Romanais Blog

Sunday xx

9/3/2014

We got up this morning to a lovely day, Mark washed both of the cars sparkling clean while I got tea prepared.

We collected Anais and Roman from grandma and grandad's house at lunchtime and made a spur of the moment decision instead of going home we would go to the park. The usual park we go to was packed with queue's down the road for car parking, we think there might have ben an event on as it's not that busy, not even in summer. We detoured and found another park where we had a lovely walk round.

On the way home we passed the yachting pool and Mark noticed they had the boats out so we stopped for a walk round.

We enjoyed seeing all the bursts of colour from pretty flower's, spring is springing!

Look at the temperature in the car, 19 degree's! Much different from this day last year when it was so wet we got the caravan stuck when we pulled her out to take her for a service, nightmare!

When we got home it was warmer in the conservatory than in the house so we set ourselves up in there. Anais and Roman did their homework and Mark cleaned the conservatory roof which was long overdue. He normally does it every March but last year we didn't have the weather for it so it has been left until today.

This evening we all watched "Dancing on Ice" which Anais loves. It was the last one tonight so she will be lost next week.

Breaking Bad - 35/62

Pinched from a friends Facebook, I liked this..........

Friday xx

28/2/2014

Shopping this morning in Aldi. I picked up two bunches of daffs for 95p - one bunch in the kitchen and one bunch in the living room. I am waiting for them to open and give a pop of colour, I love daffs, such a happy flower. (I made the vase cover before Christmas!)

This afternoon I finished my book "The Afghan" - I enjoyed it although the end seemed to have too many coincidence's.

Also today I made a ginger cake for pudding with the additional of crystalised ginger, it was yummy, will definatley make this again.

I also made another owl.

Here they are together...........

How can I tell them apart?

The owl I did yesterday I made the back using the aran mottled wool. I didn't have enough of the wool to do the back of the owl today in all mottled aran (it didn't go very far) so I had to do the back the same as the front white aran AND mottled aran.

The mottled aran was from a wool shop in Burnham in a "bargain bucket" for 30p for a brand new ball. The cream aran was off Elaine.

Family film for tonight was Disney "Planes"

Saw and liked this today.......

Thursday xx

7/11/2013

I am feeling very emotional tonight! It was the Celebration Evening at Anais' new school this evening. All of the parents stood in the foyer while all of the year 7 children stood on the balcony of the first and second floor and sang Gary Barlow "Sing" - it was very moving!

Parent's then moved to the relevant part of the school their child was based and an awards ceremony took place for that "house".

Anais was awarded with certificates for double attendance - 100% attendance including no lates, bronze Vevo awards, gold literacy award and silver numeracy award. We were very, very proud! She has settled into her new school very well, does a number of extra curricular activities and we are very pleased.

I popped out this morning.

Home Bargains have these packs of transfers for card making/crafts, 10 packs for £1!

Last night I started the second side of the crochet cushion and finished it today.
I crocheted both sides together with single crochet...........

........... and then finished the edge with the crab stitch.

I crocheted ten little flower's, one for each corner and for the middle of each square. A mint coloured button is in the centre of each flower.

First side.....

Second side.......

The pillow.........

Pinched from a friends's Facebook but I liked this.......

Monday xx

4/11/2013

today's thoughts of the day.......

First day back at school/work for everyone today. I had an appointment this morning and had a look in the charity shop while I was out. There was a basket with yarn in I went to look at, lady behind counter said it came in Saturday afternoon, they priced it at 50p per ball and put it out this morning, she expected it to go fast as it was all 100% cotton!

This is why I love looking in charity shops for yarn as 1, its really cheap and 2, you never know what you will find! Very naughty of me as I don't really *need* anymore as I wanted to use up everything I've got first but for 50p per ball and it all being 100% cotton I couldn't really leave it there, so I had £10 worth which was almost all the balls they had. It will all get used for something and I justified it by thinking its there when I do need it!

Must admit I do like working with 100% cotton, I can feel the difference on the crochet hook, it is so smooth and glides off the hook.

I had (going clockwise)...............
* x1 white South Maid
* x2 mint Coats
* x2 pink Sirdar soft
* x7 cream Wendy Supreme
* x1 cream Patons
* x2 white Jaeger Siena
* x1 lilac (no label)
* x2 yellow Coats
* x2 pink (no label)

I'm thinking beaded doilies and table runner's........I'm thinking of spring and using the yellow, pink and mint, they look lovely together, like liquorice allsorts!

I also got a cushion pad...........

Remember the crochet cushion cover I started to crochet before we went on holiday......

It was one round too small as you can see here This afternoon I crocheted one more round to make it fit.

I also crocheted this much of the other side tonight.

I am running out of wool, eeeeek! I have tried to do a "pattern" on this side but to use up equal amounts of the white and grey wool as I don't have much grey left.

Project to be completed tomorrow........

We started decorating our Christmas tags earlier, last night we left them with one side covered in card ready to write a sentiment on and beaded and strung......

The plain wooden part of the domino we left blank........

............so Mark could get his pyrography set out and start writing people's name's on them. We have done these so far................

...........Mark was practising on the kindling wood!

(Click here to see our Christmas 2012 gift tags)

We also sorted out all the other wooden things we have got to pyrography.

Rainbow over our house today.

Very pleased today as well as going out, shopping, crocheting I also did ALL of the ironing from last week, it is now all done and put away. I am up to date!

Fred went on early today so the house was warm for when Anais came home from netball practise approx 4.30pm.

For some reason even though it was cold, raining and going dark outside I knew she would come home in her PE kit, shorts and t-shirt instead of getting changed.

House was lovely and warm for her to come back to :-)

(P.S. still haven't transferred the holiday flowers to a vase, they are still in the pop bottle!)

Friday xx

1/11/2013

1st November - a new month and another month added to the archives on the right hand side of the page. Where has the year gone so far? I enjoy looking back through my blog and seeing what we have done throughout the year. It also gives me a sense of pride to see what I have achieved! Last night I was flicking through old blog post's and found this blog post dated 22nd February 2013 where I said "I would love to make a blanket made up of granny squares". I finished my crochet granny square blanket on 9th October 2013, eight months later!

Last night I also did more updating to the Creations page (thanks to free wifi!). I was amazed to see that this year so far I have either knitted or crocheted 18 scarves!!!!!!!!!! I need to do more updating with all of the bits I have had a go at crocheting too, that will have to wait until we are home though.

Kids wanted to go crab fishing again today so we went to Weymouth again first thing this morning. We were lucky today, we caught THREE! Anais named them Ariel, Sebastian and Flounder.

There wasn't much room in the bucket for them all so it was a good job we only caught three and no more. Mark was going to tip the bucket over the side to let them go but this idea upset Roman as he said they would hit the water hard and get headaches and hurt themselves! He made Mark put them back in the net and gently lower them back into the water!

Anyone got any clever idea's I can do with these?

They were 10p each from the charity shop so I got all 8! They are Christmas patches.

Only thing I can think of is buying some red and green felt and making some Christmas Tree decorations with the kids and gluing or sewing these on the front.

We went to Portland this afternoon as when we went last Sunday it was too windy to get out of the car and when we went on Wednesday it was only a quick trip to see the Lighthouse while the fresh baked bread cooled. We managed a nice walk around Portland Bill and saw some nice sights.

We then managed to fly the kites for an hour on the grassy area. We took Mark's stunt kite out today so had three kites on the go. We had to take it in turns one person running between each of the three kites so people could have swap overs as we couldn't get close enough to each other in case the lines got tangled!

Mark's stunt kite is hard to fly and spent most of the time on the floor! We thought it was going to take off with Roman flying it! It needed a spare person to keep launching it in the air. It was all good fun though!

On the way out of Portland we stopped off at the view point again. I LOVE the view from up here. This is just how I like the sea side! Nice views and being by the sea but not actually going in the sea!

Last outing of the pumpkin tonight.

Mark brought me these flowers "home" on Friday but we hadn't got a vase to put them in so we used an empty pop bottle.

They are still beautiful so they are coming home with us tomorrow.

Last outing of the money pots for another 12 months *sad face*

Anais won another bunch of tokens, Roman won nothing but is going home with half a potful of change and Mark won these two racing toys.

I realised earlier I hadn't taken any photo's of the swimming pool (not allowed), ball pit or arcade.

Here is a picture of the huge ball pit. They have played in here every night.

Here is a picture of the arcades, they have played in here every night too.........

* passes expire tomorrow
* nice glass of wine tonight
* key to the lovely apartment
* thanks to the 1 hour free wifi codes I have been able to blog in the apartment everynight at a much faster speed and with more content/picture heavy, than had I used the dongle! It also meant I have been able to upload 200+ photo's to Facebook!

Pinched from a friend's facebook but I really liked this quote!

Everyone is very sad to go home tomorrow we have had a lovely week. We have been swimming everyday, ball pit and arcades every day. We have been busy and done things, made things and seen things! We have caught fish, crabs and colds! We have flown the kites and almost flew ourselves away too! Anais is already talking about "when we come back next year..............."

Friday xx

21/6/2013

A quick blog entry tonight as I am tired, been food shopping, library visit and then dvd shopping this afternoon to get a copy of "Wreck it Ralph" for Anais and Roman as Sainsbury's didn't have any this morning.

I made the kids a chocolate cake which didn't rise very well but was very dense and rich, half got polished off tonight already, yum! They were impressed as I iced the top as well as the inside today, just double cream warmed up enough to melt a block of dark chocolate.

Finally got hold of a copy of "Wreck it Ralph" after the kids have been asking for it since we saw it at the cinema and they love it. We all watched it eating tea on our laps and had chocolate cake for pudding.

I made another "cover" for a jam jar, this one is bigger than a jam jar though I think it had pickled onions in it! It is the cup pattern again but I kept going until I got to the top of the jar and then did a simple crochet chain in blue and cream yarn together to act as a tie around the top to secure it and stop it falling down. It didn't take long at all as the wool was quite chinky and I also used a larger (5mm) sized crochet hook. Will use it as a vase for flowers.

Monday xxx

17/6/2013

I finished "The Help" today after not being able to put the book down! I also learned it has been made into a film so maybe our next DVD purchase?!?!

Anais has been reading the paper folding/origami book again and making animals, I could only find these two to take a photo of though, I don't know where the rest have ended up...

...and Roman had an empty tic tac box and said he wanted to make a "James Bond" lighter/gadget with it! He made "fire to come out of it to get the baddies"!

Roman has gone mad on Pirate's. He got his pirate ship out to play with and asked to watch Peter Pan which I think is the only cartoon Disney film he has ever sat through in one sitting, he has never really been that interested in them.

Now off to "return" library books and download some new ones! x

Warm Wednesday! x

1/5/2013

Today was week three of "Managing Children's Behaviour" course.

We looked at tantrums -
* finding the root cause of tantrums
* dealing with a tantrum
*how to prevent tantrums again.

We also looked at different parenting styles and traits -
* authoritarian
* authoritative
* uninvolved
* permissive

Not a lot else done today as I have been reading "The Girl Who Played With Fire" (Stiegg Larsson).

I did make a very quick chocolate slab cake for the kids for pudding done in the silicone loaf tin as I was feeling too lazy to cut the grease proof paper to line a metal tin!

Two black crochet flowers for a "project" I should have done a while ago! To be revealed shortly...

A black bow for Anais but I could only find one hair slide though so NB to self - buy more!

Pinched from a friends Facebook but I quite liked it !

Friday x

26/4/2013

Not a lot done today as I have been out for most of the day.

I stopped off at Sainsbury's on the way home for strawberries and cream and made Anais' favourite cake, it didn't rise very well though :-(

I also brought these for the kids to try and plant, grow and hopefully consume!

Here they are planted and in the sun in the conservatory. Anais wants to make homemade tomato ketchup with the tomatoes!

I also crocheted another flower square but forgot to photo it. I then crocheted all four squares together and double crocheted around the edge to finish it off. Could be a lot neater but not bad for a first attempt! Anais said I should put cakes on it, she knows me well! If I buy more of the same wool I could do one to match for the reverse and make a cushion cover?

Yet more crochet! x

24/4/2013

Today was week two of the "Managing Children's Behaviour" course.

We looked at root causes of bad behaviour such as home life, parenting, inconsistent discipline etc.... What children expect of us and are our expectations of them too high?

Today it has rained on and off and the boots have made another appearance! I didn't go out this afternoon as it was wet so I stayed in and did more crocheting instead listening to Absolute 80's radio.

Thanks Jenny for the cotton to do the table runner. I was hoping not to have to start on the third hank and give it you back but unfortunately I had to unravel it for the final few hexagons :-(

I was wondering what I could use the rest up for so have made this for you to say THANK YOU for the cotton! I have called it an "afternoon tea set!" - a table centre piece to go underneath a cake stand and six little coasters to go under white wine, water or lemonade only!

Or use the coasters as little mats under plants or candles...

.......and want to see how much of the third hank was left?

Not a lot!

I am on the look out for some more cotton like this now so I can crochet my mom a set for her table too.