Easter and Giveaway Winners

I bet you thought I'd given up blogging at the 1 year mark .... well of course not :) Sorry about a slightly longer absence than usual but we've been busy having a really marvellous Easter holidays, I mean really tippity top. It's been one of those holidays where we've found the perfect balance of going out .... staying in .... doing lots .... and relaxing ..... There really has been much to be thankful for.

.... sweetheart roses - sweet indeed

.... spring greenery from the garden

.... little chocolate eggs from my lovely hubby

.... fun day out at Basildon Park

.... doing their Easter quiz-trail 

... and admiring the beautiful blooms

.... enjoying first crochet in the garden this year

The weather has been fabulous here, I hope it's been as good wherever you are. We've really made the most of it with trips to the park, lots of time in the garden, Little Man and his friends have been out on their bikes and playing nerf-gun wars on the field, and the girls have been trampolining, playing hopscotch, making assault courses, skipping, ..... oh the list of outdoor pursuits goes on and on, its been so lovely to see them having all this wholesome fun :)

Just before Easter I had spotted these little chick beanbags on Pinterest. (http://www.petalstopicots.com/2014/03/crochet-chicken-pattern-little-chick-bean-bag-pattern) I decided to make a whole bunch so we could play beanbag games with them. And of course they had to be rainbow coloured.

I tell you, this is a fab stash-busting project. Each chick is just a rectangle, twice as long as it is wide, then you sew it up at a strange angle, add on some of those red wobbly bits on their heads (should they only be for roosters ??) and some beaks and ta-daaaah ..... little beanbag chickens .....

If you think they are looking rather menacing, you should have seen the first one I made with pointy eyes. Very Angry Birds.

In the absence of a suitable Easter bucket, we stuffed them all in a Halloween pail and took them outside for some beanbag fun.

The homemade beanbag tossy stand thingy was another Pinterest find. Got to love Pinterest, eh ?

Now. After all that jolliness, get our tissues ready for I have a sad little tale to tell you. Little Man and his friend were out on their bikes yesterday and found this little chap at the roadside. They very carfeully carried him home in one of their bike helmets (so proud of them both :) The doorbell rang. "We found a tortoise" they said. "A tortoise?" I said. "Er.....". And so we phoned the vet. And took the tortoise, in a shoebox balanced very carefully on Little Man's lap in the car, to said vet - me, my 3 Little Peeps plus Little Man's friend. Quite an expedition. And so the vet took a look at the tortoise. Which turned out to be a turtle.

"He's very poorly...." said the vet "... very skinny and dehydrated..." he continued. Turns out he is a type of Asian Box Turtle. Aquatic, not native to the UK, difficult to look after, and of high monetry value. Often used for breeding, illegally. And really not in great shape at all. The vet said he would monitor it overnight and call us today with an update. In the meantime we called at a few houses to see if anyone had an escapee turtle (how does that even happen) but in reality I was rather hoping we wouldn't find anyone as I have a suspicion that the poor little turtle was, at best, not being looked after properly, and at worst, had been abandoned.

So the vet called this morning, poor little turtle didn't do well overnight, isn't feeding himself so needs tube-feeding which would need an anaesthetic which would add more stress and trauma....... aaaah bless him :( Vet is going to monitor again tonight but between us we agreed it would be best, if there's no improvement overnight, to put him to sleep :( We, hubby and I, considered giving poor little turtle a home, but we don't think we'd be able to care for him properly. Poor little turtle :(

Phew. Sorry. Bit of a sad ending there. I am supremely proud of my boy and his friend so being so caring, they were so worried and so gentle with poor little turtle.

And onto brighter things. Little Miss helped me to pick the Blog Birthday Giveaway Winners :) 

We wrote out the names, folded them up and plonked them in my button tin. If you're wondering where the buttons are, they are now in jars and sorted according to colour (wee bit OCD ??).

And the lucky winners are ..... Niki Murray - hurray!!! And HouseWithHearts - yippee!!!

I'll be in touch tomorrow ladies to get your contact details :) And then you can await an exciting parcel in the post :)

Enjoy the rest of your Easter hols people - mwah!

xxxxx

Easter is Over

My Easter tulips finally gave up the ghost today, they'd done pretty well lasting nearly 2 weeks. And the last piece of chocolate was consumed this afternoon (a bonus chunk found in a box about to be recycled - lucky Little Miss got that piece!). Easter is Officially Over. So it seems fitting to show you some final Easter fun photos.

The Little People went back to school on Wednesday after a pretty long break of two and a half weeks. I really enjoyed having them at home for so long, they are great fun at the moment, still happy to spend time with boring old Mum, but independent enough to not need constant attention, so I can get a few things done round the house as well. Including some crochet of course :)

Easter Sunday was great fun. You may remember I had bought some little eggs to crochet covers for, I blogged about it here. Well, I also bought a load more that I wanted to fill with teeny chocolate eggs, and then hide them all round the house for an Easter Egg Hunt.
Now, I've been here before and learned a valuable lesson - do not just let 3 children of different ages on the loose to find as many treats as possible: at least one, and quite possibly all, of them will end up crying because one of them will find nearly all of them leaving none for anyone else....

So I bought 6 different colours of plastic eggs .....

... yellow and orange, blue and green, pink and purple. I popped some chocolate eggs and sweeties inside the plastic eggs and then hid the plastic eggs round the house....... and it worked perfectly:) No arguments, tears, or fighting, they were all very good and didn't even tell each other if they spotted someone else's colour of egg.

Some were quite tricky to find, involving much shouting of "Warmer! Warmer! Colder! Warmer! Boiling!" and so on. They all seemed to enjoy their loot, and it didn't last long ....

... they loved their not-so-egg-shaped Easter-eggs, like this one ....

and of course not forgetting the extras that come with Easter eggs ....

... and who remembers "Pez" and the associated Pez dispenser (or the "Pez-inator as Little Man has decided it's called)....

... and massive personalised eggs from Grandma!

....  but it wasn't all about the children, I was a very lucky lady and my lovely husband gave me some really sweet thoughtful gifts. I love chocolate (yay) but I can't really have it because it triggers migraines (boo), and he knows I like little tins for putting things in ...... so he gave me this ultra cute bunny rabbit tin with little eggs in ...

.... I'm now using it to keep my stitch markers in :)
... and he also gave me this tin of scrummy shortbread .....

... not sure what I'll use this one for yet, but the biscuits were De-eee-licious :)

In case you're wondering I was a Very Bad Wife and didn't get him anything - too busy arranging the children's bits and pieces - he was seriously unimpressed - oops!!

Hope you all had lovely, relaxing, stress-free, calm and happy Easters :)

Easter Tree

Do you remember in one of last week's posts I mentioned the twigs destined for my Special Project ? Well, it's finished, so now I can tell you all about it - oooo goody! I've been just desperate to show you!

Upon my request, the Little People had collected loads of fallen twigs. I selected the twiggiest twigs (lots of the rejected ones would really have been classified as Sticks which apparently are much more worthy of collection, if you are aged 10 or under). The other main thing I needed was some kind of receptacle for standing twigs in. I had exactly right cheerful yellow vase for the job .... in went the twigs ......

... I'm sure you've worked it out by now:)

The twigs just sort of flopped around sadly so I put in a couple of inches of little pebbles from the garden (to wedge the bottom ends in), arranged the twigs artfully (twiddled around til they looked ok) and then wired them in position (amazing how you can find a use for a random bit of wire that's been lying around in the garage for years). Then I painted them with a tester pot of whitey-cream paint (that's also been lying around in the garage for years).....

... the children thought I was a bit mad and Mr EC didn't even dare to ask ......
I left the painted-twigs-in-vase ensemble on the windowsill to dry overnight. Look, there it is on my kitchen windowsill (actually that was just an excuse to photograph my daffodils - they just need to be photographed, don't they, such great colours).

Whilst that lot was drying I gathered a few more supplies - some wool, some ribbon, a crochet hook and a bowl of jolly plastic eggs ....

Do you like my bowl ? Do you Love it ? I do! My bargaintastic 50p charity shop find, it makes me think of daisies and sunflowers all mixed up :)

I wanted to make some covers for the eggs, and I decided to write my own pattern (whoop - go me). So I set to with my crochet hook and rustled something up (actually it took aaaages to tweak it til it was just right)

They didn't take long. Then I threaded them with the ribbon ...

I pondered for ages whether to embellish these with flowers, or buttons or something else, but in the end decided that Less Is More and that I like them Just The Way They Are. I'll post the pattern soon :) At least in time for next Easter :)

All that remained was the final positioning .... and .... ta-daaaa.....

My Easter Tree :) I'm so happy with the end result, not too blingy, not too overpowering. I know it's not an original idea, they are all over Pinterest and you can even buy them in the shops - but I love the fact that the Little People collected the sticks, that they watched me assemble and paint, and that I crocheted the egg covers with my own pattern. And yes, that is my flower garland in place too. All together such a springy Eastery happy addition to our fireplace :)

Easter Holiday Fun

Gosh has it been nearly a week since I last posted ?! Where has that gone! I can't believe the Little People have been off school almost two whole weeks now, the time really has flown by in a whirlwind of parks, friends, bikes and food. And a tiny amount of crochet. I must admit I could easily find it frustrating not to have more time to crochet and blog, but in truth I've loved spending time with the children. I know that the time that they will want me with them won't last forever so I'm making the most of it :)

We went to various parks ...

... we played in the sand ....

... we built sand mountains ...

... we went to the fair and went on the swinging chairs ....

 ... and the zoomy round motorbike thingymajingy ...

... and I managed a bit of crochet whilst supervising from afar ...

One morning I took them on a children's First Aid course. Little Man was very reluctant, and I was a bit worried that I'd got it badly wrong, however they all had a great time. (He proclaimed later that it had been the best day ever - praise indeed!) They got to take part in question answering, saw a few videos, and acted in some role-plays - rather over dramatically in the case of Little Man who was pretending to be a patient with a cut, but acted like someone having a limb cut off with no anaesthetic (very funny, lots of giggling all round). Best of all there were crisps and biscuits at half-time... cappuccino and grapes for Mummy. Actually I tell a lie, best of all was the First Aid kit that they each received for attending the course ...

... Little Man is (rather-worryingly) desperate to use his ...

Today we started our 5-day intensive Get-The-Girls-To-Ride-Their-Bikes mission. Little Miss is capable but Very reluctant, Little Tomboy is extremely enthusiastic (in fact Desperate to do it) but has rubbish balance. They are currently aged 9 and 6, so Little Miss at least should by now be able to manage. So we had a few practises of wheeling yourself along without pedalling, and before I knew it she was just pedalling and doing it....."Mummy, I can't believe I am going to say this, but its FUN" Yaaaay!!!! 

That's a Big Thumbs Up from her then :) and 50% of the mission accomplished.
Little Miss on the other hand is still Very Wobbly even just wheeling herself along, so it's pedals off for her at the moment, and we'll give it another go tomorrow.

It's been busy and fun leaving precious little time for crochet or craft. I've managed to finish all the squares for the baby blanket I'm working on ...... you can see the last one in progress here ....

... phew ... and the other are all there in the tin, awaiting ends being dealt with. Really hoping to finish it over the weekend but there may still be too much fun to be had :)