Monday, January 31, 2011

On the Camera

Squeezing this in before the end of January... can't believe that's the first month of the year all but gone already!

 A new Christian Home Ed group we have found... a bit of a trek over to Coventry (and found the road system there rather scary... but the SatNav was a wonderful help!). We are trying to branch out and attend more groups - how much we will be able to do this, given the price of petrol at the moment, I don't know. We are already over the petrol budget for this month. It was good though, and both the kids got stuck in in their own ways.

 One Saturday... much in need of the big open outdoors, we went to Trimpley Reservoir to feed the ducks and have a little walk. It was cold, but satisfying.

 Whoo hoo - my first finished project of the year! (one of my craft aims for the year is to actually *finish* the projects I start!) I have had the material for this quilt for about 5 years! The patches relate to books from the FIAR curriculum which we did for a little while when the kids were younger. Now that I have the sewing machine out all the time, I thought it a good opportunity to finally whip it up. Not wanting to buy material for the back, I used some from my material stash - unfortunately it was slightly narrower than the width of the squares so I had to trim the quilt down a bit! Originally I thought I'd hang the quilt at the front door to stop the draft, but the thought of the extra hassle to fix up a curtain rail put me off (I'm no good at DIY!), so we just use it to snuggle under when we have read-aloud time.

 Another great Home Ed meet - Tewkesbury group this time. We had a tour of La Parisienne bakery, tasted lots of different types of bread, and made croissants, pain au chocolat and rolls!

 and this is the rolls cooked up and ready to eat.

 One of Bub's projects she set herself - to create her family out of finger puppets!

 We took ourselves off to bowling at Worcester one day... and stayed for 4 hours! We probably had atleast 8 games, and a nice interlude for lunch! It was fun... but our wrists ached the next day!

 Bubs making the scone base for our pizza night... we make our own pizza one night a week, and are currently trying out different types of bases - so far we have had regular dough, puff pastry and scone bases.


 History club, and the kids Campaign Make an Impact *Mood Boards* that they worked on. They all had such fun! It's such a fab group and I love being able to be there and watch them.

 Another finished project! I'm on a roll! This one I started when our house in Rosewell went on the market in 2008! It really helped me at the time, and I fully intended to make many more squares... but as much as I loved the chenille yarn, I have to say that I got bored working with the same colour all the time, and that's probably why it never grew beyond the 25 squares! Those squares had been sitting for a long while, but are now finally sewn together and edged.
And just one more completed project to squeeze in before the end of January! Another Story Quilt completed, with the FIAR theme of the other, just smaller. This fabric had been sitting for a long time too. We can now pull the books out and read and look at the square and give meaning to the quilt. Complete... breathe... happy sigh... great end to January...






Wednesday, January 12, 2011

On the Camera

 New Year's Day. I don't normally give gifts... but I had withheld a couple from Christmas as there seemed to be too many, so now seemed a good time to give them. More yorkshire puds for lunch - you can never have too many of them!

Pizza Hut... to claim our 30% off voucher, yay!

 More ice skating at Webbs, West Hagley! I went on this time... can you see the concentration? or maybe it was worry! We all had fun.

 Enjoying a cuppa at Webbs, Wychbold (we love garden centres... and their coffee shops!!)

 Bubs has been saving for this doll's house with garage wing for AGES! Ordered... and finally came... here, starting the painting process. It's a work in progress...

 Time to have a cuppa in Sainsburys... celebrating our 'not back to school' day!

 Enjoying some wax effect art work... the photo of the finished product does not do it justice.

 Not wanting the dreary weather to get the better of us... we ventured out for a play at the Severn Valley Country Park...

... once a week we are going to make our own pizza and try out different bases for it... this week we cheated with a pre-made ready-roll dough base - it was very yummy though! Other weeks we will try puff pastry base, scone base, tortilla base etc!

While out trying to find some (cheap) digital alarm clocks we came across these money banks on special offer. The kids think they are great! They have their own bank card, and PIN number to access it! Bubs is SO good at saving... just got to try and get Spike saving some money instead of wanting to spend it the minute it's in his pocket... (we never did find alarm clocks!)

2010 all finalised! We have finished the last of the scrap-booking for 2010... it was great to look back over the year and refresh our memories of what we have done and achieved. This is the second year that we have done the albums in a vague scrap-booking style (though nothing fancy you understand!) and it's a wonderful thing to look at! Because all the photos we take are digital, in past years the photos are there, but all on CDs somewhere, and we don't tend to look at them much/ever. By choosing a selection of photos to have printed and put them in the scrapbook we have more appreciated the memories.