A weekend of sunshine

The weekend started early for us with the boys having great fun in the garden until way past their usual bedtime. It was so warm & lovely out there that I just didn't have the heart to bundle them off to bed!

Trampoline fun

Playing together (makes a change from fighting/arguing!)

Daddy getting in on the action when he got in from work!

Saturday was spent doing lots of stuff around the house. Our odd-job man was here for the day getting lots of job finished for us (he's worth his weight in gold, as Mr Wilfing is rather challenged in the DIY skills department!) and helping Mr W. move furniture around. Mr W. declared he was "nesting" and got lots of tidying and sorting done, which I just haven't been able to do lately (due to not being able to bend down!)

Sunday we met up with friends in a local country park for a picnic lunch and afternoon of playing. While everyone went off for a walk through the woods, I sat under the shade of a tree in my deck chair and got a few ripples done! They came back with ice-creams, and a deliciously refreshing lemonade ice lolly for me (I have a thing for home-made lemonade and lemonade flavour things at the moment!)



Crochet in the sun!



Sun-dappled play area

We had to drag the children away from their friends at about 5.30pm in order to get home for supper, bath and bed. We all had a lovely afternoon enjoying the beautiful weather, and it was so nice to see the children playing outdoors and away from their various 'screens'.

The lake at Barnwell Country Park

Happy Friday!

It's Friday and it's warm and sunny - what's not to be happy about?

The garden is starting to bloom which always lifts my spirits:

Wisteria

Cosmos

First rosebud - it will be pale yellow when fully open & smell amazing

Allium

Californian Lilac - coveres the front of the ugly garage

Lupin

Busy Mr Bee!

I grew the lupins from seed last year - loads of spikes still to open

The wisteria is starting to climb up the front of the house. When we moved in, it had been cut right down to a stump but is now slowly coming back. Needs a bit of training though!

The chair is finished and in the nursery. I think it could do with some cushions to make it a bit more comfy for breast feeding, but my first crochet blanket looks rather cosy on it.

My lovely new pink Birkenstocks. My pedicure is not looking too bad that I had done on holiday at Easter. A few small chips starting to appear...

Lovely pastel ripples on my latest crochet project - a baby blanket...

A little treat for myself to read in bed later. I've been naughty and already bought Country Living this week, but I have been restrained for a good few months!

As well as the garden, I am also in full bloom! 36 weeks tomorrow and getting bigger by the day. Random strangers have stopped me in shops and in the street to ask when I'm due - they all look slightly shocked when I tell them I still have a month to go. This photo is actually rather flattering, and I look a lot bigger in the flesh. But I have had lots of compliments today on how "blooming" and "well" I look which makes me happy (as I had been feeling rather cumbersome and unwieldy this week!), even if that is code for "flippin'eck you're enormous!"

My new doormat. Just a cheapo one from B&M Bargains, but we had to throw the previous one away after I trod in dog poo getting out of the car on the driveway & then wiped it all over the doormat & trampled it all up the hall! Don't get me started on how cross I was, as we don't even any pets, so was furious to have someone else's pet leave us the gift! But the new doormat makes me slightly happier.

Looking forward to a lovely weekend of sunshine (or at least warm and dry!) with my boys. We're off on a picnic at a nearby country park on Sunday with some friends.

Have a lovely weekend!

Rocking Chair - WIP

We bought this rocking chair from a friend not long after we moved here. We bought is unseen, and I was a little disappointed when I saw it, as it had a much more modern finish than I was expecting - shiny, pale pine. So it has languished in the corner of the dining room (along with all the unpacked boxes and other bits of furniture that we're not quite sure where to put yet) for the last 2 years.

Pale, shiney pine but a nice style

I have always meant to paint it or sand it or something to make it look more rustic or old but you know how things are, best of intentions and all that.

Then I started hearing about Annie Sloan paint and how it needs no prep work (always a sure fire way to put me off doing something!). With the fast approaching arrival of baby #3 I decided that I would like to use the chair in the nursery for night feeds & painting it white or cream would make it fit in with the white furniture. I decided this months ago, but still wilfed about getting no further with actually buying the paint. Until finally this week I went and got a tin of Old White Annie Sloan paint. I am lucky enough to have 3 different stockists within a 20min drive of here!

Sunday morning, Mr Wilfing headed off to London to watch Spurs annihilate his beloved Aston Villa, leaving me home with the boys. As they seemed happy enough playing on their various electronic devices for a bit, and as Mr W had kindly carried the chair upstairs to the nursery for me on Saturday & I had given it a good wipe down (super dusty!), I decided to bite the bullet and slap some paint on. The lady in the shop advised it would probably need 2 coats to give a nice even coverage (I've had a bad experience with some Annie Sloan paint a few weeks ago when about to paint an old church pew but more of that another time).

Here it is after 1 quick coat - not much care taken as it was getting close to lunch and I was rather hungry!

Much better already!

Not looking too bad, just a little patchy. The paint was really thick and I used an Annie Sloan brush which left quite big brush strokes, so I decided to lightly sand it with very fine wet/dry sandpaper before  applying a second coat of slightly watered down paint.

After it's second coat of thinned down paint using a normal flat paintbrush

Here it is above after the second coat - rather sunny so difficult to see it properly. 

 

 

After a thin layer of clear wax applied with a cloth

And here it is after a layer of clear wax applied this morning. The wax has shown up some patchiness in the paint coverage which is a shame as I thought I'd given it a nice even coverage. 

I'm now undecided as to whether I should do some distressing. I had planned to just paint and wax it and buff to a slight sheen. But in places the paint has rubbed off some edges giving it a slightly distressed look which looks ok. Generally I'm not too keen on the full-on shabby chic look. But i do like vintage and character. Should I go the whole hog and distress more edges or leave it as it is? Any advice/opinions would be very gratefully received! 

I did plan to apply another layer of wax tomorrow, but not sure I can be bothered. It is rather arduous being on my hands and knees waxing & buffing with this enormous belly getting in the way - serves me right for leaving it so long to do it!!

Anyways, please do let me know your thoughts on whether or not I should distress some edges a little more...

Rainbow Baby Blanket - finished!

I did it!! I didn't watch much of the Eurovision Song Contest (apart from the bearded-lady of course!), although I heard it all, while I had my head buried in my crochet. By the time i'd finished, I had cramp in my hand, a numb bum and a crick in my neck, but I really really wanted to finish the edge in one go while I had the pattern for the picot edging working in my mind.

So here it is:

Lovely rainbow stripes

Ooops - my slipper got in the shot!

I think I will give it a quick wash, to make it smell nice and block it (as the edge is curling a little) and then I will post it off to my friend, who's baby boy was born a few weeks ago. Hope she likes it! It is the first cochet item I have made as a gift so I am a little nervous!

I used Stylecraft Special DK left from my first blanket here. It's amazing how far that wool goes. I bought the 'Lucy Pack' which I think was 17 balls of yarn for about £22 (there was a special offer on, so can't quite remember what I paid!). I also bought some balls of white in the same yarn and used almost a whole 100g ball. So far made a small blanket and a baby blanket with the coloured yarns and still loads left for at least another couple of baby-size blankets or a lap sized one. 

I now need to decide on my next foray into crochet. I would like to have a crack at some granny squares or maybe a baby ripple blanket. I got some lovely pastel shades of merino baby wool from The Range last week, which is destined to be a baby blanket for my baby bump (only 5 weeks left until D-Day, so I'd better get a move on with it!), just not sure what pattern to go for - I'd definitely like a change from Granny stripes now though...

In other news, I painted a rocking chair with a first coat of Annie Sloan chalk paint today. Hopefully I will get a second coat on tomorrow while the boys are at school. I have the chair ear-marked for the nursery for the night-feeds!

Hope everyone has had a relaxing and/or productive weekend. Back soon with a rocking chair update!

Hooked!

So, for a while now, I have been interested in learning to knit. I used to knit a little as a child (a few dishcloths for my Granny mostly), but have totally lost the knowledge. It has been one of my New Year Resolutions for the last few years, and a couple of years ago I even got as far as buying a set of knitting needles, ball of wool & a beginners guide to knitting. But that was as far as I got, as we then decided to relocate and haven't got around to settling down to knit since!

Then I met a lovely, lovely lady through my son's new school. She's the chair of the PTA and made me so so welcome when we first moved here and has become a really close friend. Turns out she also has a love of all things crafty, and even has occasional crafty get togethers at her house (but I must add that rather a large amount of wine, and very little crafting actually takes place!) Anyway, she is a hooker. No, not that sort of hooker!! I had never actually seen anyone crochet before, and was totally fascinated with how quickly she could do it and how much progress she made with her project in such a short space of time. My attention then moved from knitting to crochet, but I still made no attempt to actually learn it :(

Over the last year (since discovering blogland), I have come across lots and lots of amazingly talented bloggers, many of whom crochet. I had no idea the skill was so prolific (having always associated it with ladies "of a certain age", maybe because my mother-in-law crochets). I had also thought of it in terms of granny square blankets, cushions and clothing in dodgy browns, oranges and greens (I am a child of the 70s!!). Lucy at Attic24 in particular has changed my view of crochet. Her colours are so bright, vibrant and fresh, and the things she makes so unlike what I remember from my childhood, that I was totally mesmerised.

This year, I decided I definitely wanted to learn to crochet, especially with our new arrival due this year (I had visions of lots of crochet baby blankets, toys, hats etc!) I enlisted the help of my lovely friend to show me the ropes (she is self taught using books too), ordered the "Happy Hooker" book on her recommendation and got some cheap wool from the charity shop. There followed a week or two of extreme frustration and choice language in the Wilfing household, but I finally grasped it. I just couldn't get my head around how to hold the wool (or I should say "yarn") resulting in my tension being all wrong. I was also not too good at counting my stitches, resulting in sloping sides to my practice pieces! I finally grasped it though, and decided I needed to actually make something rather than just endlessly crochets rows and then unravelling them and starting again.

So here is my very first creation:

Apologies for the poor quality of the photos - taken on my phone in bad light!

It is a snood/infinity scarf thingy from this blog raincloudandsage.

I used chunky yarn on a 7mm hook, which made it super quick to make - even at my beginner's snail's pace, I only took an afternoon and an evening. Not sure my sewing in of ends was up to much though, as some of them have started to poke out.

Next I decided to give Lucy's Granny Blanket a go. I just love her colours and ordered a "Lucy Pack" of Stylecraft Special DK from Deramores. Delivery was super fast, so I could crack on straight away. I did a little tester of the pattern to make sure I understood it, and then got going. I have to say the first few rows were tricky, but once I got going properly I found it really easy. I decided to do random colours, which is actually harder than I thought! I'm not convinced I fully like the finished colour combo, and think I may be more of 'plan in advance, orderly colour patter' kind of gal. But I kept going ad going, making the blanket WAY bigger than I meant too (it was supposed to be a little blanket for the baby!). My youngest took a shine to it anyway, so it has become a 'snuggle on the sofa' blanket instead! I was pretty happy with the edging (I copied Lucy's) and I even managed my own version of her scalloped/picot edging which was I am very chuffed with.

It could really do with blocking, as the edging is rather curly (I think this is due to my poorly executed corners - I still have no idea how to do corners, having bypassed the granny-square part of learning to crochet! If anyone can give me any helpful tips or guide me in the direction of a tutorial for edging blankets/crochets around corners, I would be very grateful!)

And now I have almost finished a much smaller granny stripe blanket for a friend's new baby (fudging the corners to the edging - they look slightly better than my first blanket...) so hope to show some finished pictures soon!

I've survived another week!

So it's almost Friday again! How did that happen? The joys of having a bank holiday Monday I guess. And we've got another one coming up soon (even if it is hidden a little in half term).

Another week gone means another week closer to meeting the new member of our family. So I'll be 35 weeks on Saturday - only 5 weeks to go! But if it's anything like its big brothers, it will be nearer 7 weeks before we meet. Midwife appointment yesterday went well. I am very lucky to have exceptionally healthy pregnancies - no morning sickness, low blood pressure, fully active and mobile until the very end (I think partly due to carrying my babies very high, which leaves my legs/hips free from pressure). I feel very sorry (but so lucky for myself) when I see pregnant women limping and lumbering around with still 2-3 months to go! It was due to my healthy pregnancies that I happily booked a trip to Texas and Mexico for Easter when I would be 30 weeks pregnant. Everyone thought we were mad to be going on a long haul holiday, with 2 small boys in tow, at such a late stage in my pregnancy, but we had a fabulous time (apart from all the queuing at immigration, security etc)! More of that another time.

So it's almost Friday, which means a weekend lie-in is on its way! Hooray! Him indoors and I take it turns to have a lie-in at the weekend. Sometimes the boys are good and quietly play in their room (they share) for a while before thirst and hunger get the better of them and they come and wake us. Other times, they go downstairs and help themselves to breakfast (always a little hit and miss as to what they end up having and how much mess they make). On these days, Mr Wilfing and I both get a bit of a lie-in! More often than not though, by 7am the boys are awake and sound like they are about to murder each other, so one of gets up and swiftly takes them downstairs to be fed and watch telly, while the other gets a much needed extra bit of sleep. Gotta make the most of this weekend routine before it is shattered into a million pieces by a newborn's hungry screams at regular intervals of the night and day!

This weekend I am hoping to finish the blanket I am currently crocheting for a friend's baby. It is only my 2nd blanket and my 3rd crochet creation ever! 

I took this yesterday whilst sat in the car watching my eldest at football training. He has no natural aptitude, bless him, and only likes going because his best friend goes, but we're hoping that at least he will learn how to play and also get some excercise at the same time.

The blanket is a rainbow one, which I am currently edging in blue (as the baby was a boy!). Still very new to crochet, and struggle a bit with starting and finishing things. Once I get going I'm fine, and love the rhythm and methodicalness of it. Tres relaxing!

I'm also hoping to get a few more of these made over the weekend for the baby:

They're burp cloths - one side is brushed cotton and the other towelling, making them super absorbent. They were super easy to make too! I breast fed both my boys and got through a ton of muslins every day. But they weren't the most absorbent and I invariably had a patch of dried posset/puke on my shoulder at all times which had soaked through the muslin!! These little cloths should hopefully be better fit for purpose, and will certainly look a bit nicer when out and about, than a slightly off-white, screwed up muslin! The wonders of Pinterest for introducing these to me!

Hoping to keep up with some regular blogging, but seem to spend a LOT of time reading other people's instead! Here's some updates I hope to share soon:

* My finished crochet projects

* My planned crochet makes

* Other creative projects that are in the pipeline

* Our wonderful visit to Texas and Mexico

* Updates on work we've done to the house

A rather prolonged absence from blogland...

Well, I have finally made it back!! My last post was July 2013!! I don't know what happened really - I guess life took over for a while - first the school summer holidays (6 weeks with my 2 munchkins to entertain), then the back to school & seasonal adjustment and then this:

Yup! I'm preggers!! This was a selfie taken 2 weeks ago when I was 32 weeks pregnant. So now only 6 weeks (though probably nearer 8 if the first two are anything to go by!) to go!!

Took us a little by surprise, but a pleasant surprise as I have always wanted to have a third but we just hadn't got around to making THE decision to start trying again. Mother Nature made the decision for us.

So time has kind of slipped by in a whirl of midwife appointments and having work done on the house "before the baby comes", resulting in my blog falling by the wayside.

I can't promise I'll be any more frequent with my posts going forward, as the summer is likely to be pretty hectic & will no doubt pass me by in a haze of tiredness, breast feeding & nappy changing! But I can but hope that I manage to find a little time here and there.

I have recently learnt to crochet - something I have fancied mastering since first discovering Lucy at Attic24. I can report that I am totally hooked (get it??) so hope to share some of my makes with you. I have discovered some amazingly talented crafty ladies out there in blogland, who have really inspired me with my crochet and crafting, and renewed my interest in blogging.

Off to lie down & take the weight of this ginormous bump off for a little while...