The unexpected walk

  
I’ve been full of cold for the past couple of days and stuck indoors. This morning I really needed to get outside for some fresh air, so me & Baby J decided to pop down to our local urban farm. We parked up, got the buggy out, but instead of going to the farm, I headed in the opposite direction. There’s a windmill not far from the farm and I’ve never been. The sun was shining so I thought, what better time to go and explore?

  
Within minutes we were in woodland. I had no idea this was even here.

  
Once we’d made our way through the woods, we found ourselves on higher ground and what seemed like a whole other place.

   
   
I had no idea where I was going but I was enjoying the walk! I kept on for another five minutes or so, went across a metal bridge then turned and saw this..

  
Quite impressive! I know I was expecting to see a windmill but it’s not everyday you see one up close.

  
I let Baby J out of the buggy for a little bit, he loves his freedom.

   
 
There were some amazing views from up here, right across to Liverpool..

   
 
And turn around, you get to see out to sea..

  
There was another building up here that I’d never heard of..

  
Apparently it’s called Proudman Oceanographic laboratory. What a mouthful! It’s currently at risk of being demolished as it has no occupiers and costs too much to maintain. It’ll be a shame if it does go, it’s a great piece of architecture.

   
    
 
We found a shorter way back to the car, and walking over the bumpy terrain actually sent Baby J to sleep instead of giving him whiplash! It was a lovely walk, maybe next time we can make it to the farm too!

Happy blanket progress

Hello fellow crafters! How are we all? Good I hope? Well I’ve been busy here working on my happy blanket and I must say its a pleasure. It’s working up really fast, it won’t be long I don’t think until it’s finished. It’s only been just over two weeks since I started it I think. It came out in the car again with me yesterday and it even made a quick visit into the bathroom while Baby J was having his shower.

  
I sat last night and did a couple more rows while watching TV. It was only this morning when I went to do another that I noticed this…

  
Can you spot the very stupid mistake?? I only did one cluster of tr in the corner instead of two like the others. Ooh I was so annoyed with myself. I couldn’t just ignore it though, I had to undo 3/4’s of that row and redo it. It would spoil the whole blanket if I didn’t.

  
 That’s about an hours work there. I tried to keep my work in this row quite tight as I didn’t want to get to the very end of it to find I didn’t have enough wool. I needn’t have worried though, I ended up with more left over than I had with one less cluster. How on earth, I’ll never know!

  
It’s getting quite a bulky little project to move about now. Not long to go!!!!

  
I’m feeling a little under the weather tonight so I think that calls for early pj’s, ovaltine & chocolate with a happy blanket warming my lap!

Thanks for taking the time to read my little blog, I love writing it and hope everyone enjoys reading it. 

Bye for now xxx

Big boys bedroom

We’ve made a few changes in Baby J’s bedroom, what with him officially becoming a toddler and everything. He has the littlest room in the house but it’s such a lovely, light room. It was always screaming out to be a gorgeous nursery. It has a nautical theme which I love (obviously as I chose it!) but I do hope he does too. 

  
The first thing we had to do was turn his cot into a toddler bed. I thought it would be really difficult coping with the change but he seems to be dealing with it very well. We put the bed guard on so he doesn’t roll out in his sleep. So far so good. 

  
This is his changing table/chest of drawers. It’s perfect for our needs especially with the handy shelf above to store all the essentials. The mirror was an auction buy a few years back, I think it looks rather like a porthole on a ship. The bunting I made before he was born. I still have some extra fabric left over, I must find something to make with it.

  
  
Here’s the mod podge project I did a blog post about a while back. I must do some more mod podging soon, it was great fun.

  
A few accessories to add that nautical feel!!

   
    
 
  
I had this idea a while ago of making a type of sail to hang across the ceiling. I imagined it with glow in the dark stars and moons shining through. When my mum visited last month, we were shopping for fabric and I finally found the perfect material for the sail. It needed to be really light, almost like parachute fabric. 

  
After cutting out and hemming, I had to thread cord along the two lengths.

  
Whatever you do, don’t lose it half way through..

  
I bought a load of glow in the dark stars, moons & planets from Amazon.

  
Once I finally got the sail up and the stars and moons sprinkled out, I must say, I was a little disappointed. You know how you get an image in your mind of how something will look, but it just doesn’t quite match up? It’s okay, just not exactly what I imagined it would be.

   
   
Overall, I love his little nautical room to bits. I hope it will do him for the next few years until he decides he wants something more grown up.

V xxx

Pamper Pantry reminiscing

As some of you already know, I used to run a little business from home called The Pamper Pantry. I made handmade soaps, bath bombs, melts & basically lovely smelling goodies to pamper yourself with. I REALLY miss it, a lot. I miss the busyness of it, the constant ideas flying round inside my head, the demand for creations that I had made from scratch. I’m certainly not someone who craves attention but I did enjoy the compliments people paid and the whole buzz it created when I’d designed a new product.

Every girl needs some pampering and preening every so often. For me it’s been far too long so I decided the other night to put my crochet hook down and lock myself in the bathroom for some me time.

I ran myself a hot bath and plonked one of these little treats in.

  

These have to be one of my favourite things to have come out of the pantry. Cocoa & Shea butter bath melts. I have about 8 left and they’ve been sitting in my fridge in a sealed container for almost 2 years! I’m going to be very sad when they’re all gone.

I also made myself up a little batch of organic French green clay face mask.

  
I used to sell this and it went like hot cakes. It’s such good stuff, I didn’t want to stop using it.

  
I’d given my eyebrows a good tidy earlier in the day, in the mirror with the good light.

I was going through my old Facebook page to retrieve some pictures to show you. I got quite emotional! Silly I know. Here’s some of my favourite ones…

  
Peppermint foot scrub, I still have some of this left!

   
 
Soaps for men, these smelt like Paco Rabanne’s ‘One Million ‘. One of my bestsellers.

   
    
    
 
Some of the kids soaps, these were great fun to make.

   
 
Christmas puddings!

   
    
    
    
   
Some of the soap bars I created, they smelt gorgeous.

   
 
Bath bombs..

   
 
Unscented bath melts for little ones.

   
   
Vintage style Wedding favours x

It’s been almost 2 years now since I shut the pantry door. I love being creative, especially when it can earn you a bit of pocket money too. I hope one day soon I can come up with another venture. In the meantime though, I shall enjoy the pampering and just relax…..

  
Ps. This isn’t me or my bathtub unfortunately!!

One week on..

Well it’s been one week since my spot of guilty crochet. Do you think I’ve managed to steal some more time to hook my heart out?? 

Oh yeah! I can’t seem to put this one down. What a difference it makes when you have a pick-up-quick project. By that I mean one that you can just pick up and do for a couple of minutes or a couple of hours. A nice, easy one that you can sort of do without thinking too hard or concentrating too much.

After finishing all four granny squares, seven rows in each, I crocheted them together and dealt with all those horrible ends. 

  
Then I got cracking with the rows to go around the centre.

  
Even Honey the chicken was impressed!

   
   
So this is it a few days ago with 6 rows, one of each colour, around the centre squares. I’m loving the colours together, it’s a real happy blanket.

I even managed a bit of sunny doorstep hooky. The weather was gorgeous & the littlest person was sleeping so me & my yarn hopped onto the doorstep to make a sweet blanket.

   
 
This is a nice mobile project so I brought it into the car today, along with a packed lunch to sit and do whilst waiting an hour for the eldest child. Baby J slept too which was perfect timing. I was rather impressed with my perfect planning today, I must try it more often.

I wonder how long it’ll be before I’ve finished this happy blanket?

Happy hooking 😉

Ferry cross the Mersey

This post is a little bit late, but I thought I’d share a little day drip we went on in the summer holidays. Yep, you’ve guessed it, we went on the very iconic, Ferry across the River Mersey.

The ferry terminal is only a ten minute drive from our house. It was a beautiful day for it, bright blue skies and lots of white, fluffy clouds.

You can see right across to the Liverpool skyline. It doesn’t look too far at all does it?

There was a big cruise liner there that day. We’ve had a lot of cruise ships here this year. A few months ago, Cunard celebrated its 175th anniversary. There was a huge event which brought the three queens (Queen Elizabeth, Queen Victoria & Queen Mary 2) all together for the first time in history to the waterfront of their spiritual home. They sailed into port in formation and performed a water ballet together. Thousands of people lined the banks of the Mersey to see this once in a lifetime spectacle.

Inside the terminal building was a little indoor ‘River Mersey’with model boats. Baby J was quite mesmerised.

This is the walkway down to board the ferry.

And here comes our ferry, The Royal Iris. There was much excitement from all the children waiting.

These buildings here are known as the three graces. There’s the Royal Liver building on the left, then the Cunard building and then the Port of Liverpool building.

It was a lovely way to spend a couple of hours, and they even play the famous ‘Ferry cross the Mersey’ by Gerry and the Pacemakers as you come into port!

Thanks for reading xx

Guilty crochet

I don’t expect I’m alone in this. Please tell me it’s not just me. Does anyone else feel oh so guilty, taking a bit of precious time out during the day to crochet, craft or create? I do, lots, which means I hardly ever do it. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to craft for a living? That’s not easy these days. As my job is to stay home and look after the house and children, it really is 24/7. There is no 9 to 5, shift patterns or days off. I’m on duty permanently. There’s always plenty of jobs needing to be done, and once they’re done, it’s time to start all over again. On a normal day, I get roughly 2 hours while baby J naps, in which to do things I can’t do with him around. Things like ironing, cleaning the chickens out, doing dishes and general cleaning and tidying, which there is always heaps of with a big house full of 6 humans, 2 dogs & 11 chickens.

Today, I decided I really, really wanted to do some crochet. Everything else could just wait an hour. I set myself up in the dining room, put some classical music on and made a cup of green tea.

  
I’ve been excited to start this project, it’s been sitting on top of my bookcase in it’s pretty pink bag for about 6 weeks or more.

I was quite happy with the start I’d made in my little bit of stolen time.

   
 
I’m justifying today’s lack of housework as this project is sadly not for me. It’s going to be a present for my lovely nan for Christmas. 

Yes, I said the ‘C’ word.

Christmas.

Christmas, Christmas, Christmas!

Yes, I’ve started thinking about it already.

Only 3 pay days to go you know!!

Playhouse curtains

After making the cushions for my living room, my mum and I got cracking straight away with a very special project, cute curtains for the playhouse. I had a small amount of fabric left over from when I did the letters for baby j’s bedroom wall back in March. I’ve tried & failed miserably at putting a link here to the post about it but if you want to look in the archives, it’s called Mod Podge Project No 1. I really must spend a bit of time learning how to use WordPress better! Anyway, the fabric was perfect for the nautical, beach hut theme going on in the playhouse but there was only enough for a border on the bottom of each curtain. Trying to find a coordinating plain colour was way harder than it should have been, but we got there in the end.

  
As we were tight for time before my mum had to leave, she did quite a bit of the work, making sure I’d done my fair share though so that I knew exactly what I was doing. There are 4 windows in the playhouse so we needed eight little curtains all together. Quite a lot of work!

  
After I’d dropped my mum at the train station, I got home, made myself a nice cup of green tea and got my head around finishing off the curtains.

  
   
    
 
We made the border section into a pocket then attached it to the bottom of the main fabric. The top was measured, pinned and a channel sewn across for the wire to go through.

   
 
They were then pressed and ready for hanging.

  
I was really pleased with them but felt they needed a little tweak. So I delved into the basement to find my stash of bakers twine.

  
Perfect! Easy-peasy tie backs in 3 minutes.

   
   
Ta-dah! What do you think? I absolutely love it! I think I might actually slip out here with a glass of wine and some crochet next time the kids are doing my head in!

  
Thanks for stopping by, lovely to see you.

Vicki xxx