Family Celebrations

Hello ...........I'm back!

I haven't disappeared of the face of the earth at all!! I didn't quite mean to be away from Blogland for quite so long, but sometimes life has a habit of taking over and some things just have to take a bit of a back seat for a while! I am so glad to be back though and am looking forward to catching up with you all again.

It is a day for celebrations in our household today!

My little girl is eleven today ~ I really can't quite believe that it is eleven years since she was born and whisked away into intensive care in the Special Care Baby Unit. I didn't even dare to dream about birthdays then and just took each day as it came ~ but here we are celebrating her eleventh birthday. The time seems to go by so very, very fast once you have children. One minute they are tiny and helpless babies and the next they are nearly all grown up!

It is also our wedding anniversary today ~ I have been married to my wonderful husband for TEN whole years. We decided all those years ago that it would be a very lovely idea to get married and have our daughter christened on her first birthday. A little bit unconventional perhaps, but it makes today a very special day indeed!


Here we are looking very young indeed outside the beautiful church in Dirleton, East Lothian.

We took the children and some of their friends out yesterday for a Birthday Day Out ~ swimming and a Chinese Buffet lunch. Then it was back home for some Happy Birthday chocolate cake and a bit of a play ~ which involved much charging about the house, with lots of LOUD noise going on too!!

The celebrations today should hopefully be a much quieter affair and it will be just the four of us enjoying a civilised Birthday/Anniversary dinner. Although, at the moment I'm not quite sure what that dinner will be ~ because as usual I am Mrs Very Unorganised and have yet to go shopping for the necessary ingredients! :O) xx

Back to school

My two small people went back to school today after a what seemed to be a very quick seven week Summer Holiday ~ I'm not quite sure where the time went to, but it certainly zoomed by at a very alarming rate indeed!

We were all up bright and breezy this morning, trying very hard to get back into some sort of routine. Breakfast, teeth cleaned, little faces washed, new clothes to put on, packed lunches made and new school bags packed.


Off they both trotted, looking very happy and cheery in their brand new school uniforms and their beautifully shiny new black school shoes ~ which will no doubt be scuffed to death by the end of the first day back! Thank Goodness for Scuff Coat is all that I can say about that!!

I delivered them safely to school this morning and am now sitting with a well earned cup of tea and enjoying the peace and quiet ~ Ahhhh...........Bliss!! There's nothing quite like coming home from the school run and being able to do whatever YOU want for a couple of hours. No constant cries of MUM!, or I'M BORED!! to be heard at all. It goes without saying that I will miss them terribly ~ but I can't tell you how nice it is to have some ME time back again.

I know that most of you still have a few weeks of your Summer Holidays to go and hope that you all have a very lovely time :O) xx

Holidays ahead

I'm so excited!

I've got 3 whole weeks of time off work ahead of me ~ and after the last few weeks that I've had at work ~ I must say that I really am in desperate need of them!

I usually only work a few hours a week, but have been covering for holidays and other absences and as a result I have clocked up an extra 40 hours in overtime over the last couple of weeks. At times I have been stressed up to my eyeballs! Who ever said that libraries were supposed to be nice quiet places? A few days ago I even had to call the ASBO people out to deal with some horrid teenage trouble makers!!

We are not actually planning to go away anywhere very far due to the house selling situation ~ but I am looking forward to spending time with my family and having lots of days out and about........


I'm planning on reading lots of rubbishy novels and looking at lots of crafty books to try and get some new ideas together for future projects. I've got lots of ideas whizzing about in my head already just now but I'm really struggling to find the time to get them all done.......... Maybe one day!!



I have also got to keep adding to the pile of Summer Garden Grannies...... I would love to get this project finished whilst we are still in Summer! and ...........Yes, I do actually mean this Summer!! I really do want to make a start on a Lucy style Granny Stripe blanket but am not allowing myself to buy the yarn until I am nearly finished with this one!

I hope that you are all enjoying your Summer Holidays and look forward to catching up with you all very soon :O) xx

Sunday viewing

Last Sunday the boys of the household set off on a bit of a Boy Adventure which they had been planning for ages.

They went off to visit Bo'ness and Kinneal Railway ~ which is Central Scotland's Steam Railway situated by the Firth of Forth. A real boys day out ~ lots of fun for the small boys and nostalgia by the bucket load for the big boys!


They took a ride on a beautiful old steam train to Birkhill station.


Where they also took a tour of the Birkhill Fireclay Mine.


Through the entrance and into the dark depths of the mine ~ definitely not my cup of tea! Far to dark and claustrophobic for my liking!!


Back up lots of steps ~ you can just spot a small boy charging up in front of everyone else!


They also met a lovely old doggy, who seemed to belong at the station. They nicknamed him the Dog Master as he parades up and down the platform barking at all the trains and being friendly to anyone who stops for a chat.

Little Miss Madam and I were left to our own devices at home. We normally would have planned a girly day out doing a bit of shopping, but as our house is still for sale we had to stay in ~ just in case there were any potential buyers looking to view our property on the Sunday afternoon. FAT CHANCE!! Nobody turned up!!

To alleviate our boredom we decided to do a bit of Sunday viewing ourselves and settled down with a new DVD ~ St Trinian's 2, The Legend of Fritton's Gold ~ which we had treated ourselves to especially for the occasion. We had a lovely afternoon cuddling up on the sofa, eating lots of yummy snacks and with the added bonus of no small boys running noisily around interrupting the film ~ Bliss!

Hope that you all had a fun filled weekend too ~ whatever you were doing...........:O) xxx

Last day of term

Today is the last day of term!

I'm sitting here this morning with my feet up, having a little cup of tea and doing some hooky yarny stuff and making the most of the peace and quiet before the Terrible Two ~ Ooops!, I mean my lovely children ~ break up from school this afternoon for their Summer Holidays.


They went off to school this morning in a very happy and cheerful mood, clutching little bags of goodies to say Thank You to their teachers. We all went into Edinburgh last Saturday to do a bit of shopping and they both chose a lovely colourful Cath Kidston mug for each of their teachers, which we then stuffed full of yummy Thorntons chocolate bars.


I'd like to tell you that I took a very long time in wrapping them all up carefully but that would be a bit of a lie! I wrapped them up this morning in between making breakfast and packed lunches! To say that I am not the most organised of people these days would be a vast understatement!

We are all looking forward to this summer break immensely ~ 7 whole weeks of fun and adventures, days out to the beach and trips to the park, visits to some old rugged Scottish castles, yummy picnics and lots more have been planned. All we need now are some lovely hot summer days and life will be good!

Hope that you are enjoying your day and that you all have a lovely weekend :O) xx

Baking Day

When I woke up this morning I immediately knew that I wanted to bake today. I haven't done any baking or making of any yummy things for eight whole months ~ as all my baking things have been packed away pending the sale of our little house.

However, this morning I decided that enough was enough and I rummaged about in my kitchen cupboards looking for suitable alternative baking utensils to use ~ and managed to scrape together enough substitutes.

I fancied something nice and sweet to have with my mid afternoon cup of tea and made some Fudge Slice ~ very yummy, very sweet and very moreish too!

This is a lovely recipe and it is just like eating fudge, but a lot easier to make......

The Ingredients are ~

225g digestive biscuits, finely crushed
225g butter
225g sugar
397g tin of condensed milk
200-250g chocolate ~ use either milk, plain or white, whichever you prefer!

First melt the butter, sugar and condensed milk together in a pan over a low heat until the sugar has completely dissolved.

Then bring the mixture to the boil and boil for 3-5 minutes stirring continuously until the mixture thickens and begins to turn golden. Take extra special care not to burn the mixture or you will get little black bits in your fudge.

Remove from the heat and add your biscuit crumbs. I find that there is something quite satisfying about bashing biscuits into crumbs with a rolling pin ~ it's very theraputic!!

Next pour the mixture into a traybake tin and leave to set. I usually line my tin with tin foil to make it easier to remove. There is nothing worse than having all your hard worked ruined by the refusal of the fudge to come out of the tin and be eaten!

Once the mixture is completely cool, melt your chosen chocolate and spread over the top. Stick the tray into the fridge and once the chocolate has set you can then cut the fudge into small squares.


Finally ~ put the kettle on, make yourself a nice cup of tea, put your feet up and ENJOY............... :O) xx

Ups and downs

I'm just popping by to say Hello to you all and to let you know that I am still very much alive and kicking! I've just not had much time recently or indeed the motivation to have anything decent to blog about!


Thank you all so much for your lovely comments about my woolly paintbox cushion. I am so glad that you liked it and I did love reading all your wonderful comments about it ~ it really did cheer me UP alot ~ xxxx

I have been UP to my eyes in the end of year accounts for the wonderful charity that I do some voluntary work for. Rummaging around in piles of receipts and invoices and calculating and then recalculating ~ I think that I am finally getting somewhere though, and hope to have some kind of report done for the AGM which is happening very soon. Much too soon for my liking!


Earlier on in the week I had a little bit of a panic to myself ~ a little bit of a disaster....! No matter how hard I looked I just could not find my favourite and trusty metal hook. I decided that I needed to tidy out my crochet bag ~ which was a very necessary and very much avoided task ~ and do you know what? I found it hiding at the very bottom of the bag with all the scrappy little bits of wool that I keep 'just in case' I might need them again. I'm sure that you will all know how that is!!



Now that the little hooky stick has resurfaced again I really do want to get going with my summer garden granny squares ~ I desperately want to finish the little summer garden throw that I seem to have working on for ages. I have told myself that there are no more projects to be started until this WIP has been finished and as an added incentive to get it finished I have promised myself a new batch of Lucy inspired yarn once it's done. Better start crocheting quick then!!

I'm looking forward to catching up with you all sometime next week and I hope that everyone has a very lovely weekend :O) xx