Weekly round-up

Last Sunday was lovely... after Church and lunch, I sat outside by the table, under the umbrella and read... a rare luxury. Meanwhile... the kids did this...

First to brave it was Bubbles... brrr... but it gets warmer!

Spike wasn't so sure... but he got there in the end...

Don't really like posting pics of myself! But here's one anyway... !

Waste Management on Monday... there was a fair bit of table work... looking at packaging of items and how good it was - or not! Then they were split into teams, to design packaging for an egg... using packaging items from the rubbish bin... the idea : each item of rubbish has a number of points according to how easily it can be recycled eg paper 5 points, yogurt pots 30 points; make the packaging with the least number of points possible... BUT, it has to be good enough to protect an egg when dropped from a meter high onto concrete! They finish that this coming week... be interesting to see how they get on!

Ah... no matter how hot the day is... boys STILL manage to run around!

Strawberry picking! We had fun! But... I forgot to take my camera to the field... so these pictures of preparing the fruit to make jam will have to suffice... Bubbles and Spike were good helpers... even if they did lighten the weight by eating some of the spoils!

Throw in some Rhubarb from big Bro... we made 2 varieties of jam : plain old Strawberry, and Strawberry and Rhubarb

Yum! These we get to eat...

The finished product.

I spun this skein of singles a long while ago (still practicing!)... finally got round to washing it properly this week... it's really twisted, and is begging to be plied, but I didn't want to do that!

Soaked in warm water for an hour first... then soaked in soapy water, and rinsed in warm water.

Hung to dry... weighted to try and straighten it a bit.

Finished skein... looks a bit better, don't you think? Still curling, still begging to be plied... but, I don't want to do that... just want to find something to crochet it in to! I'm glad to have actually washed it properly this time... it isn't essential, but it smells good and feels good too!

I keep finding some very random photos on the camera... I'm glad for digital photos... at least I don't have to pay to have a whole film of 'random' photos printed off! With digital, I can delete what I don't need and it means the kids can mess around with the camera...

A couple of random breakfast photos... The above is Bubble's usual breakfast - cornflakes and yogurt... it's the only thing (apart from porridge... which I can't be bothered making at the moment!) which doesn't seem to upset her tummy in the morning. The below is a sweet treat breakfast cereal Spike likes... it's WAY too sweet, and not my ideal breakfast for him... but once in a while...

Wednesday and Thursday were very odd without Bubbles, but we tried to carry on with our work, and played lots of games... and also went walking in the crazy heat... droplets of sweat on brow.

My "meadow"! Isn't it lovely? Look at all the Hawkweed, and clover... the grass wasn't actually very long... but the Hawkweed, unlike the Dandelion, likes to be noticed, by shooting out tall from the ground (unlike the Dandelion who lingers close to the grass)... they open to the sun, and shut themselves away at night... daytime, it looks lovely, nighttime it just looks like long sticks of green all over the grass! So, how did I get my meadow? Well, one thing or another seems to have got in the way of grass-cutting these past 3 weeks... I intended on cutting every 2 weeks, but something went a bit skew around the 2 week mark, and this is the result of leaving it for 3 weeks! I wish I could have left my meadow... but it looked a little messy... the grass was not long at all... and now the lawn is just green again... not very interesting... but green IS a lovely colour!

I'm not entirely sure what it is... but Spike laboured over this creation... and he doesn't normally like to create, so I was happy to see ANYthing... even if I didn't know what it was!

Um? Any ideas?!