Easter Sun Catchers

On Good Friday, the Podlings painted some inexpensive sun catchers I bought a while ago. As they painted their crosses, we talked about the Easter story and about what happened on that first Good Friday so long ago. The Podlings all seemed to enjoy this activity and were very proud to show their completed crosses to their grandparents over the weekend.

.

Fun with Eggs!

Dyeing and decorating eggs has become one of our must-do activities for Easter now, so we spent part of Friday afternoon playing with food colouring and stickers. We had the novelty of being able to use the snow to cool our eggs faster this year. Come on Spring, where are you?

Lily was her class Star of the Week for the last week of term, which means she gets to look after Cuddles the bear for the entire Easter holidays. She is a happy little girl! On a different matter, I wish she would let me cut her fringe! She insists she wants to grow it out, but it's in her eyes all the time and it's driving me crazy!

Cooling the eggs in the snow...that was a first! 

The end results

.

An Easter Hat

Emma wants to show you the Easter hat she made at playgroup yesterday.

.

Embroidered Felt Egg

My Mum was finally able to collect her Mother's Day gift from my sister's house last week, so now I can show the little Spring decoration I made as part of her gift. This little hand embroidered felt egg was so much fun to make. A little appliqued felt butterfly flying above a field of French knot Forget-Me-Knots. French knots are so satisfying. They create such a lovely effect for such little effort.

My Mum taught me so much about sewing, knitting, cooking and all things creative. She is a very talented seamstress and quilter, has been knitting since she was five years old and is the most wonderful cook. She was a gifted and patient teacher when it came to passing on her skills to her daughters and my love of all things crafty comes from her. I owe her so much and it gives me great pleasure to use the skills she taught me to create little gifts for her as a way of saying thank you.

Love you Mum! Thanks for teaching me to sew!

 .,

Spring Sledging

Since we were subjected to an unseasonally heavy snowfall, we thought we might as well make the most of it and spent the weekend tobogganning.  Mark found us a fabulous park in Leek (near the Peak District) with not one, but two awesome sledging hills and we had a great time right up until the Podlings realised how cold they were. Cold wasn't really a problem for Emma in her snowsuit and flock-lined wellies, but the other two felt the cold more in their normal winter coats and basic wellies and the poor things suffered the agonies of warming up in the car. Thankfully children only seem to remember the good parts and were happy to tell me how much fun they had had when I was tucking them into bed.

These pictures were taken over two days and are generally mixed up, but they show some of the fun we had.

Daddy takes a turn, much to Lily's amusement!

Tom's response to sledging: "That was awesome!!!"

Lily had absolutely no fear and went right to the top of the fastest slope. The speed she flew down that hill was astonishing!

Emma was a regular little daredevil. There was no stopping her!

I had a go at sledging too, which I found tremendous fun. I'm not prepared to put the photo up though, so don't ask! 

"My feet are cold!" - Time to go home!

.

A Tale of Two Sisters

Once there were two sisters who loved each other very much. Sometimes the little sister wanted the big sister to do things for her and the big sister loved to try to please her. One day the little sister wanted the big sister to pull her to the top of a steep hill on a sledge. The big sister tried very hard to pull the little sister, but the little sister was too heavy. The big sister gave one big pull on the sledge...

...it didn't end well!

Thankfully the little sister thought  it all tremendous fun and continued to love the big sister very much.

The End
.

Spring?

What better way to celebrate the onset on spring than a day off school. There was such heavy snowfall on Thursday night and Friday that the school was closed and Mark couldn't get into work. Not that it wasn't lovely to have everyone home together (I'm always thrilled to get a bonus family day), but can we have some warmer weather now please?

.

Thursday with Emma

 Would you look at that sweet face! I made the apron Emma is wearing for Lily's second birthday and I'm pleased it is still getting lots of use even though Lily has long since outgrown it. Emma loves her apron and insists we put it on the second we embark on any baking endeavours.

Just a few photos from our Thursday together. Emma loves baking, so we spent most of the morning in the kitchen. Love Thursdays!

Rolling out the dough for spice biscuits. We chose some animal shapes from my vast biscuit cutter collection and Emma had lots of fun cutting out biscuits. It's not unlike play dough after all! 

Emma glazing the cottage loaf I made for lunch. She had a lot of fun punching the dough back.

Playing with the toy farm. We keep the farm and zoo animals in the same tub, which makes for an interesting farm set up! The lion really does lie down with the lamb on our toy farm!

.

Sunday Afternoon Sunshine

We were treated to a few hours of sunshine on Sunday afternoon, so we took a walk around Biddulph Grange Gardens in an attempt to pretend it was spring for a couple of hours. It was still too cold to fool anyone, but it certainly looked pretty and we all had a pleasant time.

The Podlings always have a lovely time here and though they were disappointed they couldn't feed the fish this time (the pond had been completely frozen over until last Wednesday, so they didn't have any fish food in the shop), they soon forgot their disappointment as they ran about and explored the gardens. A little sunshine makes such a difference, so here's hoping we will soon be seeing a lot more of it!

 

Snowdrops

Lovely moss

.

A Cardigan for Rowan

Now that I have finally given it to my sister, I can show you this sweet little baby cardigan I made for my nephew Rowan. I finished it weeks ago and was terrified that he would outgrow it before he had a chance to wear it. Thankfully it does seem to fit him (at least, I've seen a photo of him wearing it!), but I don't know for how much longer!

.

Meeting Rowan

On Saturday we travelled to Bristol so I could visit my sister and meet my nephew for the first time. Rowan was born on Christmas Day and I have been dying to meet him ever since. Between snow, illness and various other inconveniences, I haven't been able to get there before and he is now 11 weeks old. Where did the time go!

The Podlings were tremendously excited at the prospect of meeting their cousin and they were completely smitten with him when they met him. They all keep telling me 'I love baby Rowan!' and they think he is the best thing since sliced bread! It is so sweet to see how much they love him.

Rowan was on top form and consented to allow his doting aunt to hold him a great deal. Given that he didn't know me from Adam, he was remarkably content to stay with me a lot of the time. I was quite flattered and not a little thrilled. He is such a content little baby and I am completely in love with this adorable little boy!

Thank you, Elaine and Gareth, for a lovely afternoon and for allowing your baby-mad sister to completely hog your son!

First cuddles with my nephew! It was love!

I was so excited to finally get to meet my adorable little nephew. Mark says this is my slightly guilty 'I want one!' face!

Happy family! My sister, brother-in-law and nephew

Lily holding Rowan for the first time

Lily was beyond thrilled to be allowed to hold her baby cousin

Adorable!

We tried to get a picture of all the children together. It didn't go too well, but they are at least all in the photo!

Elaine offered to take a photo of our family as we don't have many photos of all five of us. Emma was tired and was using the curtain as a blanket!

.