Little Hats And Poppets

Another nice holiday day today, Simon at home from work too so we set off this morning to have a play at Little Treasures, we met some friends there, had a bounce and some lunch. Nathaniel loves the bouncy castle now that he can move around, only sorry I forgot to take the camera!

I quite often meet Lynsey there as our girls are all big enough now to go off and play and because there is so many of them they look after each other nicely so we always know when someone needs us. It means that we can sit and drink tea and craft.

I took some knitting today. One of my very dear friends is expecting her first baby in November and I am determined to make some beautiful things for her long awaited bundle. I only learned to knit last Christmas (Mum was off work following a mastectomy and a year of chemo therapy so I grabbed the opportunity to get her to teach me while she was unable to run away), I seem to have taken to it quite well but have stuck to very basic items so far. I found a pattern for a baby hat that you can knit on two needles (I still have trouble with DP needles and knitting in the round), thought I'd start small and work up to a cardigan and a lacy blanket in time. I don't yet know what colour the baby will be (pink or blue) so am knitting in white. I had planned to send the hat now, something of a taster of things to come. I was going to send the hat with a pink flower to sew on if the baby is a girl but I realised it would probably be easier to cut it off if it's a boy! I am very pleased with the hat, what do you think;



The girls like it so I may have to make some pink ones for their dollies.

If anyone out there in blogland has some really easy but fancy looking baby patterns feel free to email them to me!

On the way home this afternoon we stopped at the shop for a loaf of bread, Simon climbed back into the car and asked;
"What flavour poppets* are your faves?"
"Toffee."
"Phew!"
"Why?" asked I.
"Because I bought you some,"
"Ah, thanks. Why, because you love me?"
"No, they were less than half price."

I am rapidly approaching 100 posts and am planning a bit of a give-away (not sure what yet) so watch this space!

Daisie xxx

*Poppets are small round chocolate covered sweets that come in mint and orange fondant and toffee. They come in a card box that has a small hole in the top, usually they don't come through the hole so you make it bigger and then they all come rolling out at once! Yummy!

Extendable Nozzles, Textured Wallpaper And General Sadness

The Singing Kettle was wonderful, as usual! Derby is such a long way but the show was well worth the journey time! Forgot to take any good photos of the girls, this years theme was pirates. Here are my pirate princesses;




And here we are having ice cream at half time;




Today has been a strange old day really, Nathaniel woke at 5am so I was wide awake and busy from then really. I crept round upstairs and tidied the bedroom and then came down early and made a shepherd's pie for tea whilst the breakfast was underway. The girls came down to join us and the cleaning continued with the hob of the cooker and the top of the microwave etc. I put some washing in the machine, changed our bed, washed and dressed the children, vacuumed the floors and was out of the house at 9 to go to our breast feeding group. All the children came this week which was really nice. I'd invited my friend Caroline and her son George along too, Caroline is no longer a star but was for two years with George. Claire was there with Li-Bau too. They come with us every week, Li-Bau is six months old and Nathaniel thinks he is the coolest friend he has (mainly cos he's a boy and not dressed in pink!), here he is beating him to the ground in a passionate cuddle;



And moving in for a quick kiss;

Anyway, enough of gorgeous baby boys, lets get back to the title of this post. In my mad cleaning mode I tackled the rest of our bedroom when lunch was over. The bed was moved and the floor beneath cleaned and the rugs were lifted and wafted in the air and the floor beneath cleaned (sounds like nesting to me...). There were a few spiders' homes (cobwebs) in the corners near the ceiling so I extended the nozzle on my lovely vacuum (I don't get out much) and attached the brush end and went on a cobweb removing spree. Great, though I until I stepped back to admire my handiwork. We have horrid 'wood chip' wall paper in the bedroom that we just painted white (it was moss green and plum and reminded me of vomit) when we moved in because we were going to make things nice as we went along. Needless to say, tis still white, eleven years later! But I like white. The tiny bumps in the wall paper collect dust and where I had removed said cobwebs the walls looked brighter and cleaner, so off I went with my nozzle extended around the room making the walls dust free. Well, sort of, the walls in my bedroom now look like an old grey zebra. Never mind, I'm usually asleep when I'm in there, ha ha!

I came back downstairs from my cleaning madness to find the girls had got the play dough out and were making food, I had chocolate spaghetti with strawberry 'meatballs', vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce drizzled over, small love heart cakes, and big aeroplane cakes waiting for me.....

And the mention of sadness is because whilst ironing (I am a domestic goddess!) I saw an advert for this on the TV and squealed with delight, I have to have one!! How sad am I?!

Daisie xxx

Can't Believe I Forgot.....

That my amazing husband bought me this wonderfully fancy (limited edition) daisy stamp;


I stamped three this afternoon and cut the main daisy from one and the daisy and inside border from another and layered them up on a full stamp. I highlighted the edges and swirls with a gold glitter pen and finished it off with some amber coloured gems. The photo doesn't really do it justice;



Daisie xxx

Cosmic Letters

How SMART is this, I love it, thanks for the link Swirly!!!

A Day At The Seaside

A fabulous (windy) bank holiday Monday was had at Fleetwood yesterday.
Here are the crashing waves;






We wrote our names in the sand, well, Elizabeth did and Francesca managed her 'F' and then was distracted by a crab's claw;



We had a big shop at Freeport and bought lots of lovely goodies and drooled over many things in an amazing cook shop. Then we walked on the beach at Fleetwood and drove on down to Cleveys and had a fish and chip supper (well four of us did and Nathaniel stuck to boobie and threw it up all over everyone). Elizabeth and Nathaniel fell asleep before we got home (Francesca was still awake but she did sleep on the way there).

Now for my goodies. I found this book in The Works for £1.99, it's really rather good and very easy to follow, watch this space for my creations.

I also got an amazing scrap booking kit, it has lots of different papers, eyelets, toppers, sentiments, beads, stick on gems, ribbons, metal and wooden buttons, and just amazing things and all for £3.99, can you believe it!?

Here's a close up of my buttons and can you see (on the left) three wonderful green resin daisies;

Today has not been so marvelous, I was awake most of the night with a small starving boy demanding boobie because he was so hungry and then being covered in my own milk when he threw it all back up twenty minutes later. Fun and laughter (not). By this morning he was very miserable indeed so we set off to the doctors. After an hour of hanging around and crying (mostly him but me also) we saw the doc who examined him thoroughly and told me...wait for it.....he has a virus (!), winter vomiting virus (in May) apparently and there's not alot we can do. He is quite dry so we have been trying to give him rehydration salts (he likes it not one bit) and his tummy is sore and empty, poor baby. He is having lots of loves and hopefully will feel better soon because we are off to Derby tomorrow to see The Singing Kettle we go every year and have a wonderful time, am hoping to get a few more years out of Elizabeth before she grows out of it and will get many years from Nathaniel and maybe we'll just have another baby........

If ever they are near you, take some small people along, they'll love it!

Daisie xxx

Paper Craft And A Clean Car

Bank holiday so Simon at home tomorrow, we are planning and adventure and in readiness we have cleaned the car (he did the outside, I did in), very shiny it is too!

I have been feeling a little poorly, a bit cold and not very motivated even though it's been very sunny outside. So I have been indoors while the children have been playing beaches and schools and labour wards(?!) in the garden. I have been playing with all my lovely goodies that arrived last week.

Here are the fruits of my guillotine (so to speak).

Another tear drop 'Daisie';





This is a really cool stand-out flower with a die cut butterfly, it needs something more but I quite like the idea;






This is what it looks like from the side;

I had lots of fun playing with this wired handmade paper. I need some more practice at this but I quite like the rustic look;

I made a 'box' of flowers for a friend's coming birthday;

And this is a card that has been in the making for ages, it's an order from my mother-in-law for a friend of hers. Her friend is an artist and I felt under pressure to produce something really marvellous, think I've achieved what I was aiming for. This is the outside;

And when you open it up......

Hope she'll like it!

So hopefully tales of an adventure tomorrow, unless the British weather lets us down(well it wouldn't be unheard of for it to rain on bank holiday Monday)!

Daisie xxx

One Size Fits All

Morning, sorry I didn't get back yesterday (well I did but the internet was down, bah!)

In my huge box of goodies was a tear drop shaped paper punch, it's an X-Cut for those of you that know about these things and I didn't want to let it go but couldn't think of what to use it for. So I cut lots from some swirly handmade paper and then cut some from some lovely metalic green and made this;



I didn't crop this picture like I usually do because you can see my rather groovy purple knitting needle bracelet that Swirly made for me! I love it and it gets lots of comments. And you can't see my lovely button ring that Jenny made for me on the other hand - I am truly a crafty person on so many levels!!

And here is a lovely thing that Kae-Lei brought me back from her weekend away where she celebrated her 8th birthday. A thank you for the present I made her. Think it says it all really, don't you?




Daisie xxx