Miniature Garden

Our old metal wheelbarrow has given up the ghost. With a totally flat tyre, and the top rusted through and coming away easily from the bottom, it was time to dispose of it.
Being me though, I thought that it would make a great novelty container for a miniature garden, or just filled with flowers or even carrots or something. ( get another year out of it and save a trip to the tip!)
We have a fair amount of top soil left over from what I ordered for the raised beds, so I got the kids all working together to fill the wheelbarrow and gave them some ideas of a cave, a pond, a mountain etc and told them they could use almost anything in the garden to build a fantasy land.
Their excitement at being allowed to do something like this was fantastic and as you can see they created a wonderful garden!

They made a cave out of a flowerpot they found and a pond out of a margarine tub. They used some of the shells they had collected on trips to the seaside and stones too. They even dug up some weeds out of the flowerbed to put into their garden. As I was preparing supper at the time of construction I had several carrot tops which I said would grow and have lovely leafy plumage. They found some of their dinosaur toys and little people and put them in there too.

This project took them a good couple of hours and they were happily working together thoughout. They did come in covered in mud though!

The Princess wants to build another garden, so I will have to dig around in the shed and see what pots I can find, anything that keeps them occupied in the garden is worthwhile in my opinion.

Busy Busy Monday

So, this is without any pics of any kind, but just to have a bit of a breather and say whats been going on....pretty boring stuff really.
After taking the boys to school the Princess had a playdate, so we went around to her friends house and I don't know what it is, but whenever I satay at playdates or parties she refuses to join in and is generally grumpy. The mum said that she is getting a lot worse from her older daughter at the minute though, she is only 6! But it seems that when the Mum leaves be it me or my friend, they always behave fine and even remember their please and thankyous!!! Why can't they do it in front of you as well?
Anyhow, we stayed an hour and a half, apologised profusely and left to pick up my older son to go to the doctors. There was typically no parking at the doctors even gong around twice, or in the huge carpark that you have to pay to park in just outside, so landed up parking about 10minute walk away! Luckily the surgery always runs late.
After this and dropping him back at school the Princess and I went to the library and changed some books, swept the floors downstairs at home and mopped them, called the electrician to fix the bathroom light, he was able to come around within the hour!!!!!!!!!!! I love our electrician! We had lunch whilst watching Frozen...a big favourite at the moment. A lady called around to pick up an old stairgate and am just sitting down with a coffee before going to collect the boys and go to another friends house for supper. This friend has a lovely back garden, I will try and get some sneaky pictures!
Oh well, best to be off now!

Bluebells!

The Bluebells are out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I love bluebells, I love most flowers! The Lilac tree is also out and smells divine, you can smell it from the patio about 8 meters away. I do miss the huge Lilac that we used to have in the front, but our neighbour hated it because it would take all the moisture out of her front garden and she could not grow anything.
   Still, we have the one in the back and it looks great alongside the bluebells and the forget-me-nots!!!

Flannel Cupcakes

Along with my Baby Cake Hampers (Nappy Cakes) I also do a lot of smaller items for quick sales at craft fairs. I managed to found a supplier of cheap colourful face cloths so brought heaps of them, they average about 33p each flannel. By folding and wrapping 2 colours together I managed to create some lovely looking 'cakes'. Topped off with a paper flower from a florist supplier, and packaged in tin foil pudding basins and muffin holders.

I created my own labels for them by hand. This gives it a much more personnal feel. All in all these gifts fit into my theme of 'cakes' and gifts being useful and pretty!

Day on Isle of Wight

IN the last week we have had a day out to the Isle of Wight...the kids loved the ferry ride across, middle child kept calling it the fairy though! We found a brilliant adventure park type of thing for the kids and had a fantastic day out...the park had so many different nooks; dinosaurs, fairies, sweets, pets, enchanted land, and even two rides....one of which the children all went on with Daddy.(Mummy is scared of heights).

This was obviously the Licorice House! The detail on everything was fantastic!

The Fairy Castle! And the little mushroom houses in front!

A giant Snakes and Ladders with stairs to run up and long slides to slide down...even Daddy went up and had fun sliding down.

Lots of inspiration for my garden....just need to win the lottery!!!!

Princess has a new bedroom!

I have, amongst everything else that I am currently doing been redecorating my daughters bedroom. Unfortunately I do not have a picture of what it was like before, but here is a picture once I had gotten rid of the horrid vinyl wallpaper and the lining behind it:


The vinyl paper was a horrid cream with shiny blue bits on it and was peeling everywhere...a face that was helped by the princess almost daily until I got fed up and decided that I would do it properly...
Anyhow her stuff was all still in there because I cannot paper a wall to save my life, so a week later a painter decorator friend came by to reline the wall ready for me to paint.


The empty room ready for me to paint:

One last bit of the horrid old wallpaper as you can see!

Guess what colour she wanted.......PINK.....it has to be said that we said no to that and went for the neutral colour to be enhanced by princess decals on the wall and the very pink rug that I am making her.

It is not a large room by any stretch of the imagination but it seems to work well and I think it looks soooo much better now. As you can see my latch hook rug is in there too. And the bunting above the window I made a while ago! We managed to get hold of some princess decals on ebay and they are above her bed. As I put her to bed tonight she said " I love my lovely bedroom mummy" so cute! 

Daffodils

We have had so many daffodils in our garden. They have got to be one of my favourite flowers hearlding warmer days and longer evenings. I always like to leave most of my daffodils in the garden but occasionally I bring a few indoors.
I managed to save some of the glass water bottles that my husband got on his work excursions to Belgium and with the labels left on they look kinda shabby chicish/retroish (I think) and they work well when they have a few flowers in each stood in a row.

The glass in the middle is a bubble bath container that I loved the label on! At the moment these are taking pride of place in the downstairs bathroom on the window ledge.

So Much To Do!!!

As the title says....
for the next week I will not be posting as we are sooooo busy with friends and relatives...
Happy Easter anyhow.

Spring Egg Wreath

I found an idea on pinterest that I thought I would copy for a spring wreath. Using egg cartons cut out as flowers and painted.
It is a simple idea, but simplest ideas are often the best, and my daughter loved doing this with me. I cut up the egg cartons,we used 3, while she painted them in various pinks, reds, yellows and oranges.Then we cut out a circle with a hole in it out of a cereal pack and painted it green and stuck tissue leaves to it then stuck on our flowers...

I think she has done a lovely job! It is now hung in the playroom on the door. Even the boys have admired it.

Latch hook rug update

Well....I have finally finished my daughters rug! Took quite a while though...about 7 weeks, but then I did not do it every night.

It is VERY pink...but then she wanted pink walls in her new room and I refused! So the rug was always going to be very pink....she loves it....it has taken pride of place in her newly decorated bedroom!

Day 1 of the hols

Well.....11 kids later...and I am not having a meltdown!!!!!
It rained.....always pants when you have loads of kids around and it is raining....however it did not stop them going into the garden and having a good kickaround! They were out there for about an hour in just Tshirts and shorts...got them all dried and changed when they came in.
They also enjoyed decorating Easter bunny biscuits .....and scoffing them down after too! Even the 8 year old boys enjoyed this.
The little ones all made some chicken type mask things out of egg cartons:

This was done by quite simply cutting out the egg carton and gluing lots of tissue paper and feathers to it. Some were more decorated than others, but fun was had by all.

Two other mums of the youngest stayed for the 4 hours of mummy madness and we managed to have 3 cups of tea and a good natter as having so many kids around meant that they all had someone to play with all the time!

Overall it was so successful that my kids have asked if they could do this every holiday! I think as long as I have a couple of mums staying I will be ok with this!  

Chess Birthday Cake

My son had really become interested in chess just before his 7th birthday so I decided to make him a chess board birthday cake. MADNESS!!!! The first thing was to find a mould for the chess pieces which were going to be made out of white and milk chocolate! I found one quite quickly on Ebay, but I would have to chocolate 'glue' the pieces together as the mould was a half piece one. 

I set about it about 2 weeks before his birthday and melted the chocolate the spooned it into the moulds and to speed up the setting I simply put the mould with chocolate in the freezer. This worked really well and within 3 days (evening only as he did not know what I was doing!) I had enough half moulds to make a complete chess set. 

 Along the journey several pieces broke so it was as well that I had made a few extra! 'Glueing' the chocolate halves together was quite tricky and required a fair bit of chocolate shaving to get the edges smoothish.

 But I think it all worked quite well:

 For the actual cake I made a maderia sponge or 2! I used a total of 12 eggs for this reciepe!!!! Then when they were done I cut them and fitted them together so that they were large enough to contain my chess pieces.

 I got some ready to roll icing from Tesco, just their own brand as this was recommended by a cake maker friend!

 I also brought some chocolate flavoured icing which I rolled out and cut into 1 1/2" squares (roughly...I am very mush a do it by eye type of girl!)

 Generally it worked quite well again! I stuck the chocolate icing to the cake with water! Then I had to outline the board with more icing!

Writing on the cake is always quite nerve- wracking.... and I am not particularly good at it!

And then putting all the pieces on the board.

I actually managed to keep this a secret from my son the whole time and even on his birthday he did not notice the cake until his brother pointed it out to him.....we have far too many chess boards on all surfaces in our house!

Fairy House Cake

 For my little girls birthday last year she decided on a fairy house. I got out my good old maderia cake receipe and managed to borrow one of those giant cupcake cake moulds! With a little reshaping it looks about right. I used the Tesco own brand ready to roll icing for the white and added food colouring for the lilac. For the red icing I had some of the ready to roll red icing.The butterflies were very thinly rolled icing that was shaped and dried on a folded piece of card.

Magnolia Tree

When we were looking for somewhere to move 5 years ago, my specifications were quite simple really: it had to have a Magnolia tree in the front garden and lots of fruit trees in the back! So it was fantastic that just around from our house we found our ideal home where we now live. It has a splendid Magnolia tree in the front that is about 50years old I think and a lot of fruit trees in the back too!
This is our lovely magnolia tree with one of my sons in it!

The flowers only last about 3 weeks and are a lovely pinky white. However this year we have had a really bad frost. It happened 2 days after the magnolia flowers started flowering and totally destroyed them!

Overnight they all turned quite brown and yucky! It is such a shame....roll  on next year! Hope it has not done any long term damage.

Easter Hols around the corner!

Another 1 week of school before the Easter break...I really hope the weather warms up considerably!!!
What to do with the kids....well I have already invited a cousin to stay for a sleepover and to meet him in Lewes at Monkey Biz...the kids will love to go there again, then there is a chess friend who wants to come on the Friday in the middle.
I am thinking of inviting a friend or two for each of the kids one day if it warms up...hmm maybe 9 kids is just too many! But the older ones would be easy, little ones just like to do craft and much around in the garden so would it really be too bad....will have to think on that one!
I have done it!!! The kids have called it Mummies Mad Monday! My eldest son has 3 friends coming, my middle son has 2 friends coming and my daughter has 2 friends coming as well! This is going to be one busy day! Luckily it is the first day of the hols so hopefully the weather will play along and we will be able to do lots of stuff in the garden!
On the Tuesday their cousin is coming and staying till Wednesday...again hopefully the weather will play ball and they will be out lots.
On Thursday there is a birthday party that my eldest is going to for most of the day and I will have to think up something exciting the the two littles.
Friday..our chess friends are coming.
Saturday we have various things lined up but from then I will not be posting till after Easter as we have various days out and relatives coming etc.....
Sorry for an all word boring post!