A Little Flower Lent Not Given

To Bud On Earth And Bloom In Heaven

It’s so cold in the house tonight and I just can’t warm up. The snow hasn’t arrived yet and while I love the snow I just hope it doesn’t linger and turn our streets into another ice rink. Hopefully the local council will be more prepared and get the gritters out in good time and keep up with the gritting before it all freezes over.

Time for hot chocolate and bed me thinks.

I’ve not been posting recently because I’m trying to get through my huge list of Christmas gifts to be made so I have to say that the only updates up until Christmas are likely to be completed projects, fabulous finds and anything that is just so exciting that I cant wait to post it.

One knitting project I have been working on is a Monkey Moo for Chris’s workfriend, nicknamed Monkey!  It was his birthday last week and as well as package of goodies, I made this for him….

I do love Monkey Moo and I might just have to knit myself one.  And as you can see, it looks like I had more fun posing him and taking photos.

Monkey Moo was taken from this website.

Well as it is now November, it’s time to get organised about things to make and buy for Christmas.  I found this lovely link from somewhere (think it was a forum I look at) which has some wonderful ideas.

My favourite thing has to be the toddler t-shirts.

There is this guitar design and a tie design too but you could really do anything!  Im thinking a car or a rocket or something.  I could be brave and give them a go with the oodles of scraps of fabric I have.

Or there is lip balm.  Think I will definitely give this a go, I never knew lip balm was so easy to make and check out the gorgeous little tins!  I also want to try my hand at bath salts or soaps.

With the obscene amount of lavender in my garden, I could easily whip up some lavender sachets but here are a few which have caught my eye.

Im knitting a few things too, scarves, toys that sort of thing.

Oh and I love these as an alternative to scarves.

Im also going to make foody gifts again and have already started collecting some lovely jars to put them in.

Oh how I love Christmas!

Up until a couple of weeks ago Joe would not leave my side if we went out anywhere.  If we went to play areas both indoor and outdoor, I had to take him on the play things; if we were out walking, he would hold my hand; with swimming, he would always hold on to me.  That was until the Summer.  Maybe, it was the fact that we went to our local park almost every day, that gave him a confidence boost or that we went swimming for fun where he could jump in as many times as he wanted, I’m not sure but he runs off to play ahead of me in the park now and at swimming he swam on woggle which was completely out of character as he would never go near one, let alone swim on his own on one!  Not that I’m complaining, its fantastic to see him swimming from one side of the pool to the other with his arms resting over the woggle, while he frantically kicks his legs and reaches out with his arms.  It certainly makes 2 years of swimming with Merbabies worth it.

Today, we went swimming as usual and then stopped by a local family pub for lunch with a friend and her little boy who is Joe’s age – we met when they boys were about 5 weeks old so they have pretty much grown up with each other.  Anyway, in this pub they have a room with a ball pit, slide, climbing stuff for kids and the boys were so excited that I think they were fit to burst!  I thought I would be in for an afternoon of climbing up and sliding down an throwing balls around, however the boys ran straight to the play area when we got into the room and that was that.  There was a twisty, covered slide which Joe went down, he loved it, so much so he went on it about 12 times!  He was quite happy to climb and run and shout, “Hello Mummy!” from the top of the play area… so out of character for him but equally fantastic at the same time.

You never quite know what is going to happen next with toddlers!