African wax print

A friend of mine, Faye.  Is as creative as creative can be, I am extremely jealous of her! a while ago I purchased some African wax print fabric from her, and until now I have not known what to do with it. I have noticed that its quite popular in the design world at the moment so Faye's Etsy shop (link) and her unusual designs are getting quite a lot of attention! she has had her shop and the fabric she sells mentioned in a magazine and even some interest from the Lorraine show! About time too! fay also writes a blog

So here is my folder cover.

Come Dine with me....

I finally had my turn.....

Some of my friends and I have been hosting our own "Come Dine Nights" we love getting together. So far we have had Doreen's night (almost a year ago now lol) which was Indian themed. Then Sarah's titanic murder mystery, Klaire's movie star night, Sally's 80's night and my ancient rome night although due to my fussy friends I stuck to a mostly Italian themed menu - dormice were not on the menu! I did find an anchient pudding recipe of stuffed dates in honeyed wine. Which I loved ( not sure it was to everyone's taste) just Katie's night left now!

The stuffed dates recipe came from a blog called healthyfoodietravels.net

Here is a pic of my goddess's

Progress on my allotment

A catch up from the visit to my allotment last Monday,

I have finally finished weeding my spud bed, it will have my main crop Sarpo Mira in plus one lot of early's that can be left as second early's - although I can't remember what variety this is.....doh I just need to move my sage..... I will wait until my seed potatoes are ready before moving them.

The rest of my early's I will be attempting to grow in large ikea bags, I have always used this method as I have a small garden but I think I have in the past tried to grow to many seed potatoes in one bag so although I had masses of potatoes they were small.

This year I will stick to 2 seed spuds per bag, filling half the bag with compost then filling up as the leaves grow. I have lots of carpet covered land on my allotment so I will utilise the space on top of the carpet areas. Along with anything I chuck in containers.

Chloe helped to sow tomatoes and yellow toms, aubergines, chillies, peas, chives and some morning glory. They are all in my little grow house with some early cabbage seedlings and various winter lettuce that I let the children sow last year!

Strangely the garlic cloves that I planted in modules last autumn have done nothing but the forgotten bulbs in my potato bed are all doing well in their new home

What are you going to grow this year. (One day I will have some followers)

Crafty Morning

Yesterday I started making some wrist warmers, I don't like gloves so this is the next best thing. I pinned a post in my crochet board on Pinterest and although there was no actual pattern to follow I got the gist from the description. This morning Evie kindly woke me at 6am, so I thought it was a great opportunity to finish them so here they are.....

After I still felt the need to make something. A lot of people we know are having babies at the moment so I used this creative mood of mine to get another present done. I always find making girl gifts much easier, I suppose it's because I have 3 of this gender. But today I made a little boy present for my besties sister who gave birth to a blue child last week. Here is my present for the little fella, I just can't make up my mind on whether to add button eyes or not?

Lovely windy day!

Today the sun was out, it was also extremely windy! I was secretly hoping that the wind would blow next doors fence down ;-) its really tatty with slats missing here and there. No joy as yet but I am hopeful. Anyway I was pleased that for the first time this year I managed to get some washing on the line! I'm easily pleased.








I managed to get my butt to the allotment too, I was being a little lazy so instead of opening the door to the garage (this required me hunting for the keys) to get my wellies. I grabbed Shannon's from the car along with an ikea bag that I intend planting some first early spuds in. Feeling satisfied with the lack of effort involved in grabbing Shan's willies I set off.

Trip to lottie was an epic fail! Firstly Shannon's willies were blooming wet inside - YUK so I opted to keep my converse on. Then after digging roughly a 2ft square of bed 1 my thumb burst through my glove! Well my beautiful dank clay soil didn't let me down...... I was literally stuck in the mud!

Allotment

So last year, April to be precise. I got a letter from my local council to say that there was a space on my nearest allotment. I put my name on the list when I moved here and then forgot all about it as the lists are so very long here. It is a new site, and has been waste ground for many years but I still I jumped at the chance and promptly chose my plot; Number 13.

So it was full of weeds and huge! I did my best with it last year but it beat me in the end. By September I was wondering how on earth I was going to maintain it. But then For my birthday my lovely fella Chris, surprised me with a shed on my plot. My in-laws also surprised me with a wheel barrow, chair and new fork and a gorgeous sign for my shed! I was in love with my plot again.

Armed with my new camping stove and accessories from my besties I set about making some new plans for plot 13 and fingers crossed it will be a better year this year!

My little pumpkin

I wanted to create a pumpkin hat for Evie's costume this Halloween, so I set about searching my normal places (pintrest, YouTube, google) I found some tutorials on YouTube but none were really what was spinning about in my head.... I literally couldn't sleep!
I settled with a beanie by Aussie crochet extraordinaire bobwilson123 that I found on YouTube, her tutorials are fabulously easy to follow. I would link to the actual tutorial if I could figure out how! After the beanie was made I made the leaves etc, I just can't decide whether to put a scary face on it. Hope you like it x