Enjoy the little things!

 

Enjoy the little things for one day you may look back and find they were the big things!

 

One of my favourite quotes! It's been in my head a lot this past week, I've been forced to realise just how quickly time is passing and how quickly our babies are growing up.  Particularly, my littlest baby!! Just going from milestone to milestone, from one first to the next.  It seems like no time ago at all that we were taking him home from hospital and having his first night at home, first bath, meeting family for the first time!

 

Then, in the blink of an eye, we were doing first spoon-feed! 

In the past week alone we have had HP'S first night in his own room, his first tooth and he has rolled over for the first time!!  Understandably, a little much for any mother to take!  While, I love to see him doing so well and achieving all these little goals, ultimately it means he his growing up and a little to fast for my liking. 

Just look at that cheeky little face, devouring the strawberries!                 

Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do to slow time down, so I have came to the conclusion that all we can do is try our best to live in the moment, and truly experience out lives as they are happening.  This is no easy feat, most of the time I'm so caught up with the daily routine of cleaning, cooking, feeding, school runs etc. to truly enjoy the little things.  So this summer the plan is to take life at a slower pace and enjoy as many moments as I can, and hopefully give the illusion that time is going even just a little bit slower.  

All of this philosophical thinking brings to mind another wee poem that I like very much and should really try to live by, so I will leave u with that!

I hope my children look back on today

 and see a mum who had time to play! 

There will be years for cleaning and cooking,

but children grow up while were not looking!

Anonymous.

 

 

Fun with the Fairy's

 

A few week's ago we had a lovely wee day out with my sister and her family at Slieve Gullion Forest Park.  Apparently the forest park has been there for ages, but had just recently been part of an art project which has completely refurbished the park.  It's in a beautiful area known as the Ring of Gullion, an area of 'outstanding natural beauty'  just over the boarder into the South of Ireland, near Newry.  We had heard a lot of good things about the park over the last while and decided to see what it was all about for ourselves!  I have to say I was very glad we did!  There is so much to do and see and the best part is it's all completely free!!  Thankfully we left home early and arrived before the crowd's so the massive play park was fairly empty and the kids had a good time running about and exploring.

Ben was the only one who stood still long enough to have his picture taken, which is a rarity because he usually hate's having the camera pointed anywhere near his direction.  It was pretty overcast in the morning, but that didn't bother the kids and it did brighten up as the day went on!

 

We found our way through the maze to the wishing chair, where each of the children, and a few of the adults as well, made a wish.  I did laugh when NJ's turn came, he squished his eye's up real tight and said 'I wish for Lightening McQueen'.  When he opened his eye's he couldn't understand why Lightening McQueen wasn't there.  The innocence of children is a truly wonderful thing. 

 

 

 

After a long play in the park we went for much needed refreshments, in the form of the biggest ice-cream cones the van had, and then it was off to find the fairy's.  Before starting on the walk through the forest, you can read the story of the giant, witch and fairy's who live there, then your off into The Giant's Lair, and you better hope you don't wake the giant on your way round.

 

 

Through the red door and the beautiful wicker tunnel into the fairy village!!

 

 

The little fairy house's were built so skilfully into the beautiful natural surroundings they looked like they had always been there!

 

They were so cleverly made and named.  There is only a few pictures of them here, but there were at least 60 little houses, all with different names.  The fairy tale book shop was BT's favourite.

These ones were my favourite, the stepping stones winding their way up the tree trunk, with little fairy houses every so often and a wee bridge between the tree's, you can just imagine the little fairy's flying about from house to house!

 

As we leave the fairy village behind we upon a few larger houses belonging to the trolls of the area!

 

 

My lovely family.

 

 

BT listening at the door to see if anyone is home, thankfully there wasn't!

 
Then we came to the part of the forest where the giant lives, we had to be extra quiet here so we didn't wake him up!  This is the kids sitting on the giant's dinner table.

 

 

The Witch!

 

 

HP was very comfy and enjoyed his first time in the baby sling, in fact he slept most of the way and missed the fairy's, the giant and the witch.  He woke just in time for the Giant's tea cups.

 

 

 

 



 
Absolutely magical place for adults and children.  Our visit here was well timed as BT and I were just finished the first book in Enid Blyton's Faraway Tree collection.  If you havn't read the books with your little ones, or even just for yourself, you definitely should, they are fantastic.  We are now half way through the second book in the series and we both love it.  I can't wait to enjoy it with my other two when they get a little older!

We will definitely have another trip to Slieve Gullion over the summer holidays, fantastic day out and loads of lovely memories.



Back Again

I find it really hard to think about how long it's been since I last posted.  I really just completely lost touch with everything there for a while, it's been such a long time since I even dropped in on some of my favourite blogs.  Since I was last here we have been through Autumn and now almost the whole of Winter.  Thankfully it's almost Spring and I can't wait for it,  I absolutely detest Winter.  It's the dullness I hate most of all, I just feel so much better about everything when it's nice and bright outside.  I've sort of hibernated my way through Winter and now I'm just starting to waked up again to greet the coming of Spring.

It has, however, been very busy here in my little world this past few months.  We have had Halloween, Christmas, lot's of cold family outing's, enough sickness to last me a life time (although, thankfully nothing to serious, just a month's worth of chickenpox), and lots and lots of growing up.

They really are growing up much too fast.  My oldest boy is over half way through his second and last year in  nursery,  this morning when he told me I could only kiss him on the cheek on his way out to school, I was devastated.  Last week my youngest little one started a little toddle and talk group, he goes for two hours two morning's a week for two month's.  On his first morning I was all prepared for a hard time when it came to leaving him, but to my utter surprise he just toddled on in not a bother to him.  I have to admit I was a little devastated about this as well.  It's just the sudden realisation that they are not so little any more and don't need me as much as they once did.  As mother's we expend so much time and energy teaching our children to be independent, why then does it come as such a shock to us when they begin to grow into confident independent children?

As well as all the family things that have been going on, I have found time to continue crafting.  I really don't think anything could stop me, it's the only thing that keeps me sane in this crazy world.  My very first craft fair, which i had talked about before, has long been and gone.  I was really busy getting things ready for it, but in the end it didn't go as well as I had hoped.  But nevertheless, I am not put off, I have another one coming up in April for Easter and am busy preparing for that.

After the disaster of the craft fair I was a little disappointed and I would be lying if I said my confidence didn't take a bit of a battering, but I busied myself getting ready for Christmas and home-made a lot of the gifts for my family.  One of which was the rag doll in the picture above, she is called Penny and thankfully is now much loved by my little niece.  There is nothing like the pleasure and delight a child get's from something you have made, to give you a little boost in confidence.  After Christmas I slowed down a little bit, and took some time to complete some projects that had been waiting for a while to have their finishing touches, and now I am once again in full swing and am very excited about some of the projects I have going on at the minute.  I promise more info. on those soon, but for now I am glad to be back!!

Granny Sitting and Crochet

We have had a pretty uneventful week spent in my Mum and Dad's house looking after my Granny.  Granny was largely independent until March this year, Mother's Day to be exact, when she had a really nasty fall down the stair's in her own house.  Leaving her with a good few broken bones and plenty of bumps and bruises.  She went to stay with Mum for a while and has just never really gotten well enough to go home again, although to be honest it's a bit of a relief to all of us that she is there, at least we don't have to worry about her being on her own quite so much.  This past week Mum and Dad have been on holiday in Benidorm (lucky them) so I was volunteered to move in, along with all of my clan, to look after Granny.  I absolutely love my Granny to bit's, I spent a lot of my childhood with her and my Grandad, who passed away when I was nine, and I have the greatest of respect for her and the older generation in general.  They have gone through more in their live's than we ever could, we have it so easy now and we don't even realize it.  All that aside, it really was a long hard week, I think Granny get's frustrated that she can't do all the thing's she used to and she hate's relying on other people to do thing's for her, so it was very hard work at time's.  It was nice, however, to spend some time with Granny, in this crazy life we now all live in everything just gets a bit hectic and thing's like spending and hour just listening to Granny's old stories doesn't happen as often as you would like.

I did spend my time wisely though, between school run's, cooking, cleaning, playing, etc. I did manage a bit of crochet. I think lately I have been sidetracked from my main crafting passion, crochet.  I do enjoy sewing as well, but i think because i'm still learning it can be stressful at time's, so this week i needed to relax and that's exactly what i did.  Although, as anyone out there who crochet's will know, you are constantly learning new stitches and technique's, crochet is just so comfortable for me, it's like my safe place.  When life get's stress full i pick up a hook!!  I thought I would try and get a little bit of stock together for the Christmas Craft Fair and so I spent the week doing small thing's that I think people will like.

This is the second owl bag I have made and i'm really loving them, I have a real 'thing' for owl's at the moment, and woodland thing's in general.  This bag and the other one I made have already been claimed by my sister-in-law for Christmas present's, so i'll have to make some more for the fair.  I'm debating whether to line them with material or not, i'm really not sure what i should charge for them either, is £10 too much?  If I line them should I charge more?  That's the part i'm not looking forward to at all, pricing the product's.  I want to make it worth my while, but I don't want to over charge and not sell anything.

The phone sock's are perhaps my favorite product of the week.  Again, it's the woodland thing.  I came up with the pattern for the ladybird as I went along and I made the owl one after seeing something similar on pintrest, but thankfully I did write the pattern's down so I will be able to make more.  Which is just as well really, because I've decided to keep Mr Owl for myself.

                                            

I got the pattern for the rose corsage via pintrest, here, and added some pretty button's to the middle, tidied up the back with felt and added a broach pin.  I did have a lovely orange one as well, but my sister swiped it, ah well, that's what family's for, or so she tell's me anyway.

I did the same with the triple layer flower's, added a button, felted the back and added a pin, I really do like these because the color combination's are endless and I am a girl who like's her color.  I will be making more of these as well, you can find the pattern here.

The little hair clip's are really simple, I used Lucy's pattern for Teeny Tiny Flower's, again added a button (everything is made better with a button) and sewed them onto a hair clip.  I also had more of these, but they seem to have disappeared as well.

Lastly, I tried my hand at a bit of felt sewing and made some Christmas decoration's.  I thought I really should do some as it is a Christmas fair.  My sister is usually the one to do the felt thing's, but her stuff is just so lovely, she inspired me to have a go and this is what I came up with.  I'm quite pleased with them and may just have to do some for my own tree this year.

So that's my week in crochet and felt,  I hope you like my little makes, thank's for dropping in, see you again soon.

The little things!

I love that wee saying ' always remember the little things,  because one day you will look back and realize they were the big things'.  Forgive me if I haven't got that exactly right, but you know what I mean. Generally, everyday we take so much for granted,  my biggest problem is not taking the time to step back and look at what's going on around me.  Like being too busy tidying the toys to watch how the kids are playing. 

                           

Like when did my little man learn how to be a doctor, honestly the last time I looked he was building blocks and knocking them down again.  Now all of a sudden there he is playing pretend doctors with a teddy bear.  It was so cute I almost cried, he did it all himself.  Well, alright, i did help him with the blanket, but he was keeping a real close eye on me the whole time to make sure I did it right.

I really enjoyed watching him.  Another thing I love to watch is my boy's interacting, particularly with their daddy.  I firmly believe that little boy's have a very special bond with their daddy's, I suppose it's much the same as little girl's with their mummy, but I don't think i'll ever get to experience that.  They just want to be like him so much, my boy's just love to spend one-on-one time with their daddy, and thankfully their daddy is more than willing to spend time with them, most of the time anyway. 

This is our big boy baking with daddy, they made some lovely soda bread.  Speaking of which....

was absolutely delicious with my home-made sweet potato, carrot and coriander soup.  I got the recipe here, but I left out the ginger, because i'm not a big fan of ginger, it was really lovely.  I love soup at this time of year, it's just so warming and home-made soup is something I just took for granted as a child.  I usually make soup on a Friday, to make use of any left over vegetable's before they go bad and also so there is something in the fridge which is quick and easy to get to the table.  I'll be doing this one again, and i'll be convincing my husband to make the soda bread every week too.

Another favorite from this time of year is chestnut's, or conker's as we call them here.  I have very fond memories of going out with my brothers and sister looking for chestnuts, the boy's used to take them home, screw a hole through the middle, string them on a rope and play 'conker's' with their friends.  Did anyone else play? or is it something from this part of the world?  They would take it in turn's to hit each other's conker's and the aim was to break the other one, the conker that ended the game intact won.  This is the first year we have taken our boy's out looking for chestnut's and they really enjoyed it.

We have yet to teach them how to play conker's, but i'm sure my husband will get round to it.

Lastly fitting in some time for some sewing, this time a small doll's quilt, I will show the doll next time.

This is the first quilt i have made,  i really enjoyed making it and it will not be my last.  I hope someday the when she is all grown up, the little girl who is getting this little quilt will look back on it with some big fond memories as well.

Thank's for stopping by today, hope to see you again soon xx.