Well it has been some time since my last blog entrant, infact I haven't written anything since my husband got back from Africa, but now the camera has been brought home from work and I've started making some Christmas decorations that my friend and I are hoping to sell at a local Christmas craft fair so I thought I should make an entrant before I lose all interest in carrying it on. Don't worry I haven't lost interest in all your blogs as your lives are a lot more interesting and you're all a lot better both at blogging and crafting than myself  but give me time. So here are the gingerbread men I have been making and today I took them into work to show my crafting buddy and I got some positive feedback and somebody even asked me if I could make them some. My kids love them and even my husband thinks they're good.

I started this a month ago and are only now getting around to posting it. All my gingerbread men have been sold with orders for another dozen which I really must do this week. I've also made some little pin houses and some other Christmas decorations.

My hope of making all my friends and relatives a homemade present is still on the cards, although I haven't actually started as yet. The fact that money is extremely tight, as in we have none and will be living on our overdraft this month means I don't really have much choice.

The kids have been off school for three days last week and the two older ones are off again today. They have extremely enjoyed the snow, as have I, although a lot of people are fed up with it now and the dirty heaps from people's drives don't look very appealing.

This week I have been painting our newly fitted bathroom and the blind has actually been put up after not having one up for eight months. The tiles and shower are still to be fitted when money's less tight but it looks ten times better than the original pink and grey bathroom. Photos to be added at a later date.

Still waiting

Well my husband was supposed to return home from Africa yesterday but it has been delayed till Saturday. After having two people threaten him for money he has decided not to risk walking down certain streets to restaurants after dark. This means I have to wait even longer to get my camera back. I went out on Saturday to buy a compact, thinking I knew which one to buy but went to another shop first to see what they had and ended up confused again so came home with nothing, in order to do more research. Hence I'll have to wait to show some of the things I have bought but now I can add some lovely books I am waiting on. In the meantime I have been painting my kitchen and some shelves to put up, reading more of your lovely blogs, something I think I'll have to stop doing for a while because it takes up too much time, there are sooo many, time I should be using to decorate my house and make the things I got my material for, the reason I started this blog in the first place, but what can I say, I spend too much time thinking and dreaming instead of doing!

I have been looking and dreaming about one day living in something like this:

or here

with a kitchen like this

and a garden like this

or this

I wish!!!

All these photos are from http://www.findaproperty.com/ 

Maybe

One day!!

Oh and can I say THANKYOU to my first follower over the Atlantic in 'cosylittlehouse'. I hope I soon have some more visitors. In the meantime I shall carry on enjoying reading your blogs.

Garden visitors

 I am not too great with a camera, I can't really be bothered with all the applications to try and make them better. My husband is passionate about photography and has recently got back into it after a number of years away. Because of this most photos on the blog will be ones that I have taken from various cameras and so, not that great. There may, however be the odd good one, of which case will have no doubt been taken by my husband.  Here are a few of my photos of visitors to my garden.

If you look closely you can see a fox running away from the tenfoot. Probably the same fox that killed 5 of my guinea pigs over a year time period. Sadly they have all now died, guinea pigs that is, and been replaced by two lovely rabbits, thunder and lightning.

A young wood pigeon decided to shelter from the rain in my bottle bin.

Two of my last remaining guineas.

Lightning

Thunder

And here are some of the things that grow

My garden

Although I live on a very busy road in the city I am fortunate enough to have a decent size garden. I think it was the garden that made me want to buy the house initially. When we first came to see the house the agent couldn't open the back door into the garden so we had to see it from the bedroom window. The owners had left the house empty for some time after renting it for a while, but decided, after a bad experience with tenants, to sell the house instead. What greeted us was a lawn full of very long grass, over a foot high and a glorious 100 year old, huge apple tree as well as various other trees, a few too many considering the width of the garden is only 15 feet and about 120 feet long. When we eventually manged to see the garden properly we discovered another far smaller eating apple tree, the big one being a cooking apple, although sweeter than your usual Granny Smiths you get from the supermarket, and a delightful plum tree. There were also three domed pine trees, I think Monteray pine. We cut down two of these firs soon after we moved in to let more light into the back part of the garden and have recently cut down the last. I had waited and waited, trimming off the bottom branches each year, because I really didn't want to chop down a healthy growing tree, but it grew at an alarming rate each year, blocking out light and all the needles would fall off into my pond. So sadly we made the decision to cut it down before it became unmanageable. My neighbours were grateful too.

The apples are falling off because of the wind. A lot of them are still quite small and probably very sour but I shall use some of the ones that haven't got too bruised from falling from a height.

This is the eating apple tree but are very small and a lot of the time don't taste that nice so we usually leave them for the birds. It has done well this year though and earlier on I had a taste of one that had dropped off. It was quite nice, sweet and crunchy. The problem is with all fruit trees, if you wait till the fruit drops off they get bruised when they hit the floor or else a lot of them look like another creature has got there first and if I see a hole I don't like to eat it. You have to be really careful with the plums because on numerous occassions after cutting one in half I have found a caterpiller has got there first.

I shall have to get a move on and pick these before they go over  ripe and rot. My mum's plum tree has snapped this year and is now trailing on the ground. They lost half of it a few years ago and now the other half has broken. There are new shoots further down the trunk though so if they cut it off it should be able to start growing again. I have a second plum tree growing near the first that has self seeded and I even have some plums growing from that even though it's just shot up this year.

Not a pretty part of the garden but it will one day be used to grow vegetables. Each year it gets cleared only for it to be covered in tree and bush cuttings the following year. Other than the nettles that keep growing it is actually quite clear at the moment as we've had a couple of fires to try and get rid of a lot of the stuff. When my husband eventually gets round to making the raised beds out of the wood he brought home two years ago I think the soil will be really good to mix in with the soil I buy for the beds. This part of the garden, as with all scruffy bits of people's gardens is a haven for insects and frogs.

I seem to have had more bees than butterflies this year. Last year I had masses of butterflies.

Well I think that will do for now, I love gardens and wildlife so expect more of this in the future.

Holiday in Cornwall

We have recently been on holiday to Cornwall. It is the place of my birth and even though we moved when I was four we spent many happy holidays there each summer visiting my grandparents, aunty and uncle and cousins. The last time I was there it was for my grans funeral over 15 years ago. Sadly I haven't been back since, mainly because it is so far away, so I thought it would be nice to take my own children. Unfortunately we never got the glorious hot weather I was used to as a child but we went to some lovely places and the children did manage to get in the sea, even if it was a bit cold.

They even managed to be the only ones to strip off on a little cove called 'Crackington Haven' and get wet after the sun had gone down.

My eldest, however wasn't as daring!

We went to a place called Boscastle,

and a lovely little harbour named 'Port Isaac'

Sadly, my hubby's excitement with taking photos, in what he thought was the best place we had been to, was cut short because we had already spent the whole day in Padstow, only stopping off here on our way back to the caravan, and all of us, except him, had splitting headaches and so there was a lot of moaning and groaning going on. We shall one day hopefully go back and experience the food in one of the rustic pubs.

We visited a place called 'Tintagel' which gave the kids yet another opportunity to skim stones into the sea and run away from the waves coming in and where they could also do a bit of climbing, both up the steep hill to the ruined castle and on big rocks.

We did get one lovely day when the sun was out and we actually got burnt. I kept telling my boys to keep their t-shirts on so their back wouldn't burn but as always they would not listen and so the two youngest ones had to suffer the consequences for the rest of the week. Maybe, just maybe, one day they will realise that I'm telling them for their own good and listen to me. Anyway they enjoyed their one day of sand, sea and surf.

Well that was a peek into our holiday. I hope I didn't bore you too much, that is if anyone actually finds this blog and reads it but even if they don't it gives me something to do.

GOODNIGHT