They're off!

Following my previous post, I phoned another butcher in Rhosllanerchrugog and they had space for all four boys in two weeks time! Eeek! They are lots cheaper though, and were very helpful answering all my newbie questions. It does now mean that I am in a bit of a rush making sure that I have all the documentation (there's an awful lot of administration involved in sheep-keeping unfortunately!) in place, we still need to beg borrow or steal a trailer from somewhere and we need to pre-sell our carcasses so that they can be delivered immediately. Luckily they've all been snapped up very quickly - we only really have room for one lamb in our freezer so we've offloaded the other three in half-lamb bundles.

This dreadful weather we've been having hasn't been very good for the poor sheep. They can handle any amount of cold but this continuous rain has just been miserable for them. The fields are completely saturated and extremely slippery as a result. Hopefully the weather will turn very cold soon, and give the fields a chance to dry out a bit.

Speaking of miserable, the poor children have had it very rough these past few weeks. Ellie has been plagued with ear infections, which then culminated in her ear-drum bursting :(  It's made quite a big hole in her ear-drum and she's really struggling to hear now. I'm hoping she'll be offered another set of grommets to help her. She had some put in just before her third birthday as she'd struggled pretty much from birth with her ears. Her speech was delayed and so they eventually put some in and it made the world of difference - no more bursting ear drums, no more pain and of course she was finally able to hear properly. Her speech caught up really quickly too. Now she's at school, her hearing loss is going to be a real hindrance to her so I hope she gets on the waiting list soon!
Jasper is also suffering badly with an ear infection and is on antibiotics so hopefully that will clear up soon.

Tabs has had her pre-school immunisations and she was very brave, poor poppet. She's like a little twig and when the second of the two needles went in she really screamed (causing Ellie to burst into tears in sympathy!). It's left a really bad bruise on her arm so it must have really hurt :(

Hamlet time...

It's very almost time for our ram lambs to take their trip to 'the seaside' (wink, wink). I've been struggling to find a local abattoir slaughterhouse 'beach' to take them to but I think I may now have found one. It's such a shame that so many have had to close because of all the red tape and legislation. It means much longer journeys, more stress and quite often a much less personal service because mostly it's the bigger, more commercial ones that have been able to remain open. Our nearest one is an hour away now and, as this is our first year of sheep husbandry, I've been a little late in setting the wheels in motion. It seems that our sheep will not be able to be 'attended to' until January. I guess that means no roast lamb for Christmas dinner - so the boys can put their Hamlet cigars away (for now).

If you are not in the UK, and not of a certain age, then the Hamlet reference will make no sense to you at all, so here's a link to the YouTube video of the 1989 Hamlet cigar advert:

Hamlet Cigars - Christmas turkey ad

On the plus side,as we are having to wait a little longer before enjoying the rewards, it means we will get more meat for our money. Zwartbles sheep are a large breed and not very inclined to running to fat. This means that the longer we leave them, the more meat - and not fat - we will gain.  The breeders we bought them from just told us that one of their lambs weighed in at over 38kgs (it's usually more like 23 kgs!) at the butcher's. Good news indeed, and even more so for those family and friends that have requested a half-lamb!

I think we deserve some reward for having to rescue one or more of the boys from the fence (they just don't seem to realise that their heads shouldn't go through the mesh) almost daily since we got them! Dave has been the worst offender - I don't think he's the brightest of sheep! Someone once told me that it is the aim of every sheep to meet its Maker as soon as possible and it is the aim of every shepherd to delay this for as long as possible!

Here's a quick pic of the sheep, as I don't think I've actually put one up yet :)

The boys are the ones closest to the camera. That's Dave, centre back, nuzzling Suzy through the gate. Ellie came down to the field with me because she wanted to make a 'sheep book' for Show and Tell at school. Naturally she wanted to pose with the sheep for one of the photos!

Procrastination...

So...when I was pregnant with Jasper in 2011 I received, from the US, a rather nifty little gadget called the AccuQuilt GO! Baby fabric cutter. It's essentially a contraption that allows you to cut up to six layers of fabric with one of the dies. The die that I received with mine was the 'value die' which can cut one 4" square, one 2.5" square and two 2.5" triangles. This die also came with a pattern for making a wall hanging/lap quilt using the shapes on that particular die (with me so far?). As I'd not done any piecing before, I thought I'd follow this pattern but adapt it in order to make a full sized single bed quilt for my unborn son. This is the pattern for the original:

A number of things went wrong with this grand plan. It had started off really well - I'd selected my four fabrics and cut out some of the pieces. Wanting to get to work as soon as possible, I pieced together some of the design but quickly realised that I would soon run out of two of my fabrics. Unfortunately, I'd bought both of them some months before and I simply couldn't remember either what they were called, or where I had bought them from! It took about a month to source them, and wait for them to be delivered from overseas! By that time my pregnant tum had grown too much for me to be able to sit comfortably upright for more than a few minutes at a time (I suffer terribly with rib pain when I'm pregnant), let alone hunched over a sewing machine.

Plan B was to wait until I'd given birth - so that I could sit at my sewing machine again. I'd surely be finished in time for Jasper's first Christmas? He was born on Halloween so that gave me almost two months to finish. Unfortunately, Jasper was incredibly colicky and cried almost all of the time. So I was getting pretty much no sleep at all at night and during the day I had to carry Jasper around all the time. This didn't improve until he was about 10 weeks old. The week between Christmas Day and New Year's Day was spent with Jasper and I in hospital (he was 8 weeks old) as he'd come down with bronchiolitis. The children's ward was filled with tiny babies that had this, it wasn't pleasant! So needless to say, Jasper's quilt was not done in time and so I put it away to complete at a later date. The next year passed by in a bit of a flurry so despite my best intentions of completing the quilt for Jasper's first birthday last month, I never even got it out. Here's how far I'd got before it was put away:

Today I got it out for the first time since packing it away and took it along to my sewing club. I am determined that Jasper will have his quilt by his second Christmas! I managed to finish off the zigzag border on the right-hand side, and added two bands of squares around the outside of the whole piece. I'm thinking of using bamboo for the wadding and possibly backing it in dimple minky. That way it will be thick enough to use as a summer quilt on its own. The binding I'm not sure of yet but I will do all of that by hand. I'm not overly keen on hand-sewing but I do really like binding by hand. It's very therapeutic!

Oops!

I didn't realise it had been quite so long since my last post - things have been a little hectic around here lately!

Poor Jasper has had what seems to have been a constant cough and cold since he started nursery one day a week in September. I realise this is because of the barrage of new germs he has been exposed to but it is taking its toll on all of us! He's not sleeping properly because of his coughing and spluttering - and the fact that he seems to be getting four of his molars through at once. Still, when he isn't crying all night and being miserable for most of the day, he's still a real cutie-pie and rather cheeky.

Jasper celebrated his first birthday last month - and had a little party (Halloween themed as he's a Halloween baby!) with some of his friends and family. I had grand plans of making him a 3D pumpkin cake that looked very realistic. In true 'poor neglected third child' style, I didn't get around to thinking about how I was going to attempt this until the day before. So he got a pumpkin cake but it wasn't anything like how I wanted it to look. In the end I used one of those bundt tins (the ones that look like a jelly mould with the hole in the middle), on top of a usual cake tin cake.

Not quite how I imagined!

As for things chez nous, the new playhouse is coming along nicely. I gave it a lick of paint last weekend and hubby has finished glossing the trim for the outside of the windows this weekend. We should get that put on tomorrow and then all that's needed is a front door (which I think will be a stable door style), a staircase/ladder for the mezzanine floor and the railings for the front veranda. I'm looking forward to putting some window-boxes up in the spring and introducing the girls to growing their own flowers (that aren't sunflowers!).

Humble beginnings!

Taking shape

I've been very busy on the sewing front - trying to get through as many orders as possible, before the Christmas rush. In the last two weeks I have made a backpack, a drawstring school bag, a pen roll, seven lots of personalised bunting and six dribble bibs. My poor son has been taking Ellie's old (bright pink) Peppa Pig backpack to nursery whilst I was supposed to be making him a more manly one. Two months down the line and I finally got around to doing it! It is made from Riley Blake's Foxtrails laminated cotton. The pattern is Made by Rae's Toddler Backpack pattern which can be purchased HERE  The pattern is relatively simple to follow - I'd recommend it for more confident novice sewists. 

The toddler backpack

The quilted bottom (which is the same
fabric as I've used for the lining).

On a completely bonkers change of topic I am currently reading Shakespeare's Hamlet - yes, for fun! - and wondering why oh why I have never read this play before. It's really very good! I did Shakespeare at school of course (Romeo and Juliet (in early high school), Macbeth (GCSE) and King Lear (A-level)) and I've enjoyed a few of the plays performed in Stratford-upon-Avon (King Lear, Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night and The Tempest). I also loved the film of Much Ado About Nothing (starring Kenneth Brannagh and Emma Thompson) and one of the more recent film productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream. But I have NEVER read or seen Hamlet, surely one of Shakespeare's most famous plays. Rather luckily for me I know that David Tennant (whom I loved as Doctor Who) played Hamlet so I will hopefully get hold of a copy of that soon. I must admit that I didn't honestly properly enjoy Shakespeare at school. I liked watching the plays and films but would never have read one of the plays just for fun!

Having just discovered Hamlet, I think I shall be enjoying much more Shakespeare in the future :)

The sheep get a new home

Today my hubby finished building yet another shed the shelter for the ewe lambs. They are in the top of our two paddocks and have no real shelter to speak of. The boys in the bottom paddock have the benefit of the woods at the bottom to shelter from sun but the girls have nothing really. It's taken him quite some time to figure out the design as it had to fulfil quite a long list of criteria:

• It had to be sturdy - to try to make it survive the strong winds we get up on our hill. 
• It had to be light and airy enough that the girls would actually be tempted to go into it (sheep are notorious for ignoring all manner of offers for shelter). They have been, thus far, sheltering from the strong sunshine we've had under an old flappy tarpaulin we erected for them in the corner of their field whilst we thought about their permanent shelter. Once we managed to work out a combination of knots that would elude Flossie - our naughtiest sheep - it worked out quite well, but there's no way it would afford any protection from the elements during the winter. 
• It had to be portable - so that we didn't have to get the planning department involved and so that if the ground got poached around it in the winter, we could move it elsewhere in the field
• It had to be big enough so that when we eventually breed the girls (they should be going to a ram next year) then they'd have somewhere large enough to lamb in.

Hubby has managed to incorporate all of these features and the wood arrived this week in order for him to begin building it. He decided to build it on our driveway, as the field is quite sloping, and tow it down later - once fully built. It didn't take too long in the end and I'm certainly pleased with the result. Our neighbour towed it down in the end, as he has a 4x4 and so could use much lower gears to tow it down gently (and not pull it to pieces, thus ruining hubby's hard work).
The girls were thrilled with the arrival of their new house, not least because it was being pulled by A CAR!!! Our sheep get ridiculously excited at the arrival of motorised vehicles in their field. I have no idea why. They will fawn over them like they are long lost members of their family, jumping up, sniffing, licking, trying to get in...very odd behaviour in a sheep I'm sure you'd agree.

Daffodil asking Jasper for a fuss...

So, after having given the neighbour's car a good going over, they turned their attention to their little wooden house (after a brief detour to visit Jasper in his pushchair - they also have an unhealthy attachment to the pushchair and Daffodil has a particular fondness for Jasper). Suzie marched straight in, and baa-ed loudly (amplified by the enclosed space) - scaring the bejeezus out of the three young children who were also in there investigating. Suzie is the matriarch of our mini flock and so if she approves, the rest will follow!



Here they are chasing the 'sheep kennel' (as Ellie called it!) down the field...

"Hey! Come back with our house!"

I am thinking of making a sign to hang outside the shelter, to make it seem more homely. I was going to call it 'Tŷ Dafad ('sheep house' in Welsh) as these sheep, although a Dutch breed, came from a Welsh flock and our family is mostly Welsh! Hubby's suggestion was 'Mi Casa Ewe Casa'! Any other suggestions?

Rainbow roll

I have a small sewing business (Bye Baby Bunting) where I make things to order; most of the things I make seem to begin with the letter 'B'. I have no idea why, it has just happened this way! I mainly make personalised bunting, bags, blankets and bibs. I have also made some other one-off pieces. My most recent commission is for a set of egg-cosies! I'm still working on the pattern for those...


Here is the rainbow pen roll. I'd been toying with the idea of making a pen roll for some time but just wasn't sure on what look I wanted to go for. Eventually I stumbled across this blog post at Chez Beeper Bebe and decided that a rainbow was definitely the way forward! Matching each pen to its own fabric colour pocket seemed a lovely idea. I've seen lots of tutorials for making pen rolls but decided to make my own up. I really disliked the visible seam lines on the outside of the rolls and so I went about mine differently. I shall be posting my own tutorial very soon so will give more details then...

Here's the open roll

...and here it is closed

September goings on

After having completely bored regaled you with my arthritis news, it's now time to tell you what's been going on with the little darlings.

September saw the beginning of a new era in our household - the first of our offspring entering the hallowed halls of the education system. Ellie has been desperate to start school ever since we first went for a look around our local village school, last year! She's settling in well, although she's absolutely exhausted by it all. She's also suffering with having to be separated from her best friend, who has gone to a different school. Said friend is also suffering quite badly. They've known each other since birth, possibly even before then - if babies are capable of cross-womb communication (although I suspect they aren't) - as we met Sophie's parents at our antenatal classes. They went to the same nursery, playgroups and ballet classes and there have been countless sleepovers and meals at each other's houses. We've even taken the opportunity to 'adopt-a-granny' and Sophie's is affectionately known as Grandma to all three of our children, as well as her own actual grandchildren!

Jasper has started nursery one day a week and, predictably, they've all gone a bit gaga over him. It has to be said that he is a handsome chap! I am obviously biased but everyone who meets him is in raptures over him - they can't all be wrong, can they? Anyway. So, he's settled in well at nursery and is thoroughly enjoying all the attention, as well as interacting with some babies of his own age, as he's not had much of that to date.

Tabs has started going to nursery two days a week now, instead of one, although she's finding it a bit strange not having Ellie there anymore. I think she's quite liking being the big sister there now though! She's also started at the pre-school that's attached to Ellie's school one morning a week. No-one else from Ellie's nursery, or from her group of friends, went to the same school as Ellie and so she's having to start all over again with making friends. We decided that to make it a bit easier for Tabs, she could go to the pre-school for a couple of hours a week so that she could make friends beforehand. On the day that she goes, it's not actually at the preschool, the session is in the woods behind our house at a Forest School. The session is held come rain or shine and the kids love it. They get to explore the woods, get dirty and just be kids. They also learn fire safety and how to react if they get lost. Not bad for three year olds!

A diagnosis!

For a few months now I have been suffering with crippling pain in my joints. Not all of them at the same time and with varying degrees of pain. Some days my wrists and fingers have been so bad that I've been unable to lift my baby, drive or even turn a tap on. Other days my hands have been fine but I've struggled to walk because of the pain in my knees and feet. Worrying indeed for a 34 year old!
Anyway, I've finally been diagnosed with having something called psoriatic arthritis. Basically, my immune system is a little over enthusiastic in its bodily defences and so sees anything and everything as something to be attacked with gusto. Unfortunately, this includes its own cells! The symptoms are pretty similar to those of rheumatoid arthritis but with a slightly more optimistic outlook in the long term.

 Whilst I'm not exactly thrilled with the prospect of having what I consider to be an 'old person' disease, at least I am now able to be treated. The long-lasting steroid injection in my derrière has done absolutely nothing at all for me though, rather disappointingly. Before starting on my medication (a rather strong drug called methotrexate - an immune suppressant) I had to have a pneumonia vaccination which left my poor arm in a state somewhat reminiscent of Wesley's limbs when he is recovering from being "mostly dead all day" (The Princess Bride - world class movie :D).

So, I have started my medication and haven't reacted to it, so that's good! (Crippled) fingers crossed that things will improve soon and that my (beaten down) immune system won't now be bombarded with nasties from the germ-monsters darling children.

Cake and camping

I made a really nice cake at the weekend, for Jasper's Christening - even if I do say so myself! It was a 6-egg lemon madeira sponge, in three layers with home-made damson jam and I wanted to ice it with lemon butter icing with a blue ombre effect. I found a great example on Pinterest, courtesy of The Hungry Housewife's tutorial and decided it didn't look too difficult (famous last words!). I didn't have the specified size of icing tip and so I just used some disposable piping bags and cut the ends off without putting a tip inside. It seemed to do the trick and my cake didn't turn out too badly (at least I didn't think so!):

Not a bad effort?

The day went quite well, although it did start to absolutely pour down just as we left the church. The after-party was to be held in our garden and as we don't have an event shelter/gazebo (we live in a very windy location and our last one blew away!) we decided to put our tent up instead. There were about 60 guests in total and so we were a little nervous about squeezing everyone in if it did rain but it worked surprisingly well! We bought a new tent last year (the Outwell Montana 6, complete with the awning) and it would appear that it doubles quite nicely as a garden party shelter :-) so that's handy to know for the future!
We also took a gamble and got Sainsbury's to make up some sandwich and wrap platters for us. They were a lot better than I was expecting, and very good value I thought (Sainsbury's, that's your cue to send me lots of free groceries...). We also got free glass hire from them, which was handy! As it took me forever quite a long time to ice the cake, I was very relived that I wasn't then going to have to stay up even later to make all the food for the next day! 
As we had the tent up anyway, the girls and I camped in it for the night whilst Daddy and Jasper stayed in the house. Unfortunately, we are riddled with birds where we are, due to our rural location, and the dawn chorus was tremendously loud! Especially at 5 o'clock in the morning. Still, at least the girls and I managed to fit in thousands a few egg and spoon races before breakfast! Always a fun start to the day!

Well, here it is! The inaugural blog post!

I have absolutely no idea if anyone will ever stumble across my humble little blog but it will, nonetheless, provide an outlet for my incoherent ramblings thoughts. I hope to write about the children, progress on our house renovations/works, sewing (possibly some tutorials) and perhaps the odd bit of recipe sharing! First and foremost I want to share real life. I'm not a Stepford wife or Nigella Lawson and doubt I ever will be. My house is cleaned and tidied fairly regularly (particularly in those frantic 10 minutes before a guest arrives) but isn't immaculate. It used to be a lot better pre-kids but with all three of them at home at the moment it's a thankless task trying to keep it show-home pristine, much as my husband wishes it was. The kids do drive me to distraction on occasion and I do admit to resorting to cBeebies once in a while, in order to give me a break whilst the baby is sleeping!

I guess the first thing to do is to introduce myself:

I am a thirty(something) year old harrassed mother of three little darlings, un-domestic goddess/wife of a hard-working husband, sewist extraordinaire (not really, but I do have a teeny tiny sewing business - www.facebook.com/byebabybunting - that provides me with a pathetic modest income) and more recently an accidental smallholder.
The latter sounds more grand than it actually is - we actually only have eight sheep (Zwartbles breed) at the moment and they'll be reduced to four come November (shhhhhh, don't tell them that!!). We may have chickens and ponies by next year but as we are also saving for a much needed extension - that came in at quite a lot more than we were expecting - then the other livestock may have to go on hold for a little while!

As for the little darlings themselves...First we have Ellie, the eldest at the grand old age of nearly five. She is the peacemaker of the family; a lover of animals, food and books. She's about to start school and is desperately excited about it.
Tabby comes next. She's three and a half and suffers from that terrible affliction, Middle Child Syndrome! She has three main aims in life: to have hair as long as Rapunzel (a rather ambitious wish as she currently still has very little hair!), to beat her big sister in a running race and to eat as much porridge each day as she possibly can.
Jasper is our last, and most definitely final, child. He's almost 10 months and a complete menace joy. He's been crawling (in a Platoon extra, shot in the legs manner) for three months now and we are thinking of hiring him out to building firms due to his uncanny ability to locate even the most hidden wires/cables in a room. He is a generally chilled out, happy, smiley baby but if he is remotely hungry or tired then the whole world is quickly apprised of his situation.

My husband is a metrology engineer. Ever heard of one of those? Nope, me neither. It means he gets to go and visit places like F1 factories, aerospace and military installations and measure stuff for them/sell them stuff to measure their stuff. It's all terribly exciting and glamorous. Actually, it really isn't, but he's a bit of a geek so he loves it :D
In his spare time, my darling hubby is a bit addicted to building sheds. We currently have three in the garden and he has just designed a playhouse for the girls that will be being built soon (he assures me). He's also just in the throes of designing a shelter for our sheep. No doubt it will be bigger and better than they actually need but he'll have fun doing it, which is the main thing.

I think that's probably plenty of writing for a first post, particularly one that doesn't actually have any readers yet! Further posts to follow hopefully...