Sticking at things.

Well I have been keeping up with my running.  

We are now on week 7/10 of our beginners group and going well.  I've also been able to manage 1-2 running practices a week in between sessions.  Running with people seems so much easier as there is that element of distraction which inhibits your mind from encouraging you to stop.  Some runs have been easier than others, but I am getting there. I hurt my knee around week 3, and was really disheartened.  My head was telling me not to run on it, but I couldn't bring myself to miss a session.  Thankfully ice and stretching seemed to work and it's been so much better and no pain when running now.  I also treated myself to a snazzy new pair of running trainers (see photo above) to try and reduce the risk of hurting my knee further.  Love them.  I wouldn't have believed the difference a good pair of trainers would make. I did have my gait analysed by doing the run on the treadmill in the shop...I did feel like a wally but I'm sure I looked like a gazelle!  Good job it was a quiet time of day.
I've found a running partner in the village too which helps with practicing and motivation and as of yesterday I have signed up for a 5k Race for Life at the beginning of June.  I'm looking forward and hope this will be the start of many to come.

I have also been to a local free buggy fitness group which sounds less hard core than it is.  But when you're doing your walking lunges, crunches, push ups, planks, sprints etc. you are soon the one that finds yourself wishing you could turf your baby out of the buggy so you can have a sit down and recover!!! 

I have also started a new circuits class that's re-establishing locally.  My first go at circuits and the class was small (just the 2 of us!) so there was definitely no hiding!! My favorite bit was donning some gloves and punching the stuffing out of the instructors pads...what a great stress reliever! 

All this fitness is making me feel a bit stronger in myself...fitness and self esteem.

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Making has been a bit on the slow side here as I feel I've just been buzzing here, there and everywhere.  We often are away at weekends visiting people and it always seems to fall in back to back weekends. It's lovely, but I've had enough now and am sticking at home for a while!  

I've been able to make something (a little commission I suppose) but it hasn't been given yet so I'll keep that under wraps for now.

So other makes have been focused on my little man. We have been having some success with sticker charts.  They never used to work, but after potty training, he was still looking for instant rewards, so the implementation of the sticker chart gave him a longer term goal to focus on.  The first was a pirate ship sailing to the treasure, the second a dinosaur.

He loved the idea that he was getting closer to the star.  He got a mini Haribo bag of sweets for each little star which he loved, and for the pirate ship he got a Spiderman Doll (or action figure as I've been corrected plenty of times!) and for the Dinosaur he got  a big Playdoh factory.  It's quite nice as his birthday is Christmas Eve so he gets one big present drop a year, and this is a way of re-enforcing good behaviours but also giving us a good excuse for us to get him some new toys once in a while.

The current one is a snake focussing on getting washed and dressed with NO FUSS! 

 

 I may be aiming too big as 'procrastinate' is his middle name!  All three year olds are the same I'm sure, but sometimes the battle is so irritatingly frustrating that it deserves a chance to change for the better!  We have had a few mornings/evenings with no fuss whatsoever and all happening in real time which have been delightful (yes three year olds also have no sense of time passing what so ever!).  Some he's still mucking about so he's gone without his reward.  I'm sure with time he might click on to the idea! His reward for reaching this one is a family trip to the zoo so he's quite keen for this one.

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Another little project this week was an up-cycle I suppose. My little man had a very cool dinosaur bag for pre-school which broke, but it was too good to throw away.  So I cut out the leather dino's and re-purposed them into a collage for his room.  I had a spare green Ikea frame kicking around so it seemed the perfect use for it for now.
 I used various bits of fabric, wool, ribbon etc.  and we painted the sun, leaves etc. together.  We did use bubble wrap to make some textured paint but for some reason the paper sort of made it disappear.  When he saw it half made he gasped when he saw it and said he really liked it.  When I showed him the finished one he carried on playing...and my husband laughed.  I'll take that criticism as I think it looks really nice hanging in his room so it will stay there until it grows old.

     The pictures not that clear here...and maybe that's for a good thing.  Every time I look at it it looks more and more pre-school!

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My littlest in now sitting for long periods, weaning is going well, and he is still rocking on all fours!
He is also getting into trouble around the house determined to reach for all of his big brothers toys.

My time on maternity leave is coming to an end with a return to work at the beginning of June.  My uniforms still fit (just).  That will be a whole new phase to adjust to... trying to keep all those balls up in the air.  I could stay off forever to watch my little people grow and learn. 

Enough for today.  I'm enjoying soaking up the warmth in my little sun room, making the most of nap time.  So I think I'll pop some more music on and enjoy some me time.

Love from me and my little men x

Surviving the Pox

In my last post you saw my DIY heart picture which I think looks pretty spiffingly awesome (even if I do say so myself).

It's now sitting on my new shelves in my lounge.  New Shelves! Yes...I'm quite excited about these as ever since we have moved in (that's about 5/6years) I have been plagued by a blank wall and had no clue as to where to start with it.  How can a blank wall be so difficult? Well I find it easier to cosy up/decorate the small nooks in a room, rather than make a commitment to a large part of the room with the risk of getting it very wrong.  I decided to make a bit of a gallery wall so I could mix up the artwork if I wanted to.  I think these picture ledges are perfect and I am really pleased with them.

Love these pictures.

There are my two home made ones in the middle!

Unfortunately you don't get a picture of the shelves in context with the rest of my lounge as it is all a bit "plastic fantastic" below this photo line.  That's the baggage of having children...the hundreds of plastic toys that adorn your living room.  The added problem of having boy children is that none of those plastic fantastic toys are particularly pretty... Cranes, pirate ships, racing cars... 
My shelves can be my bit of prettiness amongst all their crap!

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We've been plagued by chicken pox in this house.  The eldest got it and I think we got off lightly.  He was a bit of a grump bag and tired, but apart from that not too irritated by them.  We are paying the price now as our newest boy on the block is absolutely covered head to toe with amazingly big blisters.  He has screamed for the past two nights with an unbreakable fever and has been in obvious discomfort.  Absolutely heartbreaking to watch and not be able to do anything to make it better for them.  However, I think the fever broke this morning, and he has had a sleep for 4hours solid today.  So far he is settled in his cot, so all we can do is keep our fingers crossed that he has a more restful night.  I can't wait for him to be on top form again, and I can't wait to stop finding splashes of pinky/white calamine lotion everywhere (I came back from picking one up from nursery to see I had calamine splashes all up my jeans...not a good look).

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Our little one has also cut his first two bottom teeth!

He's been pulling the funniest faces feeling around for his new toothy pegs.  We've also started the very messy adventure, of weaning.  

Hmmm....I'm not sure who won that one...!

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Me and my little man have also been playing with Sensory Writing.  Something I saw from the Imagination Tree  and kept us amused for ages.  Perfect for pattern copying, letter copying, oh...and digging in!  Yep, there was a lot of digging and flicking with salt and glitter flying everywhere, but that was cool.  

Little people are learning all of the time.

Mixing in the blue glitter.  We need to stock up on crafting goodies.

No kitchen foil in the house to make a shiny background so picked a nice sunny yellow.

After plenty of digging my little man achieved his initial!  

He was super pleased.

A few more things to jot down, but I'll save that for another post.  What better way to spend a pox ridden bank holiday weekend by having some blogging time.

Now for more tea.

Love from me and my little men x

Family Love.

I’ve had a truly enjoyable weekend.  I’ve been spoilt by my two boys for Mothers day. Homemade cards and flowers had my little man busy in nursery all week.  A lovely breakfast and a roast dinner cooked for me, and bunches of flowers brightening up my day.

Usually I am a bit of a flippety jibbet on weekends wanting to clean and then go out and herd the boys to various locations and ultimately feeling like I need another weekend to recover, however this weekend I was very much happy to go with the flow and just chill.  We went out shopping (a trip to Ikea for some bits and bobs), we went walking, we played, and I even had time for crafting.

Delightful. 

 

I am so lucky to have my family and they whole heartedly reassured me that I’m not doing a bad job of being a mummy (and I’m sure that’s something that most parents question at some stage).

Love. Love. Love.

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I had to buy some photo frames from Ikea for some pictures I had recently bought.  On opening the smaller one, I was most surprised to find there were two frames in the pack! That find made me instantly smile, almost like finding treasure. So with all the family love I’ve been feeling this weekend, it seemed fitting for this make.

 

I’d recently seen this Valentines heart card idea on Pintrest, and thought it would look fitting in a frame for a pop of colour in the living room.  I had all the ingredients…a frame, cardstock (cut to the size of the frame), needle, and embroidery cotton in red.  I had contemplated a different shape, but actually I really liked the heart so I forged ahead and traced a heart template on my card.

 

I picked the first needle I came to…Small eye and thick thread – NIGHTMARE!  It was fine, but threading the needle took more time than the project in total probably!

 

So making this evenly spaced, threading the cotton through the outer shape through a centre point and repeating around the shapes outline.  It was a nice one to do in front of the TV last night.  The thread did start to get a bit congested toward the end so I employed some pliers to pull the needle through a bit more easily.  Surprisingly, it took quite a lot of thread to complete. Thankfully I had enough red, otherwise I would have had to do a 2 tone heart.

 

 

TA DAH….

 

 

 

 Here in it’s frame…shot taken at night time so a bit dull…so here’s one in daylight with it sitting nicely in my living room.

 

 

 A simple but effective project.  I’m really pleased with how it turned out, and it makes me smile to look at it

Love. Love. Love.

More things to show soon.

 

Love from me and my little men x

 

PS..I'm not sure what's happening with my blogger but the layout keeps going all screwy...so excuse any bits that look odd!

Upcycling and Crayola Art

It's been a while...about 6months in all, that I've shied away from blogging.  The time seems to have flown and I've been busy crafting something a little different...

...and I'm now 27 weeks pregnant!

The pregnancy has been great on the whole, and I have only really struggled with restless legs at night - apart from that no other physical complaints which is good.  There have been some potential concerns with the baby, but so far it's growing, kicking me a lot, and the medics are keeping an eye on us, so hopefully all will be okay eventually.

My little man understands a lot more than I give him credit for, and we have turned a corner of him thinking it was being a "naughty baby as it's kicking mummy", to lots of hugs, talking to the bump, and plastering the baby in Thomas the tank engine stickers!  The future arrival of a new addition to the family has led to some great developments for him - the transition into a Big boys bed, and a Big boys bedroom!  This has all gone down very well and he has not been bothered by venturing into his old room.

I will take some photo's to show you his new room in time...but I have completed a couple of projects for him.

1) Up cycling furniture.

Storage has always been limited for clothes, and a new chest of drawers was definitely needed.  Coincidentally my mum was getting rid of an old dresser she had.  I think the story is that she had it when she was 18 and it has taken on different colours/uses since then!

This is it in it's original, dated glory...

 I hired my husband to do the hard job of sanding it down.  The varnish was on so thick it took a good while.  He started when it was a bit chilly, so he waited until warmer weather to finish it off for me.

Once sanded (I forgot to get a picture of it when it was naked!), I set about to painting.  I did two coats of undercoat primer, and two coats of eggshell paint.  It didn't take too long to paint, but I had to be careful of dribbles.

It then sat knobless for a while why I debated over which knobs to choose.  I wanted something that would be boyish, practical, pretty, not too expensive and something that he wouldn't grow out of.  I ended up buying red, green, and blue ceramic knobs which I think work well for a boys room.  These can always be changed in the future so the dresser can be re-purposed when needed.

Here is my "Ta-Dah" moment!

 I am really pleased wit the way it's turned out.  We still had a conversation about storage crisis...so we ended up buying another unit from IKEA, but I think eventually it will get the same treatment and I think they'll look pretty good next to each other.

There's lots of little bits to finish off in the room which will come in time, but at the moment, he's enjoying sleeping in his new bed in his new room.

I have done some fun crafting for his room too...

2) Crayola Art

So i've absolutely loved the crayola art ideas that have been coming up on Pintrest...and it just seemed too much fun to pass by!

I had a spare canvas, so I set about buying a good range of crayons.  Now this was probably the hardest challenge.  Every shop I looked in did the smaller packs, but I didn't want repetitive colours, I wanted a whole range.  Crayola in shops these days includes all sorts of fandangled new pens/pencils/crayons etc.  I just wanted traditional!  In the end John Lewis came up scrubs and I bought....

I went through and picked out all the dull colours (blacks, greys, browns etc.) and then sorted them into colour groups and arranged them until I was happy, and was certain they'd fit.  I then set about super gluing them to the canvas.

 This was my favourite colour range.

I was going to stick my little man's name accross the bottom and then peel off once the wax had dribbled...but I actually like the black W I stuck on in the corner, and decided to leave it there.  Then came a hair dryer...and a lot of fun....

 They took a while to get started, but then once they started running, they were away!

 

It's not hanging on the wall yet but....

....Ta-Dah!

I think it's pretty cool, something just for my wee man...and it was super fun project to make!

That's all for now.  But am sure will write again soon.

Love from me and my little man x

Happy Halloween!

I think I prefer more of the treats than the tricks…so we stocked up our sweetie bowl ready for the onslaught of masked crusaders in search of their sugary treasures.  Luckily for us this year we had one (very loud) knock at the door…two boys stood on the doorstep looking particularly un-spooktacular...and that was it!  Lots of sweets for us then…Hoorah!

The nursery had a Halloween party so my little man went as a vampire.  The coat was the only thing that kept him from pulling off his cape, but he did wear it for a good time in nursery with his friends.  I think he looks cute.

In nursery he decorated his own Halloween pot and it was filled with goodies.

We had some pumpkin carving at home, and Wills popped the pieces out to make our friendly, toothy ghoul…

He enjoyed lighting him up in the dark to see him glow. 

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Love from me and my little man x

PS…I have been busy squirreling away in the Craft room.  Two homemade presents wrapped and sent down to Wales already! One homemade present waiting to be wrapped, and two more imminently starting!  I had a friend to keep me company earlier this week. x

Give us today our weekly bread…

We’ve turned our hands to something a little different this week.

Bread.

I LOVE bread.

Door stop sandwiches.  Hot toast with melted butter and marmite. Bread and butter dunked in soup….mmmmmmm!…it’s just a pity it’s not that great for the waistline!

Surely it couldn’t be that hard to make a loaf? I also wondered how expensive it would be to bake your own bread, with bread costing anything from £0.80-£1.30 in the shops.  So one day last week, we went to the supermarket to get our ingredients ready for our project.

My little man was so keen to take part…he pulled up his own chair and he really enjoyed turning the dial on the mixer.  He kept peeking in the bowl to see what was happening, and clapping almost to say “We’re almost there mum!”. 

Here are some pictures…

Ta Dah!

Here is our first loaf of bread!

Warm from the oven we were obliged to see how it tasted…

YUMMY!!!

Here is the recipe…

500g strong white bread flour mixed with 25g butter to make breadcrumb texture.

Add 1tbsp sugar, 1 and 1/2 tsp salt, and 1tsp dried yeast and mix slowly adding up to 320ml of tepid water until combined to  make a soft dough.

Knead in mixer for about 5min, then cover with oiled cling film and place somewhere warm to prove for 1hr (I use the conservatory on a nice day, or airing cupboard).

Then knock back the mixture and put in an oiled loaf tin, and again cover with oiled cling film.  Place somewhere warm to prove for 30mins.

Then pop the loaf in a pre-heated oven at 200C for 30mins or until sounding hollow when tapped. 

Then…EAT!!!!!

In all I think it cost between 45-50p to make…and it’s not really that time intensive.  So we have now stopped buying bread for the time being…and I am now on my third loaf!

Loaf no 2…

Loaf no 3…

It has been a resounding success.  So now I am confident with the basic loaf…we are going to experiment with rolls, different artisan breads, and CHELSEA BUNS…yummy!  I am on a diet…so I’m going to have to exercise bucket loads of will power!

We are also going to have to invest in my little man getting his own apron now that he is my sous chef!

Have a go at making your own loaf.  If I can do it I’m sure that you can!

Love from me and my little man x

Man-Zone

Since re-turfing the garden which you can read about here we have been contemplating buying that manly playhouse/den/shed to put on that designated patio area.  We have been umming and ahhing for a few weeks, browsing online, waiting for sales…we just had to bite the bullet and decide.  We went to a few stores and let Wills have a good trial of all the houses…and he did love them.  He ran from one to another, barging through the doors, shouting “Hiya” from the windows…he pulled at our heart strings and made us smile.  One of the sticking points was that the majority of the playhouses (in our price range) were all really small, and all a bit girly.  We thought about whether he would outgrow it really quickly also…so summer coming closer and still no decision.  We thought bigger and so we thought…shed! Something that we could decorate for Wills to use now and we could re-purpose for storage when he’s fed up of it.  And how manly is a shed right?!!  My husband was much more on board with the shed direction (…although he still accused me that I would make it “Twee”!!!  I don’t know what “Twee” is.  I know what pretty is though…)

We were excited to have it delivered, although we forgot that we would have to build it.  It said it was a 2 man job…so my husband settled with me!  Surprisingly we were a good team, with no arguments, and a leisurely build…no stress.  Our little chap helped out too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once built time for decoration!   Unfortunately for me this involved more painting…but at least a pretty colour this time.  I went for a lovely Forget Me Not blue, and then painted the trims in a Seagrass colour. I was going to embark on a stripy beach hut style…but I opted for plain in the end. 

We painted the insides white to try and keep it as bright as possible although we might consider some sort of lighting in there at some point.  We’ve put carpet down to make it comfortable under foot (and under bum).  It looks really smart and we all feel very pleased and proud of our efforts.  We’ve had good family times…funny how much more than a shed it has become…

Lots and lots of bubbles have helped us celebrate finishing Will’s Shed.

As well as the bubbles…a little homemade bunting and my handmade sign (the very start of the pretty-fying which I’ll fill you in on later…) declaring the Shed OPEN!

We’ve already had so much fun out in the garden this year, and this is just the start!  I’ve got lots of plans for homemade additions to the shed (beanbags, shelving, curtains….) which will all come with time. 

One thing we do have to take note of is making sure if we’re on the inside we need to make sure Wills is with us…or at least have an eye on him! I was playing with him in the evening, and all of a sudden I thought “Hang on…I’m in here and he’s out there?!!  And I can’t get out…Crumbs!!!!!”  He’d bolted me in and couldn’t unbolt me!  To be honest I wasn’t thinking Crumbs at the time…a lot worse! Thankfully my husband was 10minutes away by car, so that 10 minutes I spent trying to pacify my distraught little man by playing an overenthusiastic version of peek-a-boo through the window!  Very funny…!

Well this is the beginning of our adventures in “Will’s Shed”.

More soon.

Love from me and my little man x