A little competition for you

I have been selling my handmade items on Etsy now for a year (tomorrow), so to celebrate I am having a little giveaway over on my Aisling Designs blog.  Please feel free to join in, and you could be in with a chance to win this sweet little Easter decoration.

The hub of the house

 Our beloved dining table.  It must be the most used piece of furniture we have in the house.  We bought it when we got our first house in 1995.  It has been scratched by the cats, and the varnish has all but worn off it.  It is scratched by knives, forks, scissors.  Has dents all over it, and patches of paint.  Oh and recently a patch of glitter too that is now glued to the table!!    It is my workspace for my sewing, which has to make way for homework and crafting for the children. 

 It is a place for technical stuff, way beyond my comprehension.

 As well as a place for much model construction and painting

It is a place for family too come together, to eat, and catch up with each other every evning, as well as to celebrate those special occasions.

 We have been thinking of re-doing the dining room, with dreams of a big round table.  To have a devoted dining room, so we don't have to clear away the days activities each time we want to eat.  This is not as simple as it sounds, as we also have to find ways to continue all our other activities in other areas of the house. 

For all that our dining table offers us, each and every day, I thought is was worthy of a blog post!!

This week

 This last week has been the week that Luke cooks at school.  I love those weeks, as he always makes wonderful food.  They are given a recipe, and they have to adapt it.  So this week was upside down cake.  Luke adapted his to make  chocolate and orange upside down cake, and it was amazing!! 

He has also had some success with a painting competition. Last weekend Stuart and Luke went down to Gloucester to a minicon (conference for wargaming), and Luke won the junior painting competition with his dwarf.

I have been busily creating more bunting!  Finishing off my order for 30 metres for a nursery, and making a quick string of bunting for general sale, just plain, using some complimetary fabrics.  A bit pink for my liking, but then it is not for me!! 

 

I have also been treading a very fine line with my health.  For a long time I have pain in my feet when I wake up, which I just put down to one of those things.  When the pain started encroaching into the day I went to the doctors, who said I had plantar fasciitis (an  inflammation of the tendon that runs under the sole of the foot) , and one of the main remedies for it is rest!!! Yeah, right!!  But I have found that if I rest as much as I can during the day it actually makes the pain  worse, as the tendon hasn't been stretched, but if I do too much the inflammation is too painful.  However, I did find going to a beer festival helped significantly as I relaxed enough to walk correctly!! But consuming alcohol on a daily basis probably isn't the best way forward!!  I am hoping if I am sensible that it will not last the year, like it reportedly can do!! 

Related to my own health, I have given notice on my allotment.  Sad, and a hard decision to make when I remember the lovely times I have had down there, and the successful crops.  But also having to realistic about what I can achieve, and how having the allotment has been at the expense of our own garden, which has the potential to be enjoyed by the whole family rather than just me enjoying the allotment.  I am looking forward to getting our garden back into a lovely state.  Before I had the allotment, I can remember a neighbour saying to me that she could imagine fairies living at the bottom of our garden, well, 5 years and 3 chickens later, you can definitely not say that about it now.  So I will get my outdoor fix right here, and I hope to sneak a few crops into the flower beds (obviously not on the same scale as the allotment!)  Looking forward now to spring, and seed sowing for our garden.

Catching up

Gosh, January is all but over, and personally it has been all about bunting!!  I made some Little Red Hen story bunting just after Christmas, posted it on Facebook, and had an order to furnish a nursery that was soon opening with around 30 metres of bunting, ranging from outdoor bunting to various story buntings with the largest consisting of 31 flags!!

 

Sophie is loving school, and will often sit down with pen and paper to do her "homework".  This is all self-imposed homework, where she just enjoys spelling out words and writing them down.  Here she has written "ant", "red", "cat", and "ant" (again!!)

 Then we were hit by the snow.  I had seen an idea on pinterest or Facebook, one or the other, where you freeze water with food colouring in in a balloon, and it makes a coloured ice globe.  So as the temperature plummeted, Sophie and I set to work.  First night, nothing happened, the tops froze but the earth insulated the bottoms of the balloons.  Second night, it snowed, and the balloons got lost under mounds and mounds of snow.  I tried to find them, but to now avail.  Now the snow has melted I discover they were furtther down the garden than I had remembered, and still not frozen.  I think we'll have to resort to the freezer!!

 First couple of days of snow, much playing was had, although the novelty soon wore off.

 And my old wooden sled from when I was a child, worked wonders.  Here is it carrying 4 children down the hill!

I have spent alot of time with material this month, and drawing round countless triangles.  

 Sophie, completely off her own back the other day decided she was going to make her own bunting.  She said she'd pretend the paper was fabric, and she needed a bowl and some scissors.  She proceeded to draw three circles using the bowl as a template, cut them out, and decorated them.  We just need to string them together now, and she has made her own bunting!  She's also been helping with taking the needles out when I'm sewing on the machine, and turning the fabric!  We'll make a seamstress of her yet ;)

 And here is half of the bunting, about 15metres worth. 



I've only half of one bunting to finish off now, and then there's lots more ideas in the offing!

In other news, Luke won a painting competition at a wargaming conference the other day, and came back with a prize of a whole load more models. So he was really happy. 

Alec's school was shut through a burst water main, not that he minded in the slightest!!