Looking Forward ~ 2015

The year ahead looks like it is going to be a bit of a BIG year for us here in the Button Tree household ~ Firstly, three out of the four of us have fairly significant birthdays happening throughout the year ::

Next month I will be having a very BIG birthday which ends in a Zero!
In May my "small" boy will become a Teenager and turn Thirteen ::
In September my "little" girl will turn Sweet Sixteen::

Also in February we will be taking our first ever trip to the United States of America. My Dad has very kindly offered to take the four of us on a wonderful American Adventure to celebrate my BIG birthday. We will be going to Los Angeles for the first few days and then we will be taking a drive up to Las Vegas for the rest of the holiday. We only have five weeks to wait until we head off on our trip and to say that we are all very excited about it is a bit of an understatement!

I haven't really made any other plans for the rest of the year yet ~ other than all the usual plans that tend to be made at the beginning of each New Year. (And then never happen!). A couple of other bloggers posted this list of Things To Do in 2015 and it all does seem like pretty good advice to me ::

2015 To Do List

Eat Less,

Move More,

Buy Less,

Make more,

Stress Less, 

Laugh More, 

Feel Blessed,

Love More, 

Find a quiet spot every day

and breathe :O)x

The one thing that I definitely want to get around to doing this year is to be making more. I haven't really been spending a great deal of time on very many woolly activities for a while now ~ but this year I should hopefully have a bit more time on my hands to surround myself in huge piles of squishy yarn again. I have lots of crochet plans and yarny projects swirling around in my head and it's now up to me to make them happen!

I am absolutely bursting full of excitement and anticipation for the year ahead and am looking forward to seeing what 2015 holds for me and my little family :O)xx

2014 ~ Looking Back

It's that wonderful time of the blogging year that allows you to go through your archives and have a look back at all the lovely everyday things that might be otherwise might be forgotten if they hadn't been blogged about. Here is my yearly roundup for 2014.

January 2014 ~ I started the year by trying to get out and about a bit more in the fresh air and took some very nice, but bracing walks along one of our beautiful beaches.

January 2014 ~ Taking inspiration from my walks along our beautiful local coastline, I had a play about with some neutral, blue and green yarn and made some seaside coloured Granny Squares. These squares are destined to eventually become a seasidey blanket.

February 2014 ~ My birthday month :: My daughter made me a wonderful birthday cake ~ a lemon Victoria sponge with a lemony mousse filling and decorated with my favourite green and yellow jelly sweeties.

March 2014 ~ I enjoyed some more lovely springtime walks along the beach. Our town has two beaches and this one is the West Bay looking towards the harbour. 

April 2014 ~ we spent a week in Disneyland in Paris to celebrate my small boys birthday and had an absolutely fantastic time doing all the wonderful Disney rides and attractions.

May 2014 ~ whilst we were so close to the centre of Paris we spent one of the days seeing all the sights. We tried to cram in as many as we could and saw the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, the beautiful Louvre Pyramid, Notre Dame Cathedral and The Sacre Coeur to name but a few!  I absolutely love Paris ~ it's one of my very favourite cities ~ there is so much to see and definitely not enough time to see it all.

June 2014 ~ I added some more stripes to my Little Boy Blue Granny Stripe Blanket :: I am happy to report that I am now working on the edge of this blanket and will be doing a "Ta Dah" post later in the month. It's taken me a while but I'm nearly there!

July 2014 ~ We spent a very lovely week in the summer in the Weardale countryside visiting relatives who live in this beautiful old cottage which is right on the banks of the river Wear.

August 2014 ~ Every Wednesday in the Summertime my boy plays his bagpipes with the local pipe band for all the tourists visiting our seaside town. I never ever get tired of listening to the sound of the pipes and feel so proud of him when I watch him play.

September 2014 ~ September is a month of celebration in the Button Tree household as we got married on my daughter's first birthday ~ so her birthday is our anniversary too! I always get a beautiful bunch of pink lillies from my hubby to celebrate the special day. The smell of them always takes me straight back to the maternity ward. 

October 2014 ~ We made some very simple Halloween decorations from black card ~ this little mouse was one of my favourites.

November 2015 ~ More walking around our beautiful town ~ this time through the park on a very dreich wintery day.

December 2014 ~ my very first attempt at writing a crochet pattern. I made these pretty Flowery Coasters for my hyacinths to make their life on the window sill a little bit more comfortable. The pattern can be found on my blog and on Ravelry.

I hope that you enjoyed this little look back over my year ~ I will be back later on in the week with a little look forward.

Wishing you all a very Happy and Healthy 2015 ~ hope it's a good year for you all :O)x

Little Things

Little things that have made me happy this week ::

Thing One ~ watching my boy march at the front of the Remembrance Parade last Sunday playing his bagpipes.

He looked so smart in his uniform and I'm not ashamed to say that I had a little tear in my eye as I watched him march past. Such a Proud Mummy Moment!

Thing Two ~ unearthing my Little Boy Blue Granny Stripe (which has been on the go for much longer than I care to admit!), and adding a few more lovely blue stripes. It feels like it's just the right kind of weather now to be crocheting a blanket too. I think that I must be almost 3/4 of the way done with this blanket now and it is getting quite heavy. There is something quite comforting about feeling the weight of the blanket on your knee as you crochet, and I must say that it is doing a really good job of keeping me cosy as I crochet away adding stripes.

Thing Three ~ ordering some Rico Creative Cotton for my latest project from The Wool Warehouse and being delighted when I opened the parcel and found that it came all nicely packaged up in a beautiful little organza bag. I really didn't expect that ~ what a lovely thing to do!

Hoping you all have a very lovely weekend :O)xx

Smiley things :O)

Making me smile today are these gorgeous pink hyacinths that are sitting on my kitchen window sill just now ~ they were a very cheap buy from Ikea and more than worth the couple of pounds that I paid for them. They smell lovely and even standing washing the dishes doesn't seem so much of a chore when they look and smell so good! I can also see them everytime I walk up the garden path and they are a very welcoming sight indeed!

Also making me smile today is my new crochet project which I found the time to make a start on this weekend with my new stash of Rico Creative Cotton ~ I love the colours of this stuff so much ~ they are so bright and cheery and an absolute joy to work with ~ a little bit splitty sometimes but nothing too drastic! It just means that I have to be a bit more careful when I crochet along and take a little bit more care to put my hook in the exactly the right place making sure that I don't split the cotton! I have to admit that I do normally like to whizz along the rows as I crochet so it is making me stop and think about the process more than I usually do ~ but then again, that's no bad thing!!


I have had this particular project on my To Do List for ages now but I have never had the right yarn or colours to make it. As soon as I saw this yarn I thought to myself this is the one! And I can tell you that Rico Creative Cotton is very definitely the right yarn for the project ~ and although I'm not going to tell you what it is yet I'll leave you with a sneaky peek for the time being.

I hope you all have a lovely day and find plenty to make you smile too...........see you soon :O) xx