Less is more...................

Well not in our house.  

(photo heavy post)

 Ha ha we overload the Christmas tree every ear and I flippin love it.  

You can keep your colour co-ordinated designer Christmas trees, fancy a trip around our mostly homemade and very colourful tree?

 Oooo firstly here are Marcus the urbane fox and Bob Ambrose having a seasonal snifter, note empty sherry glass....

 Knitted guinea pig, doesn't everyone have one of these?

 Twiglet made this salt dough ornament at school this year, just lovely.

Gorgeous handmade tree from lovely Vicky at Anglesey Allsorts.

 

 A bit of festive stitching from a few years ago by me on the left, and a snowman made by Twiglet when he was in Year 1 - awww....

 A lovely little dangly from Jennie @ Falling Down the Rabbit Hole, where have you gone Jen, we miss you ????

And another pretty tree from Vicky !!  lucky me!!

 A gorgeous peg fairy from another lovely blogger.

 A little fleecy heart I made from one of Twiglet's baby fleeces.

 Twiglet's baby mittens and a pom pom decoration he made at school this year.

 Some more decorations he made, the one on the right way back before he started school, we made it from a crafting kit that came with his CBeebies comic ;)

 Another Year 1 Christmas decoration.

 A peggy fairy that I bought from our village church Christmas Fair last year.

 And R2D2, I wonder who put him there :)

Well, I hope you enjoyed the trip around our tree.  

Homemade by us and our very lovely friends, I love getting all the decorations out and remembering the memories attached to them at this, my most favourite time of  year.

This for me, is what Christmas is all about.

What objects do you have,that recall special memories at this time of year?

Twiggy x

What's that smell?

(I tried to capture the gorgeous sunset the night before last!)

Evening all, crikey it's flippin cold up here today.

Just back from collecting Twiglet from his Christmas art club at school.

On rota this evening to make Chrimbo cards with the Cubs, craftastic!

So what is that smell? It's a batch of chilli and tomato jam for Christmas. It's always a winner as not only is it very delicious, it also clears the sinuses a treat.

Had a very nice stitch and bitch session with my pal this afternoon, with a lot more bitching than stitching :)

Oooo hello always time for a bit of baking, Twiglet likes to come home on a Thursday to a plate of these!!

Righto off to throw a stir fry together before we brave the cold and dark and journey on over to the Scout hut.

Stay cosy

Twiggy xx

Advent traditions......What are yours?

 Hello peeps!

I'm in a much better mood today after a good nights kip.  

Just had to pick poor Twiglet up from school has he has a touch of the lurgy, so he's tucked up in bed with a pile of comics and I should be ironing but I'm on here instead, much more fun.

We are disappointed that we haven't had any snow up here yet, so here are some of my photos from December 2010, up on Royd Moor, we had gone up to sledge, but the roads were all blocked by snowdrifts!! , I love these, look how tiny Twiglet is - soooo cute !!!

.Anyhoo, I flippin love December and as it was the 1st yesterday thought about my little Advent rituals.  I would like to say we lit our Advent candle  but we ahem, have put it somewhere safe, but can't remember where!!!

Here's what we are doing.

1. Twiglet is enjoying opening his Lego Star Wars advent calendar that his lovely Auntie bought for him - lucky boy.

2. I've started my December ritual of reading A Christmas Carol, see this link where I've mentioned it before. Link

3. Enjoying a rollocking good, ghost story, is anyone else watching Remember Me on BBC1 Sunday nights, flaming Nora I love it.  (I jumped so hard the other night I spilt tea down my jim jams).

It's also nice to see such atmospheric shots of our neck of the woods and lovely Scarborough and I LOVE Michael Palin.  

If you've not seen it, iplayer it.

4.  We are feeding brandy to our Christmas cakes every week, Twiglet has a spoonful, screws up his face and proclaims, hmmmm lovely.  I remember when I was a tiddler having a taste of my darling Dad's whisky and doing the same thing.  My Dad always said `see you think we're enjoying ourselves !!'.

5. I'm doing a bit of Christmas stitching but more on that later...........

(I adore this photo of little Twiglet !!)

6. I plan to make some chilli jam, as several people have put in orders.

If I pictured my perfect Wintery evening, it would involve a good ghost story (book or film), a nice glass of vodka or a pint of  good real ale, some homemade Christmas cake and Wensleydale and a bit of stitching.  

Simple pleasures, that's what my life is all about.

How about you? do you have Advent rituals that you do every year?

What's your perfect Winters afternoon or evening?

Ta ta for now.

Twiggy x

Flippin heck

I'm in from work I'm totally knackered, wearing my pjs already and glad I made tonight's dinner yesterday.
I have nothing further to add.........

Twiggy

Hooray it's Friday !!

What a busy day, I only work 2 full days a week and have to cram an awful lot in, I'm flippin banjaxed.

We had our school Christmas fayre last night, no idea how much we made yet but we had a good turn out.  

Here's a pic of one of our crazy guinea pigs, Dom, he's quite an old lad now, 5 years old, a great age.  

When I was cleaning out their cage, he decided to hop up on the windowsill out of my way, he's quite agile when he needs to be.

Mr Twigs and I managed to sneak out last Sunday night and went to the Leeds Arena to see James and Starsailor (remember them, pop pickers?).  It was good fun but felt a bit naughty to be out without child and on a school night!!

Apart from work and catching up on course work and boring day to day stuff, I can't think where my week has gone.

Did find time to make these for the Chrimbo fayre though, they seemed to sell ok.  Also made a fish pie and made my own parsley sauce from scratch it had the consistency of school custard, yummy.

Righto, me and Twiglet managed to have our jim jams on since 4.30pm, what else can you do after a dark and rainy walk home from school. 

 Looking forward to watching Ripper Street later and seeing my lovely Mum tomorrow.

Twiglet has a Cubs Winter Wonderland thingy at Bradley Woods on Sunday, hope the flippin fog and rain beggars off by then.

Have a lovely weekend.

Cheery bye

Twiggy x

Experimenting in the kitchen.

(Twiggy's first ever attempt at pastry).

Well hello there, long time no see.  

I blame flippin Facebook and the fact I can't blog on my Kindle.  

Anyway I've fired up our ancient laptop and here I am. 

 So how have you been?

Not a lot to report from Twiggy Towers, still here despite new estate agent brochure, I think we are going to change agents soon as they are pretty ineffectual.

Still working at Twiglet's school, he's due to move up to middle school next September, I did sigh a lot while I was completing his transfer form, where on earth has the time gone?

Now here is something very lovely and exciting, my gorgeous niece's baby boy decided to appear 3 weeks early and what a total poppet he his.  

He is a lucky little boy to have such fantastic parents and Grandparents.  I can't believe old Twiggy is now a Great Auntie - blimey.

Here we are, having a snuggle!!

I am desperately searching for my crafting mojo, so if you find it post it back to me will you?

(I bought a baby sampler kit and haven't even started it yet!!)

My pal came over the other day and we got out our cross stitch that we haven't touched for ahem about a year, however, I'm hoping a bit of blog hopping and new interest in Pinterest might give me some inspiration.  Do you think I'll just look at pretty pictures and do nothing :)

With a view to motivating myself, I thought I might start doing more craft projects and blog them, so I have to finish them off !!

I have been playing in the kitchen recently and at my ripe old age made pastry for the first time, I've tweaked the recipe a bit as I used lard and marge initially and all I could taste was lard - urgh!  Today I've made some mince pies and jam tarts and some pastry for Mr Twigs to make a pie, but only used marge, so will let you know how that goes.

What are your tips for good pastry?  Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

I also roused myself enough to make 2 Christmas cakes last week.  They smell lush, I am feeding them with brandy every week as I do like a boozy cake!!

The slow cooker is back in use again, we had this scrummy lamb hotpot the other night, I blimmin love Winter a great excuse to have warming, comfort food.

Coming home from work to this was nearly as good as living at home when my lovely Mum used to always have something tasty waiting for us for dinner. (Notice I said nearly as good, our lovely Mums can never be bettered can they?)

Oooo crikey more baking, carrot cake and home made hob nobs anyone?

I promise this is the last food photo, hand made wholemeal loaf, super yummy!!

We had lovely half term hols at the back end of October, wasn't the weather brilliant?

We didn't manage a bumper crop of pumpkins like last year, but as you can see, we didn't do too badly.

Here are our Halloween efforts, traditional, Minecraft, Psycho (yes that pumpkin really does have a knife sticking out of it's head) , can you guess which of us, made which???

Here's the inevitable vomiting pumpkin :)  It's the first time I can remember sitting in the October sun in t.shirts to carve our pumpkins.

We caught up with our old mates, I love this bench our crazy boys are resting on!!

Took Twiglet and another pal to Kirklees Light Railway, top fun.

In fact we crammed an awful lot of fun into a week, it was great.

We even took Twiglet to Blackpool for the first time ever to see the illuminations, he loved it.

It amazed me that I was last there in 1982 and I swear apart from new lights and some lovely artworks it's just how I remembered it - tee hee !!

Here's a pic of the lovely old north Pier, I really want a Ventian double carousel like the one Twiglet had a ride on there, totally gorgeous.

Righto, that's me for now, I have a poorly boy full of cold on the sofa :( so off to tend to him and get ready for Strictly. 

I won't leave it so long next time, so my post won't be soooooo long :)

 I do like dark Winters evenings, any excuse to have our jimjams on, we managed it by 4.40pm lst night ;)

Take care

Twiggy x

Twiggy Towers is on the market !!!!!

Why not take a nosey and feel free to buy if you wish !!!

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-41253286.html?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=sharing&utm_campaign=buying
Twiggy xxx

Hello strangers

Hi everybody.

Apologies for the absence the problem I have at the moment is I usually use my Kindle not the laptop and I can't use Blogger on there.

Also, I have tended to start using Facebook.

So here's a link if you want to come over there.  Facebook

Holiday cottage

Feel free to send me a friend request if you want to.

So what have we been up to, well we had a super holiday in Scotland, staying just across the road from the beach which was deserted all week.

The weather was very kind too, so Twiglet spent most of the week in the  sea.

Evening walk

 And a bit of cub fun this morning !!

We also recently went to Knight - Con - we are going to Geeks con tomorrow at the unearthly time of 9am.

Calling in at Grandmas for lunch, then Dinner at Nana's.

Mr Twigs and I are going to  poetry reading by the very lovely Simon Armitage tomorrow evening as part of the Wakefield Literary Festival. 

Flippin heck back to work on Monday for a rest I think.

Bye for now

Twiggy x

This holidays we have mostly been........

Well not exactly what we had planned as my back went the second weekend of the hols, too much treecutting and allotment fettling I think.

 Honestly I should know better by now.  However, even though we've been home based for a couple of weeks, it's been so lovely and Twiglet is really enjoying chilling.

He has been in his pool everyday.  

We managed a trip out with friends to Pugneys and a very hot walk up to Sandal Castle, even the dog was knackered !!!

We've made bread, cake and a mountain of Smartie cookies.  

Bathed the pigs, much to their disgust.

Watched lots of films, especially Christmas movies for some reason.

Been for lots of walks.

Fed the ducks,  obviously.

Hmmmm Smartie Cookies.

We also had a visitor for a week Sammy the very cute guinea pig.

Visited Greenhead Park where Twiglet had a go at zorbing and tried out a few different bikes - top fun !!

I've learnt how to make very basic loom band bracelets and finished half  my cross stitch !!

We've read a lot and my good boy has been working hard at his writing practice.

My evening treat has been watching Vikings on Amazon Prime which I'm enjoying, I must be very blood thirsty, crikey it's gory, so I stitch at the same time and look away a lot.

So all in all a really nice few weeks.

Take care

Twiggy x

Schools out - pools out!!!

 The new pool is filled to the very deep brim, the gazebo is up and sun cream at the ready - hooray for the Summer hols !!!

6 weeks with my boy and 1 week with both of them when we go up to the beautiful Mull of Kintyre in August - yippee !!

As ever Twiglet is going to do the library reading challenge, I intend to read at least one book a week, I'm currently reading the Wrong Boy by Willy Russell and can't recommend it enough.

We've spent a fair bit of time at the lottie and will need to spend many hours there as the weeds are HUGE, I still have sore thighs from crouching and weeding on Sunday.

We've scoffed some lovely stuff that we've grown, gooseberries, strawberries, beans, peas, beetroot and potatoes so far!!

We have a lovely programme planned this week, including our first Summer hols car booty sale, trip around the chazza shops, visit to my lovely Mums and a morning out with my good pal C and her lovely boys who we haven't seen for ages.  I also intend to finish my cross stitch,  Twiglet and I have ordered a loom band kit and we are going o learn how to make some groovy bracelets.

Here' a photo of one of the pizzas Twiglet made for tea - yummy !!

Top fun, whatever you get up to enjoy !!

love

Twiggy x