Friday Foto - Snail Race (26 of 52)

Snail Race. 

These guys didn't win but at least they became good friends.

☼

Lemonade Stand

Since I'm spending a month with my parents (Jerry&Kay) in California, we have had a few fun days with all the cousins together. We usually have things planned for the day, places to go, people to see. However, one day we didn't have anything planned...so we spontaneously decided to do a lemonade & cookie stand. 

We quickly made lemonade & cookies from some my mom had on hand from the 99¢ store and then the kids painted signs to hang around the neighborhood. Our stand wasn't nearly as gorgeous as this one over at Scattered Thoughts of a Crafty Mom which I love, but we did have lots of fun with our last-minute-thrown-together one.

We honestly didn't expect to have very many customers. The first ones were our own lemonade stand workers. They couldn't resist the refreshing lemonade and chocolate chip cookies.

 During the slow beginning, we enjoyed a picnic lunch in the driveway...and then there was a rush of customers! Shouting at the cars driving by and any neighbours who came out of their homes really brought some good business...

Who could resist buying lemonade fromthis gorgeous princess shouting "Lemonade!! Cookies!!"

The moms of these guys should be very proud!

This was one of our best customers...he really made the kids laugh!

We also offered drive-up service.

 After each sale, we would tally how many cookies and cups of lemonade we sold. We recorded the amount of money we started with so we could know exactly how much we earned.

  

This guy's proud of his sign.

Nanny got a workout running up and down the stairs, making lemonade when we ran out, and making sure all the workers were well fed and entertained.

We sold out after 1 1/2 hours with a profit of $10.25...and saved the signs so we can do it another day!

Friday Foto - Sand (25 of 52)

At the beach. ♥ California. 

Coming Home Poncho

I recently finished this poncho for my little girl. It's one of Lionbrand's free crochet patterns - 'Coming Home' poncho. It was super easy to make and I love how it turned out. Hopefully, my little girl will be more excited about wearing it in the future than she was for the photo shoot! :-)

 Front - she's not too excited for a photo shoot.

Back - she started spinning and got into it a little more. 

 Done.

 Attacking the camera and the photographer.

Lionbrand's also got an adult version and a puppy one!

☼

Friday Foto - Harry Potter (24 of 52)

This isn't one that I took, but it was so much fun I had to share it as my Friday Foto (on Tuesday...better late than never, right?). 

I went to the Harry Potter studios last Wednesday, the day before I flew to California. It was amazing!!! I highly recommend it if you're a Harry Potter fan. It was so cool to see the actual sets where they filmed, props, masks, and creatures. The highlights for me were (1) standing in Hogwarts' Great Hall, (2) seeing how the creatures were created with animatronics, (3) walking down Daigon Alley, and (4) drinking Butterbeer! Yum! I'm on the hunt for a Butterbeer recipe...if anyone knows of one, I'd love to make it :-)

Featured on Threading My Way...again!

I was super excited again to see that the dress I made my little girl for the Diamond Jubilee was feature on Threading My Way...Thanks, Pam!

If any of you saw this post for the other time Pam featured another dress, you'll know she has a great ongoing linky party called Threading Your Way...love it!

Friday Foto - Bees (23 of 52)

Bees at our Diamond Jubilee Street Party

I know I'm wayyyy behind on my Friday Fotos. I'm not going to stop, though. This is my latest and I'll do another catch up soon to make up for the four that I missed. 

Rhubarb Bars ❤

I absolutely love my weekly veg box from Riverford Organic Farms. It's exciting to get fresh, organic veg every week. It makes my trips to Sainsbury's a lot shorter. And most of all, it challenges me in my kitchen creativity (which is not my strongest talent).

This past week, I was delivered rhubarb. I'd seen it before, so it wasn't a mystery veg like the celeriac. I'd also eaten it before - only a handful of times but enough to know it was good in desserts.

Perfect. I've been loving desserts lately ...which I'll probably be regretting when I get to California next week and will be amongst all the beautiful people. But for now, I'm bundled up for the cold, rainy, windy weather we've been having in England and am still in winter mode...in other words, eat a lot of food to stay warm.

I found a recipe for rhubarb crumble bars (Yum.) on Sweet Anna's blog and just happened to have all the ingredients in my kitchen, which was a pleasant surprise because I was struggling to find enough to make lunch and dinner. 

Anything with lots of butter and sugar and brown sugar has got to be good.

My kids helped me as usual. We made the sauce in the morning - went to a local pub to have lunch and bounce on a bouncy castle for an hour or so - came home - mixed the crumble bar recipe - baked it during nap/rest time - took it out of the oven.

It smelled and looked so delicious that after rest/nap time, we couldn't wait for it to cool completely. We cut into it and enjoyed the warm, melty deliciousness. Mmmmm...

Mom, why didn't you ever make anything with rhubarb? 

I'm only asking because when I told a few of my friends about making these rhubarb bars, they started to reminisce about their moms' special rhubarb recipes as if it were a common thing for moms to have special rhubarb recipes.

Jubilee Flowers

Are you tired of Jubilee, yet?? I'm not...It was such an exciting weekend and I wish it was even longer than four days...of course. It was so cool to see everyone get in the spirit and wave their flags. We didn't make it into London on Sunday (would have just been me & the kids) but did our own special celebrations while we watched the pageant online ;-)

This last Jubilee post is not about the cake. It's all about the flowers.

I used a tutorial I had stumbled across and pinned. It's from Scattered Thoughts of a Crafty Mom and was super clear and easy to follow. I used her tutorial to make one smaller flower and one larger flower. Then I glued those together to create one giant flower. I used felt to secure one flower to the headband and the other flower to a clip.

My supplies:

The buttons...a random assortment from my small button stash. The fabric...leftover scraps from a tooth pillow and CW's trousers. Headband...out of EV's dress-up box. Clip...my own. Overall cost...FREE! (ish) because I'm pretty sure I bought some of those things at some point in the past.

I originally made them to put on EV's dress. But, then I thought they would be just a bit too much and I didn't want to over-do it. So, I was left with two large flowers.

                             Headband...

     Hair clip...

     Eye patch...

                Outfit complete...

Complete Jubilee

 It was really tough to get good pictures of the complete Jubilee outfits, but here's what I got....

I decided not to add anything to the top of the dress and went with Truly Myrtle's suggestion of a ribbon around the waist. It is actually what I had originally pictured after reading the circle skirt tutorial. I thought I'd dye the elastic blue, but then realised I might be getting myself into something more than I could handle at the time. So, the ribbon was perfect! ...and my little girl loved it!

I matched CW's trousers with a shirt from Next. I knew he'd love the guitar. Can't go wrong with cars and guitars!

Back at home after the rain started.

...and one more. :-)

Jubilee Trousers

I just finished these trousers for my little boy to wear to the Queen's Jubilee celebration in our village on Monday! They are the Treasure Pocket Pants from Sewing for Boys. My mom (jerry&kay) gave me the book for Mother's Day and this is the first chance I've had to make something from it. There's a sew-a-long for the book going on at boy, oh, boy, oh, boy but I just can't keep up!

 Here they are with just the hem.

 Here they are with the hem rolled up.

This is probably how my little guy will wear them. He tends to be thicker but shorter than most. :-)

I'm excited for him to try them on tomorrow and hope they fit!

 One thing I learned from making these trousers is what "bar tack" means. I like it.

 My favorite part are the pockets. I hope Canaan stores lots of his treasures in them!

I also loved how the waistline was done with two narrower pieces of elastic instead of just one wide one.

I'll post pictures soon of them on my little guy as well as my little girl's Jubilee dress with its finishing touches! 

Happy Jubilee! :-)

Crocheted Birthday Card

I received this in the mail today...

It's a birthday card! Yes, I turned 35 this week. Yikes!

-------------------------

Isn't it a clever way to make a card?? A crochet flower, felt stem and leaves with a birthday coupon inside.

I'm pretty sure my mom made it and that she wrote the special poem inside. You can see more of her beautiful work on her own blog - Jerry & Kay.

Thanks, Mom and Dad!