Sunday, Sunday!

Nice Sunday roast, washing up done, glass of wine, and ahhhhhhhhhhhh! That's always a great way to round off a nice family-fied weekend I think. All that's missing really is the log fire, but that'll be April when we move.
Everyone will be sick of me saying it by the end but "in April...when we move...".
My problem is I have always been a planner and a dreamer.
We are moving to a gorgeous old house that used to be two farmhouses and I have so many dreams for the place that I'm running out of notebooks to put all this in. Not that I'll have time to fulfil many of the dreams for the first three years whilst I'm studying, but it is our longterm home and we're not intending any more gypsying for a while, well, not on a longterm basis, so eventually I'll fulfil many of them, or they drop out of my range of importance as time goes past! However, having not lived in our own home for nearly 10 years now, my creative urges and dreams are close to exploding out of me in a cascade of cacophonous fireworks!

This weekend we've been home. I had an OU biology tutorial on Saturday and then today I had a yummy reunion with some of a previous class of mums and dads. It's always nice being "the teacher" as you get to have all the baby cuddles!
Mr Beehive and I have also booked our holiday for this year. We had our blowout last year, but we knew we'd want some sun. We could have stayed in the UK, but that never guarantees that small stipilation.
I'm actually really looking forward to it.
The children and I are having a week with a friend from Edinburgh and her son, at a craft camp in Gloucestershire as soon as school is out. I'm very excited about it. There's the opportunity to do crafts that I'd never have thought of trying due to the need for so much specialist equipment. Things like, bronze casting, leatherwork, wood work, stained glass are on the agenda and what makes it so amazing is that it is like living in a big commune for a week, where we'll all be camping and chipping in with cooking and chores as well and it's totally safe for the children who also get to craft. That's always so important when you have kids that not only they have the ability to play safely, but due to that, you get the opportunity to relax and enjoy your time as well. Which then leads me nicely to our family holiday.

When I was a child, we used to go to France nearly every year. My parents would set the alarm for abour 3 or 4 in the morning and we'd head off when all the world was still asleep to catch the first ferry out. We'd then drive down through France to our destination, a gite somewhere, Aquataine, The Loire, The Dordogne.
 The sheer excitement of packing up everything we needed in the car, waking up just after we seemed to have gone to bed, the absolute silence as we left the house as everything was asleep even the birds, the turning round at the bottom of the road (yes, EVERY year!) because we'd forgotten something, the blankets over our legs keeping us warm, eating breakfast at 4am in the car...it really was an incredible tingly feeling.

Our children have been incredibly lucky in their short lives. Thanks to our ex pat lifestyle, they've seen countries such as Jamaica, America, Mexico, The Bahamas, Belgium and Kenya. All these bring a certain type of adventure and excitement, but there is something, when you're a parent, about bringing an adventure or a part of your own childhood to your children. It's really special. It's like when I share books with my children that I read as a girl, or we play a game that I used to play, it's almost like a rite of passage.
We've chosen to give the kids this exact same "adventure".

We're catching the first ferry out of Portsmouth, heading to Caen and we will travel down to the Dordogne, to our gite that we've booked for a week. I hope it will be as exciting for them as it was for me and my sister.

In other "feel good" things this week, I just got a note from Beth, to say she'd received my care package!! Yay, I'm so happy. It's nice to think she's got a few "bits" and it also must be fun to receive random parcels.

On that same subject of random parcels; three of my six handmade pledge parcels have gone out now - look out in your mail Emma, Jenny and Holly and I've two more done.
I have taken some photos of some things and also took a picture of the "Saskia" pants.

 Wristies, made with Noro silk yarn. This stuff feels so rough, but when it is knitted together is incredibly soft and the colours are divine. I was soooooooo tempted to keep these for myself  rather than send them out to my handmade recipient but...hope you enjoy them ;-)

 This picture was taken in a rush and doesn't do this bag justice. I made a quilted patchwork crafting/knitting bag for another of my handmade gift recipients.

Aha! The trews. These weren't the ones that drove me demented in the last blog post. I sussed those out and they were a linen fabric. These have taken me most of the morning, not the design, but the alterations. Wool is not such a great fabric to hang in this style of pant. It's a bit too heavy and made the trousers look bulky (okay, more bulky, they are already an unusual design). So I had to adjust by taking in tucks and pleats and actually styling a leg more. I also made them turnup at the bottom as they were so long. This means they actually really rock over a pair of biker type boots and with a long cardigan. I'm pretty chuffed with the result.
I now have three pairs - one linen, one in a kind of herrigbone but have no idea of the fabric (it does hang well) and the woolen pair. I have one more pair to make which is a kind of viscose type material with sequins. The style of pants means that the lighter fabrics are the ones that actually drape best.

Updating on spending of course having fallen off the wagon a little bit with material over the last couple of days, has gone back to nothing much today.
However, the machine has been on three times and I have used the car once to go into town when I probably could have walked, but it has been a horrid hissy rain day.

I'm already starting to focus on next month's challenge which is to try to eliminate our waste to just one bin bag per week instead of our average two - three.