Waiting....

Well it's the end of January and I'm here waiting on my new arrival... I've now gone overdue and as I went 11 days overdue with Little R I think I'm in this for the long haul. I'm trying not to crack up, to be patient and enjoy this calm time before the baby arrives but that's easier said than done! I'm going to attempt a quick blog post and just write about what we've been up to in January as it's been a busy enough month. 

The main even for us after christmas is Little R's birthday. This year Little R turned two. We had a little party low key party with some little ones the same age (two children of friends and his cousin of nearly the same age and his baby cousin - 8 adults and 4 children and 1 baby which was quite enough thank you!).  It was really lovely, tiring but lovely and Little R had great fun. His first bowl of jelly which went down a treat. And I made a birthday cake - victoria sponge with lemon curd, fresh cream and raspberries and a lemon cream cheese icing...

After a lot of searching online I decided to make a two to stand on the cake. I got the idea from here but had to tweak it slightly as I don't know if you can purchase almond bark in Northern Ireland so I used white chocolate. It took me 3 goes for it to work and as I wanted sprinkles on the back I decided to do the number two in 2 halves and then I stuck them together with more melted white chocolate. I was really super pleased with the result.

The main things Little R enjoyed was having his little friends to play with, using the Thomas the Tank Engine tablecloth (massive on his little toddler table but the little ones didn't care) and Thomas the Tank paper plates (train mad that child), blowing out the candles on his cake and of course getting presents (which helped the come down after Christmas!). 

It was a lovely affair but tiring for a 38week pregnant Mummy. Little R and I did this after everyone left...

 Much like the rest of the UK we had some snow but only a little. Little R was super excited especially after watching The Snowman on repeat over Christmas. So when it first snowed we went out for a chilly but thrilling walk...

I have also been busing myself with some crafting. My sister (who I didn't think liked crochet!) requested a crocheted blackberry cover and although I had a fair few projects on the go I couldn't refuse...

I've also been making some hearts as inspired by Attic24...

I have also been working on a blanket for the new arrival which I'll show you after the baby makes his/her debut!
I've been enjoying lots of flowers this month... my overwhelming love of tete a tete and hyacinths really began when i started onto this blogging malarky. I mean I always liked them but now I feel I just have to have them in my home in January to help the bareness after the Christams decorations have gone. And getting some bargains has really helped too... 30p for the last tub of hyacinths thanks to eagle-eyed D! 

The above hyacinth are now flowering and smelling lovely and we have lots of other bargain pots about the house but I am too tired to go on a photography expedition to capture their blooms sorry! And although it was D who found the bargains for me he can't stand the smell but he's very kindly putting up with it, the lovely chap that he is, being heavily pregnant might have something to do with him giving in to my whims!! I've also been doing a little baking to pass the time and Little R has been great at helping and eating...

The next event in January was my birthday and although people have said that your birthday goes out the window when children come, D has always been very good at celebrating my birthday and for that I feel truly lucky because I LOVE birthdays. I LOVE cake. I LOVE cards. A wee pressie is a nice bonus but I am a simpleton and don't require much (although I should admit I was totally and utterly spoilt with what D and Little R bought for me, you will see...). The day started off with all of us in bed having breakfast...

The next bit, of what is in that little package is really magical and special to me...

Some of you might recognise the beautiful little box, if not it's from the super duper, wonderfully talented and inspirational Emma from Silverpebble. My lovely other half had been planning this for months (after listening to me blether on for months, the poor man) and he ordered a commission from the wonderful Emma. Would you like to see...

It's a beautiful necklace inspired by nature and my little boy.  Underneath the main necklace is Little R's fingerprint. Honestly I don't think I have loved an object more in my whole, entire life. The craftsmanship is just amazing. And the fact that I can wear my little ones fingerprint fills my heart with such joy. I can barely bring myself to take it off when going to bed but I really don't want to break it, so I have to be sensible and I put it on my bedside table at night.

I just love it so much and am so delighted and humbled to think of my husband and this wonderful jewellery maker discussing their ideas for this necklace, just for me. 

I have worn it everyday since and honestly I will never tire of it. I am a very lucky and happy Mummy and Wife. D has already got something planned to add to the necklace when the new baby comes and I am so excited by this. And it didn't end there, D also made a rather splendid birthday cake for me - a rather delicious and moreish ginger cake. Little R, getting the hang of birthdays rightly, helped me to blow out the candles...

Very red cheeks on my little one... seriously can we have the eye teeth now before the baby comes... Little R has been tortured with these teeth for too long and I just want them to come... now please!!! I was also treated to a new Cath Kidston mug, the latest country living magazine (a new addiction of mine) and some beautiful cards. My lovely friend Dr T has a stamp fetish and she sent me a set of Alphabet Stamps in the post from Australia. The day ended on a high!

So now I am waiting. I'd like to be able to say patiently but that just wouldn't be true. I am positive that I am doing my poor husbands head in with my moaning but I can tell you that he is being extremely patient, at least someone is!! To be fair I have been knocked for six this week due to a pitiful head cold which has just zapped any remaining energy that I had. I am happy to report feeling a bit better today and more settled and less jittery wondering when the baby is going to come. I am going through a rollercoaster of emotions, excitement and anxiety and nervousness and joy. Mainly my concerns are for Little R and how he is going to react. He has been the centre of my universe for 2 years now and I have loved it all, I just don't want to upset him and I hope that he will love his new little baby sister or brother. I read a wonderful thing online when I was anxiously searching to see what other people felt like before their second baby arrived and one lady wrote the most wonderful thing that I am always going to remember...

♥♥ "Love doesn't divide, it multiplies" ♥♥

Thank you for reading. Thank you to new followers, I'm tickled pink that you want to stop by. And also a BIG thank you to Hazel at Cupcakery. Hazel very kindly nominated me for the Liebester award and I am truly grateful and chuffed to bits. But sadly I don't think I'm going to get the time to pass this on and do a post on this... it has taken me a lifetime to do this post and time is just not on my side these days. So thank you Hazel for your kindness.

Over and out xx

❆❆❆ Christmas 2012 ❆❆❆

Christmas 2012... well it's typical of me that while everyone else is writing their synopsis of 2012, and wishing Happy New Year, I'm just getting around to telling you about December and Christmas! I guess it's better late than never. Well I hope so anyway. 

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 I really had been looking forward to Christmas for what felt like forever and it has gone by in a flash. I always feel sad when it's over but I am still enjoying spending these relaxing days with my little family. So here's what we've been up to...

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We got our tree on Friday 30th November, ready to decorate in time for the 1st of December. It's a Fraser Fir, my all time favourite type of Christmas tree. It was a little more difficult this year as one of us had to run distraction with Little R while the other one tried to put on the lights and then the decorations. I used to be a rather fussy Miss when it came to the fairy lights, well I mean D used to put them on and I used to observe and give rather strict directions and oh how times have changed, I'm just so happy to get the tree up and I just give D free reign with the lights, what's the point in stressing? Right? Well I don't have time anymore, Little R and bump are keeping me rather busy and I don't imagine that changing any time soon! So D does the lights (and did a good job too) and then I did the decorations and Little R amused us greatly, it was a lot of fun. We have mainly red and white decorations, not to follow any trends or fashion, it's just what I like. So here's what it looked like...

I treated myself to a little Christmas purchase... well it felt like rather an extravagant purchase... an Emma Bridgewater Joy plate. Some people are able to furnish their kitchen crockery entirely out of Emma Bridgewater which does amaze me slightly so I was more than happy to be able to invest in the little plate. I really wanted it to start our own wee tradition and use it as our plate to leave out for Father Christmas on Christmas Eve and that's what we did this year. It was such fun!

December has been a very busy month as amongst other things I filled the advent calendar with lots of fun things to do. One thing I was desperate to do was to visit the christmas display at a local garden centre. It was such an amazing place. There were animatronic Santas everywhere. Little R loved it and to top it off there were little trains hidden all about the place and as he is already a train fanatic this definitely was a hit for him.

The next adventure was to visit the local farm. At Christmas they take you on a tractor ride and one of Santa's elves reads a story on the way. When the tractor stops you take a walk to a field where the reindeer live and then to get to feed them... super duper. Little R had sooo much fun at this, not to mention his Mummy & Daddy & Granda. After feeding the reindeer carrots we went to Santa's workshop and made a little bag of reindeer food to take home and to leave out for the reindeer on Christmas Eve. And then we got to meet Santa... I was worried that Little R wouldn't like that part but he was great and Santa was too. 

Haha the next job was to make some gingerbread men. I really wanted Little R to help but he's still a little too young for this to hold his attention so I just made them myself. I'm hoping in years to come he will help me because I'd much rather do it with him. This story has rather a tragic end to it as the gingerbread men didn't live for very long... 

My two little dachshunds helped themselves to the gingerbread men on the tree. I don't think you can really comprehend what a feat this is because they are only little doggies and they reached the highest man close to the top of the tree. Look at the two little monsters, don't they look like butter wouldn't melt! Well it turns out they are rather fond of gingerbread!  

In December I also finished work and started maternity leave. I am so very thankful to be off work because it was really exhausting in the last month. I gave my all in work because it's so busy and then I was fairly useless by the time I got home and Little R is so energetic so I had to go to bed when he did! Ah at least it's the winter and it's dark outside at 8pm, worse having to go to bed at 8pm when the sun is shining and children are still playing outside! Anyway my last week was particularly exhausting, no wind down for me I can tell you, so when I left work on my last day I arrived home to a lovely hot bath, with a new christmas magazine, some lovely treats, new christmas pyjamas (which did actually fit over the bump!) and candles everywhere. I felt extremely lucky, overwhelmed and very emotional. D finds it difficult to surprise me and this time was no different, I was particularly difficult, I won't go into it but I'll just say that after all D's attempts he had to march me up to the bathroom to reveal my surprise... oh dear I am hard work at times!! Anyway it was such a lovely treat for which I'm very, very, extremely grateful.

A job I really love in December is wrapping presents! I had decided what design I was going to use in about September - brown paper, red and white butchers twine, a handmade label (bought from ebay - someday I will make my own) and some festive washi tape. Oh I had such fun wrapping these presents. Without blowing my own trumpet I just thought they looked beautiful. Sadly most presents go to children who this pretty wrapping is wasted on but hey I had fun doing it so it was worth it in my book. I just love when presents go under the tree, makes it look more festive. Also D moans for days when there are no presents so it's worth it just to make him happy to - he appreciated my efforts which makes me happy too.

I did some crafting in December too. I made some salt dough decorations which I sadly don't have a picture of but my favourite was the one with Little R's handprint. I painted it white and sprinkled sparkly glitter on it. I really wish I had done it last year to capture his first christmas but sadly I wasn't really on the ball, oh well. Another craft I just had to do was to make Little R his own Christmas Stocking. My word, I made rather a meal out of this job because it took me about a whole week to draw out the stocking pattern. For some reason I didn't like any of the ones I found online and thought it best to draw one out myself, and finally I got it right (D teased me quite a lot about the huge mountain I was making out of this job!). I also made a right mountain out of picking the fabric, again D helped but teased me quite a lot. Anyway I'm super happy with the fabric I picked and decided to make the bump a stocking too (think I could be a bit busy next year!). I picked a fabric by Kate Spain which had two different colours in the range, complementary but different. I used this tutorial but used my own pattern. Then to personalise the stocking I added a white felt letter R to the band of the stocking, I think it looks the business and it was just the right size to fit all the treats from Father Christmas - stickers, clementine, crayons and other bits and bobs. I could have bought one but I just felt that this was something that I wanted to make for Little R myself so that he could have it forever and know that his Mummy made it with a lot of love. 

Christmas Day was sooo much fun. We had a little Elf outfit for Little R that I picked up from Sainsbury's as soon as Christmas things came into the shops. D wasn't keen on it when I bought it but he absolutely loved it the moment Little R put it on, on Christmas Eve. I just love the photo of him under the tree as I think it captures our Christmas perfectly. We opened the stocking in bed as Little R likes to get up pretty early so we did this bit in bed before we ventured downstairs to see what Santa had left. We didn't I mean Santa didn't go overboard as we think Little R is still a little young so he got a little piano, books and a shopping trolley (he loves running about with his cousins so we thought, why not? Plus we're getting him a little teaset for his birthday, I'm not into gender stereotypes and he likes making 'cuppa tea' for us so again why not?). We knew that his uncles were going to get him train things as he is a train fanatic due to his Granda working for the railway so we left that to them, as you can see the train set is a hit!

After we opened presents we went out for a Christmas Day walk with the doggies. It was a lovely day, dry and bright and not too cold but cold and damp enough for me to enjoy my presents. D & Little R got me some absolutely B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L wellies, complete with wellie warmers (I have never had any of these before but seriously why not, they keep your toes super toasty!) and wrist warmers all from Joules. I love the bottom photo because it looks like Little R and I have fallen out but we were just having a little rest and Little R is swinging his feet and chatting merrily, tooooo cute. I'm sorry I don't have a photo of the doggies but they were enjoying their walk too much to stay still... they haven't been out for a proper walk in weeks so they didn't stay still for too long!

After our Christmas Day walk we had some lunch and then Little R & I went off for our nap. Dinner was all prepped and it was time to relax. My brother joined us for dinner so it was just the four of us. We had to wait for dinner as my brother had to work for a few hours on Christmas day so by the time he finished Little R were up from our nap and it was time to get the dinner on and have our starter. We had smoked salmon bellinis and prawns with chilli, garlic and ginger on toasted ciabatta. These went down a treat, the prawns were specifically requested by D and he enjoyed them very much. Then the main course was Roast Beef. I absolutely love taking photos of food and nice dinners. I was a little worried that people in blogland might think this was slightly insane but I'm very happy to say that I have seen many people posting pictures of their Christmas dinners and this made me smile. So dinner was Roast Beef (just didn't fancy turkey), mash and roast spuds, cauliflower cheese (a christmas must in my family), roast carrots & parsnips, roast onions, stuffing, brussel sprouts and lashing of gravy (we are also gravy nuts in my family and I'm very slowly and steadily turning D into a gravy nut too, well it's been 16 years and he isn't quite as mental as my family are which means more gravy for us, but he's nearly there!!). I love decorating the table at Christmas but I went for understated this year, I left my new table cloth do the work... red and white polka dot oilcloth. Dessert was unphotographed but absolutely D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S. My brother doesn't really bake but took on the challenge for Christmas. I must admit I was a little apprehensive but I need not have been for he made one of the best desserts I've ever had - Chocolate Roulade with spiced winter berries. Yummy Scrummy. After Little R went to bed the three of us played scrabble and went to bed very happy at having such a relaxing and wonderful Christmas day in great company. 

Mostly over December and Christmas we have been doing a lot of this... Little R and I have been napping together most days since I have been off work, I don't seem to have much stamina at 8 months pregnant so I'm enjoying relaxing with him (although I'm slightly worried that I am creating bad habits). And then when he goes to bed in the evening I have been going to bed too and reading my christmas magazines (with a little treat or two! A chip shop from my home town does the most amazing ice-cream with melted marshmallow, D has been kind enough to pick me up some and bring it 30 miles in a cool bag! Normally I couldn't eat too much of it but I have a seriously sweet pregnancy related tooth!). I have only just discovered the joy of Country Living... it's so beautiful but I don't want to get too hooked as it also makes me quiet envious of the owners... think I might save it as my Christmas treat!

We have also watched The Snowman about 100 times since the beginning of December, Little R absolutely loves it. We get requests for "Snowman, Boy" at least a couple of times a day and we fell in love with the new animation The Snowman and the Snowdog (I almost cried my eyes out watching it for the first time on Christmas Eve). So now we get requests for "Snowman, Boy, Dog", ahh it melts my heart. 

Artwork courtesy of D and sketch pad courtesy of Granda.

So I'll leave you with a snap shot of a December day in my family, enjoying time together, a little glimpse of the advent calendar (never really got a good enough photo of it to show you but we loved using it), Little R nibbling on a gingerbread man I didn't put on the tree (one of the few), the doggies getting a little couch time (they aren't really allowed up anymore due to Little R and the new baby on the way, but hey it's Christmas) and our Christmas hats (I forgot to wear my antlers).

I hope you had a very lovely Christmas and I hope that 2013 has lots of amazing things in store for you. Thanks for reading, following, commenting and for making this blogging malarky a world of fun.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Helen xx

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New Baby & House Warming Ta-Dahs

So I finally finished a couple of projects and delivered them to their special recipients today. Remember ageeees ago I was chatting about picking yarn and going on and on about picking colours? Well my friend finally had her baby and I finally finished the blanket. I worked the blanket up in gender neutral colours since I didn't know the baby's sex and I decided that when I found out I would do a border in a gender specific colour. Well a little boy arrived, Baby E and this gave me the poke that I needed to finish the blanket. Oh I never used to be a last minute person, when I was at school I used to do my homework on Friday night so that I didn't have that Sunday night dread but now I seem to work best under pressure and leave things to the last minute. Very, very bold! Anyway I only really had a couple of stripes left to do so I guess it could have been worse (my new mantra in life! Oh dear). 

It's actually supposed to be a vertical stripe blanket but I forgot this when I was taking photos! I did the starting chain too long... hope it doesn't really matter!

My friend had just moved into a new house a few weeks before the baby was born so I wanted to make them I little house warming gift. I thought it best to do something small since I wanted to visit them soon after the baby was born and if I picked a larger project well sure I'd still be doing it well into 2013!! So I came across these little crochet jar covers on the internet...

I think they are so lovely, I don't mean my handy work I just mean they are so effective. They make the coldest evening seem so cosy, although I do suspect there is colder to come (please no snow in January!). The link to the very clever lady who made them and her tutorial can be found here. They are super easy to do and now I really want my own and I feel I should make some as christmas gifts for some craft friends but we shall see if time permits.

I like how they look with the baby blanket. I hope my friends and their new baby will be snug as bugs in rugs this winter!

I just love candlelight and yarny creations... 

Ooh and another thing I've been up to.....

 Well for years D didn't like coffee so if we ever went out for coffee or tea he would have a diet coke and while that's perfectly fine, there is something really nice about sharing coffee together.. maybe that's just me. Well anyway since the birth of my Little R, D has felt the need for some extra stimulation each day and as his teeth can no longer stick Coke he has persevered with coffee. At first it was sickly sweet mochaccinos and the like, then a gradual conversion to lattes. I really dislike milky coffees, I find them really sickly but I really wanted to perfect a homemade latte for D. I found this video on youtube for how to make frothy milk. I have been really intrigued by the coffees made by Attic24 as they always have a little embellishment on them.. a star or a heart and I really wanted to do this too. I found coffee stencils online but at £5 a pop I figured I could do a homemade one myself from a milk bottle. And today I finally made the perfect homemade latte for D...

It got a 9.5 score (I told you how my family like to give me marks out of 10!). So I was chuffed to bits. It really makes me smile, just going that extra little mile for my beloved. A little thank you for all the extra work he's putting in at the minute now the third trimester tiredness has kicked in! 

And finally we are getting super excited about Christmas. Today D taught Little R the  start of Jingle Bells... not the whole song but just "Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells" which I think is pretty cool for a little 22 month old to learn in about a minute. Oh we are in for a lot of fun this year. And I just noticed that there is a new animation this year... 'The Snowman and the Snowdog' which is going to premiere on Channel 4 this Christmas Eve. I am doing all I can to contain the excitement!!

Thanks for reading xx

I can't wait, I can't wait!

Ok so I have been getting really excited about Christmas since about August (well probably January but so I don't look so insane we'll say August). I've been scouring the internet (blogs and pinterest mainly) for christmas baking ideas, present wrapping ideas and the like. I've been going through my blogroll and reading everyone's lovely posts from past Christmases. This has been getting me very, very excited indeed. So yesterday, in order to ease the excitement, D put up some fairy lights in the kitchen for me. 

 Then I did some baking as I haven't done any for absolutely ages, surrounded by lovely fairy lights while listening to The Cardigans on the laptop. 

I was inspired by the lovely blogs I was reading, especially Cherry Menlove's blog. I quite fancied making her White Chocolate & Cranberry Cookies, well really everything on Cherry's blog looks so appealing and this seemed the least faffable to me. Well that was the theory, however..... A few years ago I lost my beloved electric hand whisk (a house warming present from my sister) when holidaying in Donegal. That sounds much more interesting than it really is, I just left them behind in the house we hired and I even rather stupidly thought that it would still be there a year later when we returned to the same house but they weren't! Boohoo. Then I purchased a really great and cheap electric mixer with a bowl attached, nothing fancy like a Kitchenaid or anything but it did the job, freed up my hands while mixing and I just loved it. Then one day I decided to try making dough with the dough hook, I felt like a little break from hand kneeding and who'd have thought it would be a good idea to read the instructions on where to put the dough hooks? Well clearly not me, and so I attached the hooks in the wrong way round and up the dough merrily travelled into the workings of the mixer. Although I needed a slap for doing that miraculously it continued to work for a few months, albeit with the odd bit of crusty dough falling out of the workings when it came out of the cupboard (but I never let it contaminate my baking in case you're worried for the people who eat my cooking!) and the odd bit of heat coming off the motor. But one day it decided it had had enough and it gave up on me. From that point I have been electric mixer-less. I toyed with buying another handheld one but thought it best to wait and get a replacement with a bowl but then I could never justify buying another one especially since we have so many other things to prioritise, childcare, nappies etc. Anyway this baking session left me feeling tired and a bit worn-out, I thought I had picked an easy recipe for relaxing Saturday afternoon (my brother had even offered to take Little R out for a walk - I thought I'd easily get the cookies made and put my feet up too ha!) but the lack of electric made it a bit too much work. So I decided we can't carry on like this, I can't keep avoiding recipes that require a lot of whisking and I just noticed this evening after a quick search on the internet that Argos sells a basic one for £6! I've been knocking myself out and I could have had electricity again for only £6 - I need another slap!! 

Anyway despite my doing the mixing by hand I did end up with a decent batch of cookies. Definitely no-where near as good looking as Cherry Menlove's but rather than cooking them in batches as suggested by Cherry, I ran out of patience and piled far too many on the baking tray at once so they all look a bit wonky. You see I was still hoping to get to put my feet up before my brother and Little R came back... I'm almost 29wks now and feet resting moments, while hard to come by, are very much appreciated! And I also wanted to have them ready for my brother as a thank you. So despite their random shapes they were well received and scored an 8.5 (my brother likes to score my work and fully admits that as a true critic he can't do anything himself). I'm not a huge fan of them myself, they are rather sweet but D and my brother like them a lot and that gives me a lot of satisfaction.

Since I started writing this post the lovely D has put up some fairy lights in our dining room and I am basking in their glow as I type (our living room and dining room are joined by an arch).

Teehee I love how a bit of tinkering in picmonkey can make a terrible, grainy photo look much better, well it does to me anyway. Little R's reaction to the lights has me in stitches. He looks at them and says "Oooh lights" and that pretty much sums up my feeling too. He is so much fun at the minute and I think he is going to make this Christmas even more special. I can't wait, I can't wait!!

I've been busy recently as my lovely friend has had a little baby boy. She also moved house so I have been busy making little things for her and her new little bundle of joy. I'll show them soon, fingers crossed. 

I'm off to the Creative Craft Show in Belfast with a friend this Saturday and I am also finding it difficult to contain my excitement about this. This friend has a special birthday this week and I've ordered her a beautiful pair of earrings from Folksy (love that site). She is very crafty and I'm not saying she's old, she isn't, but she has done nearly every craft there is and I know she'll appreciate something handmade. I really wanted to make her something myself but I just can't find enough hours in the day (need more sleep these days). So we are both looking forward to the show and I'm sure they'll have some Christmasy things too just to get me even more in the mood.

Thanks as ever for stopping by and good luck with your crafty preparations for the days ahead.

Helen xx

The countdown begins...

Hello there, I should put a little warning on this post, if you don't like to think about Christmas until December or at the earliest November then I think you should look away now! 

I've been getting excited about Christmas since about August and have been slowly stockpiling presents since then. I must admit I am usually not that organised and usually have a dream/nightmare in December where it's Christmas day and I haven't bought any presents so I have decided this year that I am going to be super organised and not have any shopping to do in December. This is a great plan in theory but no doubt I will still end up racing around like a luny on the 23rd of December trying to find something but I am trying to avoid that. I love Christmas but I hate Christmas shopping in December: crowded shops, longs queues at tills and anxiously waiting on Amazon orders to get here in time for Christmas are yuk and I promised myself I'm not doing any of that this year. Watch this space!

Anyway enough ranting. I just love Christmas and I love getting prepared so this year I was very good to myself and purchased this...

It's a Cath Kidston Christmas Organiser that I saw on Hookin with Laa Laa's blog and I knew instantly that I had to get it (well after a few days chirping away at D he told me just to buy it - I'm not a very spontaneous shopper, I don't like to waste money!). It's sooo lovely, I wonder why I never had a Christmas organiser before. It now lives beside my bed, ready and waiting for any Christmassy ideas that come in to my head. 

So anyway the main reason for this post is that I have completed a Christmassy make and I really wanted to share it before December. It's an Advent Calendar garland type thing. Basically I wanted to make an advent calendar that my little family can use every year and I wanted something different than the shop bought calendars. I got the idea from a book my husband borrowed from the library for me which suggested making 24 red felt pockets and numbering them 1-24 and hanging them up on a string and each day you would take one down to help you remember what day you are on. I thought it was a neat little idea and decided this was the project for me but I thought it needed a few tweaks and embellishments. So I made my 24 little pockets numbered 1-24 but I felt the numbers needed to be embroidered to the pocket to help them stay put and to make them look pretty and this is the finished result...

I also added a little jingle bell to the bottom for an extra Christmassy touch...

I also decided to pink the edges (is that the correct term?), what I mean is the straight cut edges looked a little boring so I used pinking shears to crimp the edges and I think it makes them look more festive. I didn't like the idea of just removing each pocket as the month progressed so I thought it would be nicer to turn them around after each day passed and have something on the back. So after a little searching on the internet I decided to put the words HAVE A MERRY CHRISTMAS on the back of the pockets so this will eventually be spelt out by Christmas day. I decided to separate the words with a little star button and some felt. This idea is my favourite and the fact I came up with it all by myself gave me the biggest thrill. This is by far my favourite pocket of the 24...

 This is how all the little pockets will look together...

 And this is how they will look when turned over...

I'm going to hang the little pockets on some twine with small clothes pegs and I might even wrap some fairy lights around the twine if it works. Oh my word, I am soooo excited... I don't want to wish my life away but I am really, really, REALLY looking forward to when I can get this out of it's little box...

I'm going to fill the little pockets with special advent things to do like decorate the tree will be on day 1 and other things like make gingerbread men (I have never made these before some recipe recommendations would be really useful, otherwise I'll probably just use the BBC recipe), sing christmas carols, make mulled wine. I might also pop in some little treats like gold coins and candy canes but I'm not sure what to put in for Little R as he isn't eating sweets yet... maybe some little boxes of raisins (or baby crack as my Aussie friend likes to call them) might do the trick.

I also have some news to explain my terrible blogging habits of late. I feel I must apologise for not commenting on all the wonderful blogs that I love, I do still love reading them but I just can't find the time to comment and as for actually writing a blog post well I am even worse at getting this done! And the reason... I am 24 weeks pregnant (baby is due at the end of January 2013). Working, looking after Little R (although I have to admit D is great help and lets me have little rests when they are much needed) and trying to get some craft done make it hard to keep up in the blogging world but I'm so glad other people do manage it because I do love reading everyone's crafty exploits. I think making this little advent calendar has excited me even more because I know/hope little R and his little sibling will get years of fun out of it. It's going to be a chaotic 2013 but we are up for the challenge!

Thanks as always for reading and hello and a big thank you to my new followers, I'm so delighted you want to see my little corner of bloggyland.