I fortnight

Well Burnice was very keen to see what I fortnight brought so I felt I should oblige! Don't hold your breath though...it has been a horrendously busy couple of weeks so I fortnight had to be squeezed in amongst school sports days and Fathers Day! Well we began with iced cakes..."what is so special about that?" I hear you ask. These were iced with the strongest mint icing EVER! Talk about clear the sinuses...

Ice cream had to be on the menu and it was on special offer too.

One night we had an Indian; curry, naan, rice and yogurt.

Then on Father's Day we were going to have lunch in a pub in nearby Isfield BUT Ken had to start work at 2pm so instead we had breakfast at Bill's in Lewes and drove through Isfield on the way home!
So what is so special about Isfield then you are now asking...there is a steam railway there, only a short one but still rather a nice one. And if you are a morbid sort..it is where that chap, Chenerey-Wickens, who murdered his wife, used to work as a volunteer!

A shot of the trains.For father's Day we got Ken this amazing mug made by a company called "ishey"Don't you love it?

So hereby ends "I fortnight. A bit brief this one...will try to do better next fortnight.

More of 2009 scrapbook

Now this just isn't seasonal is it? Especially with the lovely weather we have been having lately! But as you can tell, I am nearing the end of my 2009 scrapbook and this was the huge snowfall we had that all managed to disappear about 2 days before Christmas! It really is not easy getting paper to go with wintery, snowy photos at this time of year! But in the Winter I hadn't got the pictures printed! Still this is what I came up with, after a scrapbooking desert! It shows Jasper sledging down a hill near us and having a rather spectacular crash!
There will be more snowy pics to follow but meanwhile I am in the middle of a week from hell....more later.

Thoughts of early summer...

Finally I get some free moments to craft. The weather has been lovely and almost summer-like...well that is before last week when it was blowing a gale all week! But last weekend I re-discovered this lovely quote which seemed to sum up how I was feeling then about June!
Needless to say I don't feel quite so positive now! The BG is distress inks washed over the page in patches then overstamped with the same inks in a variety of flowers. I then filled in the gaps with different shades and added a tiny bit of stickles in red and yellow and clear and added the words....let's hope this heralds the dawn of a bit more crafting time!

A fortnight of H-ness

Hmm well this was the hardest one for a while. There are tons of places around us beginning with H but this fortnight we seem to have had no time to do anything, as our weekends have been busy doing other things like PGL and Guide Camp....which don't begin with H!! Still we managed some housework

using Henry Hoover.

One day we ate a packet of Haribo

and as the weather has been very wet we have been wearing our matching hats.


Ken took an arty pic of his, Jasper and Eliza's hands,

we had haddock fish cakes for tea,and we went to Heathfield. Now we do go there every day to school but this was at half term to look in charity shops for fabric for Jess to make Joseph's Technicolour Dreamcoat..(another story) This is a shot of Heathfield High Street, as you can see, totally devoid of anything of interest, although there is a lovely deli, some nice antiquey places and good charity shops!

Right at the beginning of H fortnight, Jasper and Eliza did go to Haidee's new house for a house-warming and played with her new hamster, Hazel, but I forgot to take my camera, so I shall go and visit them again to take some sneaky pics to pop in when I make this into an album! I don't think that will be cheating do you?

Art Journal

So for the second of my arty musings.....I did this about 2 weeks ago but I have been so busy that I hadn't even had time to photograph it, let alone blog it! My 5th washing machine broke down and was just 2 years and 10 months old. How do I know that so precisely? Well because 2 hours after the new one was delivered, we found a 5 year warrenty for the old one! Now we NEVER buy extended warrenties so quite why we did on that occasion I will never know! But it was no good, they would not let us claim retrospectivly, and nor will they refund any of the outstanding premium. This page was what I did to stop myself ranting and raging and it had a very theraputic effect!
Lots of symbolism here for me...blue to reflect my mood; chalked squares to represent kitchen tiles; circles on the white to represent the laundry bubbles; the drawings are all the white goods that I have had that have packed up recently and I think the money symbols are self explanatory!
Thankfully I am feeling a lot chirpier now!

G fortnight

G fortnight just happened really without too much planning! First of all I went to Gilly's house for a day of scrapbooking.

Eliza did some gardening, planting various flower seeds.

Of course there was the guinea pigs...the other one wouldn't come out for his pic!

Eliza baked some gingerbread men that the others (except Jess) decorated in a variety of "interesting" ways! This is a Grandad one..
and this is a gobbled one!

We are in the process of building some veg boxes, but first we have had to get out this stump so we let the girls out to grub in the roots and loosen it!

Later on in the week I had Guides and we were practising putting up the old Icelandic tents ready for camp.Ken managed to get the stump out and finish the garden all ready for growing.

And finally he moved his ghastly gnome to keep an eye on things! I HATE this gnome but he insists on keeping it as his parents bought it as a joke when they knew how much I hated them!

Another Quilt!

Wow what a lovely weekend I have had! Gilly has just had a significant birthday and so a few of us went to spend Sunday and Monday with her, crafting. I hadn't got around to getting any scrapbooking papers and I am up to date with my CJs so I dedcided to take all the bits I needed to make Eliza a denim quilt. After she saw Jess's one she declared that she wanted a "tidy" one so I had to start collecting more old jeans again! I had a fair few bits left over but I got a pair from a lady at work, a pair I sneaked from Ken's "comfy" pile and Eliza has just grown out of a pair too. That made me just 3 squares short but after a rummage in the fabric I just collected from a Freecycler, I found some new denim for my last 3 squares! Jess had all the fancy squares already in her quilt so first of all I had to decorate some squares.....

These buttons were in a tin from my Grandad who was a tailor, and are a mixture of plastic and mother of pearl ones,

this fleece was from freecycle,

Gilly gave me these red buttons,

and this white fur. She also gave me a few bits of fabric and I added ribbon and ric rac to a few patches too.

Then I just stitched it all together, seams inside this time, and assembled it in the same way as Jess's, again backed with a red and white spotty blanket from Primark!

She liked it!!!!