The Patio

So our garden is a blank canvas.  This is a vast improvement from the 'mess' that we inherited when we bought the house

This was the overgrown back garden when we first moved in:

And here's the patio:

We worked hard to clear the whole thing including the rubble and brambles that were the biggest part of the end patch:

Yes that was once a pond!

Which led me to have big plans which we were due to get started on 18 months ago. And we all know what happened then...

So absolutely nothing happened in the garden for the whole of the last year. DH doesn't do gardens. He grew up in a sixth floor apartment in Athens, gardens confuse him LOL. He did keep the grass cut (sorta) but that was about it so this year I am on a mission to get started with my plans. Stage 1 is getting the patio sorted.

This is what it looked like after the winter:

And this is what it looks like now (minus the bread which the birds have removed):

A friend of ours jet washed it for almost two hours to get it to that state - there's just no escape from the fact that they are old and nasty slabs but we cannot afford new and nice ones so we're going to repoint these ones and make the best of it for now. 

Do you see those decorative bricks down the left hand side?  We have enough of those to build two walls at the end of the patio either side of the steps (it's about a foot and a half drop from the edge to the garden below) to make it a bit safer for the boy toddling around.  I will also finish painting the side of the garage so it's all blue (I painted the first bit two years ago LOL).

Once that is done I have plans for a veggie patch and a wildlife garden as well as leaving a large chunk of kid friendly lawn.  We won't get too far with it all this year but we will definitely make progress on last year!

Gardening

So we've spent the last two weekends trying to clear the garden a bit more. As an update, here's the back garden as it was when we moved in:

And here's some of the stages it's gone through since then:

So here's what it looks like now. We've spent lots of time trying to get the fence out and all the ivy that was growing next to the patio and clearing it all the way down to the back fence.

We've cleared a lot of the awful bit at the end but we're still left with this:

The pond:

One of the awful stumps

The general awfulness!

And those are the reasons why we're going to have to get professional help! There's just no way that DH and I can clear that lot in any kind of reasonable time. For a start we're busy ever single weekend in April and at least two in May but more importantly we don't know where to start. We spent a lot of time out there last weekend and it's hard to see what we achieved which is soul destroying when we're faced with so much more still to do. I know it's just a matter of plugging away but if we don't get someone in we will lose another summer of being able to enjoy being outside.

All I want is everything that is there now stripped out, a basic fence down the side (just to keep Lia in and to define the boundary) and a rectangle of lawn that Lia can play on. All the planting, veggies, wildlife garden, new patio etc can wait till next year. Lia's desperate to be outside and I hate that I have to watch her every minute and constantly tell her to be careful or no she can't have toys out because it's not safe for her to play.

Anyway, we've almost certainly got somebody to do the work - I have no idea how some tradesmen get on with things as they're so unreliable - my nieces boyfriend who has done this kind of work in the past. It means dipping into our savings (again) but it'll be worth it to see this mess gone and not be depressed every time I look outside. I was even looking at the pics at the beginning of this post and thinking that it looked better in the first one than it does now.

Nevermind that we couldn't actually get into the last 1/4 of it due to the brambles or the ants nests in the lawn etc, at least it was green and flourishing!

Grab your sunglasses...

And no, it's not just for the fabulous weather we've been having, it's because I reverted to my favourite colour scheme for my latest quilt top...

I love this style of quilting - it's so much simpler than it looks and I did most of this one the day of the class, I just had to finish putting the strips together at home. I'm going to double the width of the quilt so the dimensions balance better, typically me I had to do it 20 colours deep when the rest of the class did 10 - 12 colours but I'm not really into quilts as wall hangings so I want this as a snuggle quilt for the house (to add to the ever growing pile!)

I've only got one more quilting class booked - the Mariner's compass block at the beginning of September. I've tentatively said I'd like to do another in Feb but that will have to wait until we see what the money situation is. I'm going to miss the classes, mostly because it's a whole day quilting with no distractions, but I am confident in my skills now and have so many projects to be getting on with that I'm sure having a break from learning anything new will be good for me.

I'm planning on taking some pics of my stitching at the weekend along with my monthly review so I'll do a proper catch up then. What I do have are some progress pics of the garden.

We've been working to clear things and it's going to take a long, long time to get it done, especially when you are working in the prime growing time - it seems as quickly as we cut things back they grow again at the moment. Still, we're starting to see a difference which keeps us positive.

This is the fence that runs down the left hand side of the garden. It's kinda knackered and not that pleasant to look at but at the moment it's holding back a lot of the overgrowth from next door (we have an elderly lady next door whose garden is just completely wild) so what we decided to do is take off the top half and use the better boards from that to replace the worst boards from the lower half. We figure if we give it a coat of paint it'll look better and we can think about what we'll replace it with later.

You can see from the pic that we've got about half way down removing the boards but you can also see the overgrowth we have to cut back. Yes, I know it's next door but she can't do it so if we don't it will just engulf our garden. At least she doesn't mind what we do so I'm getting on with serious pruning...

Here's the most horrible bit of the fence which is just next to the house (so just before the bit of the fence in the above pic.)

It's totally overgrown with ivy that is stuck to the fence so well that it's difficult to tell where one stops and the other starts. We're battling with it slowly but I think we might give in and remove the whole lot.

We have, however, managed to clear all the junk from the patio and surrounding areas so we at least have a pleasant place to sit and yes, those are tomato plants on the left, we even have four mini tomatoes (although they will be lucky to survive Lia's obsession with them).

We've also done a lot of clearing out of the beds at the end of the patio and started painting the garage which has made it look a lot nicer (it's blue because that's the colour of paint we had LOL)

That last bit of garage (the hideous wooden bit) is a badly built extension and we're going to pull it down as the first part of our garage conversion programme. Probably not till next spring though so we'll have to live with looking at it for a while longer.

So you have an idea of exactly how much things have changed here's the pics of what we inherited last august...

Looking at those I'm a lot less depressed by how long it's taking LOL.

And finally, as usual, Lia was happy to pose for a picture given the camera was out

Too Many Pretty Things!

Surfing blogs is officially bad for the wallet!

I haven't had a chance to read lots of blogs lately but life has calmed down a bit so I've been playing catch up and it was a bad mistake. It seems like everywhere I go people have links to pretty things, great shops, fantastic finishes and so on and it's becoming very dangerous for me to click my mouse!

Karen's blog had a link for a wonderful site selling ribbons and I admit that this is the only site where I caved in and bought some (the July Ribbon Kit). In my defense I don't have any ribbon stash and my new-found finishing skills mean that I'm sure to need some. Then I was reading a blog whose author had finished an amazing quilt and I had to click on the link there to see more designs by the same person (Judy Niemeyer) and I'm totally in love with 4th of July and Tropical Sundance.

I'm being good though, the two designs are now on my wish list and maybe Santa will be good to me at the end of the year.

Life is bimbling along here. We took Lia to the cinema for the first time this weekend and it went much better than we hoped. We saw Wall-E (great film and the short, Presto, before it was fantastic) and she sat in her seat for the whole two hours only getting a bit upset when it got too loud for her. We're going to do Kung-Fu Panda next.

We've been doing some work in the garden too as the weather here has finally cheered up a bit. It's such a huge job that we sometimes feel we're not getting anywhere but little by little it's getting cleared up and eventually we'll have a garden that we can just sit back and enjoy. DH has been much more motivated than I expected which is great - Lia and I went to a birthday party on Saturday afternoon and got back to find he'd ripped down half the fence and cleared loads of overgrown ivy.

I will get some pics soon both of the garden and my stitching and quilting.

I've had a small HD this month as I stitched up a Secret Needle Night project from The Silver Needle - Ho Ho Santa. I'm now working on Lavender Hearts and making good progress. I've never done drawn thread before but managed the first row without too much difficulty, I've also done my first ever Lazy Daisies too. I have been a bit of a coward though as I'm leaving the hardanger heart till last, again I've never done it before, so I'll practice on some scrap fabric first.

Quilting wise I've finished up the quilt I needed to do for a birthday gift and I've also finally gotten round to finishing up the cushion tops I did in my curves course. I have another course this friday to learn the Bargello technique so am looking forward to that. I have picked out all of my red, orange, yellow and purple fabrics to take so this one is going to be bright!

In other news it looks like my work situation is going to change soon as I've been warned that my job could be at risk of redundancy. It's not really a shock (a lot of organisational changes have happened in the last couple of years) and we have redundancy insurance so we'll manage for money if we need to. The truth is that DH and I have been talking for a while about me moving on and getting something closer to where we live for when Lia goes to school (I work in the next town over, about 30-40 mins drive from home).

This is just a kick up the bum for us to get moving with things really. I won't know anything for sure till the 20th August so at the moment I'm just looking at the job market, working on my CV and biding my time till I know the facts. I don't want to jump now because I'll lose any redundancy payment I'm due and after seven years in the job it should be a decent sum.

I am sad, it's not how I'd like to move on and I do like the people in the team I'm part of but my job has changed a lot in the last two years and it's not one that I'm really enjoying any more. So all in all, I can look at the positive side of it and not really get stressed or upset, it's most likely that we'll be better off as a family once we get through all the changes.

Garden Plans

Grrrrrr to the English weather as I'm so keen to get out and work on the garden and it's been tipping it down for days.

We have been looking into the possibility of a garage conversion. Our house is nice and big but only has three bedrooms so if we have another child we'll lose the spare room. We could do a loft conversion but we'd lose the smallest room to provide access to the room upstairs so all we'd gain would be a bigger third room and less storage space.

We could also consider extending out to the side but given this work would take around 100k we could spend the same money building a huge house in Greece and moving over there (not to mention we don't have 100k to spare).

So DH has been looking into garage conversions as, if it's a room for your own use, you don't need planning permission and it's a much cheaper, less hassle option as all the work would carry on outside our living space.

I probably mentioned back when we were buying the house that our Garage is 51 feet long (that's 15.5 metres for the non-Imperial readers). The back end of it is a not-very-well-built extention to the original structure and the whole thing is freestanding (so not connected to the house at al).

We had a man out yesterday evening to give us some idea of what we can do and how much it will cost and we're still looking at a large sum of money (around 25k) to do it right. Basically the back extention to the garage is not stable (the walls are cracked in a way that indicates the foundations are not good enough) and to convert the whole thing would mean pulling that part down and rebuilding it so we made the decision that we'd pull it down and not rebuild, just restore the garage to it's original length which is around 35 feet so plenty big enough.

I'm so pleased - since we moved in I've wanted to get rid of the end part - it's wooden rather than the concrete of the rest, it's manky, badly built and frankly, an eyesore. Plus it's far too much garage for us - I'm going to gain around 15 feet of extra garden space when it goes which is fantastic.

We're getting a quote from the guy for the conversion of the front part of the garage into two rooms and an ensuite toilet/shower room. There would be one small 'workshop' room for DH to have his tools etc in and then the rest of the space would be our hobby room come guest room. With the extra space outside we'd get a nice garden shed to take all of the garden tools etc and we'd have more veggie patch room too.

The conversion company do a finance option where you don't pay for a year and then you pay off over four years but I'm a little reluctant to consider that option in the current financial environment. I want to talk the plans over with my BIL who is extremely experienced in building/converting/extending current houses and who will have a lot of good advice for us.

It's at times like this that I regret not living much closer to my family as, if we were with them, my BIL could be our Project Manager and Foreman and DH could learn from him and we'd get it done much, much cheaper. Unfortunately DH doesn't have the skills to go this one on his own so I need to see if my BIL would consider living with us for a few weeks to get the project done.

All in all it's very exciting. We'd move the 'office' out there and DH's guitars etc as well as my books and stash to make a real cosy space for us to use. We'd gain a nicer living space too as currently part of our lounge has the desk and computer, my stash and DH's guitars so if all of that was outside the lounge would be much less cluttered.

We'd also be able to give guests a bit of privacy as well as having a room Lia could use later for sleepovers, etc.

It's easy to get caught up in the enthusiasm for all of this but we will sit back and make proper plans. We've talked on and off for years about moving to Greece at some point and it may be that our funds could be better diverted into property over there. TBH, if we go through the 'professionals building it for us route' I will want to save for a while before going ahead (we won't be able to afford it outright) and if we go through the 'build it ourselves with assistance from friends and family' route it'll take time because it will have to be done in stages as we can afford it and have the time so neither option will be an instant one (unless we win the lottery in which case we'll be moving anyway so it won't matter LOL)

Aching ribs

Well I don't know about the rest of you but I had a terrific weekend - my ribs have only just stopped aching from the laughing and we're already planning next years!

The place we stay is fantastic for us because as well as being clean, comfy and cosy, it has places indoors and outdoors that we can all fit together - a lovely enclosed courtyard and a conference room - which means that if the weather is not great (like on Saturday) we can all be inside and when it is great (like on Sunday) we can all be outside and we're not split up into smaller groups.

I was going to say that I can't remember the last time I laughed as much but I can, it was the same place and time last year. At one point I seriously thought I might die and someone had to rescue the large bowl of strawberries I was carrying as I was in danger of falling onto the floor.

I also spent far too much money on fabrics as my road-trip-mate and I managed to visit three quilting shops, one of them twice. In my defence she spent more money than me but really that doesn't take away from the fact that I spent more than I should have.

So now I'm officially on the Stash Wagon for both quilting and stitching until I've made a significant dent in the stash I have. At the moment this will be a year long trip on the wagon with a review and probable extension next June. The exceptions are:

1. The last Bent Creek Big Zipper kits whenever they are released
2. Any cotton required for quilting projects
3. The one or two more fabrics I need to locate for the baby quilt to be gifted to my impending niece/nephew
4. Budgeted amounts for the NEC and Ally Pally shows
5. Limited amounts of floss for Stitching projects (if I need too much I'll stitch something else)

I also have some things to sell on ebay and any money I get for those will be channeled into buying wadding and backing for my current quilt projects.

Yes this is to do with the guilt that I feel but also I have so many fantastic projects in my stash that I should be getting on with I don't need to add any more. I have two more quilting classes booked and that will be the end of them until June next year too as I need some time to practice what I've already learnt.

So quilting wise I'll be focusing on making quilt tops only and saving up for backing and wadding to do the actual quilting in the winter (exceptions being the last two Jungle quilts that have to be gifted).

Stitching wise I want to focus on Sleigh Ride, Cirque de Cercles, Happy Haunting and Red Thread with the idea that I'd like to get them all finished before the end of this year. I can fit small projects around those as and when I need a break.

In other news we never did get hold of the gardener so we're slowly but surely getting on with the work ourselves. We now have a spanking new petrol lawn mower (so lovely and shiny that it's a shame to use it LOL) which means we can keep the savannah to a minimum and we're starting to clear the junk out of the garden to. Painting the fence and the side of the garage will brighten up the whole garden so is hopefully one of the next jobs that will get done.

DH ripped out the manky old water feature on the patio - when I say water feature, it was a plastic bucket covered with a wheelbarrow full of shingle - and has replaced it with the one we had at our old house which fits perfectly and can be powered from the garage without the wiring being intrusive.

I got a voucher for 1000 tesco clubcard points if I spent £50 or more at Tesco Direct this month (stay with me, this is relevant) so I had a nosey around their site to see if there was anything we could use. Basically 1000 points equates to £10 in vouchers to use in store but if you swap that £10 of store vouchers for clubcard vouchers they are worth four times the value so we can get £40 of things such as restaurant vouchers and day out vouchers.

Not a bad deal really as long as one doesn't spend money to save money. Anyway, we bought a 240 litre water butt and some solar lights for the garden for a total of £59. The lights were 50% off so we actually got £70 of lighting for half price plus £40 of vouchers so I feel happy we got a good deal. We do have a water butt that was already in the garden but it is really old, clogged full of ick and has no lid to it. Oh and is about half the size of the new one. The best feature of the new one is that it comes with a lockable lid so is child safe.

Fingers crossed the weather is okay this weekend so we can get a bit more done out there. Now we've cleared some Lia can run around and play while we're working which helps. After this weekend we're on holiday for the next two so it'd be nice to get a bit more done before we go away. At least DH is a bit more motivated than I thought he'd be - he did quite a bit last weekend when I was away so I don't feel like I'm cracking the whip all the time.

Back to Reality

So we're back to the normality of work and nursery. Lia had a bit of an issue adjusting back to nursery after the spoiling she received whilst in Greece but after a week back she's much better. She's also in the process of moving rooms which is unsettling even when you've not been out for three weeks.

I can't believe that she'll be three in a couple of weeks! I'll have to get some birthday pics as it's been a while since I posted any. She's getting very grown up now and is a right little scallywag. LOL.

I'm currently trying desperately to get the Gardener to confirm when he's going to come. He's proving impossible to get hold of on the phone and we've left message after message for him to contact us, the last one saying that if we don't hear from him this week we'll go elsewhere. Not that there's anywhere else to go as we had a hard enough time getting anyone to come and quote for the job. We've decided at that if he doesn't contact us we'll do the work ourselves - it'll take a lot longer but we'll save around half the cost. I'm not sure DH is that confident about doing the work but he's been reading up on what needs to be done and I'm sure we'll be fine.

The main problem is that one of us has to be with Lia which means the other is working alone. We're stupidly busy for the whole of June so the work will have to be done in July - I'm hoping that for at least one weekend my parents will come and babysit so we can both get on with the clearing up and tree stump removal. I guess when it's all done we'll have the satisfaction of knowing we did it all but I'd much rather pay someone else!

Crafting wise I don't think I'm going to manage any of my goals this month. Between being in Greece for the first week of the month, a couple of weekends away and a secret project that has to be done for a couple of weeks time I don't have any spare time to get on with anything.

This weekend is a Bank Holiday here and we have to work hard to get the garden in a fit state for visitors as the following weekend we're having a BBQ to celebrate Lia's third birthday (the first time we'll celebrate it at home). Much weed removal, painting and lawnmowing is required just to get it in some kind of order.

I hope to get some crafting done as well but I'm not in despair as it's only two and a half weeks till I have a whole four days away with friends where I can stitch without interruptions. We're off on our annual trip to Derbyshire where no husbands and no children are allowed. We get to knit, stitch, quilt, whatever takes our fancy and Kate from Sparklies will be holding a dyeing class again too (BTW Sparklies has a fabric naming competition on right now - go have a look!)

I'll admit that I didn't get much stitching done last year (mainly due to laughing way too much) but this year I intend to do little else but sit and stitch.

I'll be sure and get some pics this weekend to make my next post a bit more interesting...

Bad Mummy Day

Lia didn't want to go to nursery today. This meant the day started with whining which quickly moved up to tears and then finally screams. All before 8am.

The result being a snotty, tearful child being left at nursery and me sitting at work with a blinding headache and feeling like a bad Mum.

This isn't a play for sympathy, I know that by now she'll have totally forgotten her angst and she'll be enjoying herself and I've just taken some painkillers so the headache will go soon. The lingering 'bad mummy' feeling will probably stay for a lot of the day but when I pick up my happy child this evening that will go too.

It's just that some days start badly you know?

And no, I don't have any regrets about her attending nursery, I'd be a much worse Mummy if I was at home with her 24/7. I know that nursery is a subject that people have strong views about but it works for me and it works for Lia. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she's created like she did this morning about going, generally she loves it and she gets much more activities and company than she would if we were at home.

The time I have at home with her is more precious too which means we both benefit.

Anyway, the up side of today is that I've just posted two cheques, one for the balance due for our holiday in Devon at the end of June and one for the balance for the Stitchers Weekend GTG at the beginning of June, both of which I am looking forward to immensely.

I've also sent confirmation to the gardener that we'll accept his quote for clearing our mess, removing three tree stumps, levelling the lot and laying a lawn. All of which he says can be done next month so we'll have a proper garden for Lia to enjoy for the summer.

Okay, all of the above involves significant cost to us (as does the two week holiday in Greece this month and the boiler replacement) but I think the boost to our quality of life that the garden will provide plus the well needed breaks will do us all good. DH hasn't been home to Greece for a year and Lia and I haven't been since Christmas 2006 so it's a long overdue trip (mainly because of the house move last year and my SIL's ever moving wedding date).

We've not had a proper family holiday since Lia was born either (Greece doesn't count) so the Devon trip will be great fun for us all as we're staying on a farm that's about 20 mins from the sea so Lia will have a blast with the animals and the beach.

I have to say that I'm more excited about the garden than anything else though. I can't wait for it to be cleared and looking nice. If it all works out we should be able to order the wooden playhouse for Lia in time for her birthday too. We got the Grandparents to give money for christmas last year and they'll do the same for her birthday so we can buy her one of these.

I figure that it'll provide years of fun and a nice hidey hole for her to escape to. Oh and of course I can have fun furnishing it with curtains, quilted cushions etc.

Snow!

We woke up to this today:

I love snow - we don't get more than a few flakes that often and it rarely settles so I was more excited than Lia!

You can also see from the above pic how much clearing we've done from the end of the back garden

It didn't take long to start melting though so we had to get out quickly and make this guy

And then we came in and Dr Lia administered some drugs to stop us catching cold

And because I had the camera out I finally got round to taking some pics of my latest finishes and WIPs

Here's The Big Zipper (post frogging and partial restitching of the window in the house section)

And I treated myself to a small project just because I felt like somethig simple - Fa La La from Shepherd's Bush - and it stitched up very quickly in just two evenings

And here's The Cat's Whiskers' Alyssum Scissor Pocket made up

And finally for the stitching here's the small Daydreams Wedding Design for my SIL (I forgot to take a pic of it framed but I will). Be impressed I stitched in Greek! LOL

One last pic which is the quilt that I finished last month by finally getting the binding done

The Lurgy

Ugh, both DH and I had the flu last week - something I've never suffered from before and I'm still trying to recover.

I was supposed to be on a course last week - I did two days and then, when I got home on the Tuesday I felt so rotten that I went to bed early and ended up staying there until Thursday! DH was about three days ahead of me recovery wise which meant that he did most of the childcare. Amazingly, Lia remained bug free and thankfully so did my mother who was staying with us to look after Lia whilst I was on the course. We sent her home as soon as we felt able to cope though because I didn't want her catching it.

This meant that Easter was pretty much a wash out for us as we had to cancel pretty much all we'd planned. We did manage to visit friends on Easter Sunday as we were both feeling much better but Monday morning I woke up with and ear and throat infection that meant I was in agony every time I swallowed. However I'm three days into a course of antibiotics and am much better now - today is my first day back in work.

The downside of being sick is that no stitching or quilting has been done for about 10 days so I'm rather behind in my March goals. However I have been reading quite extensively and have managed to finish sixteen books so far this month! See, always a silver lining LOL.

We had a bit of a disaster early on this month as our boiler stopped working and the nice man who came to fix it informed me it is 26 years old and on its last legs. It hasn't been serviced or looked at for years and, although he did manage to get it started, we need to replace it and overhaul the system. Cue some expensive quotes from plumbers!

However my Mum has come up trumps with some cash to help us which means we're not raiding our savings quite as badly as we might have. We're collecting quotes for both the boiler and the garden and I'm hoping we can stretch the cash we have to do both. Mum had planned to give us the money so we could get the garden done completely but obviously the boiler is more important. I'd be happy if we can get the whole garden rotivated and the part we want as lawn turfed. Anything over that is a bonus really.

Also, I'm looking forward to creating the garden myself and learning a bit as I go along, if we get the whole lot done for us I'm not sure it would be anywhere near as much fun. The rotivating and turfing is the boring bit LOL. I'm also hoping we can get the garden done for the beginning of the summer as it'll be much nicer for all of us if we can enjoy it rather than spend the nice days looking at the mess it is now.

The clocks change here this weekend which means lighter evenings so if the weather improves I shall be out in the garden tidying up. We've got to weed kill round the patio slabs again as there's a whole bunch of new shoots coming up and I have to clear out four more beds so I can do some planting. Also, if we can paint the outside of the garage and clear up and paint the fence then the garden will look much better (plus it'd be a good thing to do that before they come and lay new turf right?)

So I imagine my stitching and quilting will slow down a bit for a while. I don't mind that as I do enjoy gardening, my only problem is that my bigger WIPs just won't get much attention. However, we're off to Greece for two weeks next month and I intend to take Sleigh Ride as my only stitching so hopefully I should get plenty done. I moan a lot about it not being a real holiday when I'm out there but I do at least get spare time when I can sit and stitch.

That's pretty much it I think - I can't believe March is almost over, to me I'm still somewhere around the middle of the month. Still, the best thing about March being over is that April is my birthday month so I will get a birthday discount order from Needlecraft Corner as my present. I'm already listing what I want but I shall reveal all in a later post when I've double checked with DH just how much I can spend!

Friends

Last year passed in a bit of a blur for us as a large chunk of it was taken up with the whole process of moving house which took from early May till late August and by the time we'd caught our breath it was time to start planning Christmas!

This meant that we missed seeing a lot of our friends as more often than not it was impossible to co-ordinate our limited free time. We are determined to make up for that this year and so the weekend just gone we had friends to stay and the one before we stayed with friends.

The first weekend when we were away was fantastic fun - it was three couples plus Lia and two baby bumps as both of the other couples are expecting their first babies in July. A great time was had by all, especially Lia who was spoiled by everyone.

This weekend we had my best friend, her husband and their two children to stay with us and yesterday we were joined by another family of four which meant I catered for 11 (the most I've ever cooked for before was 6). Again a lovely time was had by all and the kids aged from 10 months to 8 years and they all managed to play together with no upsets.

It was a bit of a mad weekend - our house is large but two families living in it means it's heading towards mayhem - and I'm thoroughly exhausted today but I'd forgotten just how wonderful it is to be surrounded by friends whose love and affection inspires and warms.

We had a long discussion about our garden (it is the current topic of choice given the amount of work it requires) as I'd arranged for a professional to come round and give us a quote for some work. Anyway S, the husband, said he'd be more than happy to help and they could come and stay two or three times specifically so he and DH could go out in the garden.

The next thing I know DH and S are out there for three hours chopping down trees, cutting away all the brambles, pulling down old fencing and suddenly we can now see the whole length of the garden! We also have a huge amount of fuel for a second bonfire next weekend. E, my best mate, was also out there with a bin bag picking up the rubbish that has accumulated (we live next to a school and coke cans and crisp packets are regularly thrown over the fence) and all I was doing was making lunch and checking on their baby.

Thanks to their work we're now a bit further on and I was able to have a much saner conversation with the gardener. His recommendation is to kill off the current 'lawn' (read moss, weeds, shoots, tree stumps, brambles and bare earth), rotivate it all and then re-turf. It's basically what we figured we needed to do given the state of it all and at least once it's done we'll have a good, flat, lawn that Lia can run around on.

We'll be leaving two large chunks lawn free though, one patch around 4 metres by 12 metres where I want a veggie bed and a small greenhouse and the end patch - 9 metres by 13 metres - where we'll build up a wildlife pond and garden, a tranquil area if you like. Both of those projects will take more time (because they'll require more money LOL) but if we can clear everything and get it set up then we can look at the next stages next year.

We'll have plenty of other things to keep us busy - garage and fences need painting, the five small beds around the patio need clearing and planting and we're also planning on putting some fruit trees in so once the inital clearance has been done we can maybe put those in if we can afford to.

All the planting around the patio is going to be as aromatic as possible. There'll be a small herb bed and I'm hoping to get some jasmine to train along the fence on one side. I love lavender so there'll be a couple of lavender bushes in the beds at the end of the patio. I'm not sure what else I'll be including - there's not a lot of space and I'm not looking at bedding plants or anything that requires a lot of attention. My idea is that the garden isn't high maintenance, energy will be spent on the veggies mainly, with mowing and a bit of clearing and tidying the only other regular tasks. I have a lot of hobbies and not enough spare time!

In other news my parents have moved house. They have downsized from a four bedroom house to a two bedroom ground floor flat. It's strange because for 31 years my mother lived in the same place (12 years in one house and then 19 in a house next door) so the only homes I remember have always been 'Up Iffin' (the name of the lane the houses are on). My sister still lives in one of the two houses so I will still go up there but if she ever decides to move I'll only ever see the houses if I go to take a peek because they're up a driveway set back from the road.

Still, given my parents are in their mid 70s the new flat is a good idea, it's on a bus route and they can walk to town which is a big improvement from being a mile up a tiny country lane. It's also an odd feeling because they're a stone's throw from where my favourite Auntie lived while I was growing up. She died a few years ago and I've not spent much time in that part of town since so when I visited my parents last week I was wandering around reliving childhood memories.

A Productive Weekend

Well I don't know what it was like where you were this weekend but the weather was absolutely glorious where I was which encouraged a very productive time.

Quilting wise I finished the gift quilt I was making, put together the centre of the first jungle quilt, did the quilting for one of my finished tops and sewed the binding on two of its sides. I definitely need more practice re the actual quilting bit - I've decided that sewing straight lines is incredibly boring and I go way too fast trying to get it done. Still, practice makes perfect and I'll work on making myself take time because I'll only end up spoiling the work I've already done.

Stitching has also been going well, I've made good progress on my Small Start for Feb - First Moon Colony - Cirque des Cercles has had some attention and last night I properly finished two projects, The Stitching Shed's Santa cushion and The Cat's Whiskers' Spring Fever Biscournu. I also made headway in finishing The Cat's Whiskers' Alyssum Scissor Pocket.

I'm thinking to work on Sleigh Ride a bit this week. We're away visiting friends next weekend and the one after we have friends visiting us so I don't think I'll get much stitching done for the rest of this month as I have to finish the Jungle Quilt in the next couple of weeks too.

I don't have any pics of the above because I spent yesterday in the garden and it was too dark to take good photos by the time I remembered so I'll take some pics this week and post them.

I had a Stitchers GTG at mine on Saturday. A couple of my friends run online stores so we filled my house with their stock and had a great time rummaging through it all. Kate from Sparklies was one of them and she was kind enough to bring me some dye to do a piece of fabric. I bought a metre of white/silver metallic off her last year with the idea of dyeing it at some point and when I got given Row of Christmas Fairies for Christmas I decided that I needed that particular fabric dyed a paleish blue (and I needed it NOW! LOL)

Kate ran a dyeing class last June when a bunch of us stitchers went away together for the weekend so I was confident enough to go ahead with the dyeing (and her great instructions helped too) and the fabric has come out just as I wanted. I've got half a metre left which I intend to dye during her class at this years GTG as I want it the same blue but with a hint of purple so I need a bit of guidance. I have so many christmas/snow designs that I'm sure I'll get through the fabric in no time!

As I mentioned we spent a large part of yesterday in the garden starting to clear up a bit. We finally had the bonfire we'd been putting off since October. Okay it's not that environmentally friendly but we had so much to get rid of it really was the only way. Since moving in we've taken around 150 large bags of garden waste to the tip and we had more than all of that to burn yesterday. Plus we have about as much again (if not more) to cut down and remove so the bonfire has at least given us the chance to clear the backlog.

I had a chat with DH about my plans for the garden. He's not really a gardener, okay, he's not at all a gardener, so he's happy to let me decide what I want to do and then help me when he has to. I want to plant a couple of fruit trees as we've taken several trees out (because they're in the wrong places and not particularly nice) so I want to put some back and I figured fruit trees are a good plan. I'm also hoping to put some fruit bushes in as well so I'll be doing lots of research into what my options are. At the moment I'm thinking Pear, Plum and Cherry Trees but that could change.

I'm also going to have two vegetable beds and a small greenhouse. Obviously this is not something that will happen this year but we can at least plan it out and get started. We've decided to fence off the last quarter of the garden (the bit that still needs clearing that DH refers to as 'The Secret Garden') and leave that till last as it's going to take a lot of work to get it sorted. There's the remains of a pond, a million blackberry brambles, trees, shrubs and a lot of bricks embedded in the soil.

See, I told you it was a productive weekend!

One final cheerful note, I was spoiled with Stash this weekend. I was gifted with a couple of Fat Quarters and two lovely charts, I bought (shhhhh, don't tell) a few charts on Saturday because they were reduced and I'm awaiting some stash in the post which I ordered for DH to give me for Valentines (much more rewarding than flowers and choc). Oh and Bent Creek finally released the last of their Red Thread charts and the next part of The Big Zipper so those are included in the packages winging their way to me (my enforced Wagon ride included those as 'allowed' purchases)

A Lia update

Seems my plan of keeping track of Lia's milestones has slipped a little...

Still we're currently in the middle of a couple - potty training and the final teeth appearing - so things are moving on.

She's back to her perky self after the chicken pox episode. In case you're in any doubt here's a pic of her testing out the new sofas:



As you can see she I finally achieved my goal of doing something 'girlie' with her hair. This was the first time she allowed me to put her in bunches and I've managed twice more since.



Potty training wise we've been doing a bit at home and she's quite adept now at stripping from the waist down and announcing 'Lia do wee wee'. Nursery and I had a chat yesterday and from today she's moved up to 'serious' mode which involves no nappies, training pants, etc, just several extra pairs of trousers, knickers and socks together with plastic shoes...

I'd forgotten all about teething so it took me a while to attribute the symptoms she's been displaying with the notion of teeth appearing but I finally checked at the weekend and it appears that the final top two are though and the final bottom two are just about visible under the gum. No wonder she's been grumpy and slightly off colour.

Her speech is coming along in leaps and bounds now and she chatters almost constantly. A lot of the words she got wrong or stumbled on are now coming out clearly and she's much more interactive in conversations now.

We've also (with the help of friends) cleared a lot of our back garden so she's able to get out more and explore a bit. She loves being outside and she also loved helping when we were doing some clearing up. I've probably mentioned before that the new garden was incredibly overgrown but in the course of six weeks we've gone from this:



to this:



to this:



with a bit of help from Lia and Neh-Naw



The front garden has had even more of a transformation going from this:



to this:



As you can see we still have a really long way to go but now we've made such a good start it's not quite as daunting. Even better we've got enough stuff to burn we can have a fantastic bonfire on November 5th.

We're heading down to Canterbury on Thursday as it's the second of my trio of Quilting Courses. My parents are away so my sister is babysitting for the day. I'm not quite sure how she'll cope or what kind of mood Lia will be in as she misses my parents (they've been on holiday for weeks!) and this will be the first time she's been to their house with them not there. Still, my sister has three dogs that Lia adores so I'm sure they'll be a good substitute. Plus it's only a few days after that we'll be back down there to see my parents on their return (and to collect the one or two bits of stash they picked up for me in the US!)

Talking of Stash, several of us went to the Knitting and Stitching Show at Ally Pally last Saturday and a fab day was had by all. I spent a fortune (I had been saving up) and bought way too much stash and found at least one more fantastic shop to lose money in - www.daisychaindesigns.co.uk. Here's some pics of my stash purchases: