New Forest Show

We had such a lovely day the the New Forest country show yesterday. The worst part naturally was the intense heat and sunshine but thanks to an obsessive sunlotion routine and a zero tolerance attitude to hats being removed, I'm happy to say the children all returned home unburnt and without sunstroke.

We saw a lot of people feeling faint and being sick due to the weather! 

The people manning the stands were amazing though, we were offered lots of water and offers of shade especially if i was trying to feed baby W. It was lovely to see people looking out for one another.

The children held chicks, petted sheep, watched showjumping, ate more ice cream than I'm willing to admit, tried about 5 million crafts and came home with bags bulging with free colouring sheets, stickers and pens etc.

DH and I have lots of foodie treats including the most amazing chocolate orange fudge ive ever tasted! 

I also bought a beautiful piece of oilcloth to use for my dining room table. Once I've set it up I'll give you all a little peek.

X x X

The Prime Minister's Cat

 A good friend of mine shared one of her favourite games with me a short while back. I'm not quite sure how we got onto the topic of Larry the current Chief Mouser to the Cabinet office, but some how we did. She told me that when her family were on long car journeys they played a game called The Prime Minister's cat. Its a memory game very similar to "I went shopping...". You list interesting attributes in alphabetical order until you can no longer remeber them all or you reach the letter Z.
 Today I was playing it with DD1, who is ridiculously good at these games!
 We ended up with;
The Prime Minister's cat is an amazing buzzy curious dangerous exciting fancy gorgeous handy intelligent jumpy kung-fu fighting lady-like miowing nutrious opinionated pooping quaint rascally cat!

 If you ever find yourself on a very dull journey or long wait in a queue, I recommend giving it a try.

 Let me know how you get on in the comments.

 X x X

Mela festival

We had a wonderful day out yesterday at a local festival celebrating culture and diversity.

We watched Lion Dancers, tried some belly dancing, made windmills, drank bubble tea, wore a police officers helmet, looked around a fire engine and so much more.

All the small people enjoyed it including Baby W who had plenty of adults on hand to carry her through the crowds and see the sights. 

Everyone returned home tired out and smiling. 

Today we're keeping everyone home for a rest day to recover. It's far to hot to be out and about though we have been trying some star printing in the garden using cookie cutters.

Tomorrow we're back to the library to log our first reads on the reading scheme and Wednesday has a very special day out planned.

X x X

Day 1 of sunmer

Yesterday was day 1 of the summer holidays so we put our best foot forward and started how we intend to carry on. 

First I took the small people to the library for construction club, everyone enjoyed building lego and duplo creations for a while. Then we tried some of the Tour de France themed colouring and activities. 

I've never really been into cycling so it was a nice new topic to explore.

All 4 behaved beautifully whilst we were there so I rewarded everyone with a donut from tesco (£1 for 4) and after a quick visit to play in the park, I used the donuts to tempt everyone away from the slide. 

We spent the afternoon asking Google questions about the Tour De France and sticking the colouring pages we'd done in our holiday diaries.

Today we are heading a local festival so watch this space.

X x X

Signing up for Summer

DD1 and DD2 are officially signed up to the summer reading scheme. This will be the 3rd year we've joined in and the children love doing it.

It always happily fills up one morning or afternoon a week during the school holidays. The library here offers a lot more than our previous one, especially for children. We intend to make good use of it.

DD1 has been saving up her birthday, tooth and chore money for a few months now in order to buy a new LOL doll. She chose a Pet version and was very impressed with toy inside. Apparently this glittery kitty is a rare one, but i have no idea 🤣

We found 4 books in one of the charity shops we passed for 25p each. I've been looking out for a copy of Pride and Predjudice and Zombies for ages. I can't wait to start it, maybe as a Halloween read?

X x X

Peter Pan

 I found the most beautiful copy of Peter Pan in an Eastleigh charity shop last week. After all the moving expenses we are trying to be pretty frugal for a few months, but the 50p price tag was just to tempting to resist.
 Inside each chapter are interactive pages like little fold out maps or paper compasses and clock faces with hands that really move. Its stunning. Amazon and Ebay price copys at around £10-£15! So my 50p was an amazing bargain!
 I'm planning to read a chapter a day to the children and make some relevent crafts along the way. In chapter one, Wendy tells her mother that Peter has left skelaton leaves by her window because he came in without wiping his feet. So this afternoon we will be drawing and cutting our own skelaton leaves while listening to the story. At least that's the plan!

 X x X

P.S - we are still waiting for the estate to be connected to the internet. However Costa have free wi-fi and I walk past it 4 times a day on the school run so I should be able to post most days! Hurrah!

Lounge tour

I was determined to get one room sorted out properly this morning. Seeing as everyone congregates in the lounge most of the time I decided to start there.

So going anti clockwise here's a little tour of our new lounge.

First up the left of the door live the frog family, the 2 footstools and my dresser which houses my Wade Whimsies and the posh China for Christmas or when her Maj pops round for a cuppa.

Left again is the sofa with a very hot GMan melted onto it. The leather cushions are proving very unpopular in this hot weather hence the throw.

The window is just perfect for sewing and knitting! 

Left again are the fishies, we sadly lost several in the stress of the move. I have 3 left for now but we're watching them closely.

And also a sleeping baby W who doesn't like this hot weather at all poor thing. 

  Next to the fish is Gmans builder window where he watches the diggers and workmen.

Left again and we have the TV and bookshelves. Ignore all the photo frames we can't put up anything for the first year so I'm collecting them all up to live together under one of the beds. I'll miss having them up but i understand why.

What do you think?

X x X

P.S - thank you for all your lovely suggestions for the nets. I love the vegetable/fruit bag idea and the gift bag idea. A few laundry bags would definitely be useful and some lavender bags would be lovely in the new wardrobes! Suddenly I'm worried I don't have enough off cuts!!!

X

Nets

We've officially been in the house for our first week. There's been a few disasters but we've survived.

Today I am tackling the net curtain situation. I have enough matching fabric for all the windows to match, but the length is to long. This means I have lots of off cuts of net curtain to use up. 

Any ideas readers? 

My mum found three enormous net curtains in the same pattern at a charity shop and snapped them up for us. 

 Thanks mum x

X x X