Day 10

Charlie and I spent a lovely morning with my friend Kathryn, Jessica and Daniel. It's Kathryn's birthday so we headed to Beetham Nurseries for morning coffee! Jessica and Charlie really enjoyed playing together and Daniel enjoyed watching them from his pram so a good morning was had by all!

We just had one of the labourers here today and he's worked really hard! It's been hot so i've been a very good customer and kept him supplied with cold drinks this afternoon!! He dug out all the rough soil in the base of my craft room then used some of the dash as a hardcore base ready for the concrete to go in tomorrow! A guy also came tonight with Jason, the main builder, to look at the block paving. He's coming tomorrow to straighten and tidy it all up. :D

Day 9

No pics today! The pebble dash is now completely finished on the wall! Yay! My craft room is getting done once more building work is done!

Day 8

There's been real progress today! :D The pebble dashers were back (and are coming tomorrow, a Bank Holiday, too!) They've dashed all the inside walls today except for half the driveway and the posts which will be finished tomorrow. It looks so good, we're really pleased.

Howdy Partner!

Yesterday I spent quite a bit of time in Charlie's room having a sort out in preparation for Courtney's arrival (as they're going to share a room initially, we live in a dormer bungalow and 2 of our bedrooms are upstairs,as Charlie is only 3 we feel he is too young to be on a separate floor on his own. When the children are teenagers they will have a room each upstairs at which time i'm quite sure we'll be pleased to have them on a different floor, LOL!!)
So back to the sorting! Charlie's dressing up clothes have always hung in his wardrobe and he plays with them occasionally. I decided to take them off the hangers so he can play with them more often. He had great fun trying on all the outfits, from the Easter Bunny to Mr Tickle, Count Dracula to Woody! LOL!

Day 7

The poor builder's haven't been able to come the last few days because of the weather :( They could have come yesterday but the pebbles for the dash hadn't arrived in time! Today they came at 4:30ish to make a start on the dashing, they didn't leave until it started to go dark. By the time I went out to take photos is was dark, lol!

Courtney Grace L

I've been dying to announce our news but we wanted to read the report first and make sure all is well! We've known for 2 weeks so you can imagine how hard it has been holding it in!!
We have been matched to a little girl called Courtney, she is 17 months old and sounds delightful! We are giving her the second name Grace as we gave Charlie his second name too. We can't wait to meet her.♥ There's a lot of paperwork to go through first but we should have 2 children by Christmas! Charlie is going to be a wonderful big brother!♥

Drawer topper finished :D

The top of my drawers are beautiful and it does seem a shame to cover it but I want to protect it as this piece of furniture will be functional and things will be stored on top of it so that's why I made the 'topper'. I'm really pleased with it finished.

Craft room plans

It's all very exciting!! Jen sent me a plan last night of the design for my craft room. I think she's done a fantastic job, I love it!! Thank you so much Jen!
I really like that there's 2 chairs so I can 'entertain' and the workspace I will have is about a metre wide so masses of room to spread out, LOL! The grey box is my antique drawers and I have a hensvik unit which will hang above it. With the topper I think that corner will look very pretty! (the topper is almost finished)
Above the workspace my Making Memories unit will be, I bought this a few weeks ago, it was a QVC TSV and I was a little bothered where it would go as it's quite big but Jen has found the perfect spot for it! Once everything is built I will decide whether to just sit it on the workspace or hang it above. I can't wait to see it all in reality *excited*

My current W.I.P

I'm currently making a patchwork topper to protect my antique drawers as i'd like to put things on top of it in my craft room but don't want it to get damaged. I love this tilda fabric but it's quite pricey by the metre. When we went to the Amy Butler evening we popped to Embsay first and they were selling the fabric in pieces so I bought 3 that I liked, originally not for anything in particular, just that I liked them! I also bought a nice white embroidered piece of fabric that I thought was cute! When I started making this topper I got out the fabric that I intended to use and it just didn't 'pull' me into the direction of wanting to use it. I then remembered the tilda fabric and thought it was perfect! I took these photos earlier today, it's now progressed a little. I have now attached the wadding and back sheet and sewn on 15 white buttons! Tomorrow i'm hoping to stitch on the binding (the pretty white fabric) and then it will be finished ready for it's new home! :D

c.h.a.r.l.i.e

I've tried and tried to rotate this video but i'm desperate to share it so if you could just tilt your head a little to the left please!!! LOL!

Amy Butler evening

My lovely friend Jen and I travelled to Leeds on Monday evening to meet Amy Butler. She is an awesome designer and has a really good eye for putting colours together. Her designs are very bold and vibrant, I really admire her style. She was truly lovely, she gave a talk for about half an hour and shared photos of her personal life and company. Originally i'd heard of her through scrapbooking but she has now branched out into home decor, fabrics and knitting wool! I adore this wallpaper but at $80 a roll I think i'll have to just keep admiring the picture!!

Days 4,5 & 6!!

*Hangs head in shame!*

I fully intended keeping a progress report going on here of the garden transformation but life has a funny habit of getting in the way!! LOL!

The wall is totally built now and today they've put the scratchcoat on everywhere, it's looking fab! My craft room is also taking shape, literally, LOL! I've been standing inside it and can now get a real sense of the size. It isn't huge, I admit, but it's all mine!!♥

(Please excuse some photos, the weather has been really bad in the evenings but thankfully it's been good in the day for the builders which is the main thing!)

Side wall is finished

Mark standing in the hole where the trampoline will be sunk in!

My craft room (a.k.a. 'Mummy's Den!')

Back wall is finished and skimmed

and the rest is skimmed

Day 3

.......and the first brick has been layed!

It's been a lovely day here all day so the builders have really cracked on and we have half a wall! They wanted to give us some privacy from the pub for the weekend so built as high as they could in the day. It will be about double this height once finished!! The soil level will be about 2 bricks up and we're allowed to build 2 metres above that. we should have maximum privacy once finished!! :D

Day 2

........and there's a new workman!!♥♥♥ I like all the workman and you can call me a biased mummy if you like but I think this one is the best!! LOL!!



The builders have worked hard today digging the trenches for the foundations. Charlie had been promised a go on the digger before it went back and this promise came true after nursery.
Fingers crossed they can continue tomorrow as our weather is quite varied at the moment! It's currently raining heavily out there so i'm hoping the foundations will set enough to build on as they are hoping to start the blockwork tomorrow!

Day 1

.......and we are rather exposed :o




The builder's arrived about 8:20 this morning and cracked on straight away! I arrived home from work to no fence/wall and the concrete strip completely removed! I really never expected them to get so much done in a day! At around 7 a lorry turned up with a grabber to remove all the concrete. The garden looks quite big at the mo! Can anyone tell me just why I spent 2 hours mowing the grass on the extra land, look at it now, LOL!! (The large building behind our bungalow is a quiet village pub, it used to be a stately home and apparently was once owned by a descendant of mine!!)

Random sunflower & building work starts - Yay!

A few weeks ago we planted three sunflowers Although they have grown a little they really haven't taken off as such, LOL! Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I noticed a random sunflower growing in the back garden, on the new piece of land! I was quite chuffed to discover it! When I mowed the grass last week I took great care not to disturb it and today I noticed that it has bloomed! The builder is starting work in the garden tomorrow so i've also taken some 'before' photos. (you can see on them just how random the sunflower is, LOL!!)
So the plan in the back garden is we're having the concrete divide completely removed, we're replacing all the fencing with a solid wall which will be about 8 ft high and totally private. this wall will continue along the side of our driveway, stepping down near to where I park on the drive and then there will be a new wall to divide the drive and back garden, making the garden nice and secure for the children to play in :D In the bottom corner we're hoping to dig a hole deep enough to sink the trampoline into, there was an old tree near to there and we're hoping the roots won't prevent us from this, only time will tell!! Finally, and for me the best bit ;D we're having an extension built off the back of the garage which will be my new craft room!♥

Rhino-Mania

We had a little adventure over the weekend! We went Rhino hunting, LOL!! Chester is hosting Rhino-Mania and we spent a few hours tracking them down! They were mostly in the town centre, we found them all over including inside the cathedral!! We then had a little drive out and found one at the football ground, one at the racecourse and one at the BIG storage place! We knew there were four also at the Cheshire Oaks outlet place and we were going there anyway so hunted for them too! The nice thing is that the local schools also got involved and we found several miniature ones in shop windows!

Charity was my favourite rhino!

Half way!!

It's strange isn't it how thoughts enter your mind!! I was watching football this afternoon with Mark and Charlie (which was quite a boring game I might add) when I thought, 'oh, Mark and I have been married for 12 1/2 years, that means we're halfway to our silver wedding anniversary!! Then I spookily realised the date, today is the 7th which means we're EXACTLY half way there!! (we married on the 7th February 1998) It was very much a random thought but i'm pleased I thought it, LOL!!

My Little Bowling Boy.

How cute are those shoes!

This morning Charlie went Ten Pin Bowling with his friends! I wasn't sure if he'd be a little young but my friends and I have 8 children between us and such a large age range (1-10 years) in our children that it's hard to think of things for them all to do. Usually we go to the park or the Battery play area which suits them all but this morning it was raining heavily so bowling was suggested. Well I needn't have worried, Charlie LOVED it!! He couldn't wait for his turn to come around again! He played all 10 rounds and scored a very respectable 78 points! (which may have been the lowest but he was the youngest playing! Bless!)

15.5 miles

We had a lovely day for our bike ride today! I suggested today's route as we haven't cycled to Carnforth for a while! We rode to the promenade from my parent in law's house and took that up to Hest Bank, climbed Hest Bank hill which i'm pleased to say I can now seem to do with ease! That hill used to be the bain of my cycling and quite often I would end up walking up it, LOL! Now I can cycle it without even changing gears!! We got onto the canal and cycled to Carnforth where we saw the cygnets, they've grown so much!! I have seen them in between times from my last post about them but I was so surprised today! It seemed odd that their dad (i'm presuming it's dad, of course it could be mum!!) is still protecting them!! He was scarily big when he stood up and stretched his neck, LOL!! When walking past I kept my bike that side of him!!
I decided it would be too short to just cycle back so we continued on the canal to Lancaster, we got off at Barleycop Lane and rode right around Ryelands Park before getting onto the cycle path at Carlisle bridge back to Sylvia and Hughie's.
This evening I have cut the grass too so i'm hoping i'll have burned off a few calories!!

MLH August

I can't believe how fast this year is going! So it's the beginning of August which means it was time to stitch another My Little Heart panel. They were so cruel to us this month and gave us two gorgeous options! There was a beehive on one and the sunflower on the other. I did try combining the two designs and it kind of worked but I felt it looked a bit crowded compared to the other months. In the end I decided to stitch the Sunflower. I love how vibrant it is and think it really lifts the whole cross stitch. I totally adore how this project is coming together. Two rows are now complete! :D

19.1 miles

Yay!! i've finally been able to go out on my bike! I planned cycling twice this week and both times it was windy and raining!
I set off from home and cycled along the prom to the Midland Hotel, I took the cycle path from there all the way to Bull Beck. I then cycled back to my parents in law's house to leave my bike there ready for tomorrow.