Cakes...

June is a very busy month for us with lots of family birthdays, my brother, my sister in law, my son, my partner, my grandma and some friends all have their birthdays in June.

This makes June EXPENSIVE!!!

And lots of cake baking.

My brother turned 30.

We decided to have a family picnic, which turned out to be a picnic in the rain!

I made these cupcakes for him. 

I made a chocolate cake for my son, covered in chocolate fudge icing and then covered it in smarties, but I forgot to take a picture of it before the children got stuck in. 

I then decided to make my partner a 3 layer victoria sponge cake with strawberries in-between each layer and on top.

I have never made one like this before but will definately make one of these again, it was so yummy.

Amy x

Finger knitting

Today myself and my 5 year old twin girls have been learning to finger knit.

I have been wanting to do it with them for a while but thought it would take a long time to teach them.

 How wrong I was!

None of us had done it before, so I searched on you tube and found a simple tutorial that even I could understand. I had the instructions in a book too, but found the tutorial easier.

 And as for my girls, well what naturals!!

I couldn't believe how quickly they picked it up and were soon telling me to go away because they could do it themselves and didn't need my help.

They really enjoyed it and didn't want to stop, only trouble was it was dinner time.

 I wasn't sure what to do with it while they ate, so I had a think and we ended up putting the knitting onto pencils.

Straight after dinner they asked to carry on, which to be honest isn't like them, they have usually forgotten by the time they have eaten dinner. 

So finger knitting definitely has the thumbs up from us.

I better get some more yarn, I think we could be doing a lot of this, and then all we have to do know is work out what to do with metres of finger knitting. 

Amy

Walking through the garden...

...to find the remains of the children's play yesterday.

It did make me smile as I walked around the garden to see where they had put things and what they had made.

It made me wonder what they were playing yesterday, what they were imagining and it took me back to my childhood, which gave me a warm feeling.

It made me so happy.

The entrance to a camp/hideaway

And a barricade to the fairy garden, with 'no adults allowed' signs.

Amy 

busy, busy, busy

Well hello there, long time no see!

Hope you are all well and have been enjoying the sunshine.

I have been very busy crafting this month and the two crafts that I have been doing are ones that take me a very long time to do.

I decided to knit my sister-in-law to be a cushion for her birthday and thought I had left myself plenty of time to do this but as I am a beginner in the knitting department it was no where near enough time.

I had to undo it twice!!

So I think it will be a christmas present instead.

I was also asked to be god mother to my friends daughter and wanted to make her something for her.

So I decided to cross stitch her name and frame it.

Now I really love cross stitch but ti just takes so looong to do, or it does me anyway.

There quite a few moments when I was cursing my friend for giving her daughter a long name and next time will be requesting her to name her children with 3 letter names.

I will be back soon with some pictures of the things I received in the heart swap, that I actually received weeks and weeks ago, but haven't had a chance to blog about yet.

See you soon

Amy

Cupcakes

We didn't really do a lot for valentines day as my partner was working during the day and I was working in the evening and as we are trying to save, decided that we didn't really need to buy anything for each other.
So we just made each other a card and I baked some Red Velvet cupcakes from a recipe out of 

'The hummingbird bakery cookbook'
 

 In the recipe though it says to make a cream cheese frosting but when I made it before we weren't that keen on it, so I decided to use vanilla frosting instead.

My son liked them so much he asked me to make some for his girlfriend for valentines day.

You know you have girls when...

...you often go to work covered in glitter

...your lip gloss and 'clip clop shoes' go missing and you find them in your daughters room

...everyone has to have a squirt of perfume before they leave the house

...you get asked to make princess swirly dresses

...you spend a lot of time every morning making their hair has the right accessories and is just right

and I love every minute of it

A monthly make

To keep my little girls ears warm.

I made a black one of these for myself a couple of months ago and after one of my girls saw mine she then wanted one too, and has been asking me to make her one continuously but with Christmas I just didn't find the time until last week anyway.

 Now I'm not quite sure exactly what these are called, we call them ear warmers, but have heard other people calling them headbands, ear huggers or as my boyfriend calls them 'plain silly'! 

He thinks I should just wear a hat. But hats actually give me a headache so these are great for me as they keep my ears warm but don't give me a headache.

So that's one happy little girl... 

but now my other little girls wants one too!