A cropping we shall go...

It's the first Saturday of the month - it's time for the Bromsgrove crop!

Off Helen and I trundled to enjoy a day of scrapping, laughing and festive merriment - complete with a visit from Father Christmas himself! Who invited us all to delve into his sack! Thanks for a lovely day Lib.

Mark and the girls had been to see Mark's mom, and they got me this sweet little robin - oh how well they know me...

4th December

Friday the 4th dawned cold and frosty, but treated me to this lovely view when I got to work.

After school a family trip to the German Markets took place. All of the cousins, plus Nanny, made their way into town, to enjoy the festive lights and delights.


A trip on the wheel was planned, but, due to technical problems, it wasn't turning. Phew...

We munched our way through hot pretzels, yummy German hot dogs and chillipoppers (chilli peppers stuffed with cream cheese, then deep fried).


The littlies got their adrenaline kicks from a slide down the helter skelter - complete with coconut mats.

We then meandered back through town, mooching in some of the shops, before making our way home to a welcome Friday night glass of wine...

3rd December

So, today I ended up with a surprise couple of hours at home, by myself. So, before I left work, I sorted myself a little to do list:

• fill advent calendars - check
• sort pressies in bedroom - check
• move wrapping downstairs
• sort craft table - check (although Charlie cat does think it's his bed!)
• tidy PTA paperwork away - check
• check girl's trees in loft (bought new earlier in year, and forgot what colour they were - black for Luu, white for Phoebe) - check
• check Christmas lights in loft - too high up, so left for another time. Aargh - running out of time, hope they all work before a panic/manic dash to the shops at the weekend
• take some photos for the blog, as home in the daylight - check
• update pressie lists in "my book" - check
• blog this list - check

Still have to go and collect the turkey for the school Christmas Fayre, but that won't be until later, so not really for this list.


I'm quite pleased with what I achieved with my little to-do list - one of many over the next few weeks, I'm sure.

2nd December

Luu's tree has now been finished. But no pics yet, I'll try to get one tomorrow.

A quick trip to the chocolate shop to stock up on humungous tins of chocs ready for Christmas - and some "emergency" chocolate, just for me... Also, some advent chocolates.

Then, this evening, a very unusual shoppping trip - the only presents bought? Presents for me...

December the First...

So, December is here, and the countdown to the most wonderful time of the year!

Phoebe made the tree, Luu's is still a "work in progress", at the moment.

Is it 25 days to the big day? Or 24? I think 24, but Phoebe has it at 25, so there we go.

A bit of Christmas shopping today, and some of it already wrapped! And the first Christmas card has gone in the post - but it has gone overseas...

made this weekend

This last weekend has been one of those quite ordinary weekends. You know, one where you don't really DO anything. And then I thought, actually, we did do quite a lot...

On Saturday we cleaned and tidied the house, set up the new laptop to our home network, set up the printer as a network printer, Phoebe did her gymnastics, Mark and I had our flu jabs, the lawn was mown, the girl's and I had our hair cut, we enjoyed a delicious home made chilli and the day was rounded off by watching Strictly - quite a lot for a quiet Saturday.

Sunday was a lazy day - all the housework had been done the day before. All we did was the weekly food shop, Mark did four hours of homework, the ironing basket was (nearly) cleared, we popped to a couple of garden centres looking for planters and looking at fish, cooked and consumed a Sunday Roast before sitting in front of the TV watching Doc Martin (oh, how I want to live in Cornwall, AND have a dog!), laughing our way through a re-run of Top Gear (the one with the old Leyland cars, that Helen and I saw them filming, but that's another story) and dreaming of going whale watching again while watching Last Chance to See..

Yep, just another average quiet weekend. Then I remembered the crafty, creative makes that had also made their way into the weekend.

Phoebe made banana cakes, using a banana loaf recipe that she'd made a couple of weeks ago.



While the house was being tidied on Saturday, Mark inadvertently threw away some very important bits of paper that were lying around on the computer table. These were lists of various important bits of info that Luu had been jotting down while surfing the net. So, pulling a few bits of card from my stash, I made her a book to keep those scraps of paper together and not looking like intended rubbish...

The cover was made from a quick card I had started to make...

The inside pages have been folded up to make pockets for those important bits of paper, and some blank cards left for new notes...

And some pictures added, well, just because... Then all put together using my Bind-It-All. It's already been put into use - I might just have to make some more...

Sunday morning saw me showing the girls how to make paper boats, the picture's at the top of this post. We used pages out of magazines headed for recycling - carefully choosing pages with good colour combinations. And very pretty they look - "sailing" along the window ledge in the conservatory.

So, there you go, a quiet weekend at our house...

Sarah x

and she's back...

Dear Blog,

I am so sorry I have neglected you. It has been many weeks since I visited you, but I thought of you often. And pondered our reunion many times. So, please accept my apologies, and welcome me back with open arms and mind.

your friend,
Sarah x


So, I've been an incredibly bad blogger. Also, didn't do too well with my Learn Something New Every Day. I think I knew it was going to be a commitment too far for September. And it turned out to be. Mark ended up juggling two jobs for the month, which meant home life got a bit hectic. But, he has now officially been made redundant, and has started his new job. So life is still busy - but in a different way. Also, I had to do the round of secondary schools with Phoebe, as her application had to be in at the end of September. One week we had seven schools with open nights! Needless to say, we didn't get to all of them! But, the form has been submitted - so, now we have to wait until March to find out where she'll be going next year. Loads more happened, but I won't get bogged down in that just now, better to just get this much posted, I think.

So, for something to look at, a couple of layouts that I did in September. No, fibbing, the last one was done at October's crop...



Sarah x