Come rain or shine

When you live in England you just have to be prepared to learn to carry on, regardless of the rain.

The National Trust had a free weekend so we made plans to go to one of my favourite places; Fountains Abbey. We checked the weather forecast - a sunshine covered by a dark cloud with two drops of rain. Not ideal but we decided to go anyway. The rain obviously came into its element as we had literally been out of the car 5 minutes :)

Anyway unlike our trip to Hardcastle Crags - 3 of us has hoods (Note-Ben needs a coat with a hood) and three of us had wellies (Note- Nathan needs wellies)

Like our trip to Hardcastle Crags we had a good time and enjoyed being in lovely surroundings.

The boys loved the puddles.

I loved that there was choir singing inside the covered part of the Abbey - the acoustics were fab

Love how my boy is into his posing at the moment lol!

Love this one of my boy :)

The boys love climbing and exploring every inch of the ruins

More puddles :)

I love these next two photos of them racing :)

As we went for a walk around the lake the sun made a welcome though brief appearance

Such a lovely place and I'm glad my boys seem to be totally unaffected by the weather and come rain or shine they know how to have a good time :)  

Nautical Shirt Pillows

Whipped up these cute (if I do say so myself) pillows for the boys rooms.

I used two shirts; one costing £1 and the other from a 50p bundle of things I got from a jumble sale last week :)

I used the idea of making pillows from  old shirts from Releve Design found here  and the ship motif from the Sew fabulous Fabric book found here  ( I have also used this book as inspiration for the four peg pags I've made found here  here and here)

I'm really pleased with how they turned out and they were really simple to do too. 

Simple and satisfying just the sort of making I like :)

Why I blog #8

I'd been revarnishing this what do you ma call it?? Clothes horse?? which I found in the back of the shed in the spirit of 'make do n mend' and the need to try and find a way of drying whites without the dryer (it turns them grey) and without the sun (seems to have disappeared).

Came outside and Joseph was stood like this

'Mummy I'm on a cross'

'Oh dear that's really sad, it must really hurt' I replied.

He then came away and said

'Mummy it's OK, look I'm resurrected'

You know it's moments like this when you realise that they actually do take things in. 

Also love that Ben discovered this bucket filled with rain water and of his own accord set tot the task of painting.
Clean painting - love it :)

catching up

Going back to Good Friday - I know I'm totally jumbled up chronologically!? 

Anyway, Joseph and Nathan went for a dad n son trip to..... B&Q of all places ( and then to make up for it to a traditional sweet shop for loads of sweets) for our mum n son trip Ben and I lucked out as he'd been invited to Ethan's birthday, messy play bash.

They got to decorate cupcakes dino style with green buttercream and sweets for scales. Ben loved the buttercream - good job Andy:)

Then there was painting

I love the look of concentration on his face totally inherited from his dad :)

jack got totally into the painting session (love Izzy's expression)

.. yep quite literally :)

Love this photo of two little buddies.

Here's Ben modelling the superhero mask  (upside down)

and cuffs we gave Ethan 

Rhiannon is sooooooo clever and made these amazing dinosaur tails for the boys to take home. Ben was very pleased and Joseph probably slightly even more so when he saw it at home.

Peg bags again!

 Peg bags number three and four. One for Carol for her birthday and one for Sarah

Peg bag one found here and peg bag two found here

H

Centre parcs

Tuesday we went to Centre Parcs to meet up with Craig,Frances and the rest of the Hancock/Kitsell entourage for the day.

It was fab to see them and their gorgeous gang

Joseph had a ball whizzing around on his bike at lightening speed (don't mention him going off with other parents who had bikes,leaving us behind worried sick)

Ben fancied taking Isaac's bike for a ride down the dirt hill behind their villa - boring mum put a stop to it after taking this photo :)

We loved the swimming and the boys bravely went down 'The Death Slide' though weren't keen to repeat.

Ben was totally whacked afterwards and tried to snuggle down onto of the bags in the changing room.

Joseph really enjoyed hanging out with Joshua - he had lots of cool planes.

Great to be with our old friends 

(obviously not 'old' literally speaking!) 

and for our children to make new friends with each other.

So near and yet so long?

So according to the AA route planner. Nathan was brought up 12.6 miles and I 18 miles away from Hardcastle Crags and yet in both cases we had never been. 

We took the boys there on Friday and the question 'why?' did cross my mind a fair few times. It was such a lovely place. We walked by the river; up and down stairs;

through the 'squelchy mud'; ( I loved hearing Ben say this over and over with delight), over rocks and bridges and through tiny streams. 

There were plenty of sticks for throwing in the river. We saw another heron and  huge ant hills with equally huge ants. 

At the first set of stepping stones (which had to be traversed a few times, at first with some help from Daddy and then 'all by myself' with Daddy just behind) Joseph in his outgoing nature made a friend in a little boy called Owen. We then stuck with him and his parents for the rest of the walk. It was nice for the boys to have the company and James and Karen were really nice to talk to. (a good opportunity to OYM) 

By the time we made it to Gibson mill, the sun had disappeared and it was absolutely pelting it down with hailstones thrown into the mix. Naturally (ever the optimists or the unprepared) we were without waterproof coats or even coats with hoods which made for a soggy, cold walk back to the car. 

We will be back - perhaps in May for the bluebells or in summer for fun in the river and I definitely will go the extra 50m needed to walk around the other side of the Mill and look at the fab view from that side (just found photos of it via google). Oh, and while we're at it next time I want to top the day off by going into Hebden Bridge for a browse round all those quirky shops we drove past - husband please take note :)