Thimbleina

Additions to our wardrobes

 

I have at last finished this cardigan for Lady A's Spring/Summer and probably the end of Winter clothing.

  

I love these buttons, I took them off of a cardigan that she has grown out of and I plan to unravel it to make something else.

I had a bit of time to fit in two items for myself

   

This A-line skirt is made from a 50pence offcut from a roll of curtain fabric and a doilie (not sure on the correct spelling) from the Red and Aqua swap that I did. The inspiration was the Boden Spring/Summer 09 catalogue and so was the top made from inspiration in the same catalogue.

 

Well now I must be off to bake a cake for Mr Thimbleina's 40th birthday!! I shall attempt to put some pictures on the blog of the celebrations and cake

Eggyness (or could that be eggymess)

 

I saw this idea in a magazine (can't remember which one) and thought I would try it out. I am quite impressed with it and thought I would show it to you as you might want to make this as a special tea/breakfast for Easter or perhaps another special occasion, you could do a heart shape for valentines.

Just take your slice of bread and use a cookie cutter of your choosing to cut the middle out. Place on a well greased baking sheet and then crack the egg into the space. Put in the oven at a medium temperature I think it may take about 6 mins but that depends on all sorts of variables like how you like your egg, temp of oven etc. so keep checking.

Tinkling the ivories

 

I'm not sure whether I have mentioned wanting to learn how to play the piano/keyboard before. But I don't get a regular child free slot so lessons are kind of out of the question at the moment. So I thought I would try and teach myself out of a library book. I did have an adults book from the library for this but couldn't follow what they were talking about as I am not very musical, so when I found this book in the children's section I was very excited as this explains it slowly and simply although I am getting a little stuck now on the chords bit, but I'll get there. There is a CD and DVD with the book - I haven't yet watched the DVD or listened to the CD so must do that as that will probably help with the bit I am stuck on. But I think this book is one of those I am going to have to buy as not only is it useful for me, Lady A seems to be trying to teach herself from it as well, I have found her sitting down at the keyboard trying to follow some of the tunes. Mister T is just at the switch the volume as loud as possible and bang on the keys all at once stage - but he may well also be interested later on.

Ouch!!

Lady A has been doing work about the artist Judy Joel (who is very inspiring - have a read of her biograpy on her site, she became an artist after having children and like many of us in blogland has found her creative side through doing activities with her children). Particularly they have been studying and are going to recreate her picture 'Skating in Central Park' . They have discussed the geography of New York and of course the season and the skating. So Lady A was really excited about going skating and as a new rink opened near us in November I thought I would take her along. Now ice skating was something I used to do at senior school - never that good at it but I thought that, that would stand me in good stead. How wrong could I be!!

I put Lady A's boots on and mine, thinking these haven't changed much in the last 20 odd years so it may be like riding a bike, but no. I step on to the ice and bash! straight down on my bottom - Owww!!!! and so did Lady A. So I thought this is no good how can I take her around if I can't stand up myself. So eager as she was, she agreed to stand on the side while I went around first time clutching the side and then getting more confident so that I could gain some kind of composure and look as if I had some idea of what I was doing. Then she came around with me clutching the side and holding my hand. As she became more confident she became faster which when holding my hand was not good and down we both fell in a pile.Oh did she cry! I thought something may be broken, but after checking the limbs and asking her it seemed it was just a little sore bottom from the fall. I thought that would be it and she would want to go, but no my little soldier wanted to go on for more and through those tears she carried on and started to let go of the side when we came across others going too slow that we had to overtake. We managed 3 times around the rink without holding on to the side before she decided that we could go. I was amazed she had such confidence that she wants to go back again next week to try skating without holding on to me! wow what a brave girl she is - they surprise me with something every day, I am astounded at the things they can acheive when they put their minds to it.

Well today I am paying for it, my hips hurt and I ache all over!! So we did a few gentle things like the RSPB birdwatch and Lady A recorded the results. A bit of drawing and a bit of reading up on the camera.

  

I have also downloaded Blue Yonder's Book of days for January to inspire the children and myself. There are some good activities and ideas for mindfulness in there which we are going to endeavour to do 

Is this spring??

  

Is spring trying to pop its bright sunny head up?  Not that sure as we had showers of snowy sleet. So to try and get Spring along a little faster I appliqued some butterflies on to a t-shirt for the warmer weather for Lady A

 

This weekend we will be doing the RSPB's birdwatch to help their conservation work. This should be fun logging all the birds we see.

What will you be doing this weekend and what are signs have you seen that Spring may be coming?

Have a great weekend 

A great Sunday

 

What more could you want from a Sunday. A blue sky and the sun shining. Freshly baked Macrina cookies. A family walk in the woods with our dog and a lovely big hot chocolate at the cafe in the woods. The hot chocolate piled high with marshmallows and cream with cocoa powder all melting slowly into the sweet warm chocolate drink.

  

Back home to play games and wash cars ready for getting back into the weekly rhythm.

Hope your weekend has been a lovely one too? 

It's a kinda magic....

 

Lady A found this book at the library this week. She is very interested in magic and since the book has entered the house she has been asking for the materials to do the tricks in the book. Mister T wasn't as impressed as he should have been when Lady A magically chopped his banana up when it was in the skin - he didn't want it chopped up!!.

The book is simply laid out and easy for young children who have just started reading to follow and the tricks are quite simple so they are able to understand them and repeat them to their chosen audience. Most of the things that are needed for the tricks can be found around the house i.e. playing cards, string, paper, paperclips etc. 

Daddy is impressed as he cannot work out how Lady A managed to find the card that he picked out of the pack - I think we may find him secretly reading the book later.

A very addictive book and would make a good birthday present with a homemade wand and a pack of playing cards perhaps in a homemade magic bag to keep the book and the necessary materials for the young magician in!

Have a magical weekend 

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

 

Mister T and I had a little art session together. I did some pictures which I am going to laminate and turn into sewing cards for Mister T.

I set up some potato printing for him to make a picture of the caterpillar

 

Although faced with plates of paint and a potato he preferred his painting of smearing it about the paper and he had great fun and then wanted to paint with his bare feet

 

A bit of a cleaning job followed but he really enjoyed the feel of the paint on his feet and squidging it between his hands.

Read the instruction booklet

 

I don't really make New Year's resolutions or I don't give any aims I have that title otherwise I know that I'll get to the end of the year and may feel a bit of a failure. But I have a few things that I would like to do and not necessarily set a time limit to achieving them a bit like a rolling programme of improvements depending on what life throws at me.

So I thought I would like to be able to take better pictures, so what better place to start I thought than my own instruction booklet which has always seemed a little too complicated to tackle. But I took a deep breath last night and dived in. Well so far I have learnt that I can take black and white pictures as above and I have made a few other tweaks so things are already looking up - still a way to go and then I want to read some booklets that I got on better photography, well that is the aim lets see how far I get.

Collecting

   

I was very inspired by this Soulemama post, by the generous gifts of the hats that everyone has sent and by the stamp collection. It occured to me that I hadn't really introduced my daughter to the world of collecting things, especially the world of collecting things that cost nothing or very little - not that world that trys to market things to kids to spend lots of pocket money collecting their merchandise.

I had been saving stamps for a while to give to a local charity shop and thought we could go through what I had got and she could cut out all the different and unusual ones for a collecting book that I stitched together just for the job.

She hasn't got many yet, but it will be interesting when we receive post from other countries to look for them on her new blow up globe to see how far they have come and possibly we can use this to extend her learning by finding out about these countries i.e traditions, foods, climate etc.

As I thought about this project I looked around the house at other things that have been collected, some perhaps unintentionally.

This is Mr Thimbleina's childhood collection of football cards:

  

I used to collect postcards as a child - you know when grandparents and other relatives went on holiday they would send them and I would add to the collection - they are in the loft somewhere!

My sister used to collect erasers - as they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes.

On looking around the house I think one of my unintentional collections is of books:

  

    

This is just two shelves in two rooms, I think baring the rooms with toilets in their are books in every single room of the house. I do love good books!

Also a picture that really didn't turn out well I notice had a little knitting needle collection in it, these include mine and all the ones that my mum gave me as well, so I have a few of those as well.

What do you or your children collect and why?