The Knitted Bus

You know how sometimes just browsing on the web leads you to discovering all sorts of weird and wacky things?! Well today I was searching the net for patterns for bobble hats (long story) and a few fairly random clicks and a couple of searches later, I just happened to come across this utterly FABULOUS and in my opinion, completely groovy knitted bus! How cool is that?! Wouldn't you just love to take a ride in this amazing vehicle? I think our little crochet group seriously needs a bus like this - it could be our HQ, and we could drive around crocheting on the go, picking up fellow crocheters as we go. Look, it's even got what look like crochet hub caps!!!! How utterly scrumptious. Don't you just love it?! You can read more about the knitted bus here. Apparently this beauty was constructed as part of a craze called 'Yarnbombing' where 'gangs' of guerilla knitters descend on a particular street and wrap large objects in yarn. What a wonderful idea. What could be better than bringing some lovely, snuggly, colourful, yarny love to a boring old bus, street or lamp-post? Oh I just want to live in that bus. I've always thought living in a bus would be fun (I know, I'm a bit weird) but as a little girl I used to dream about converting an old double decker bus into a house and living in it. I especially like the idea of the old fashioned buses that have the little windy staircase at the back. I do wonder though, exactly how much yarn it would take to achieve this? I think perhaps it might even exhaust my fairly considerable stash......XX

Headless Chicken

Oh how I wish my fridge looked like this one! Gleaming. Organised. Everything just where it should be. No gently mouldering vegetables or leftover bits of this and that. Oh my fridge does need a jolly good clean out, but oh it has been one of those weeks...! I seem to have started every day this week at a run, and have spent each day racing around like a mad thing. And yet jobs like cleaning the fridge - surely one of the most boring and thankless jobs remains undone. I don't know about you but I seem to be living my life at a frantic pace, as I try to juggle all the many, many things that need to be done when you have a family. Each day becomes a super fast blur of activity, and I have been racing from place to place, trying to fit in all the things I have to do. Let me give you a rundown of the sort of thing I mean. Here is what I did yesterday:

Got up
Got the girls breakfast
Fed cat and dog
Cleared up kitchen and loaded dishwasher
Brushed the girls hair
Loaded up backpacks with lunchboxes, snacks, water bottles etc
Saw the children off
Put the washing on
Hung the clean washing out
Sorted out the evening meal
Tidied the house
Walked the dog
Took a shower
Got changed into my work uniform
Went to work for two hours of overtime
Came home and got changed
Packed my bag for evening uni class
Went to the shops to buy extra groceries
Came home and hoovered and mopped
Went back to the shops to buy birthday cards and baby card forgotten on the first trip
Welcomed youngest daughter home
Took yougest daughter to neighbours house while I walked up the road to meet eldest daughter from her after school art club
Raced home, put oven on
Collected youngest from neighbour's house
Put dinner in the oven and switched on vegetables in the steamer
Received phone call from friend asking me to collect her daughter from school
Raced out to collect friend's daughter
Brought friend's daughter back to my house
Dished up dinner
Unloaded and reloaded dishwasher while dinner was being eaten
Friend arrived to pick up daughter
Drove older girls to drama group
Drove younger daughter to Granny's and dropped her off to wait for Daddy to collect her
Drove to uni for my class
Sat in my class for two hours
Went to uni library to pick up books
Drove home
Ran bath
Lay in bath for 20 minutes
Went to bed

Is it me, or is my life completely mad?

Snickerdoodles

I don't know about you, but when it's cold and wet outside, I have an urge to bake. Today such an urge occured, and what better and more snuggly 'tucked up at home on a grey day' baking project than Snickerdoodles? These delicious morsels are our favourite home baked cookie here in the Little Blue Door household, and were first introduced to us by the same American family who introduced me to turkey meatloaf many moons ago. The recipe can be found in this delicious little cookie book which I have used and treasured for several years and which is available on Amazon. But the internet is, I'm sure awash with recipes for snickerdoodles. How can I describe Snickerdoodles to you? Well, firstly a true snickerdoodle needs to be quite large....a bit bigger than a waggon wheel I should say, for those of you in the UK. For those of you not in the UK, I suppose about as big as...oh I don't know, just BIG! Big enough to sink your teeth into and big enough to fill a hole until lunch. Secondly, a really good snickerdoodle must be slightly chewy, slightly cakey and have a slight crunch on the top from the cinammon sugar sprinkled over them just before they go in the oven. Not only do I love the fact that they are so large (greedy person that I am), but I also adore the way they look once they're cooked; big, fat, golden puffs of delicious, cinnamon perfumed heaven. You really do get a lot of cookie for very little effort which, in my book is a jolly good thing. So today was definitely a snickerdoodle day, and here they jolly well are! Let me tell you they didn't last long. This particular little baking book is packed full of the most delightful American cookie recipes, and I love to dip into this for inspiration, looking at the gorgeous vintage kitchen photos and dreaming of whipping up such delights as Blueberry Thumbprint Cookies, Chocolate and Hazelnut Whirls, Tutti-Fruity Bites and Spiced Pumpkin and Pecan Delights. Oh my goodness this is serious Cookie Heaven. In fact I so enjoyed the Snickerdoodle making, that I decided to devote a whole afternoon to stocking the cake tin ready for the weekend, and whipped up two lemon drizzle cakes, and a batch of jam tarts - go me! All I can say is, if you have never made or eaten a snickerdoodle, I implore you to have a go. They are Simply Scrumptious. XX

Simply Ripping

Hello again! Well after a delicious few days away by the sea, I am home and feeling all the better for having had a change of scene. I don't know what it is about being near the sea, but it most definitely has a powerful effect on me. I sleep better and I generally feel a lot brighter after a trip to the coast. We had a lovely, cosy time at the seaside hideaway, and we're now in the process of unpacking, shaking sand out of pockets and shoes and getting on with the rest of half term. While we were away, I found some delicious treasures, oh yes I did. This delightful jug came from a charity shop in Cromer, and I fell in love with it instantly. You may remember I have a little collection of blue and white striped china building up - I bought a teapot and jug while we were in Cornwall back in the summer. I do just love the very seasidey-ness of it, don't you? Along with my lovely little jug I dug these 'Stories for Schoolgirls' albums out from another charity shop, and they do make glorious reading. I just love the illustrations in books like these. A bargain at £1.50 each. Shabby and obviously well read, they are truly a taste of the past. The girls are usually called Marjorie or Deirdre, who go romping around in their school uniforms, going camping, getting into 'scrapes' and generally saving the day with heroic feats of schoolgirl ingenuity and 'pluck'. All jolly hockey sticks, and very nice they are too. The illustrations are particularly vivid and eye catching methinks. Well on top of all this treasure seeking I did do quite a lot of reading, and of course, being a seaside get-a-way break, it was not university reading, oh no! It was the delicious, delightful, evocative and truly wonderful Miss Read stories. Oh yes! There is NOTHING like Miss Read when you just need to curl up with a good book, with the rain lashing down on the windows (and it did!), wrapped in a blanket with a cup of hot tea. Oh Miss Read I do love you so. You may remember from this post that my obsession with Miss Read has consumed me for some time. In addition to owning a number of very battered and well thumbed copies, I also have several of her books on my ipod. Oh there are no words to describe the delicious, nostalgic dreamyness that comes over me when I lose myself in these gorgeous stories. In addition to lots of reading, I also indulged my love of Miss Marple during our little break, and of course the only Miss Marple worth its salt is the one with the stupendous Joan Hickson. No other Marple will do, in my opinion. So what with reading, snoozing, beach combing (for seaglass, and just look at this piece found by Lily!), snuggling, munching, crocheting and generally lazing around in a delicious, relaxing, seasidey manner, we had a simply 'ripping' time. Our little seaside hideaway is now closed up for the winter, and we won't see it again until the beginning of March. Farewell little seaside house, see you in the spring. XX

Floriana

Well hello! Thank you for all the lovely messages over the last couple of days. I'm feeling a little bit brighter. Mr Lovely presented me with an amazing bunch of white roses and lillies, and they are soooooo beautiful. Just the thing to cheer a girl up. And helping me on the road to cheerfulness once again are the lovely things I bought at the Sewing and Stitching Exhibition. Two balls of soft, snuggly yarn, a collection of delicious candy coloured buttons, and a second hand 'Good Housekeeping' book (circa about 1976), about making clothes for children which cost me the princely sum of £5. The gorgeous pink and heather coloured yarn I am intending to make into some more corsages (remember my recent post about my love of corsages here?) and I'm going to use the giant buttons as the centrepieces of these gorgeous girly pieces. I'm also toying with the idea of some kind of Christmas corsage. AND I'm toying with the idea of trying to crochet a gingerbread house, but have not yet managed to find a pattern. But to have a few delicious, yarny plans germinating in my mind is certainly making me feel a great deal chirpier. We are going away to the seaside hideaway for a few days from Sunday, and I'm intending to make a start on these yummy little projects while we're away. It will be our final trip to our little seaside house this year, as the chalet park closes down from the end of October to the beginning of March. I may well be crocheting with my fingerless gloves on, and almost certainly sleeping with my wooly hat on, but oh! it will be so lovely to be by the sea again. Just what I need to blow my gloomy cobwebs away. What could be better? A few days by the seaside, doing the things I like to do the most? There will undoubtedly be walks along the beach, perhaps some seaglass collecting, definitely lots and lots of crochet, hopefully lots of sleep (if I can manage it), without doubt lots of snuggling with my babies and Mr Lovely, and hopefully a lovely refreshing change of scene. I'll post lots of pictures when I get back. XX

S.A D.

Hello lovely blog readers. How are you today? Having a good week I hope? Good. I'm sorry to say the last few days haven't been so great for me. Some of you may remember that a few months ago, at the beginning of spring, I mentioned that I think I may have some sort of seasonal affective disorder? I have seen a definite pattern emerging over the past couple of years as the seasons have changed. Just as I seem to perk up no end once the mornings and evenings get lighter at the beginning of spring, unfortunately and inevitably, the reverse happens as autumn moves into winter. For the last ten days or so I have felt very low and really just not my usual perky self. For me, the effects of this seem to range from a general 'greyness' which descends as the evenings begin to draw in, to problems sleeping which leads to chronic tiredness during the day and a lack of concentration that makes it very hard to study. I do have a 'magic lamp' lent to me by a friend, and I have been sitting myself in front of it every day for an hour of imitation 'sunshine', so hopefully in a week or two, I'll start to feel a bit more myself. I think perhaps some new yarn and a lovely crochet project might be just the thing to perk me up. Any suggestions? XX

If you want something done, ask a busy woman

Why is it that once the children return to school, life immediately falls into a 'rush rush rush' pattern? Why is it that there is just soooooo much to remember each week? I find myself constantly scribbling lists on litle bits of paper, and madly scrabbling about in the bottom of my handbag for these lists, which just seem to grow and grow, and never get any shorter! Do other people find this too? I have to assume that the more children you have, the longer and more complex your lists become? Having only two children, however, I'm continually astonished at how many things get put on my list each week. The thing is, I'm very good at making lists, but I'm not so good at completing the tasks and crossing them off the list when I've done them. Let me give you an example. This week, my to do list is as follows:

*Create an outfit for my youngest daughter to wear to 'Greek Day'

*Organise collection of foodstuffs to take to school harvest festival
*Take a thank you present round to a friend (for fixing my pc which is still misbehaving)

*Book two piano exams

*Pay cheques into the bank

*Return library books

*Book eye tests for the whole family

*Paint the dillapidated bird feeder given to me by my mum before the really bad weather comes

*Weed the flowerbed in the front garden ready for spring bulbs

*Plant spring bulbs

*Design an invitation for our yearly fireworks night party

*Plan craft projects for our church's lights party on 31st October

*Take a bundle of old clothes to the charity shop

*Put summer clothes up in the loft

I'm feeling exhausted just thinking about all these things I have to do. I honestly don't know how mums with full time jobs manage to do all the things that are needed to run an average sized family. I have recently come to the conclusion that I need a wife. Someone who can walk the dog, clean the house, do the ironing, and generally prop up exhausted wife number 1 so that there is time left for cake baking, snuggling and spending quality family time together. Applications on a postcard please.........? XX