High Force, Low Force

 Today we decided to play the tourist with my lovely God-father and his wife.

We took a trip in to Teesdale and visited two popular attractions here in the North Pennines.  The first was High Force....

There it is in all its glory....the noise was phenomenal!

There is a super path all the way down from the road to the Force which means that it is wheelchair accessible (but be warned you'll need muscles for the last bit upwards on the return journey...and, of course, you can't get down to the 'beach'.)

From the path you get the wonderful view in the first photo, but also this.....

High Force stole my heart.

Whilst you might think, golly, it's so grey, brown and dull.  If you stop for a moment and take in the smallest details you will begin to see the most wonderful colours, like this wee plant in the rock.....

And for my memory bank, a great shot of my God-father and his wife.  We had a lovely few days with them and can't wait for them to come back.

Anyway, that wasn't the end of our day.  From here we drove to Bowlees visitor centre (we went there before for our Christmas Reindeer Hunt) and from there we walked through the woods........

To the beautiful Low Force......

I actually prefer Low Force.  It isn't as spectacular in drop, but the scale of it is still breathtaking.

And its situation in a little wooded area......

....with another set of falls which pass under the simple but impressive piece of engineering which is the Winch Bridge...... 

 

You can only pass over it one at a time, and despite auntie waiting to cross, you still have to stop and admire the raw beauty of the place!

And....there's ALWAYS time for a wet play.....

We left here to go to our 'local' in Holwick, The Strathmore Arms, for yet another delicious home-cooked meal from Anthony's kitchen.....such a lovely day.

See you soon for the next instalment...xx

Doing the tourist thing...Long Meg & her Daughter and Little Salkeld Mill

 Having got an order to collect from the mill AND wanting to see Long Meg......AND having visitors this week meant that the planets aligned and we were able to do ALL of these things...YAY!

So first up are some photos of Long Meg (she's the tall single stone) & her daughters (which are the 50 or so stones which make up the stone circle)....

And these are photos of  Little Salkeld watermill.  

The mill sells stoneground products and it also has a wonderful little tea room which offers light lunches and delicious homemade bread and cakes.  If I'm honest the website leaves much to be desired, BUT, I would urge you to put this on your bucket list for a visit, it's a great place to park and walk to Long Meg and you can treat yourself to a delicious lunch or tea and cake after your exertions!  Enough said 😉

See you again tomorrow!

The 3 Adventurers 😊

Summer Holiday - Day 5, 6 & 7!

At kids club the children get me (real name Karen!) and Crafty Friend (Carol!) muddled up, so for a joke, she had these t-shirts printed.

We know some of the children can't read...but the ones who can thought it was hilarious and insisted on this photo!

Work became one VERY long day of cleaning (9 hours!!), clearing out the academic year, we reorganised the room too.....gets the kids thinking about where they can find things when they come back and they remember better then if we were to tell them!

The next day we undertook all the preparing for the next year!  Still not finished to be honest!

The in-laws came down for a short stay and during a trip into town, I managed to get this shot of my beautiful Teenage Daughter...she'll hate me for this!

On Sunday, I decided to get my head into a different space.  Having ordered some new jeans from H&M, who thankfully sell jeans by the waist and leg measurements, I can get a pair that actually fit without a gaping hole in the small of my back to fill with shopping!!

Hence my lovely old pair (that I had worn through at the knee!) became my cut-offs for playing and gardening!

I cut the jeans across the knee, just above the hole.  I chose some nice bright fabric and sliced it across the width at a 2" depth and ran it through my clover bias binding gadget to produce a nice binding...pinned it on like this..........

I whizzed round the binding with my sewing machine and then flipped the binding over and hand stitched it to the inside......

And ta-dah!...cut-offs!

I've left them long so that as they wear, I can just cut them shorter and shorter!

So , that was those few days.....the next week went in a whirlwind...so I'm not sure how much of that I can really show you in photos!

But after that we made some trips...those I will share!

Back soon!

Love 

Nora

xxxx

Summer Holidays - Day 1

Yep, that time of year again and ...yep...I know the holidays actually started last week BUT, with Kids Club to get up and running, I worked last Thursday and Friday whilst Little Lady went into Kids Club!

So, for us, holidays really only started today, and I will still be working for the next 2 Thursdays and Fridays too.

But as a little record (more for myself than anything), I thought I'd photograph (or at least try to remember to photograph!) our DO-ings for each day.  Can't promise I shall be successful!  But here is Day One......

Girls trip to the hairdressers, Little Lady is done and enjoying a hot chocolate and a biscuit whilst she waits for Teenage Daughter to finish.

After this we were due to picnic at the local play park...but it rained!

So we decided to picnic indoors instead!

After lunch we had company..... 

....for dressing up and snail home building!

This gave me a little time for a cuppa and a biscuit and.....

A little time with THE blanket working the Join-As-You-Go-Grannys.

The tiniest visitor got a bit left behind with the big girl play (which is unusual as she is sooooo switched on!), so she found one of Little Lady's craft kits.......

...and we made these Shrinking Fairy Charms by Galt (available at Argos, and I highly recommend them as a gift or Summer Project).  I have a proper heat gun from my paper-crafting days and Tiny Friend was mesmerised by the curling and distortion of her fairy until it came good again!

I got them treasure hunting.....

..for broad beans and peas.  A great conversation ensued about which bits are edible and which bits you wouldn't want to eat (the furry bit of the broad bean case!)  and the pea skins were munched and a few taken for the snail house!

We ate these this evening with our Mac Cheese and Garlic Bread, Little Lady had 3 portions of Mac Cheese and then downed a Jubbly and 4 pieces of watermelon!  Obviously worked up an appetite!

At the moment she's happily playing (or that should be thrashing!) Daddy on the Wii....great fun!

We have a home day tomorrow as we are awaiting some deliveries, so who knows what we might get up to!

Have you got small people to entertain?  What have you got planned?

Until tomorrow, byeee,

Love

Nora

xxxx

Lazy Crafternoon Tea

A while back I told you about my lovely purchases in order to run a fund-raising afternoon.

I also promised to tell you about it and I apologise for my tardiness...but here it is....at last!

I invited some lovely crafty friends to pop along with any crafting dilemmas or new projects that had ground to a halt before they had really got under-way (you know that feeling, right?), I would ply them with tea, cake and cream scones and in exchange they had to dig deep and pay for their refreshments and anything else on my craft tree that took their fancy! (Sorry no picture of that.)

Want to see some calm photos before we kicked off?

OK, here we are, a charity shop find, a gorgeous yellow tea set..............

Set out on our garden room table covered by another charity shop find, a tablecloth...........

Hopefully there is something for everyone..........

Old school milk bottles with striped straws (bought from the Girls Own Store) for pink lemonade................

An eBay purchase of sugar tongs........

From the top...Cheesy Heart Puffs, Faerie Bites, Mini Scones and a no fat Victoria Sandwich......

I don't have a traditional looking Tea Dress (guess what's on the 'To Make' list for this year!?), so glamorous shoes and a dress were order of the day..............

We chatted, ate scones, chatted, did a little crochet, chatted, ate cake, chatted, drank tea, chatted and made some pillowcase dresses too!

In all we raised a fantastic £85 for Red Nose Day.  Thank you so much to the lovely ladies who made this possible xxx

I've decided to have another Lazy Crafternoon Tea in celebration of all the Children's Days there are in May and June.  It will be to get children into sewing, to sew more Dresses for Africa and all the money raised from the Tea & Scones will be used to make more dresses or contribute to postage getting the dresses to the distributor.  Can't wait!

I've got a lot of things to do by then, so I'd better stop yammering and crack on!

Until the next time, 

take care, 

Nora

xxxx

Some lovely spending!

Helloooo!

Yes, guilty AGAIN!

But, it's all (well nearly all) in a good cause, twice over!  It came from my local charity shop, Horsham Matters and is for me to fund-raise.

This coming Saturday I am holding a Crafternoon Tea for my lovely friends who like eating Scones, drinking Tea and Making!  We're going to be raising money for Red Nose Day in conjunction with Mollie Makes Magazine!

In order to put it on in my mad style, I have been searching the charity shops for some lovely bits and pieces and have been somewhat successful!

How about these....

to use as a little cover for the jam

to put the jam in!

for serving something delicious!

lovely little sugar 'shovels', one for jam, one for cream!

6 gorgeous little glasses, look at thee birds.....kingfisher

...tit....

..bullfinch?....

I also have a lovely tea set and 2 mismatched teapots.  I have bought sugar tongs from eBay and are currently searching out pastry or cake forks.....it's going well and (I hope) will all come together for Saturday afternoon!

You will also have noticed a pink gingham pillowcase....it's for another Little Dress for Africa...more about those another time.

I'll let you know how the Tea Party turns out!

Love

Nora

xxxx

Santa Sack Swap 2014 - for my partner....

Here's the post, as promised, about what I sent to my swap partner over at The Fabric Laboratory.

I've never taken part in one of these before (poor Helen!), so wasn't sure what I was doing so I just kept reminding myself of the rules.

After only an email or 4 between us (as we both seem crazily busy) and after a slight delay (as we forgot to swap addresses so had no idea where we were sending our gifts!) Our parcels were posted and I waited with baited breath to see first if Helen's arrived and secondly...did she like her gifts!

As far as my gifts to her went, I had a few clues to work with.....

Helen is a Dr Who addict, she likes the colour orange, drinks coffee and eats chocolate for company whilst creating and has clear views (which I don't disagree with!) on what should be in a stocking which she blogs about here.

So I thought it would be fun to mix my craft and included crocheted, knitted and machine and hand stitched items, I set to work and came up with these......

Of course the stocking to pop it all in.......

Pattern from the Fabricworm, and one that I have used before with great success.

The fabric is from Panduro Hobby, there is a hint of blue in the not very Christmassy orange fabric and in the very Christmassy snowflake musical fabric, I hope I got away with that colour combo but I couldn't find any Christmas themed fabric that was predominantly orange.

Next up was a hand-stitched Christmas Pudding Tree Decoration, it is so simple to do and I may just have to post a tutorial on that one (although those of you with sewing experience can probably work it out).

Along the coffee theme, I made a Tardis Mug Rug and wrapped some packets of instant cappuccino in it.

I got the inspiration from a search on Pinterest and I shall post a tutorial on this one too as I couldn't find one and someone somewhere might like one! 

The reverse of it looked like this and the whole thing was basically a mini quilt with machine quilting and hand finished binding.

Next up a Zakka inspired Zipper Pouch.................

Keeping with the orange theme again, mostly handsewn but with a little Zakka embroidery wither side of the picture panel.  Hopefull a useful little puch for on-the-go projects.

Here's the lovely bright lining......

...and a 'pull' for the zip......

Here's a close up of the picture panel.....

Some special chocolates for a special lady...............

Some 'smellies', an organic bar of orange scented soap in a Spa Soap Coat...........

The coat is made from 2 colours of Rico Creative Cotton, I made it up as I went along, so another tutorial could be in order here!

I made a hole one side and a loop the other, the loop simply goes through the hole to keep the Soap from falling out of its Coat.

Finally, no self-respecting stocking would be complete without.......an orange in the toe...........

...this one had it's own orange cozy to keep it safe, it can be reused for other fruit to prevent it getting bashed and bruised in your lunch box (or handbag!) and being Rico Creative Cotton again, is fully washable should you get a juice spillage!

I made up this pattern as I went, but I seem to remember it was in a copy of Mollie Makes magazine (found a link) a couple of years ago, and, no doubt, you could get this on Pinterest or through one of the search engines.

So, there we have it!

I hope to follow up shortly with the tutorials, but there is so much going on here, lurgys galore and I have committed myself to the Make Me a Wardrobe 2015 Challenge over at My Make Do and Mend Year, click on it to follow a link to Jen and maybe you'll be inspired to sign up!

See you soon!

Love

Nora

xxxx