Catching up on Summer photos

I've waited for this book for about 3 weeks on transfer from another library in the county. Very exciting...

Because I saw a blanket when I was at church in London, made out of these...


and I just HAD to make one myself!! So very exciting. I have the perfect yarn too, some sparkly acrylic yarn that was donated to me by Carolyn. It's actually very nice to knit with. The shorter projects are doing me good too :)

Here beginneth the photos of the goodies found in my Mums loft... this is Willow in one of the larger night dresses. They're a little long on her, and Nick isn't keen, but they'll be good in winter, and when we want to start ECing/pottying her at night.

here is Eve in her new Bob the Builder pyjamas... also a hand-me-down, but she LOVES them... I love the fact that she wants to wear them because she thinks Bob is cool (he fixes stuff), and hasn't been told that it's "only for boys". They are lovely pyjamas.

Some photos of us at the park. Willow is wearing a dress that used to be my sister Jasmines (mine is slightly bigger) and orginally it was a suit belonging to our mum. I love it. It's just the right length to cover her nappy/crotch area, and it looks cute. She's wearing a cut off vest underneath. I love my new pinking shears!! I haven't had to hem it at all, and there's no fraying!


Eve in her new dress that I bought in a fit of sympathy in the Sainsburys sale... Willow has just had a huge influx of dresses, and wears one most days now, but Eve doesn't have many... gah!

Willow showing me the way off the "beach" and up to the park.


I couldn't believe how many hoverflies were in this flower, so I took a photo. Amazing!!

Carrots! This is the first year in the three that I've been planting, that I've actually had anything to show for planting carrot seeds! These were a variety especially for pots and shallow beds, from the CBeebies Dig in campaign... so free :) I think they've done pretty well.

Willow likes to eat carrots :)

Eve helping me to wash the for the picnic later on (to dip in houmous of course!!)


The girls with my cousins 3 boys, I chose the photo with both my girls looking happy :)


Shoes. This is one of our problems in this house. Eve has too many pairs of shoes. It's not my fault, I don't really buy them!!! Nicks mum has a thing for shoes, and retail therapy is her thing. While she is waiting for her sister to be finished in a shop, she'll look at kiddie things, and often comes home with something for one or both of the girls. It's a bit crazy at times, but it saves us a lot of money....

I should probably mention that these are just the ones that fit her... if I got all her shoes out, we'd be in real trouble... can you imagine how many shoes we're going to have when there are 3 kids in the house and they are all wearing shoes? I am already dreading Willow having more than one pair (which reminds me, I must remind Nick to get Eves first pair of wellies out of the loft for her!!)

My other issue is that as kids growing up we only really had one pair of shoes... our school shoes... and as we got older a pair of deck shoes for messing about in. I have no real complaints about this, shoes are and were expensive, but I think it's a reason why I let this craziness continue. Two pairs of wellies are quite useful, but can anyone tell me why she came home from her holiday with her Daddy and Grandparents with 2 pairs of beach shoes?!?

This is quite an old photo, my last attempt at making wheat based cereal. I decided to add dried fruit, oats and rice pops to the mix. Turned out pretty good, except we decided we didn't like the dried pear, so we won't add that again...

The oats and rice pops really bulk it out with little work. I've bought some puffed millet to add to the next batch.



Sweet Peas. They're going crazy here. It's the first year I've bothered planting "pretty" rather than "useful" seeds, but I'm glad I did. They're really nice to see in the garden. I did plant some lettuce and salad leaves around them too, so the raised box wasn't entirely wasted in terms of production :)





Remember the bargain pasta maker I told you about? Well mum could hardly wait to get it out of the box, and make something...

We ended up making some lasagne sheets, and then making the lasagne from scratch for our tea. Poor mum didn't get to try it at all :s

Willow decided to help being as Eve was in bed so she was in charge...


Here are the sheets drying out...


We also made some spaghetti later on in the week... these photos are from Nicks iphone... I *did* ask him to take a photo of the spaghetti, but clearly he's confused about what spaghetti is... you can just about make out a few strands in the background.





and Nick came home from shopping with some ham ends... so we ended up making spaghetti carbonara... woooo...


Yes, there's an awful lot of sauce there, but I wasn't about to waste it, and the runner beans are from our garden, so all in all a very home made meal :) all we need now is chickens for the eggs, a pig for the ham, and a field to plant wheat... oh, and a decent wheat grinder :D


Willow eating the first harvest of corn on the cob. Very sweet, even though it's not quite ripe yet. She kept complaining about the skin sticking in her teeth, but didn't seem to want to stop eating it.
This is another of my old dresses. It is SO unbelieveably cute on her. I think it really brings out her blue eyes too!

I didn't realise Eve had her eyes closed in this photo...

this is both of them stood on Eves stepping stool. Willow is pretty much into everything right now. For a couple of weeks she was climbing onto the chairs, which got hairy enough... but was okay if we remembered to push them in... this week she's figured out she can pull them out herself!! I have to hide the stepping stool in the corner of the kitchen, and hope she doesn't figure out she can move that too, because try as I might to keep the kitchen clear and tidy, it really is constantly in use and it's never really 100% tidy and put away unless I make a HUGE effort in the evening. Then of course first thing in the morning it's a mess again after breakfast. I've decided it's not worth the effort. I have certain things I like to make sure are done before bed, like Willows high chair, and clearing the hob... but apart from that I can cope. Nick is great and normally empties the dishwasher in the morning while he's eating/ making sandwiches, and that helps a lot. I would still like to get rid of the microwave since I hardly use it, and it takes up a huge amount of space (plus all the negative health implications) it's switched off most of the time, but Nick won't let me dump the thing!!

A last cutie photo. Must try to get more photos of Eve... problem is she's generally moving so fast she comes out as a blur!!

OOOOOOHHHH! nudity warning!!! You might see naked breast in this next photo... don't look if you're afraid of that sort of thing. It's going to be happening a lot more often here... it's my public service for the week!!