2011 ~ looking back

2011 has certainly been a busy old year for us here in our little family!

There has been so much crammed into this past year, and I thought that it would be fun to look back over the Button Tree Crafts archives and relive some of the lovely memories that 2011 has created ~


January 2011 ~ I loved this beautiful pink hyacinth which brightened up my days and my kitchen::


February 2011 ~ Banana and chocolate muffins, made from my new Nigella recipe book ~ very yummy they were too!


March 2011 ~ Brightly coloured Rico creative cotton and a lovely new needlepoint kit to keep me busy::


May 2011 ~ We revisited Disneyland in Paris and had an absolutely wonderful time::


May 2011 ~ We also had a lovely day in Paris and saw all the famous sights::


June 2011 ~ After a very long wait, we finally sold our little house and moved back to my childhood hometown near the seaside::


July 2011 ~ we had some lovely summery days and spent lots of time exploring and rediscovering our wonderful new surroundings::

September 2011 ~ I finally finished my colourful Rico stripey peg bag::


October 2011 ~ We found this fabulous Halloween decoration in a little village just along the coast::


November 2011 ~ The autumn weather was glorious and I had some lovely autumny walks amongst all the crisp piles of leaves::


December 2011 ~ I made a start on a cozy blue Granny Striped blanket for my boy::

I had such fun looking back over my little blog ~ I have never done a looking back post before and it was really lovely reliving the bits that made 2011 such a special year for me and my family. I love the fact that blogging allows me to keep all these special memories and that they are there for my children to look back on when they are older. Thank you all so much for sharing this little journey back in time with me ~ I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!

Wishing you all a very Happy New Year when it comes ~ and I'll hopefully see you all next year :O)xx

Wishing you all ..........................

A very Merry Christmas!

Not long to go now ~ only 3 sleeps and I think I'm getting quite excited!

I am about as prepared as I'll ever be for the BIG day ~ the tree is up and decorated, the presents have been bought and wrapped (and have also been hidden well away from little people who have been doing an awful lot of looking this year!)

The only things that I have left to do is some (a lot!) cleaning and tidying and the dreaded food shopping. It's also our first Christmas in our new home so I want it to be extra special for everyone. I'm actually cooking the Christmas dinner for the first time in ages and I think I'm starting to have a little bit of a panic about it. But I'm quite sure that it will all go well on the day ~ here's hoping!

I'm really looking forward to getting cozy and snuggling up on the sofa with the children on Christmas eve to watch some Christmassy films. We always watch the same films on Christmas eve ~ The Polar Express and A Christmas Carol ~ and it has now become a little bit of a tradition in our house. There may also be a couple of glasses of mulled wine and some Christmas chocolatey goodies thrown in for good measure too!

Then it will be time for the stockings to be hung at the bottom of the beds and a glass of milk and some mince pies will be left for Santa, along with a nice juicy carrot for Rudolph.

I hope that Santa leaves you lots of lovely presents too and that you all have a very Happy Christmas and have all your Christmas wishes come true ~ whatever they may be! :O)xx

Giveaway Winner

Thank you all so much for the lovely comments that you sent me on my Three Years post ~ they were all very much appreciated and made me feel very happy that I am part of this lovely Bloggy World.

I must first start by saying that I am sorry that it has taken me quite this long to announce the winner, but we have had some most unwelcome visitors to stay in our house in the form of some very nasty cold bugs who have very definitely outstayed their welcome! Cold bugs, if you are listening to me ~ I think that you should pack up your little bags and go now!!

Anyway, lets get back to the Giveaway winner! As I haven't a clue how to operate one of those Random Number Generator Thingies I just put all of the names of you lovely people who were kind enough to leave me a comment into my Cath Kidston Christmas House tin, had a bit of a rummage around and picked out one little piece of paper. All very technical ~ which these days is about as technical as it get around here!!


The name on the piece of paper which was drawn out of the little Christmassy House was Victoria.

Congratulations to you Victoria ~ I will send you an e mail very soon so that I can get your posting info and I promise to try my very hardest to send your Giveaway pressie out to you in the next couple of days so that you get it before Christmas.

THANK YOU all so much again for your lovely comments ~ I only wish that I could send you all a little present.

Hope you have a lovely weekend :O)xx

Hooky Giveaway

Just a little reminder to everyone that my Giveaway is still open for comments. One of the prizes will be a copy of the lovely hooky book ~ Cute and Easy Crochet by Nicki Trench. I really love this book and there are lots of lovely hooky projects in it. I'm quite sure that there will also be something Christmassy and something chocolatey thrown in for good measure too!

All you have to do to be in with a chance of winning is to leave me a comment on either this post or my Three years post. I'll leave the Giveaway open until the end of November to give everyone plenty of time to enter. I hope that you all enjoy your weekend and I'll see you all sometime next week :O)x

Three Years

Today it is my 3rd Blogiversary!

That's three whole years of blogging! Three whole years since I first dipped my foot tentatively into the lovely bloggy world! Who would have thought it? I didn't really think that anybody would be that interested in my witterings or my creations either, but there must be a few of you out there as I still have followers and still get left some lovely comments too.

I absolutely love being part of Blogland ~ it is a truly creative and inspirational place. I love that I can take little snippets of my daily life and that it will be there in years to come as a very special record to look back on. I love that there are like minded souls out there who like to talk about yarn and hooky stuff ~ although I have to admit that my husband thinks it's all a little bit mad! But that's men for you!

To celebrate this special day, there is of course cake in the form of some yummy cupcakes ~ made yesterday with the help of two smallish volunteers. Funnily enough they never volunteer to help with the washing up afterwards though!

Finally ~ to say a very big THANK YOU to all you lovely people who take time of out of your day to read my blog I am going to have a little Giveaway. I'm not quite sure yet what this Giveaway will be ~ and I'm not promising that it will be something handmade by me, but it will definitely be something nice and possibly hooky related. There may even be something chocolatey thrown in too!

All you have to do to be in with a chance of winning is to leave me a comment on this post ~ I'll leave it open until the end of November so that it gives you all plenty time to be included.

I'm off now to put the kettle on and have myself some cake and tea ~ see you all very soon :O)xx

Remembering ~ 11.11.11

Blue Stripes

This week I am absolutely loving my new Blue Stripey wellies from Joules. They have Green and Blue Stripes with a jaunty little orange stripe up the back of the boot and the very delightful name of Water Fall ~ my all time favourite Watery colours.


Just right for late Autumny walks through the lovely crisp, scrunchy leaves and more than likely for stamping through puddles and trudging through snow later on in the year! This year I am determined to be prepared for the wet and wintery weather when it arrives.


Loving my Blue Stripey socks too! Just right for feet that need to stay warm and dry inside the Blue Stripey Wellies out in the cold and also for sitting cosily on the settee with a cup of tea and some hooky stripes.


Also loving my Blue Granny Stripes ~ although progress has not been as quick as I would have liked and these particular Granny Stripes are at the stage of looking very scarf like at the moment! And although a scarf would come in very handy right now, these stripes are destined to be a snuggly Blue Stripey Granny blanket just right for keeping warm and cosy on a wintery evening.


I'm off now to try and hook up a few more Blue Stripes ~ Enjoy your weekend and I'll see you all very soon :O)xx

Halloween

Every Friday afternoon I drive to the next village along the coast to take my daughter to her dancing class. Last Friday I was driving along, with both kids in the back of the car ~ chatting/squabbling as usual ~ when all I heard was screeches of delight and excited cries of LOOK! and Pleeeeease Mum can we stop? I couldn't imagine for a minute what all the fuss was about, but I promptly did as I was told and this is what we saw...........


An absolutely fabulous Halloween decoration which was outside someone's house! Isn't it super? It must of taken ages to put it all together and all the little details are really lovely. I particularly love the stripey black and purple tights that these three lovely ladies are wearing on their dingly, dangly, witchy legs.

My kids, like most kids, love everything Halloweeny! They love all the dressing up and all the gory and yucky stuff ~ the more gory the better in their eyes!

But, we don't let them go Trick or Treating (or Trickle Treating as it is known in our house) as it's something we just don't feel comfortable with. Instead, we let them do the dressing up bit and then Daddy plays Spooky Halloween Hide and Seek with them in the house with all the lights off. We also play some of the more traditional Halloween games ~ such as dooking/bobbing for apples, which is a lot of fun and we always end up getting soaking wet too!


Later on this evening we will all get settled down in front of the telly to watch a spooky Halloween film ~ this years choice is the not so scary Disney film Spooky Buddies and as always there will be a plentiful supply of Halloween treats to tuck into whilst watching.

I hope that you all enjoy your Halloween activities ~ whatever they may be ~ and I will hopefully see you all very soon :O)x

Smiley things :O)

Making me smile today is the progress that I have been making with my blue stripey blanket.


I have been whizzing back and forward along these stripey rows making lots of treble clusters of cozy blue loveliness. I love how easy this project is ~ easy, mindless crochet that can be picked up and put down without too much thinking about. And these days that's exactly the sort of crocheting that I need.

Smiley thing number two is this lovely new crochet book which just happened to pop through my door this week ~ Cute and Easy Crochet by Nicki Trench. Do you see that EASY word cropping up again? I bought this book from The Book People for just £3.99 ~ can you believe it? I had to do a double take for it to sink in. There was really no reason why I couldn't have this book ~ It just had to be mine! What an absolute bargain! This really is a super book and it is jam packed with lots of lovely projects which are just begging to be made ~ the only problem that I am going to have is deciding what to actually make first.

Also making me smile today is my pretty new year planner. I have been particularly scatterbrained over the past few weeks. Forgetting about meetings for work, missing dental appointments and my worst scatterbrained moment of all was turning up a week early for parent's night at my little boy's school!

Up until now my usual haphazzard method is to scribble things down on little pieces of paper and then end up hunting frantically for them in one of my many piles! So, in an attempt to get myself a bit more organised ~ and to save my poor children squirming with embarrassment at their mother ~ I am going to try and write down appointments as soon as I get them. This year planner is great because it has a side for me and a side for the rest of the family per page ~ there really is no excuse now is there? Wish me (and my children) luck!

I hope that you find lots to be smiley about today too! See you all soon :O)xx

Granny Stripes

At last!

I have finally managed to get around to making a start on a Granny Stripe blanket. I have been wanting to crochet one of these lovelies ever since they started doing the rounds of Blogland last year, but have just never had the time up until now. But here I am jumping on the Granny Stripe bandwagon and I have to say that I am really looking forward to the ride.

The foundation chain has to be done in multiples of three ~ so I sat yesterday and crocheted a chain whilst counting 123,123,123 in my head. In the absence of a size 5 hook I remembered to crochet my chain loosely on my trusty and very favourite size 4 in order to make crocheting the first row as easy as possible.
I am making this Granny Stripe for my little boy and want it to be around about the single bed size when finished. So, I carried on counting 123, 123, 123 in my head until I thought the chain looked the right length and then ran up stairs with hook and chain in hand and measured it against the bed. That's about as technical as I get these days!

This Boy Granny Stripe is going to be made using Stylecraft Special DK in various shades of blue, with perhaps a few other colours thrown in for good measure. But I've not quite decided whether or not I'll deviate from the Blueness or not yet!


These are the colours that I have chosen so far ~
Aster ~ Royal ~ Midnight ~ Denim ~ Cloud Blue ~ Turquoise ~ Sherbet ~ Bluebell.
I am really excited about this blanket and now that I have finished the tricksy foundation row I am raring to go and can't wait to go whizzing along the rows with ease ~ making lots of lovely Blue treble clusters.

Right! I'm off now to put the kettle on for a cuppa and then get settled for a few rows of Granny Stripes :O)xx

Side View

This is the view from our side gate immediately to the left our new house.


If you walk along the pathway and turn right up the adjoining field this is the view that you get! This hilly structure is North Berwick Law ~ which is a volcanic plug rising 615 feet above sea level.


Just after we moved to this beautiful town, we decided to make a day of it and climb all the way up to the top ~ we rounded up the kids and a couple extra ~ and headed off.


The climb starts of at a reasonable pace but it does become very steep indeed and as we got closer to the top I was practically crawling on my hands and knees and could have done with some extra oxygen too. I am soooooooooooo unfit! It really doesn't help when you have a small boy racing all the way up and the fact that you are trying to keep up with him in the fear that he might slip and fall all the way down! Boys!!


Here is the boy in question actually sitting still long enough to have his picture taken!


The effort of all that climbing is definitely rewarded when you get to the top as the panoramic views across East Lothian and the Firth of Forth are absolutely amazing ~ you can see for miles and miles in all directions. We are really lucky in this little part of the world as we are surrounded by countryside,the sea and some very beautiful beaches that stretch for miles along the East Lothian coast.


After a much needed rest at the top ~ for us oldies to catch our breath ~ we had a much more leisurely walk back down and then it was back home for a hard earned cup of tea and big slice of cake :O)xx

Wash Day Blues

And greens ~ and pinks ~ and reds ~ and yellows and others too!

A few weeks back ~ whilst I was working my way through the usual daily mountain of washing ~ I felt that I needed something to take the dreariness out of doing the laundry.

Something to make the whole chore a little bit more pleasurable ~ so what better way to cheer myself up than a lovely new colourful crocheted peg bag.


I took some of my inspiration from Ravelry, but basically my colourful new peg bag is just a stripey rectangle shaped piece of crochet made from Rico Creative Cotton.


I have to say that I'm still not quite sure how I feel about the Rico Cotton, it can sometimes be a bit splitty to work with, and it does sort of look a little like beautifully coloured string. However ~ even after saying that ~ I do kind of quite like the overall finished effect that it gives to the crochet fabric.

Anyway ~ let's get back to the peg bag.

First of all I started by crocheting a rectangle with a hand sized slot about three quarters of the way down. I then folded the finished rectangle over and threaded a wooden hanger through one of the middle stitches at the top. All that was left for me to do after that was to crochet the sides and the bottom closed. I also decided to pretty it up a little bit by adding a bobbly edging and.........Ta Dah!


There we have it!


A colourful little crochet peg bag all ready to brighten up my Wash Day Blues and because I now have a lovely new brightly coloured peg bag I may just need to go out and buy myself to some new brightly coloured pegs to go with it! :O) xx

edited to add :: I have been asked to do a tutorial for my peg bag and I will try to do this asap for those of you that would like to give it a go :O)xx

Bloggy Break

Goodness me!

That was a much longer bloggy break than even I anticipated having ~ but I'm really happy to be back in the land of Blog again. I'm hoping that I'll still have some of my lovely readers left! And although I haven't actually been blogging myself I have still been checking in regularly with everyone's blogs and have enjoyed reading about all your Summer Holiday exploits.


During the long bloggy break the BIG MOVE has finally taken place and after a very long eighteen months our little house was sold in June. We have now taken up residence in this modest three bed roomed semi detached house in my childhood hometown ~ which is by the seaside ~ and I am absolutely thrilled to be back home. Back near the beach and more importantly just a short two minute walk from my Mum's house ~ what could be better?


We have already spent a fair bit of time walking on the beach looking for treasures, paddling in the sea and taking in all the wonderful seasidey views ~ It makes me feel so lucky to be able to have my children spend some of their childhood by the seaside and experience the same pleasures that I had growing up in such a wonderful place.


As I've been so busy with the new house there hasn't been much time to spend on any hooky stuff ~ although I have been tying up some loose ends on my Rico Creative Cotton project ~ which I hope to be able to share with you sometime soon.


It really is good to be back! I'm off now to do a very quick food shop before heading off on the school run to collect a small boy. I hope that you all have a fabby weekend and I'll see you all sometime next week :O)x

France ~ Day trip to Paris

Whilst we were at Disneyland, we decided that as we were so close to the centre of Paris it seemed a bit silly not to venture into the capital and see some of the sights that make this city so famous. We were not disappointed either ~ I don't think that I've ever been in such a beautiful city! It was absolutely breathtaking! You could spend a lifetime there and still not manage to see everything it has to offer!

As we had such a short time in the city we decided to go on an organised tour so that we could cram in as much sightseeing as possible. We boarded a very comfortable tour bus in the morning and were shown around the city in comfort with a very informative commentary. We drove past all the important sights ~

Up the Champs-Elysees to see the Arc de Triomphe ::


and past the Louvre where the painting of the Mona Lisa is kept ::


stopped to have our photo taken in front of the giant pyramid ::

We then changed our mode of transport for a Bateaux Parisiene for a leisurely sail up the river Seine, this time getting a different view of the landmarks as we passed by them on the water.


Notre Dame Cathedral ::


Pont Neuf ~ which is the oldest bridge in Paris ::


and of course the very famous Eiffel Tower ::

After our river trip, we disembarked and crossed over the road on foot to the Eiffel Tower. This was what we had all been waiting for! We were fast-tracked through so there was no long queue to stand in either. It was all very exciting!


This was the view we had whilst waiting for the lift ~ which was a double decker glass fronted contraption. It sort of went diagonally up the first bit and then straightened itself up to get to the first and second floors.



The views of Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower were stunning::

Once we had taken in all the views from the top of the Eiffel Tower we came down and sat in a little park at the bottom of it and had cafe au lait and ice cream which was a lovely way to finish off our day trip.

Paris truly is very beautiful and is a place which we will very definitely be revisiting again ~ hopefully sometime soon! :O)xx