One and wonderful !

Tilly will be turning the grand old age of one tomorrow...I cannot really believe where this year has gone, its been amazing, and Tilly is turning into such a little character, each day brings new facial expressions, new tricks and lots of smiles. We are heading off for the weekend so we had a little party for her today, both myself and Andy have been busy making gifts for her. I used the great tutorial on the blog 'Juicy Bits' to make Tilly a great felt birthday crown :


I also made one for her birthday buddy Zac, and manged to get one quick picture before they both proudly pulled them off their heads !

Andy had made Tilly a fantastic castle out of a giant cardboard box - he was up till late late last night, cutting and taping and had it hidden under a blanket until this afternoon when he revealed all and it was worth it !
All in all a great afternoon and Tilly was totally exhausted by the time she went to bed...and its not even her actual birthday yet!

Valentines

It was a busy weekend, with my best friend visiting and parties going on...but I was on early morning duty with Tilly on Sunday, so I managed to create a few valentines cards, using 'love hearts' sweets and some p.v.a :

It's good fun opening the packets and creating sentences with the random words ! I would maybe use icing sugar to stick them on in the future as they would then be edible cards....but my brain was still a bit fuzzy to think of that at the time. HAPPY VALENTINES DAY !

Peggy - ness

So its been a bit of a hectic week - job applications and people visiting, but I'm happy as I managed to finish a few bits and pieces. I made a quick peg bag for my friend's birthday - inspired by the really quick and simple peg bag in the 'Crafty Minx' book :


I found this great pillow case in a charity shop for the bargain price of 20p and used it to make the peg bag, its a little wonky, but that makes it unique ! That's one more home made pressie, so it felt gooooood.

Baby-ness..

Exciting times...my friend has just had her baby. Since the arrival of Tilly, I get very excited when friends are pregnant. I wanted to give this friend some love and good wishes for the birth...so I made some simple birth prayer flags.
This was something I had done when I was pregnant and it was amazing....I cut rectangles of plain fabric and asked all my female friends to take one and decorate it for me for my labour, so I would have their good wishes and thoughts with me in the room and could look on the flags for strength and guidance. The response was astounding, my friends loved it, and I loved getting each beautiful piece of fabric back. I took my prayer flags with me to the hospital and we hung them above the birth pool - the midwives loved them! They are now hanging in Tilly's room.

books !!

I'm very excited....I was in Australia late last year and discovered the wonderful book : 'The Crafty Minx' by Kelly Doust......its due out here in the UK this month, so I felt very privileged to have it to myself for a few months.


I've just discovered her website, and am very very excited to see she has a new book 'The Crafty Kid' due out later this year. Check out her website here .

progressing slowly...

So, two weeks today Tilly will be turning the grand old age of one...and I have a few works in progress for the occasion, one of which is a blanket that I started knitting when I was pregnant ! Suffice to say I'll be extremely happy to finish it for her first birthday - its one of those projects which has been hanging over my head a bit.

So, whilst the blanket and other gifts slowly take shape, I headed to the kitchen once again. I think the great thing about baking is the instant results..within an hour you can have some beautiful and tasty treats and feel satisfied.

Today I went for ginger biscuits from a recipe from my Granny. Its one of the best kind of recipes, simple and brief...

Granny's Ginger Biscuits
4 oz margarine
2 tablespoons treacle (I used Lyle's black treacle)
12 oz self-raising flour
8 oz sugar
2 teaspoons ginger
1 teaspoon bic. of soda
1 egg

Warm the margarine and treacle and add to the other ingredients, with the egg. Roll into balls, place on a greased baking tray and bake in a moderate oven. Makes about 30 biscuits.


And that's it, simple as. I baked them for 10 mins at 170 C which seemed to work, I think they're better the shorter they bake as they come out a little chewy. yum