger and i suppose that as time passed and we both got teaching jobs be became more busy. We still write, and we do write too, rarely emails, but mainly on birhtdays and christmas. So a long overdue visit was in order. From the moment she came we have got on really well and the girls have loved her coming too.I could not believe how truely alike i think we are. we have so much in common. we even look alike!

 On friday we spent most of the day at the zoo.

 We saw a rhino!!

 And mummys favourite, an elephant

 lots of very lazy tigers!

 lucy watching the mummy elephants with her babies

 Lucy loved seeing the animals and the freedom of walking around!

 And a really tiny baby elephant, must have only been a few weeks old as it was not even brave enough to come out, just poking its head around the door!

 Lucy was facinated by the plastic topary elephant!! ;0

 the trees are an amazing colour at the moment arent they. Beautiful yellows

 lots of cheeky monkeys looking out the window. we later foind out it was their feeding time and they were looking out for the zoo keeper!!

 In the evening we went to a lovely retaurant with some of my friends. they met lornas when she came down all those years ago. such a lovely evening

so all in all we had a really lovely few days. Lorna went back yesterday and we hope to repeat it all again some time soon.

my new phone

I have a new phone, it is very posh. i keep telling everyone it is one of those phones that you swish along and recently i have had great fun trying it out! Here are some photos of the last week or so.

 Carnival night! great fun even tho we did get a bit wet!

And this is what has kept me busy recently. NCT sale this sat. Everything had to come down from the loft last weekend to be sorted. Hmm, like a mountain to climb and this was only the beginning. Some went back into the loft to be worn at a later date when lucy is a bit bigger, the rest had to be washed and dried, labelled and put on hangers. This has taken me all week!!! Unsuprisingly it was quite a journey. constant battles in my head - "should i keep it, shouldnt i" "how much do you think it is worth" etc. i did end up with a black sack and a half to go back up of things i wanted to keep but i was also quite ruthless.

so this saturday i ook it all along to be sold. Amazing amount of organisation that goes into the day. there were piles and piles of really good quality items. The best bit was getting first dibs on everything. I managed to get the girls a lovely wooden rocking crib for £3! i am going to make some bedding to go with it once my christmas making gene has kicked in!

Anyway i think i made just over £100 (i wont know fo about 4-6 weeks) and i have photographed lots of the left overs to go on to ebay.

looking forward to a normal week now!

Autumn

This has to be one of my favourite seasons. It is just so pretty, the weather is ofter refreshing and sometimes like this week we are lucky enough to have a few days of sunshine to last us through to winter. Autumn is also the beginning of preparing for chrismas!! yay!!!

The blogger has been messing me about and everutim i have found the opportunity to write on here it has not wanted to load pictures. so here goes

when you run out of paper, paint the table!

i love this Autumn tree made with painted filter paper leaves. So much so i made one in my class too!

I treated myself to a beauiful Nomads skirt from a shop in town. fairtrade an all!!!

conker collecting with Nanny

feeding the ducks!

making an Autumn crown!

And a conker necklace

conker counting!

We also made these lovely shape crayons out of all our old crayons

you melt all the same colour together

pour into your favourite metal cookie cutter with blue tak around it to seal the edges and when it has set, push it out and colour in!!