Reading for Advent.

I love the run up to Christmas, its and extra special time to curl up and share some magical stories, enjoy time crafting and catching up with friends.

Our Advent reading this year is the Advent Storybook, the story of little bears journey to Bethlehem. The Christmas Mystery a journey through time and countries starting in 1950 in Norway and heading back in time to Bethlehem, to the time Jesus was born, lots of interesting facts added into the story. The an all time favourite, The The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe but the first time L will of heard it, we read The Magician's Nephew earlier in the year and she loved it. I have the BBC series and the film to watch once we have finished the story. We also have a basket full of other Christmas stories to enjoy.

I have enjoyed making some cross stitch Christmas cards and decorations.

I have had a lovely little German paper craft book for a few years and every year I will say I will make something from it, this year finally got round to it. Thoroughly enjoyed making this owl, though it did take a lot longer than I expected it too.

More paper craft fun, making a various different hanging decorations.

The design below, I have made a few times and couple of years ago I put together step by step directions to make this pretty snowflake star.

I have been busy knitting, our lovely local independent craft shop closed down in the summer, so I stocked up on some wool and other craft bits, L wanted some wrist warmers like mine so she can wear them when we play sport.

L chose this stylecraft pattern for the rest of the pink wool.

I have made this sirdar cardi  so many times, it knits up so nicely in whatever type of yarn I use.

L has moved up to the older art group, she was resistant to the idea of change to start with but now is enjoying the different projects we are working on. Last week it was using newspaper and card to make sculptures, L made a lovely dragon, we finished painting him at home.

October Crafts

Art group was based around the book The Lost Words, they had black ink and lots of leaves to print with or create whatever design you fancy.

Then onto some printing, Ls view is you should say yes to words, not remove them from the dictionary.

Halloween crafts, including a black cat made out of a paper plate.

Bats made from cardboard rolls and enjoying trying out new pens on black card.

Watercolour night sky.

Birds are enjoying our new bird feeder.

August

August we made the most of sunshine, lots of time spent in the garden, which is producing a nice lot of veg for us.

The girls have been enjoying different art classes put on by our local art centre, M attended a couple of teen classes which she really enjoyed and L attended the younger group, she made a diorama with her favourite animals in it.

The following session she made a penguin puppet with a fish for his supper.

All the years of watching me set up various tuff tray scenes, L now does her own.

We have adopted a new rescue bunny, he's another mini rex, not the best photo of all 3 but its very difficult to get them all together! So going from left to right, here is Lucy, Rosie and Jack.

L has started a nature journal, she has spent ages drawing and decorating various pages.

I know its upside down, I have deleted the original and can't work out how to rotate it the right way but wanted to share it anyway as L spent ages going through her bird books and then drawing all their eggs.

Birthday

L turned 7 and M turned 16, M's birthday was easy to do, she was happy to have a friend over, share cake, go shopping and then have a sleep over. L wanted dragon themed party, based around How to Train Your Dragon, so just a little bit more work!

I have been saving all the cardboard boxes to cover the veg patch for the winter (we do no dig gardening) as well as any art project, lucky really, as it was decided shields was one thing she wanted to make, hubby cut out all the shields and I made dragons out of paper plates.

The cake had to be Toothless, according to L I did a really good job, huge sigh of relief, he wasn't easy to make! Please excuse the slight blurred image, I didn't realise till I uploaded the photos there was a small fingerprint on the lens!

So on party day we also had some homemade gingerbread eggs, for the children to decorate, a couple of dragon themed word searches, dragons to colour in

shields to paint. It was fair bit of prep beforehand but so worth it all the children had a lovely time.

We also had a trip to Marwell Zoo, as L really wanted to especially see the red pandas. As well as the giraffes. 

the meerkats

You don't want to know how excited L got when she spotted her first real red panda, even if they were very well hidden!

Then one of them got up and decided to go for a walk, so we really got to see them, they are beautiful creatures and I can see why L loves them so much.

New Pets

The girls have been wanting guinea pigs for a long time, imagine their surprise when their brother comes back from uni with 2 guinea pigs that needed a new home. Meet Rolo and Biscuit, who are enjoying lots of attention and settling in well. The rest of the month has been spent in the garden growing veg, repurposing old duvet cases and cooking lots.

L has started sewing and making a very neat job of it too.

So I have been busy repurposing some an old duvet cover, used the pattern section to make some new hankies and then the plain white part to make some produce bags.

Making homemade cordial and then using the left over orange and lemon peel to infuse some vinegar for cleaning with.

Ginger Cordial

200g root ginger, peeled and broken into large pieces

1 lemon grated rind and juice

600g caster sugar

1.5 litres of water

15g citric acid

Add all the ingredients to a pan, dissolve the sugar on a low heat for 3 to 4 minutes.

Then bring to the boil and simmer for 40 minutes.

Remove from the heat, when cool, strain through a cloth.

Bottle and store in the fridge, I have also frozen some too for later use.

Orange Cordial

3 oranges, juice and zest

500g sugar

600ml water

15 citric acid

Place water, sugar and orange peel in a pan, bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes.

Remove from the heat and add the juice.

Leave to cool, strain and bottle, keep in the fridge.

This seems to be Max's favourite place to hang out and watch the world go by, he rarely leaves the garden, sometimes he sits on the fence but most of the time he likes to watch the world go by. safely from his own garden.

Sorting out left over fabric I made one of L's dolls a dress, I will put it by for her birthday next month.

A good friend of mine came back from holiday with some lovely fabric as a gift for me, made L's favourite dress, the geranium by Made by Rae, must admit it was one of my favourites too.

First harvest from our garden veg patch, hopefully lots more to come throughout the summer.

L and I went on a bug hunts and found not only ladybirds, but ladybirds in the pupae and larvae stage too.