As far as my children are concerned today (Dec 1st) is the first day of Advent, even though as far as I’m concerned we started Advent last Sunday.  But today is when the countdown begins and we follow some general traditions. We have a card stable that waits for the inclusion of nativity characters. The [Continue]

I managed a night away without the rest of the family and amongst other nice things went to visit Guildford Cathedral.  One of the things I loved was a new piece of art called Cruciform Vision. I thought we could have a go at creating something similar but it was a bit complicated so looking [Continue]

I have made a crocheted pencil case for my Sharpie pens.   this had the advantage of combining two of my new obsessions!  Making a pencil case for the Sharpies gave me an easy crochet project to practice on but making something actually useful – the Sharpies keep getting lost in my big cardboard box [Continue]

We were inspired by the art projects website to make some patterned skulls.  Jonathan did one on orange paper first. This was completed when we listened to How To Cheat A Dragon’s Curse read in the luscious Scottish tones of David Tennant.  Ruth made bead things and I drew pumpkins using these lovely pastel things. He was unhappy with [Continue]

Since we came home from the holiday we’ve been spending lots and lots of time revising for the girls environmental management iGCSE.  I say we meaning all of us.   The girls have been working though past papers and Jonathan has had to be pretty much gagged to stop him answering all the questions.  This has shown me once [Continue]

I am very pleased to have completed a crocheted hat.  Martin is less pleased as my new interest in crochet means that I have delayed yet again completing his socks. [Continue]

I have been wanting to learn to crochet for a while now and we had some discussion about various crafts at LZ camp this year so I decided I would just have a go at it.  Having got on well with the Ladybird how to knit book when I was just starting I thought their crochet book would be a good starting point too. I [Continue]

We all know that small children love cardboard boxes, they can be sat in, tipped over and turned into pretty much anything with a bit of imagination – but can they do anything for an older child?  We spent a day where our main focus was directed by a box and this is what we [Continue]

For a few years I have been planning to celebrate Pi day but I kept missing it.  This year - despite the fact that we were really too busy – we decided we would clebrate it. Pi day is held on March 14th in American terms 3:14. I invited people from Our HE group to join us and we celebrated Pi [Continue]

So girls have dashed out to circus with Sue, for a change we’ll need to do the pick up later – usually we manage to not need to do any of the running about on a Thursday night -but tonight Martin will go out – I’m a bit rubbish at collecting in the evenings. Martin’s meeting has [Continue]