Paper Pom Poms

This weekend Lillia turns 6.  I can barely believe it has been almost six years since we were hurtled into the path of parenthood and our lives changed forever!

This year we decided to step away from the frightening practice of inviting the entire class (30 kids!!) to birthday parties and to allow her to choose just 6 friends to invite to a small party at our home.  As a result we are all rather looking forward to the big day on Saturday!  The theme for the party is to be "meadow"- think all things ladybird, toadstool, bunting and flowers! I have had much fun whipping up various little decorations (more on these later this week) but none so much fun as making these wonderul paper pom poms...

The instructions are on the Martha Stewart website, all you need is some tissue paper and some floristry wire, they are incredibly simple to make, yet SO effective don't you think?

I made a white one and a pink one before I completely ran out of tissue paper, so it'll be off to Hobbycraft for me tomorrow!  I think a few of these hung around the house and garden will be just beautiful.

 

Perfect for a spring-time birthday! And what good timing as this week Spring has really arrived, it is warm and sunny, I have washing drying in the garden. We've been able to start pottering around outside clearing up dead leaves and planting seeds, and generally enjoying some vitimin D from the sun! Phoebe is particularly enjoying being outdoors, she is enjoying playing on the slide and see-saw and picking up twigs and leaves...

My own handmade garden pot has been placed in its new home on the patio.  The green glaze on the main body of the pot is patchy as this is how it goes during firing, I love it as it makes it look mossy, like it has always been in the garden.  I just need to decide what to plant in it...

Strawberries perhaps?  Or sweet-peas? Hmmm.  A nice decision to need to make!

Hope you are enjoying the Springy weather wherever you are!

xx

London in the Spring

There is no denying it now - the air is noticably less nippy the mornings are lighter, the evenings slightly longer, there have been sunshiney skies and a few rain showers.  Spring has definitely arrived. 

I do love this time of year.  Birthdays galore, daffodils, freshness and the smell of wet mud. Luv-er-lee.

On Sunday we decided to take advantage of the Springy weather and took a trip up to Greenwich to walk around the park amidst the neat old buildings and shiny new cafes and museums.  The skies were blue, the air was fresh, we even walked about without our coats on!





Lillia loved being able to run about in the wide open spaces and play hide and seek amongst the trees...






Although suggesting we play hide and seek here was probably not one of our finest suggestions...




:)

We huffed and puffed our way up the steep hill to the observatory (you have to pay to get in these days!) and looked back down towards London...






It struck me as strange standing there so content with my little family, enjoying a relatively lazy day together, taking in the rather impressive view - when in fact I was looking towards the route of my car journey to work that causes me so much anguish.  The route that runs from the right by the Dome, past Canary Wharf and into the distance to the Gherkin.  I drive this three times a week before 7:30am, and back again in the afternoons.  It takes me away from my girls, my home and my sanity.  It was strange to look down on it from a distance and think about that.

After a pizza lunch we headed home, picking up some bridesmaid dresses along the way.  Lillia is to be a flower girl this year and I promised my friend I would take pictures of the various dresses she wanted her to try.  I took photos outside the front of the house, and they came out beautifully in the afternoon sun...





I can almost smell the roses and hear the clink of champagne glasses can't you? 

5 years ago today...

5 years ago today I was still in hospital in a daze wondering how on earth I would ever be able to look after the tiny helpless creature in my arms.  Well, it was a long road but somehow we have made it through five years without too much incident and we have a perfect, gorgeous, opinionated, clumsy, clever, beautiful, funny, quirky, firey, skinny, energetic, imaginative, sensitive, lovely 5-year-old girl to show for it.

She is in school today then afterwards we are treating her to afternoon tea at the Cadburys Cafe, I don't know who is more excited about this :)  As is our tradition I made her one of her presents.  This year she chose something out of my Curious Creatures for Immature Adults book.

A pretty floral print doll perhaps?  A cuddly princess?  A cute little animal? Nooo...

She chose "Mr Skelly", the cheese-eating, dancing skeleton!  Not one to disappoint my daughter I set to work last night and after three hours of sewing and stuffing, a bit of swearing, and two glasses of prosecco our very own Mr Skelly was finished...

Of all the things I have made her Mr Skelly was the one that has had the biggest reaction.  She came downstairs to see her pile of pressies with Mr Skelly on top and ran squealing across the living room yelling "Mr Skelly Mr Skelly!"  So it was well worth the effort :)

I have to say I do rather love him.  He is settling in nicely and is currently sat in the armchair opposite me reading Lillia's new copy of The BFG.

Now earlier this week I promised you a dancing skeleton and a cake the colour of a dead fish.  Having delivered on my first promise it is only fair I share with you the cake.  Before I do I must first explain.  I made a fabulous (and huge) two layer madeira cake sandwiched together with jam and buttercream.  I then went to ice it using ready-to-roll royal icing but failed miserably.  I just couldn't get it to look like anything other than a big white lump of wibbly wobbliness.  So hubby whipped up a ton of buttercream and we dyed it pink, not counting for the fact that buttercream is slightly yellow and therefore the whole thing went a kind of dead salmon colour...

Believe me it tasted divine...it just looked like salmon mousse.

I am now off to get ready for the next round of celebrations and chat to Mr Skelly about cheese.  Happy 5th birthday Lillia!  

March (and evil pom-poms)

"It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade."

Charles Dickens

Ok so I am a bit late with this one given that we are already half way through the month (where does my time go?)  March to me feels like the first serious step into the year.  Whereas January and February feel like dipping your toes into a cold pool, March is when you finally take the brave and bracing waist deep plunge.

This week we have been dusting off our gardening gloves and venturing out into the garden...

We've raked leaves, composted old dead plants, sifted through the piles of broken pots and tidied up ready for Spring.   We've also been planting cress seeds in various places for a school project to see where they will and won't grow...

...which is why I have to explain to visitors the old trainer in a container on my kitchen windowsill....

The things we do for our kids. Though I was intrigued to discover that the cress has grown in the inner part of the shoe as well, where there is no light!  I didn't know cress would do that. Strange plant.

Meanwhile, inside, my crochet hooks have been working hard on various projects, more of which I will share with you in the next few days.  Here is a wee sneak preview though of one of my latest creations, just finished...

What could it be??

Before this particular project I had considered zips to be my ultimate nemesis of crafting, but no!  It turns out that actually pom-poms are my Dr Evil...

They look innocent enough don't they?  Don't be fooled! They are little evil balls of fluffy deception. Grrr.

I cannot show you any more of this project as it is a surprise for a reader of this blog, all will be revealed once she receives it.

More from me later this week, in the meantime Happy March everyone :)

Happy Birthday hubby / It doesn't always go according to plan

I haven’t been able to post frequently lately as March and April is birthday season in the snipsnaphappy household. I think everyone I have ever met ever has a birthday in these two months. Well ok not everybody, but a lot of my immediate family and close friends. So there has been a lot of organising going on – arranging to meet up, buying gifts, having lunches, dinners, drinks, baking cakes, wrapping presents, making presents too of course.

At the same time my father went into hospital for an operation on his spine (he’s fine!) and we found out about Lillia’s primary school placement (she got our first choice!)  So things have been a little distracting.  Enough of the excuses though!  How about some cake?

 Thanks Nigella for this glorious old fashioned chocolate cake recipe!  I baked this for hubby's birthday (we won't say how old, just that he is older than me!) today and it is just divine.  Myum myum.

I also made him a "macho" handmade gift...

"Patch" is made entirely with scraps of organic cotton fabric.  I used a lovely pattern from DS Quilts and I chose dark colours, blues and greens etc. to make it a bit more butch!  Though I did manage to sneak in a little floral pink...

My finished dog isn't quite how it is supposed to be however.  There is supposed to be a strip of fabric runing between the two sides of patchwork but my rather questionable sewing skills left the dog a little wonky, a bit scary looking actually.  So I unpicked it and just sewed the two sides together for a less three-dimensional version!

And it came our rather well!  Not to plan but still really good.  Kind of like the story of me and hubby.  We've had to face things that we would never have planned for in a million years (hubby was diagnosed two years ago with the same autoimmune disease that I have had since I was 19 years old) but our life together is still really bloody good.

So happy birthday hubby, you always ask me if I am writing lengthy posts about how great you are..well you are! 

Oh, and I'm sorry about the girly wrapping paper, it's all I could find! 

xx

Second Toy Society drop!

We dropped our second toy for the Toy Society this morning! 

It was hard to get a decent photo as the light was pretty bad and we were in a rush to get away before we were spotted.

 We left Borisova on the back of the children's toilet cubicle in Bexleyheath mall in Kent, UK.

Bye bye Borisova!  I hope you find a good home...

Borisova

A week of creations

The power cable went on our laptop rendering it…well…powerless. This was, however, rather fortuitous as it forced me to stop gawping at the internet and get on with some proper creative time. We got the new cable yesterday so I am now reunited with blogger, my photos and the full excitement of t’internet once more, so here I am ready to share some of the products of my days away from the world wide web.

I have been having a lot of fun with felt...

I've been making some easter/spring-time themed items...

And basically have a lot of fun cracking on with making things...

I have also had time to make a start on a "manly" sewing project for hubby's birthday, I felt it was time he got something out of the hours I spend fussing about with fabrics...

I am rather excited about this particular project, but I can't reveal too much in case he checks in here and the surprise gets blown.  I just hope I can get this finished successfully and on time as it is a new technique to me, it requires lots of sewing in straight lines, which isn't my strong point!

I have also managed this week to tackle my first ever zip, very exciting!  I was rather pleased actually, I made a little zippered purse for Lillia...

On the outside I used a french quilting fabric that I picked up in Uzes last year, I love this fabric and I only have a small amount so I was happy to use it on something that will get played with every day.  For the lining I used organic cotton gingham from Gossypium...

I can't tell you how much I love this fabric, the colour is just lovely and it is so soft :)

I am hoping to able to get some good shots of finished things and more works in progress tomorrow when I have the time and the light.  All will be revealed soon enough!