As easy as ABC...

I've been colouring in this week. It all started when I noticed that Little Miss's alphabet poster was looking very dog eared. At first I thought I'd just buy another one, and then I remembered the creative promise I made and started to draw my own. Here's a sneak peak of the first letter, if it goes well I might post some more, we'll see...
I'm really pleased with the progress I've made with my granny square blanket this week. The inspiration for it came from two very creative and talented bloggers, Lucy, at Attic 24, and Fiona, at Marmaladerose. I'm not sure that my colour choices are quite as beautiful as Lucy's, nor that my blanket will be quite as gorgeous as Fiona's, but I like it anyway. My only problem now is how to organise the squares. Like this:
Or like this:
What do you think?

In (lots) of 20 minutes I made these....

I've been a 20 Minuter for a week now, so this is my second 20 Minuter post and my first 'ta da' moment. Brace yourselves:

OK, so it isn't very creative, but I have been hooking for Britain this week, and my collection of squares is growing by the day, I'm getting closer to my blanket...
I've had some great advice, from lots of people, about how to join them together (thanks to everyone - it's much appreciated!). I've decided to sew them together, I just like flat seams.
So that's it for a little while, I'm off back to the hook now! Take care until next time...

The 20 Minuters

I am developing a serious blog addiction(to other people's rather than mine). I love sitting under a blanket on my sofa, and travelling the world, discovering what other people make and do with their time. I have to admit I am more of a stalker than a visitor, I am one of those shame faced people who rarely leaves a comment, but all that changed a few days ago. I wandered onto Fiona's blog, Marmalade Rose, and discovered the 20 Minuters, and couldn't resist joining the (very) fast growing band of happy crafters. The idea is you sign up to spending 20 minutes every day making something (anything it doesn't matter what). There aren't any rules apart from the fact that you have to encourage other 20 Minuters, and leave some posts about your own progress on your blog. I'll hand in my first progress report at the end of the week...Promise!

It snowed and snowed and snowed....

It was absolutely amazing, the snow just kept coming, but I thought I was going to let my Little Man down. He kept talking about going sledging, so I was so happy when a friend of mine turned up at our house on Saturday with her children and husband and...two sledges! We dragged the kids on sledges for miles (yes, really), and found a brilliant hill, and Little Man got his wish. It was lovely!

A birthday cake for Little Miss

Little Miss was born on New Year's day four years ago. This year she wanted a princess cake, which is no mean feat for someone who isn't skilled at cake decoration (I'm not enough of a perfectionist!). I leafed through a few cake decorating books and pooled some ideas to do this:

I was in too much of a rush to make one of those gorgeous step by step tutorials (as usual!). But if you're interested, this is what I did:

1. I made a cake in a ring mould. It didn't come out as tall as I needed it ( I thought it would come up to Barbie's waist but it reached her knees!), but that didn't stop me.

2. Once the cake had cooled completely, I wrapped Barbie's legs in greaseproof paper and shove them into the hole in the middle of the ring cake. I stuffed more greaseproof in the hole to secure her. You could use foil or baking parchment instead, I just had greaseproof.

3. I folded another piece of greaseproof paper and then wrapped it round Barbie's waist and secured it with sellotape. It then looked like she had a greaseproof skirt for the ball, which wasn't quite glamorous enough for my 4 year old, so I kept going...

4. There's a fantastic haberdasher's in town, so I bought some pink sparkly netting folded it in two and wrapped in round Barbie's greaseproof skirt. At this point I thought of getting the needle and thread out but I only hade half an hour before the guests were to arrive, so out came the sellotape again. I taped the back of the skirt up and tied it to Barbie's waist with a bit of wired gold ribbon I had in my stash.

5. I found some ver regal looking candles and stuck them in some sweets that i put in front of the cake. That was it. Easy and quick and it drew some oohs and ahhs from all the little girls who saw it. Perfect!

Granny Squares in the snow...

We woke up to this on Wednesday morning:

Little Man's school was shut and the roads were impassable. So while the grown ups tried to get some work done from home, the Little People got more and more excited. Eventually I gave up and we went out for snow fun.

It wasn't any better on Thursday, but Little Man has gone back to school today, I'm dreading having to go and pick him up this afternoon. Little Miss and I will have to walk in...

With all this time trying to work from home and looking after Little People at the same time, my evenings have been spent finishing things off for work (great!). This means I'm falling behind with my latest project - Granny Squares!!!! Yes I have mastered the art (much thanks goes to Lucy at Attic 24 for this tutorial). I made a summer garden square and then added three more rounds. You just keep going in the same way as you do the last circle of Lucy's square. These are the results so far:

I love them!!!

Happy New Year!

New Year all seems so long ago now. We had a great time we went to two, yes two, parties (and who says your social life takes a step back after children?!).

The first one was held by some friends who are emigrating to Perth, they should have gone yesterday (if the snow didn't stop them). The Little People had a great time and made loads of new friends, they were all haring about shoving as many sweets into their mouths as they could. The husband is Italian so he made us a beautiful sausage and lentil stew to ensure we got luck (the sausages) and money (the lentils) in the new year.

Then we set off for the next party, at other friends, where we all had a huge meal and everyone (even the smallest) stayed up 'til midnight. Just before midnight, we all marched out of the back door of the house (boy was it cold outside), sang Auld Lang Sine, watched all the fireworks that were going off around us, and then the darkest haired child was given a lump of coal and led us back through the front door of the house, to welcome in the new year.

It was lovely!