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. 

August

Well its been a while since I have posted and we have been busy, another round of hospital appointments, I'm now on the waiting list for a hip replacement and alternating between a yay I will get my life back and oh no help!!! L has been back to see her allergy consultant and after the successful introduction to peanuts, feeding her peanut butter now feels normal, it took a couple of weeks to stop watching for a reaction I can tell you! Anyway skin prick tests look good for nuts, have had blood tests, if they come back negative we can go for a nut food challenge too, if she passes that, oh wow life will really change for her and us, well around food anyway. Editing to add I now have a surgery date the 12th September, only have 12 days notice,pre op on Monday, so will be a while before I blog again.

L and I are working our way through our planned summer reading, we bought a mixture of books for her birthday, so plenty to choose from. She is loving The Wombles, think we will be reading the rest of the series, she adores how they tidy up everyone's rubbish and reuses it. Giggled through the first of the Worst Witch Series, goes without saying she loved the next couple of secret seven. We've also read the first of the Harry Potter books, she's been desperate to add these to her bedtime story pile. I say bedtime but we read not only at bedtime  but throughout the day to, depending on what we are doing.

I am determined to work through the pile of books by my bed and those queued on my kindle before I have surgery. Ended up reading the Elly Griffiths books back to back, as there was a twist in the plot that meant I just had to read the next one straight away, can't wait for the next one in the series to come out next year. Also reading Sapiens, well worth a read, its well written and informative, without being too heavy, loving the comparisons to modern day tribes, the various theories on how myths,legend and religion started.

Max is doing well, has now been neutered and is enjoying exploring the garden, he has yet to attempt to leave the garden, much to the relief of his youngest owner. Will add that the kitten didn't listen to the vet when we picked him up after his op. Keep the lampshade collar on for at least 24 hours, by the time we made the short journey home in the car, he had got one paw through and stuck, unhooked paw but 15 minutes later he had it of. As to the bit where they said he would be very sleepy for the rest of the day, oh boy he was the complete opposite, he was hyper, finally crashed at midnight and woke at 5am still hyper, lunch time he finally slept and woke back to normal!

L is enjoying the sassafras zoology, we had chapter on a Canadian farm, had fun creating our own small world farm.

We then had friends come and visit and they had an amazing time creating different bases for all the animals to live in.

We have also spent time looking at ancient Sumer and the use of cuneiform and trying to make our own clay tablets, writing on paper is a lot easier!

Now along with the hip issue, I also managed to compress a nerve in my wrist, resulting in painful wrist and pins and needles/numbness in little finger and ring finger. Physio has helped but he wants me to rest, as in lay of the knitting for a while, to let everything settle down. So have been busy working through my fabric stash, made two geranium tops,one for L and one for a friend's granddaughter.

Fell in love with Nanoo bibiana skirt, L wants another one in a large pink gingham print I have.

Stars and Sewing

The girls and I are loving The Christmas Mystery, what I hadn't realised that the story is based on a journey through history and through countries. Starting in Norway, then heading through Sweden and then on to Denmark. So lots to look up and research if you want to, this morning we had out the atlas looking at the countries and places mentioned and listening to Bach, as his music was mentioned in the story. Wondering where else the story will take us.

The girls have been busy sewing Christmas decorations, L is still working on hers, think she choose the one with the most sewing, bless her.

M and I have been making some window stars

and I had a go at making these paper stars using this origami star tutorial, still rather shocked it worked, ok, I never manage to get the sharp crisp corners that they do but there was so much folding and unfolding before you got to anything that looked like a star. I was doing the what! Really! Its's supposed to go how!! Then wow it worked,much tot he amusement of my girls. They actually had the star around the other way but actually we rather like the contrast of the different patterns.

Oh and of course paper chain making, M still loves to make paper chains and L is getting into the swing of making them.

Joining Kat for unraveled Wednesday

Cogges Farm

Had a lovely day out and visited Cogges farm, the walled garden is wonderful to walk round, they have a variety of chickens and ducks to see, a few goats, two Shetland ponies and pigs. I will say we were rather disappointed with what we could see in the house, the only rooms set up are the kitchen and pantry which are interesting but that is it. We didn't realise that the farm scenes for Downton Abbey were filmed there, knew they filmed at Highclere Castle, the home of the Carnarvon family, which for those that know there ancient Egyptian history, will recognise the names Carter and Carnarvon for their discovery of Tutankhamum tomb.

They have a new greenhouse and I want one! I don't have space for one this size but loved the style and size of it!

Now M has been expressing an interest in photography and asked if she could us my camera, so the rest of the photos are hers, think she has done very well.

On our walk we came across this sign, when we got home we spent some time learning how flax was made, we watched this video on how they would of made linen fabric from flax seed and this  a shorter version. I always wonder when I see things like this just how did we come up with this process to start with, what were they doing that made them realise that they could produce some sort of thread from a plant. Since then we have looked at cotton production and talked about the conditions in  the mills in this country, the various work conditions in Victorian Britain. Perfect time to introduce M to North & South, so covering history, working conditions, Victorian life as well as introducing her to the works of Elizabeth Gaskell.

As well as photography M has asked to do some dressmaking, she has chosen rosari skirt, paper pattern cut out and pinned, will share photos as she starts to sew, she has chosen the jean style pockets.

So chatting with my wonderful Aunt about various bits and mentioned the shawl I had made for my friends birthday, turns out she would love something like that too, doesn't take a lot of encouragement to start a new project, so knitting silverleaf for her in a nice soft baby acrylic, doesn't do natural wool fibres as they are too itchy. Have also ordered some new wool from our local wool shop, she had some lovely new patterns in, so that should be 3 Christmas presents sorted, as long as I get round to knitting them in time. So joining in with Kat for Unraveled Wednesdays

As it's L's birthday next week, I have been busy making her doll some new outfits, using up some of my fabric stash.