Catching Up

Hopefully will now get back into blogging regularly, have lots of photos and things to share, then the computer dies on us!! Now have it back from being repaired and caught up and all the jobs that need to be done. Recovery from op is going well, loving getting out and having at least a 30 minute walk daily, still doing my physio exercises 4 times a week, its great but been busy as trying to do all those jobs I wasn't able to do before my op.

So going back to before Christmas I offered to have a couple of L's friends for a couple of art and craft sessions, this went so well that they asked to come every week! So more than happy to share my time with enthusiastic children, so in January we started to meet weekly, using the Greek myths as our theme, will share those in another post. Any way back to December we started with the story of Wilson Bentley and how he persevered until he he was able to record the beauty of the snowflakes. We also read Curious About Snow, which has some beautiful pictures of snowflakes and talks about the science behind them, how humidity and air temperature change their shape. The girls made up their own little booklets with some snow facts in then, then had some fun making gingerbread snowflakes to decorate later.

The girls work so well as a team, I can stand back now and let the 3 of them get on with the cooking, other than dealing with the oven, they are fairly self sufficient with their baking.

Mary Azarian who illustrated the Snowflake Bentley book, makes woodcut prints, I don't have the right tools or knowledge for this so we used the florist oasis blocks instead. They girls carved pictures into them, a pencil works really well for a carving tool, then printed on some brown paper I had saved from various deliveries we had to create their own wrapping paper.

Our second session was based around the story of the little fir tree, well two different little fir tree stories, we started the session of with the girls telling us what they knew about fir trees and deciduous trees. Why they loose their leaves in winter, why fir trees don't, the design of the fir tree and how this benefits the tree when it snows lots. We talked about how the little tree wished his life away, was this a good or bad thing? How much did he miss out on by doing this? Do we ever do this and why do we feel that way. In my Christmas sort out I found some wooden fir trees so they set to work painting and decorating their own xmas trees and made some paper plate wreaths.

 

We also made some origami fir trees, the instruction video can be found here

They also made some salt dough decorations to hang on their trees at home, we made them a few years ago with cornflour to give the whiteness to the shapes, using this recipe.

 A little bit of Christmas sewing, a gift for my Aunt, can add she loved it.

I finally finished L's Rosebud jumper, it wasn't the easiest pattern to follow but she loves it and that is what counts.

Polare bear cupcakes made by hubby and L

 and of course homemeade mince pies.

Recuperating

Its been 2 months since my hip replacement surgery and so far things are going well. Its great to be able to walk up the stairs normally,without having to hang onto the banister and pull yourself up.  Physio is pleased with my progress and have lots of rehab exercises to do everyday and its great to be out everyday for a walk, with no limp. Be a while before totally pain free as still healing and body adjusting to new improved posture, my knee caused the most issues but everything I have read this seems to be very common problem and time and physio should sort it all out. Oh and Max and crutches is interesting, he spent the first week being terrified of them, then decided that maybe they were good to pounce on, not helpful but luckily only lasted a couple of days, then he decided they were best ignored! The staff at the hospital were wonderful, can't fault them, made the 4 day stay easy to deal with, though was glad to come home. No allergic reactions to any meds, yay, though was rather sick and ended up on anti sickness tablets for the first week, after that I was taking just paracetamol, which I am ok with and by week 3 didn't need anything. I am amazed at how well my body has recovered from this surgery so far, fingers crossed it carries on doing so, the only downside was finding out last week my left hip doesn't look that good and they reckon 4 to 5 years and that will need replacing too. Though at the moment it is only giving the odd twinge, which isn't bad considering all the extra work its been having to do over the last couple of months.

Now hubby had the first two weeks to care for everyone, what he wasn't expecting to do was end up cake making and decorating with L. She overheard us chatting about some of the ideas I had for different project work, one was making a sarcophagus, now not the normal cardboard box ones I had seen but a cake one. That was it, Dad was not going to get any peace until this had happened, I would say at this point he looked rather shocked and really not sure what he had been talked into! Anyway of to the shops they went to find some cake decorating bits and home to bake an egg free cake. A few questions and then all I could here was lots of giggles and chatter from the kitchen, if I say both hubby and L was pleased with the finish cake, that is an understatement and I have discovered after 22 years of marriage my husband had a hidden talent!

Slowly working on L's jumper, its called Rosebud, the body is knitted in a round and the split for the armhole shaping and neck, its a lovely pattern to knit, using a pale blue cotton yarn.

Have spent a lot of the first two weeks recuperating and binge watching way too many box sets and reading lots, then decided to get out this little embroidery to work on, I usually do cross stitch but loving the fun of a variety of stitches, might have to do some more.

Oh and the highlight of November so far was L had another food challenge, this time the garden pea, she isn't impressed with taste of them but managed to eat her way through 80g of them during our morning stay at the hospital. She started of with 1 pea, then 4 peas, slowly building up the amount she had in each portion, it does mean that she needs to keep eating them at least twice a week. Otherwise research has shown that she is at risk of becoming allergic to them again, something about the body recognising the protein but not reacting to it in the right way.

Days Out and Snow

Last week we made the most of my husband using up his holidays before Christmas and visited a national trust property, one we have been meaning to do for a few years but for various reasons hadn't. Anyway we finally got to see their Christmas displays, every room has a tree set up, I took a photo of a few of them, my favourite is the book tree.

The tree in the main hall.

All set for dinner.

                    The kitchen is actually done out in full 1950s style and this is the kitchen tree.

The woodland walk is all decked out in little fairy lights, it must look beautiful at dusk, we had planned to stay longer and have a lovely walk but there was a bitter wind, to say the least, so had a short walk though the woods.

Lots of benches had carved arms, a mixture of rabbits and squirrels, the girls loved them.

The rabbits have enjoyed exploring/playing with our tree, the love to nudge the ornaments!

Woke last Sunday to the surprise of snow, at 4am there was no snow as that is when O and his friends got in from clubbing, so somewhere between then and 7am it snowed. L and M was over the moon and quickly ate breakfast and went out to play, O got up looked at the snow, tried to encourage the rabbits to go out in it and then went back to bed.

The rabbits decided it was safer to watch the white stuff from the back porch, eventually venturing out, well Rosie managed 3 or 4 hops out before deciding it wasn't for her and Lucy just put a paw in the snow!

We made mince pies in the afternoon to take up to Nanny and Grandad's, this is the recipe I use for the filling.

We've always had one or two bird feeders in our garden but L has been asking to get more, with different food to attract more birds. Within 30 minutes of the feeders being put out, L spotted our friendly robin feeding on her new feeder, she is so pleased, we so far have had sparrows, robin, blue tit, great tit and a long tailed tit.

 Finished the last of my Christmas knitting, well present knitting anyway, loved this self patterning wool and how soft it is to knit with, its one of the rascal range from sirdar.

 Monday we visited friends and met her new puppy, who is adorable, home to make and decorate candles and watch Miracle on 34th Street.

Joining Nicole at Frontier Dreams

The Little Red Hen

Today I had my friends girls over for a morning of activities based on The Little Read Hen, we read the story, made some bread, talked about what yeast does and the different types of bread you can get, which ones we have tried, liked and or made.

While the bread was rising we watched Come Outside Bread, as we watched this I talked about how flour was made, a long time ago people would of used a quern to grind their bread, then later windmills or water mills would of been used before the factories that we saw in the program. I found some photos of a quern and we talked about how long it would of taken to grind flour compared to the factories today. Could of also talked about in how in some parts of the world people still grind their flour by hand. We then watched this short film that looks a bit more at the process of wheat to flour and then looked at some resources that we got from grain chain, one was little packets of wheat as it goes through the different process, which they found fascinating.

They then enjoyed creating their own farm yard and playing with their set up.

They also spent time drawing pictures based on the illustrations from the book we read.

and finally the cooked rolls, the girls have asked to come again and have another session with me, which is great, I really love doing small group sessions like these.

Just love the way one simple story could have so much potential for different idea :-

• making different types of bread
• looking at bread from different countries
• history of making flour, farming etc
• the lifecycle of wheat, for older chidlren the pros and cons of different types of farming, genetics
• how windmills and watermills work, cogs and gears

to list few, I am sure there are lots more ideas but these are just a few on what we touched on today, who knows were it could lead.