Hello! Still here....!

Wow! I have huge amounts of time to make up for.

Well, it turns out, contrary to popular belief (well, my belief anyway), I am not, nor will I ever be, super woman. Having a baby at home, a 5 year old with school, swimming and dance classes to get to, running the toddler group, being active in the village events, and then deciding to take a degree from home, well, something had to give. Unfortunately for me, it was my hobbies.

So, since I last posted, I have only crafted for neccessity (much to my sadness) and obviously haven't had any time to catch up in blogland. I did think about still looking at the blogs I usually follow, but I didn't want to torture myself ;)

Anyway, I may not be able to pop in quite as often as I would like, but I'm going to promise myself at least a little time every month to say hi here. It should be easier now that one of my courses is reaching the end.

So, over the next few posts (as and when I get some blogland time) I'll show you what crafty things I've been up to.

And how is my small person and little wish? Growing way to fast!

Photograph courtesy of Peter Weston

And my first bit of crafting to show you:

This is Zachary in his Bunny costume for the Village May Fair fancy dress competition.

I used a long sleeved white vest, some white trousers with feet in, then made the body part and bonnet. These were made from a fleece blanket along the same lines as the animal costumes I made for Alexandra's nursery. Zack is NOT a fan of hats, and it would seem adding ears to them makes it worse. Every time I put the bonnet on, he yaned on the ears until he pulled it off. So, solution? Make him a carrot from felt to distract him. Seemed to work. The whole thing was very last minute (the night before), but he won first prize in his category, under 2's.

Right, back to student type work :)

Seeing Spots

So the small person needed spotty clothes for "wear what you like day" at school. No problem I thought, until I checked through her clothes the night before and could only find one measly spotty t-shirt. We obviously don't do spots in the house.

So I went through her wardrobe and pulled out her denim dress, picked some felt the same colour as the spots on the (only) spotty t-shirt and sat in bed watching Twin Peaks sewing spots onto her dress.

The spots were in aid of Children in Need and Pudsey Bear. The children were also encouraged to take their own bears into school.

I cut 3 different sized cirlces from 3 different colour felts. The smallest size were sewn on with a cross, the middle size were sewn on with a back stitch and the largest were sewn on with a running stitch.

Taking school up on the bring your bear invitation, Bessy Bear had another outing this time in one of Zack's vests that I drew a Pudsey on with fabric pens. Alex seems to be happy anyway. Hopefully no more emergency crafting for me for a while!

Walnut Santas

A whole tray of walnut Santas ready for the toddler group children to decorate at Toddler Group today (yes, I'm finally returning after 5 weeks away!).

Only problem is I can't find my hot glue gun anywhere :( I have a funny feeling the PVA I've had to use instead to fix the pom pom heads to the walnuts, are going to need reinforcing once the kids have finished decorating them.

They should look lovely hanging on the Toddler Group tree for the church Christmas Tree Festival next month. (so long as their heads don't fall off!)

Pow!

Mission invitation blitz - complete!

And here they are :) I've included a list of superheroes and villains inside to give people more options. There aren't as many well know female characters and as most of the kids on the small person's invitation list are of the girly variety, I thought the mum's could do with a hand.

The "Pow!" is made from foam sheets (but I ran out of the light blue and yellow, so had to make the dark blue and white ones too to make up the numbers). The "Pow!" is then matted on black card and fixed to the front of the card. The text is Comic Sans font printed onto white card.

Quite pleased they're done and mostly delivered (apart from dance class friends and a couple of family and family friends ones) and most importantly the small person was happy.

Now I need to get to work on their party bags/favours, but I may leave that until tomorrow or the next day. I have a rotten cold and my head feels like it's full of cotton wool. Definitely lacking in motivation today.

Babymoon over

And so, back to life and living it.

This week my mission is to finish all of Alexandra's party invitations and get them sent. She's having a superhero fancy dress party. I have fabric all lined up for the construction of her costume, but you'll just have to wait and see.....

I made and sent some lovely (even if I do say so myself) birth notices with combined thank yous. Much easier than doing both seperate.

I have made a start on a set of tea towels to be gifted to my Nan for Christmas. The fact that I'm only on 'Monday' and there are 7 days in a week is something I'm choosing to ignore.

I made a very quick (Saturday 30th October 9pm) Halloween costume for the small person. She was a very scary vampire (who desperately needed a trip to the dentist for some braces!). Zack reused an old baygrow of Alexandra's. He was the cutest little Devil Trick or Treating for miles :D.

We invited Alexandra's friend, Catrin the Pirate to visit for Halloween. They decorated witches hats, ate pizza and garlic bread and some of my home made pumpkin soup, all whilst Winnie the Pooh's Heffalump Halloween played in the background. Then we all went trick or treating.

Trick or Treating isn't always very well received over here in the UK, so we usually ask a few houses earlier in the week if they mind us trick or treating their house. Mostly family, a few friendly neighbours, then if we see any other houses thathave pumpkins or decorations outside as we pass, we call on them too. We had a lovely time and Alexandra will require no more sweets buying for her until Halloween 2012!

We also had a short trip to Glasgow whilst Mr Bogert was on paternity leave. He had a photography course to attend (you can see more about it on his blog, here), so he took us with him. We had a lovely big room and the small person was super excited by the double sofa bed that she slept in. Highlight of the trip (apart from spending time with my favourite people and not have to think about housework or cooking)? Across the road from our hotel window was a fabric store called "Mandors". I am in love! There isn't a single fabric I could think of that they don't have. Not only would they have the fabric, they'd have it in about 6 different colours or more! Why does Glasgow have to be so far away!? Chances of convincing Mr Bogert to make a 5 hour journey for a fabric shopping trip? Not going to happen no matter how much he claims to love me.

For Bonfire night we were invited to the house of a couple Mr Bogert recently took wedding photographs for and has become friendly with. They really are a lovely couple. We had a great time. Zack slept through the whole thing (even the fireworks!), small person was well behaved and we had a nice chat with people and plenty of yummy food. There was a bonfire (this is a big garden by the way!) and Alexandra got to try her first sparkler and light a sky lantern with daddy to let fly away. I was also bought some lovely lillies by the couple. Luckily for us, they mentioned there might be another invite for Christmas.......

I still haven't managed to return to toddler group. I took 4 weeks away and intended to return today, but the small person wasn't very well in the night. We'll try again next week! I have still been preparing crafts for them though.

For halloween they made bunjee bats and pumpkin masks.

For Bonfire night they made glitter and glue firework pictures.

Today they have been making poppies for remembrance day.

I'm also feeling quite proud of myself that I managed to complete and hand in my first assignment on my course. I don't think my mark will be fantastic (hoping it's passable though) but just the action of getting on with it and having it complete makes me feel "yes, I can do this".

And finally, I suppose you're all wondering about the smallest person? He's a perfect angel (biased, I know) and adjusting to coping with 2 children really hasn't been too bad. If I feed him at midnight he only wakes around 3/4ish and then wakes again when it's time to get Alexandra up for school anyway. He's teething already but hasn't been any bother with it. He's just very contented, and that's exactly how I feel right now. My kids, my husband, my course, my routine, my life. I feel happy :)

(Wouldn't say no to winning the Euromillions though!)

Welcome to the World Little Wish!

Our Little Wish arrived safely on Saturday 9th October at 11:46am, weighing in at a healthy and hefty 9lbs 5 1/2 ozs.

And here he is, our beautiful baby boy, Zachary Robert. Zack for short.

1 week from "B" day

One week today and out Little Wish is due to arrive. I'm not holding out any great hopes though for a baby with a good sense of time keeping. In fact, I've booked for the electrician to come and do some work in our bathroom :)

Where have I been? Well after our little get away to the seaside (which was very nice, and small person loved), we returned to no internet service. It took a while to sort it out (and according to the engineer isn't likely to last) so no way to post or to check up on the blogs I read! Not a happy bunny :( Once we did finally get the internet back, I was in full "school mum" mode. I think I've just about got the hang of that now.

It was really hectic to be honest. Not only has she just started to school, but she's just started swimming lessons on a Wednesday at 4pm and dancing lessons on Monday at 4pm, and Saturday at 9:15am. The induction period was really long and drawn out too.

She was so ready for school, she really didn't need the slow introduction (I can see why some children who are younger or haven't been to nursery would though). The first week she had a home visit from her teacher (who seems lovely by the way) on the Wednesday, then she started school Thursday but only 9am until 11:30am. We had to take her and pick her up. Great, but I don't drive and we live in a village several miles from the school. Even if I hadn't been heavily pregnant, walking really wasn't going to be an option.

The following week was the same times (9am-11:30am) but we said we really needed to send her on the school bus that's provided, which they agreed to. So small person got to sit in the classroom waiting for the other children to arrive 8:40am. She actually quite liked this because she had free use of all the toys and drawing things :) Obviously I still had to collect her so either relying on lifts to get me there and bringing her back on the village bus, or catching the village bus at 9:40am (the only one that would get me there in time for 11:30) and bringing her back the same way were the only ways to do it.

The following week was 9am - 2pm for them to see what it's like to stay for lunch (but only packed lunch). Again we sent her on the school bus in the morning, but I arranged with the teacher for me to collect Alexandra 15/20mins early so that I could get the 1:55pm bus back. If we missed it, we would be stuck until the next bus at 5pm. First day, we missed it. Yay.

Anyway, induction is finally over. She started full time school (and is now allowed hot dinners) as of this week. She can now go to school and come home on the school bus. I still have to collect her from school on Mondays and Wednesdays for dancing and swimming, but that I can manage.

She is absolutely loving school and keeps coming home with well done stickers or telling me how many house points she's had. Her reading is coming along nicely too.

Other than that what have I been up to?

- Returned to toddler group for the new school year
- Started getting to grips with my Open University course materials (course officially starts this
Saturday)
- Watched Mr Bogert tear the bathroom apart. At the moment we have no bath, but it's getting
there
- Stayed in whilst we have some lovely new double glazed windows and front door fitted
(courtesy of Mr Bogert's mum)
- Tidied the house (with much help from my friend Kate) ready for the impending arrival
- Still prepping craft projects for toddler group so that when I'm away the crafty standards don't go down hill (!)
- Making the small person a smart wool coat for when the weather's a wee bit chillier
- Crocheted endless numbers of hair bows in a rainbow of colours in the hope I'll restock my
Folksy shop soon
- Started making a few presents for Christmas

I still have so much to do!