organised is not me!

but I really do need to be! I am awful at sorting myself out. I have had 2 days off this week so far and all I have done is dig a tiny part of the allotment over and tidy the shed. I think I am going ot write myself one of these for each day;


Yup the only way I see myself getting anything done is to write a list. I may stop whiling away the days thinking about what I need to do rather than doing it this way. I will then do a round up post in the evening and plan for the next day. I'm going to trial run this so here is my to do list for tomorrow;
1. take Stephanie to school, then go for a run (possibly more a walk interspersed with the odd jog. I have not done any excercise in a while!)
2. get car windscreen fixed/replaced- something hit it as I was driving down the motorway today, not good.
3. whilst waiting for windscreen repair, which is booked for the morning, begin to write my literature review for uni.
4. after lunch go to the allotment to dig more.
5. collect Stephanie from school and take to party.
6. in the evening sew more of the hexie quilt, I am becoming concerned I will not have done for Stephanie's birthday after all.

On that note I am off to collect the children in from outside so I can get them clean and to bed in order to sew some of the quilt!

Wish me luck!

Party bags

I haven't blogged for a while as we have had another death in the family. My cousin had her baby Amelia at 32 weeks pregnant, unfortunately baby got a common, and fatal bowel infection and she died at just over a week old. So for the past week I have been trying to attend uni/school, and spend time with my family.

Today I had a day off, as is typical I also had a poorly child home! I managed to find time to plant some bulbs in the garden. Then I made this;

It is a bag Stephanie asked me to make months ago. I have decided that I am going to give it to her as one of her birthday presents. I will fill it with a set of toiletries I bought for her.

These are 2 of the pirate bags for the party. I decided to make them myself so that they are reusable rather than the plastic tat ones which go straight into the bin when the children get home. I have made 6 of these pirate ones so far. Tomorrow I plan on making the princess ones.

This is a beautiful picture of a plant I am so proud of. I bought this a year or so ago and it is still alive, this is a record for me I have the ability to kill any flower planted for me. Yet this one not only is still alive I have taken several cuttings from one plant and all of them are still alive.

so sad

Today Stephanie heard on the local radio station that people were sending crae packages of tents and pans to Japan. Her first reaction was " well there not fun parcels  are they?"

So I explained to her what had happened with the earthquake and that many peoples homes had been  ruined and they had nowhere to live.

I am so moved by what she said next, she realised that this meant that there would be children who now how no toys. This she said is very sad and she would like to send some of her toys over to Japan for the children there as she has plenty. It is moments like this that I am so proud of my children. Stephanie is 4 years old and yet she has shown today so much caring for people who previously she had not known existed. I am so proud of her that I have spend time this evening trying to find out how I can go about sending some of her toys on her behalf. So far all I can find is information about sending money. If anyone out there has advice on how Stephanie can do this, please please leave a comment with details.

Thank you

A busy evening

After school today I have been a little busy. I roped Stephanie into helping me in the garden. We gave the grass its first haircut of the year before sewing some grass seeds as we have lots of bald patches on the lawn. I would usually use a hose pipe on the garden, but I am desperately trying to sort the grass out.
I also have spent far too long ironing whilst batch cooking bolognese. I try and batch cook where possible as it saves time and money; due to large amounts of food generally being cheaper than small and I only have the cooker on once.

I made a lot of mess making these as I didn't tighten the lid on the blender enough so when I blended the bolognese sauce it went ALL over the kitchen!

Busy, busy!

I am not sure where this week has gone! It has flown by and I haven't had time to blog and let you know what we have been doing. So I am going to do a round up post, showing highlights from our week.

My cousin had her baby very prematurely this week at 31 weeks. Mum and Baby are doing well, even if baby is tiny at 3lb 3 oz. The early arrival meant I needed to organise myself to make the baby quilt I have been planning for months Luckily I had bought all of the components, I just hadn't got around to actually sewing. I'm very pleased with the end result just hope my cousin likes it a much as I do.

Tonight Dylan made dinner. Homemade pizza YUM!

We also had nachos..

and of course being Saturday evening, I treated myself to a glass of wine.

I have spent most of my spare time, which isn't very much, practising my knitting on a scarf for Stephanie. I may have got way ahead of myself but I REALLY want to knit her a cardigan.

Oh and of course there was the dress up day at school I managed to over look. I was reminded by Stephanie at 5pm Thursday evening that she needed to go into school dress up as something from around the world. Her suggestion of being a Spanish dancer threw me at first, given the time available and the fact that the shops were shut. However thank you to my lovely friend Liv who happened to have had this dress given to her a few months back. We altered it and Stephanie is very impressed with her new dressing up outfit.

It is not just at home that I have been creative. This was made at university in a science seminar where we dissected a daffodil. My friend Claire and I decided to make the Bean family, now where do my children get their concentration spans from....

I love the weekend

I love the weekend, it is a time when we can spend time as a family and not have times to be in set places. Well if you ignore the Saturday morning swimming lessons.
Sundays have absolutely no restrictions on our time. So today we got up after having a lie in, came down I made sausage and egg muffins for breakfast. Whilst eating we decided that we were going to Teston country park. We had lots of fun playing in the mud and puddles there.

This picture was taken just after Dylan fell over in a puddle. It didn't spoil our fun too much, although we did come home quicker than planned as he got, unsurprisingly, cold.

After we got changed we popped to the shops to get some bits and pieces when Stephanie spotted some rainbow wool. She promptly asked "Mum can you make me something with this wool because it is so so cool". Now I have not knitted something since I was a teenager, so bought some needles and decided I can make her a scarf. Lots of head scratching later and I am remembering how to do stocking stitch;

So far its going well, the challenge is going to be the hat she wants to have to match the rainbow scarf. Guess I best start looking for patterns!

Penguins and Meerkats

The other day I said to the children we could have a day out to a place of their choice, the choice was to be slightly more Stephanie's than Dylan's as Dylan chose last Saturday.
They chose to go to Wingham Wildlife Park If anyone reading this lives nearby, or indeed happens to be nearby. It is WELL worth a visit. It was our first visit today, it will not be our last!

sorry about this one, I can't work out how to turn it!

One small section of a fab play area

I really struggled to choose photographs to show for our day out, these are just some of them.

It was fabulous here, the children loved all the animals, Stephanie's favourites- penguins and Dylan's favourites- Meerkats, were here among many other animals. The children played for nearly an hour and a half in the play area, whilst I sat to the side quietly sewing hexies for Stephanie's quilt. An idyllic day all round!