End of 2011

Christmas has been & gone already although all 4 of my girls were here for christmas day it has for the most part been a one child household, very strange!

We went to Eden and the little one made a stocking & some reindeer food.

And for the first time I made a gingerbread house using the Good Food online recipe, which makes plenty enough for cookies as well, all decorated by my 5 yr old.

The holly berries were plentiful this year probably because it has been so mild, I had lots to add to my wreaths.

I did a big 2 day craft fair at Pencarrow house, which went really well & got me in the Christmas spirit making & selling lots of these owls

A string quilted cushion that I made for myself.

My 21 yr old is mad on the Grinch so I made these Grinch pills & hearts using fab Grinch fabric for her.

I also managed a little bit of thrifting the day before christmas eve & picked up this green Woods Ware tureen,

a really sweet ornate chair and

yet another fire screen! My 5yr old even said 'How many fire screens do you need'

And finally the glass set & stand.

I also got quite a few craft books in my stocking, these should keep me busy for a while.

Sadly my cousin died suddenly from cancer a few weeks ago, she was 48 & a mother of 4, this came just months after her mum (my late mums sister) died. It certainly puts things in perspective, R.I.P. Sonja.

I hope you've all had a good Christmas and I wish you all a Happy New Year, may 2012 be a good one xx

A rubbish couple of months.

I know, I've been awol for over 2 months! It's been a pretty rubbish, worrying couple of months but I need to get back on track with my blog. Daughter number 2 no longer has the job that she loved & because of the circumstances surrounding this I was absolutely livid & she banned me from writing about it. She also found a lump, which luckily turned out to be a cyst, this had to be removed & she had to go on the sick for 6 weeks.

All is fine now she's started a new job but is struggling with money as she doesn't get paid until the end of the month by which time she would have gone 3 months without pay! Not easy when you have rent & bills to pay and a car to run. Would have been better if she'd got her tips that were owing to her but obviously some bosses have no morals!

I'm now applying for a job as it's cost us an awful lot of money recently with number 3 daughter starting university as well, suffice to say if I get the job I won't be spending any of my wages in any restaurants in Padstow.

Now I can move on & get back to blogging :)

Summer holidays so far

A quick round up of what we've been up to in the summer holidays. This year we joined the National Trust again after a 4 year gap & L requested that we go to a castle. This is Castle Drogo which is quite close to us.

Although you can now take photos inside you can't use a flash so the ones I took inside weren't great. Loving these curtains though from the housekeepers room.

We found this little play cottage in the gardens.

We also went to Antony house, which was used in the recent Alice in Wonderland film, hence the tea cup topiary.

The gardens on this estate are huge and there were 2 massive black walnut trees on the lawn, which we picnicked under.

Although I was born & have always lived in Cornwall, I can't remember ever going to Mousehole so we went and had a look around when we were going down to Penzance.

We decided to park on the outskirts of the village and walk in past a row of allotments, which is where we met Mr tree!

It's a beautiful village & must be stunning when it's all lit up for Christmas.

As usual we went on our monthly visit to Eden & were lucky to catch a couple of the No fit state circus acts performing, brilliant!

Back to using the National trust card again we went to Cotehele.

I was hoping that Blogger may have righted itself by now but yet again there were lots of gaps in this post, I'm also still unable to comment on any blogs so apologise but I am still reading the ones that I follow.

Ending on a positive note my 18yr old had excellent A level results last week so is off to Falmouth university in September to study English with creative writing. Also my eldest passed her corporative & business law exam and her financial management exam today. She works as a qualified accountant but is studying at home to become chartered only 5 more exams! Well done both of you.

A few days out

I haven't posted for a while because of phone & internet problems, having a few problems trying to do this post too. The photos won't centre & the text seems to have a mind of it's own! Anyway we're on holiday this week so I thought I ought to post the backlog of what we've been up to recently.

L had the class giraffe, Geoffrey come to stay for a week so we took him to the woods for a picnic.

and looked for dragonflies.

We went to Lost Fest, which is a yearly event held at Lostwithiel. Lots of music, dancing and stalls, these ladies were L's favourite we had to drag her away in the end.

We spent a sunny day over at Padstow, where we walked over to the beach at Hawkers cove.

L went to meet her elder sister's
boss, Paul Ainsworth at No 6. I think she's his number 1 fan so much so that she's hoping to get a job there too, although she doesn't understand why she has to wait until she's older as she can cook already!

Over at Padstow again, we went to the Royal British Legion's summer fete held in the grounds of Prideaux Place, a beautiful house looking out over Padstow.

b

The Eden Project have a circus event, The Labyrinth, taking place over the Summer holidays. To promote this the No Fit State Circus had a parade through St Austell. It Looks like it'll be a fantastic show but at £30 for adults & £17.50 for children I don't think we'll be going!