Happy Halloween!

From the dead/zombie/scary bride and her skeleton friend!

Have fun!

Sophie and The Snozzcumber

So this week has been book week at school and what is the point of a book week if you don't get to dress up as book characters! Tara immediately decided that she wanted to go as a Snozzcumber which is the icky-poo vegetable that the BFG is forced to eat as there is nothing else to eat where he lives. I did a quick google search (other search engines are available!) but I couldn't find a picture of anyone dressed up as a Snozzcumber (some birthday cakes and food ideas but no costumes!) Luckily after a 'help me' shout out on Facebook the lovely, lovely Sarah from Ditsy Bird came to my rescue and drew out some ideas :) Did I mention she is lovely?

Mine looks nothing like this but I took some ideas from it!

It's basically a tube with a drawstring at the top but hey it works and Tara is very pleased with it! She will have to take it off at playtime though as she can only do a shuffle run in it!

Anya decided to go as Sophie from The BFG (thank goodness she changed her mind from going as the Golden Ticket from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!) This was an easy costume - long sleeved white top underneath a nightie type dress (charity shop many years ago) some old glasses (frames only) of mine and a blanket that was made by my sister :)

And here they are together :) Matt came up with the idea for the next few photographs and I have to say it was a brilliant idea :) I introduce Sophie trying a bite of the Snozzcumber for the first time and her reaction to eating it!

Funny girls :)

Where does the time go?

I should have posted this last week (see title as it can work two ways!) but I got distracted.

The girls have started their first full week back at school and now are both in Juniors!!!!! How on earth did that happen??

Feeling old now!

Hexipuffing away!

My hexipuff quilt hasn't grown much since the last time I shared it's progress (you can see the start of it's story here) but I am making more of the hexipuffs themselves.

When we were away at Camperjam last weekend the girls really wanted to help so I gave them the task of stuffing the hexis. They thoroughly loved that and Anya even sewed one up on her own which she was mightily pleased with (hey, it might grow quicker if I have a helper!)

And here are a selection waiting to be sewn onto the quilt itself. That '10 years until it's done' prediction isn't looking as silly now!

First eats from the garden!!

We have our first things to eat from the garden!!!!!! Only two radishes but hey, it's a start! Tara helped me plant them as she adores radishes so my mini gardener was thrilled to be able to pull two up for her lunch. Here's to success with the rest of the garden :)

Bank holiday fun

We went to Saltaire today to visit while the Arts Trail was on (it's the first time in about 3 years I haven't had a stall) and it was nice to wander around and see lots of people! 

This was the view from our bedroom this morning with blue sky so we decided to take a picnic along although by the time we sat down to eat it was cold!

We bumped into Bec from Do You Punctuate and her son E had built this den - the girls decided to play in it with him and add more decoration with the bunting!

Tara decided to print this cool spaceman and she was really concentrating on getting the colours just right.

She also screenprinted this robot (the other print was letterpress)

Lots of fun was had by all including Harry although he didn't like the bicarb rockets!

P.S. I haven't forgotten the giveaway (although I did at the weekend - sorry) so it will be drawn tomorrow at 12 noon(ish)

Only my girls....

..... could combine swinging on the swings with book reading :)

We truly love books that much! Of course, I was sat reading mine as they were swinging/reading/playing :)

The best kind of bargain!

We went to out first car boot of the season this morning (in a town we'd never been to before) as I wanted to find some things I can use as planters for my veggie garden. I'm not planting many things in the ground this year as our front garden may need to be dug up to have work done on the cellar so I'm sticking to pots and planters.

Here's Harry Dog* checking out the new planters - some were grabbed in Homebase (the 2 newer looking troughs and the 3 black hexagonal ones at the back) The two galvanised mop buckets were £2 each at the car boot (I'm thinking beans or tomatoes with canes in those or maybe beetroot) The two trough ones nearest Harry's head were free from the car boot! Its one of those car boots where the sellers leave massive piles of the stuff they don't want to take home with them and these were quickly grabbed by me! Anya and I also grabbed two planters from someone's skip this morning but don't tell anyone :)

It always annoys me when traders leave big piles of rubbish around after a car boot sale but today I was pleased as along with the planters we also grabbed a wooden pirate ship for the girls to play with :)

As you can see it's quite a hefty ship! There are a couple of bits missing but most of it is there :) Not bad for free eh?

*I've not really told you much about Harry Dog but I'm sure I will soon :)

Kale crisps :)

They don't sound too appetising but they are delicious :) I found the recipe on Attic 24's blog and promptly added it to Pinterest so I could find it easily again!

This is what they look like when they come out of the oven :) You basically empty half a bag of kale into a baking tray, add a bit of freshly ground salt, a bit of olive oil (not too much) and bung them in the oven for 25 mins at gas mark 2. Easy peasy!

And here are the girls tucking in - they loved them!

And this is why being the chef is the best idea - you get all the big crisps!

Have you ever tried these? What do you think? Any other flavours? We are thinking of trying some spinach next :)

Display boards!!

Things are slowly being ticked off the to do list for BCTF and one of the things I wanted to get done was display boards. Basically they are large boards with pictures of my work on so that buyers can see them over the crowds of people that will be in my booth! Ahem :)

They are A3 in size and will go up high on the walls of my booth.

They haven't photographed particularly well (the girls were facing the window and the lights were on!) but in real life the colours look great and 'pop'

Anya didn't want to hold them up hence the fake smile but I wanted her to! The boards are made of the same stuff that estate agents boards are made of - what I call corrugated plastic!

The hardest thing was choosing the images to go on there. Oh and bear in mind if you ever order these then they will need to be the correct size - so I had to send over images that were A3 in size. Luckily Matt knew exactly what to do to get them to the correct size and thus he avoided me throwing the laptop through the window in frustration :)

I used printed.com and their customer service was very good and when I asked them a question online they got back to me in 4 mins - now that is good customer service!

BCTF is starting to feel very real - now back to the to do list!

Bargain du jour!

We went to see some friends today over in a nearby town and on the way back I stopped at a charity shop to drop some stuff off that we had in the boot. That charity shop wasn't open but the one down the hill was so we dropped it off there.

These beauties were in the window and at 20p a pop for the adults and 10p for the children I had to buy them all :) So for the grand sum of £2.90 the girls have some new playmobil figures!

And these ones are my favourites l-r Pegleg Phil, Sid 'The Zombie' Skeleton and Pirate Jack :)

Introducing* Quilty!

Although he has been introduced before :) Just not with a voice and actions to match!



Tara thought it would be good for Quilty to have a voice and say hello and who am I to argue! She also thought it was funny when I mentioned that even though he is small, he might still qualify as a lap quilt.

Erm, maybe not! Quilty has grown ever so slightly since then and his wobbled bits from the video have been nipped and tucked. I'm slowly making more hexipuffs to be added to quilty but I need a sustained sewing session to get them all sewn on and it's not just happening. Good job it's a long term project hey!

Wordless Wednesday

Merry Christmas!

The girls and Santa wish you a very Merry Christmas :)

See you in January :)

That's my girl :)

Anya is a girl after my own heart - we went to the toy fair this evening after school and she found these three 'Fur Real' pets for 10p each. She was very pleased when she found out that they should be £9.99 each in the shops. I'm training her well in bargain ways :)

Mad parent vs Good parent

You decide!

Anya has a much loved bear called Bozo who has been so well loved he needs repairing on a regular basis. One of his front panels was getting very threadbare and he needed patching before it got lots of holes and was unrepairable.

On the right you can see his pocket (the brown bit) showing through his 'skin'. Anya wasn't keen on a patch as she was worried he wouldn't look like Bozo any more. I persuaded her though and this is what he looks like!

I also added a pink heart as I thought she might like it :) Now for the mad parent bit! I wanted to make sure that she liked it (as I say he is a much loved bear) so I made a video of him saying thanks and that he loved his patch! I've tried to do an approximation of his 'voice' :)



Needless to say she loved the video :) So mad parent or good parent?

Knock, knock

Is anyone there? I didn't mean to go away but birthday celebrations and a few time consuming orders kind of took over last week and it's easy not to blog when you have other things to do! So, Anya turned 9 (goodness!), I got some good news about test results, I made lots of upcycled envelopes by hand (RSI anyone?) and drew about a million robins for gift tags :)

What have you all been up to? Anything as exciting as me? :D

A few snapshots

Taken with my phone so quality isn't great but I wanted to share them :)

Me and Anya before her school Halloween disco. She had some flashing pumpkins for her head but hadn't put them on at this stage.

Me and Tara after her school Halloween disco. She went as a witch with a lacy, cobweb cardigan over the top of her witch dress.

And because I'd got photos of me and the girls, I had to get one of me and Matt too :) We didn't dress up to take the girls to their Halloween disco!

Dear the world.....

A message from Tara.

Dear the World,

Do be grateful for all the things you've got.

From Tara

And she's only 6 :) Imagine what she will be like when she gets older!

Sunday Snippets

A few snippets from my week :) Playing along with Sunday Snippets over at Tinniegirl.