September?

Well, I hadn't anticipated taking quite such a prolonged blog-break but after my last post our summer got much busier than expected.

We've had visitors, lots of visitors. The children were whisked away to London by dear friends of ours and I was lucky enough to have a whole day all to myself.

Naturally, I ignored the housework in favour of sewing, crochet and doing more sketchbook work. 

 Minx caught the arty bug and spent many happy hours sketching - talking non-stop the entire time, of course.

In fact, that girl of mine talked non-stop for the whole five and a half weeks!

She even managed to squeeze in plenty of bickering, arguing and niggling with her beloved brother.

She went back to school yesterday, and headed straight off on a whole week residential trip.

It's very quiet here this week!

Despite the noise, she did redeem herself with the odd bit of baking.

It seems I'm all but redundant when it comes to fairy cakes these days, being required only for oven lighting and the fetching and carrying of ingredients :o)

She can do a mean chocolate brownie too, and her ginger biscuits were a resounding success. I've come to realise this girl of mine is at her happiest (but not quietest) when she's busy doing - preferably busy doing with me by her side, lending an ear to the continuous stream of chat that she emits.

We both got rather heavily into making bracelets a couple of weeks ago. This cute daisy bracelet is from a very old beading book that's been gathering dust for rather too long.

It took about an hour, with Minx chit-chatting next to me....

....are you noticing a bit of a theme to my summer?

During my one and only day of silence this summer, I managed to finish off a bag that I'd been crocheting. I was hoping it would be mine but the mother in me ended up giving it to Minx, to make up for her having a poorly day the week before - she  must have been ill that day as she was quiet for about three hours!


She loves her new bag.


Hasn't used it once.


If it had been mine I'd have almost worn it out by now!

The penultimate week of our summer break saw us spending a very relaxing, and surprisingly dry, day on the beach with my lovely friend Trashy, while various children and dogs kept themselves entertained :o)



Old black dog, exhausted by the silly puppies.



So, before you know it, September is here. Another lovely summer has been and gone. There's the chill of Autumn in the air and it's back to work for me and back to school for them, although for my boy it's no longer junior school but the big and scary world of secondary education. Yup, my baby started secondary school today. I watched him go into school with his shiny new uniform, looking far too grown up and wandered back home with a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye.

Now, if you would kindly excuse me, I must go and throw the computer through the window - blurry Blogger has gone all 'new and improved' while I've been away and I can't get my words or photos where I want them....grrrr!!!

Happy blogging!

xxx