Well I’ve had another blast at the glass painting.  I actually did them a couple of weeks ago whilst hubby was out getting soaked watching Cardiff City, but I’ve only just got around to taking photos.  These will probably be the last that will be ready in time for the Christmas Fair which is a week Saturday.  I’m really happy with how these have turned out.

Outlines done waiting to be painted

Drying

Large Vase

Flowery Vase

Another Vase - Butterfly and Leaves

Storage Jar - Fish & Shells

Another Storage Jar

This is one of my favourites, it really glows when the light is on it.

Tea Light Holders

Clip Frames

The candles  in the above photo are battery powered tea lights, they look really effective and they flicker, sort of like real candles.  As I have so many tea light holders I wanted candles in them on the stall to show them off a bit, but I thought having real ones would be too dangerous.  I found these on Ebay really cheaply, and obviously I get to keep them after the fair so I can use them at home.

If I get round to it I might paint the last few holders that I have in the next week, but it’s not going to be the end of the world if I don’t get round to it.

It’s Daniel’s 5th Birthday today, I can’t believe how quickly it seems to have gone.  He’s been getting very excited over the last few days, as he pretty much knew he was getting a lightsaber, something he’s been asking for for about 2 years.  We’re not having a party for him, but he’s having one of his friends come home with us after school today.  Then mum and dad are coming round for a Chinese takeaway.

I can still remember his birth very well (do you ever forget?).  I was in hospital, in labour, for two days.  Needless to say I was completely exhausted by the time he was delivered and needed some help.  He was born at 8:36pm weighing 6lb 4oz, with a great big lump on his head thanks to the ventouse.

I stayed in hospital for another couple of nights trying to get the hang of breastfeeding, eventually they decided he was feeding and let me out.  We brought him home on bonfire night, with fireworks going off all around.

Unfortunately we were back in the hospital a week later, as he had severe jaundice, and needed to be put under the special lights.  He looked so tiny in the incubator, I barely stopped crying.  He was in for 2 nights, and I stayed with him most of the time, even though there was no bed, and I was still perserveering with the breastfeeding.  I was so relieved when they said he was well enough to go home again, although we had to go back another few times to have his bilirubin levels checked.  We also changed to bottle feeding a few days later, I was completely exhausted and hating every feed.  I was never convinced he was getting milk.  I since found out that the bruising left from ventouse can make jaundice worse, and the best thing you can do is to get fluids into him.  So if I’d bottle fed from the start, his jaundice may never have got to such a severe point, but of course no one told me that at the time, as midwives and health visitors have to promote breastfeeding.  There’s an article here about jaundice in newborns for anyone who’s interested.

Anyway Daniel is now a lovely, healthy, little boy of five.  Happy Birthday!

Yesterday morning I’d arranged to go for a walk around the Lake with my in-laws, who are visiting for the week.  We’d just got there when I remembered about a nearby footpath which leads to the sea wall.   I’ve been meaning to investigate this path since Jennie blogged about it earlier in the year.

So we cut through the car park for the lake, negotiated a couple of busy roads, and got to the entrance to the path.  The Council have recently done up this entrance, and re-surfaced around it, they obviously didn’t think that people with pushchairs would want to use it though, as they’d put in one of those anti-motor bike narrow entrance things.  It was too narrow to get the pushchair through, so I had to get Oliver out of the pushchair and lift the pushchair through a gap at the side.

The path runs alongside a murky looking bit of water, on the otherside of this is the landfill site.  Once we got past this though it was lovely and quiet, with lots of butterflies and I spotted a rabbit.

It didn’t take as long as I thought it would and fairly soon we reached the sea wall.  Typically the tide was out and all we could see was an expanse of mud.

Looking one way

Looking the other

Looking towards town

You can just make out the white uprights of the Millennium Stadium at the centre of this photo.

Looking Back Towards Rumney

If you enlarge this photo, and look carefully, you can just make at the tower of St Augustine’s, slightly left of the middle of the pic.

Oliver

Holly

Lone Swan

We managed to walk from my house, to the lake, to the sea wall, and back to my house in just under an hour and a half.  Probably could’ve done it a bit quicker if Olly had been in the pushchair the whole way instead of letting him have a little walk.

It was a good new found out, will try and do it again sometime.

Today is my first Henniversary, I can’t believe how quickly a year has gone by.  To remind yourselves of the day we got them, see here.  I’m still enjoying having them, and they seem happy.  They are still laying well, although the number of eggs we’re getting has gone done a bit over the last few weeks.  Hopefully we’ll have another happy year (at least) together.

Mash

Squeak

Bubble

I’ve got Dan at home for the second day today, he’s almost lost his voice and has a horrible sounding cough.  I took him to the doctors this morning, which was a super quick dash to be there for 8:30am, and guess what?  It’s a virus.  There’s a surprise.  At least I now know it’s not on his chest.  Dan seems ok otherwise, and he’s quite happy that he sounds like Darth Vader when he breathes.

I had a bit of a ‘feeling old’ moment at the doctors though.  We saw a new doctor and he seemed to be the same age or younger than me.  I still expect doctors to be lots older than me, I guess it’s something I’m going to have to get used to.  I only have a year and a bit left of being a 20 something.

I feel I’ve been neglecting my blog slightly lately, but I really haven’t been doing anything very exciting.  Just the daily routine of taking Dan to school, doing a bit of housework, taking Oliver to playgroup and Rhymetime, picking Dan back up from school.  Mostly I’ve been falling asleep on the sofa in the evenings.

I have got a bit of exciting news though.  Last week we booked flights to Latvia, going in February.  I’m starting to think we’re slightly crazy as it’s going to be really cold.

Hubby’s grandad was from Latvia.  After he died hubby’s parents started researching the family tree, and have contacted, and met, a number of distant relatives.  The in-laws have been there quite a few times over the last few years and we’ve always said we’d like to go once the boys were a bit older.  So when father-in-law spotted cheap flights we took the plunge and booked it.

I’m now on a mission to find thermal clothing and warm coats, that don’t cost a fortune, for the boys. I also need warm boots for myself. I got some bargain winter boots for Dan in Lidl’s the other day, but they didn’t have any small enough for Oliver.  So if anyone has any recommendations for places to buy cheap, but warm, Winter clothing then let me know.

Saturday night I had every intention to sit down and watch Strictly Come Dancing, I managed about 3 dances then Bruce Forsyth tried to do one joke too many, and I had to turn it off.  So instead of wasting away in front of the telly for an hour or so I sat in the kitchen and did a bit more glass painting.

I did the outlines on these weeks ago, and they were just waiting to be filled in.

Tea Light Holders

Vase

The following jar was done to experiment a few different things.  I think the butterfly in the first picture has come out quite well.

Fishy Vase

I’m not sure if I should’ve put the blue on this vase, as you can no longer see the colours of the fish.  You do get quite interesting effects as you look at it from different angles though.

Here it is again with some popcorn in, you can see the design a little better.  The flash also went off for some reason, so all the metallic outlines have been brought out more.

So the plan is to try and sell all these things at the Church’s Christmas Fayre in November.  I’m going to keep my prices pretty low in the hope that it’ll all go, otherwise all my family will know what they’ll be getting for Christmas.

Here’s everything I’ve done so far.

It doesn’t look very much, does it?  But I’m only sharing part of my Aunty’s stall so I don’t need to fill a huge table.  I do have a few more vases and tea light holders waiting to be painted, along with a couple of storage jars with lids.  Oh well, it’ll all look pretty and colourful even if it doesn’t sell.

The boys have done a few things to ‘amuse’ us this week, I thought I’d share them with you before I forget.

The other day I thought I was going nuts, every time I went into the kitchen I thought I could smell something horrible.  So I was going around sniffing everything trying to find what it was, but had no luck.  After tea I was doing the dishes and Oliver was playing with the drawers in the table.   Hubby suddenly says ‘er, why is there a dirty nappy in the drawer?’.  I usually put nappies by the back door, ready to go in the bin next time I go out, Olly had obviously decided to hide it in the meantime.  Luckily the bag hadn’t broken, otherwise it would’ve been even more disgusting.

On the same day whilst I was eating my tea, Danny came running through to the kitchen all excited saying ‘Mum, did you know you can now turn your gold into cash?’, one of the adverts had just been on the telly.  So I asked him how I could do it, and very seriously he replied ‘well, you add a bit of sugar, and a bit of honey, give it a stir, then put it in the oven.’.  So the secret’s out, it’s as easy as that.

Last night, hubby came out of the bathroom after having a shave.  It only happens every 5 or 6 weeks, so it’s quite a drastic change.  Danny took one look at him and said ‘Yay, you look like a real daddy now!’.  I don’t know why he didn’t look like one before, but Dan was very happy.

Last week at his gymnastics class the instructor asked Dan what he liked best about being in ‘big’ school.  Danny replied ’school dinners’, she then asked him what he liked best about school dinners, he answered ‘eating them!’.  Well obviously.

I just watched this on YouTube, the link was posted on the Omlet Forum.  I think  it’s great, with some clever little touches.

We had a lovely day out yesterday, once again the sun was shining, we went to Dyffryn Gardens in the Vale of Glamorgan.  It was European Heritage Weekend, which meant it was free entry.  We got there for 11am to meet up with our friend Richard and his daughter, and it was already starting to get busy.

You enter through the Gift Shop and we were handed a map of the gardens.  As we had two pushchairs we decided to follow the easy access route, although we soon lost our way slightly.  Part of the  gardens are made up of ‘garden rooms‘ and are like lots of little secret gardens.  Unfortunately they also had lots of steps, I think this will be another place to go back to and explore without the pushchair.    We sat in the Theatre Garden to eat our picnic and the boys had great fun running around the grass and up and down the steps.

We managed to find our way back onto the path and carried on around the Great Lawn and back to the entrance and play area.  There was also an Antiques and Collectors Fair on which I had a good nose around, I didn’t buy anything but I did fancy quite a few things.  The Cafe next to the play area was extremely busy with long queues, hubby and Richard did persevere and got a coffee, but I think it was quite obvious that they’re not used to being so busy.  I’ll leave you with some photos, as you’ll see there’s quite a few statues dotted around the gardens.  Overall a good day out, but I don’t think I’d want to pay £6 to get in, although during the Winter it’s only £3, so maybe we’ll go again on a sunny day in December.

The Rockery

Dyffryn House

A Little Reflecting Pool

Grapes

I feel like I’ve been busy over the last week, but when I stop and think I haven’t actually done that much.

Danny is still very much enjoying ‘big’ school, and has been eating all his school dinners.  I’m not sure about these ‘healthy’ school dinners though, he’s seems to have had either cake or ice cream every day for afters.   He came home the other day with his jumper covered in glue, he told me he’d been making a cot out of various bits and pieces, which comes complete with a trumpet to wake the baby up! Just what every cot needs.  He brought it home yesterday.

Daniel's cot complete with trumpet

I think you need a pretty good imagination, apparently the upright bit is the trumpet.

It’s been glorious weather here for over a week now.  It was really hot on Saturday so I gave the Eglu a wash, and we invited my parents round for a BBQ.  We hadn’t seen them for a week as they’d been on holiday in Devon, so it was nice to catch up and hear all about it. Hubby did a fab job cooking the burgers, sausages, peppers and sweetcorn, with a pint in his hand of course.

After he’d eaten he was obviously feeling a bit energetic and had a funny 5 minutes.

Hubby having a funny 5 minutes

Needless to say he needed a sit down after that.

Yesterday I was doing my volunteering in the museum.  The gallery I’m normally in has closed now for refurbishment, so yesterday was my first day in the Diversity of Life gallery.  It’s quite a small gallery but with a huge amount of things packed in, it starts with things you’d find in the sea with examples of coral, a sword fish, various crabs and fish, it moves on to different plants and fungi, then there’s some mammals including a fruit bat and  a snow leopard.  Moving on round there’s a few birds including a huge albatross, a cassowary and a penguin.  There’s also a big glass wall filled with all sorts of creepy crawlies, some of the bugs are huge and you really wouldn’t want them flying at you.

The objects I was given were a couple of examples of coral, a Unicorn beetle in a perspex cube, a fox skull and a sheep skull.  I’ve got to say I preferred talking about the Shark teeth, but these things might grow on me.  It was really quiet in there yesterday and I only got to talk to about 5 people, hopefully it’ll be a bit busier next week.  It was mentioned that next week I might have the Cookie Cutter shark jaw and the Long Nosed Skate jaw that I used to have too.

Whilst Daniel’s been in school I’ve been trying to do a few more things with Oliver.  We went to Rhymetime at the library last week, which he seemed to enjoy so we’ll go again this week.  The local parent and baby group starts again this week so we’re going there this afternoon.  We also had a go at making some fairy cakes last week, which he did really well at.

Will probably try and do some more baking with him sometime soon.