Tuesday 31 July 2012

Pyjama days are the best.

The girls decided that today should be a pyjama day and so we did not get dressed. It was lovely, we got all snuggled up together and watched a movie.

Emily is curently obsessed with the word caboose. I don't know where it came from but she has to use it in nearly every sentence at the moment. I encouraged her to write a story about a caboose and so she made herself a little book, and got to it. 




This is the first page.
It says "This is a story about cabooses.
This story is med (made) by Emily Walker." 

The picture at the bottom is a caboose.

















This is the second page, it says, 
"A coboose goes on the back ov(of) the train and the caboose is far apart because the caboose is at the back of the train and the train is at the front of the train"




On mickey mouse goofey rided in the square caboose, caboosees are at the very back of the train and there is another name for caboose and it is caboosey"




This page says "caboose is at the rear of the train and caboos are after"

not a bad little story lol.













I have completed all the cross stitching on my piece now, I only have the backstitching to do now. 

The pic on the left shows a before the white is added and the right after, I wanted to show the difference in the two as you can't really see it in the photo's of the whole stitch.


And here is the pic of what I have done so far. The next one will be the whole completed one woohoo.

Speak to you all soon xxx

Sunday 29 July 2012

Not so lazy Sunday

We went to my MIL's again today for our Sunday dinner. The girls and I rode our bikes again. (this section has been removed as it mentions my OH) This is them working on it together.

Kerry wanted to help out but Jessica..... well she wanted to sing and dance.




The finished truck looked like this.
Emily so far has not stopped playing with it.

While they were doing this I was getting on with my cross stitch, I am quite pleased with myself as it is now nearly done woohoo.

I just have a day left of stitching the white of the polar bears bodies and then a day or so of backstitching and it is then done. Here it is...

The only problem is, with all the rest being white you won't really be able to tell when I have done it :( I will still post it just in case, well I know how riveting it is to read this trying to keep up to date with what I'm doing lol.

The first week of school holidays is now over and so far we have spent a grand total of £0.50 on entertaining the kids. Everything we have done has either been free or we have already had the stuff in the house to do it with. I am a firm believer in not spending on your kids but instead spending time with them. This week my girls have learnt a great deal (even though they didn't notice as they were having so much fun doing it.)

For example, they have been measuring ingredients for the play dough, they have let their creative side out making the ball game, they have been practising with their hand eye co ordination by playing the games we made, patience, counting, hand eye co ordination and using their fine motor skills with the cross stitch. They even got plenty of exercise playing on the park.

I would much rather be doing this with my kids than allowing them unlimited electronics time. Don't get me wrong, they love to play on the computer, watch T.V and listen to music. I just make sure they have plenty of other stuff to keep them busy and their minds engaged.

Sorry, that sounds a bit preachy, but I am very happy with my lot.

Any way time for bed again speak to you soon xx

Saturday 28 July 2012

Come shine and rain

 



I had an amazing lay in today, (this section has been removed as it mentions my OH)


When I eventually woke up we decided to take the girls and the dog to the park. 

We had loads of fun playing and sliding. 
 
 Here are the girls enjoying themselves with their cousin Harvey.



Even Benji joined in the fun by having a go on the big swing, his tail was going ten to the dozen once the swing started moving lol.


 
 


Jessica wasn't so keen on the zip line though as it went too fast and scared her a little. She was fine as soon as she got off though so don't worry.




 When we got home it started raining and so we decided to make some play dough. Emiliy wanted green and Jessica wanted blue, so we just split the dough in half before we put the colour in. Here's how we did it.

You will need, (I used one of my Pampered chef prep bowls as a measuring guide, which works out at one American cup size)
1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1 cup water
2 teaspoons cream of tartar (get it from the baking aisle in the supermarket)
2 tablespoons cooking oil
gel food colours of your choice


  

 Put all ingredients into a pan (I have one we use just for crafting so I don't ruin my cooking ones), cook on a medium heat stirring all the time!! (that is important!!) 

It is not far off being done at this point, so be careful. it took about 5 mins to get it here.





put the dough on to a floured surface we chopped ours in half at this point and add a small amount of food colouring, the more you add the more intense the finished colour, but you run the risk of the dye being transfered to the kids hands and/or clothes.
Then knead to spread the colour throughout.
You might want to wait a little for it to cool before giving it to kids to handle!!
 


If like today the rain stops while you are making it then send the kids out to play with it in the garden (save extra clean up in the house lol)







 I have also been doing some more of my cross stitch, OMG today is the first time I have used light shades. This is a type of thread that reflects light, but it is bloody awful to work with. It feels a little like plastic but snags like it has glitter attached. I must admit though it does look pretty good. You can kinda see the light reflecting in these pics.


Because I have done the light shade (which took so much longer to do than normal stitching) I haven't done much else on the rest of the pic but here is my work so far.
Not looking too bad, if I do say so myself lol. Anyway, time for me to go to bed, who knows what the kids will have me doing tomorrow, though I have a sneaky feeling Kerry will want to make more play dough, as she missed out today. Speak soon xx.



Friday 27 July 2012

Busy Day

We have had a busy day today making some games for the girls to play. They have gotten very messy making and creating.

Today we made a ball game, it is not finished yet as it is yet to dry, but here is what we have done so far.





You need a box and some arty and crafty supplies and some willing helpers in old clothes.







Seal up the box, and cut some holes out one on the side to retrieve the balls, and six or so on the top to aim at.
We have covered the holes with masking tape so there are no cuts or scrapes

Then let loose with your creative side, painting sticking and making merry with the glue lol






Make some card cut outs and paint them in bright colours and add scores on.


Glue these into place on the box like this.
Now all you have to do is wait for it all to dry.

In the meantime, we created a ringo game. All you need for this is some paper plates, scissors, plastic cups and paint.

I had some old Halloween plates which were great as they were very colourful already cut out the centre of the plates.









Then paint some scores on the cups, wait to dry then its playtime.





If you want to play this game outside I would suggest weighting down the cups with sand or rice by making a lid for the base of the cups.

We have also been doing cross stitch too. Emily started hers today and is making good progress. Here she is giving it the old college try.












I haven't done any stitching yet today so there is no update on my piece today, so tomorrow will have a definite update.


We are all looking forward to the opening ceremony tonight, we are ready to cheer on Team GB, with our flag out flying.

Good Luck Team GB, we are rooting for ya.

Thursday 26 July 2012

Kerry's turn to copy Mummy

Today Kerry has been doing a cross stitch. She needed quite a lot of help and ended up doing quite a lot of frogging, (frogging is when you make a mistake and have to undo your stitches and you ripit ripit get it??) Here she is concentrating hard.

She is making a picture of a dancer for Jade (who loves to dance) so she is begging me to help her to get it done before Jade arrives.

My stitch seems to be taking forever, I feel as though I'm not getting anywhere with it then I look back on here and see significant improvement at the end of each day. I think having this is definatley spurring me on to better things, I honestly do feel that if I didn't have this, I might have given up on it by now. But here is the latest.


Anyway that's it from me tonight, I'm feeling very tired and want to get some sleep . Speak to you all soon xx

Oh P.S I have ordered the fabric for the wedding stitch. Getting quite excited to start it now.

Wednesday 25 July 2012

Children really do copy Mummy

Kerry went to sleep at my mum's house for the night and Emily went to my MIL's for the night, which left me and Jessica home alone together. We had great fun, playing different games, cooking a basic pasta bake (she got to do a lot of stirring), doing a bit of cleaning and doing a bit of cross stitching ;) I gave her a bit of scrap aida and showed her how to hold the needle adn fabric and away she went. Here is Jessica concentrating on her stitch.





She was really proud of the result, saying over and over "I love cross stitching I'm good at it aren't I Mummy?"










She had to keep asking me whether it should go in the top or the bottom, and I lost count as to how many times the thread came off the needle. But she did have a load of fun doing it, and it was lovely to spend time doing it with her.





Here is the finished result. Look at that smile. Such a proud girl, such a proud mummy.











I haven't done as much on my stitch as I was busy helping Jessica with hers but this is how far I have gotten with it.


Had a lovely suggestion for a craft to try from +Hugh Edwards, I am going to put it on my wish list and will get my self a kit, so thank you for that.

Anyway, time to sleep for me. Speak soon x