Fortieth Wedding Anniversay

Back in February we celebrated our fortieth wedding anniversary. On the actual date we were in Devon for our grandson, Gilby's birthday party. After the fab space party we all went out for an anniversary supper. 

It's not easy to get all our family together, our eldest daughter and family are missionaries in South Africa so they weren't able to join us and the rest of the family weren't able to get together until March when our son organised a great meal out in London at Roka, an amazing Michelin star contemporary Japanese restaurant. 

We met up at the London Museum where the grandchildren enjoyed some time before going on the the Barbican area and then moving on to Canary Wharf where the restaurant is.

The meal was amazing, we all enjoyed the food including the children who all love sushi. The atmosphere and service all added to the great time had by all. 

Grandpa and Ptimrose were trying to avoid the cracks in the pavement 

Eugene enjoyed some special time with Auntie Amy and the children always love being with their uncles 

As well as it being hard to get everyone together it's also hard to get everyone to look normal, I did say 'nice faces please' but clearly some one didn't hear me

They gave us a lovely big table right near the 'all you can eat' buffet 😊

Easter Break

I hope you all had a lovely Easter, our son, daughter in law and grandson Eugene came to stay Thursday to Saturday.  The sun shone and we sat in the garden, it's been a while since we did that!  I can't believe that Eugene will be one year old later this month. 

Our daughter in South Africa sent Eugene a voice message telling him how much she loves him, he loved hearing his name. I look forward to the time they all meet for real. 

As my husband is the church pastor we waited till after lunch on Easter Sunday before we headed over to Dove Cottage in Wales. We had planned on doing some work in the cottage and taking some trips out. 

We woke on the Monday to snow on the field and mountains opposite but had decided to head to the coast where the sun shone and we managed a picnic. I will post about that trip another time. 

We had taken a trailer with us of items for the cottage, we have oak and glass doors for when hubby builds his studio down the garden and new windows for the front of the cottage. These jobs will be done at a later date but we managed to lay new oak flooring in the kitchen and upstairs landing which is looking great. 

Molly loves to sit on the bedroom window sill looking out at the sheep and new born lambs :) 

summer outfits

Some time back I posted these little smocked tops that I made for my twin granddaughters, using a purl bee pattern. 

I had plenty of fabric left over, I had found the vintage seer sucker in a charity shop, so I made a pair of shorts each for a pattern I bought from ellegarrettdesigns on etsy. 

Both the tops and shorts were nice easy patterns and the fabric beautiful to sew with.

Today I received the bottom photo from my daughter of the twins modelling their little outfits :)

The sun is shining today, summer here in the UK hasn't been great so I'm hoping this bank holiday weekend will be good. We are heading into London tomorrow to take care of little Eugene for the day while our son and daughter in law attend a wedding. This is the first time we have looked after Eugene on our own and are really looking forward to spending time with him. We are blessed! 

Have a great weekend! 

Summer

Life is just so hectic, I can never seem to find the time to blog these days. 

Although I don't have children at school, the holidays bring a little more freedom as I don't need to help run the church toddler group. But that is only one morning a week anyway.

Later this week we head off for our holidays, a week at our caravan in Devon, catching up with family and seeing the grandchildren, the three of them will join us for a sleep over in the caravan :)

After Devon we will drive up to our cottage in Wales for a week.

I've just made this little jacket and have started the second one, for the twins. The sweet little booties are for Eugene who we will be seeing tomorrow. And I've covered the wooden coat hangers in Liberty fabric for the cottage. 

So the weather here just changed, so far we've had a pretty good summer, plenty of sunshine and warm temperatures, today it all changed, chilly and very wet. Hopefully the warm weather will return. 

I'm hoping you are all enjoying the summer and will manage much deserved rest.

                

                

Update

I've just noticed it's been over two weeks since I last posted. As I said last time we have a new grandson, sweet little Eugene. Here he is below, he's doing really well, feeding and putting on weight. He will need a couple more ops but thankfully they live near some of the best hospitals in the world. They are getting great support and all doing really well.

The bluebells near us have been amazing this year, infant all the blooms that are out at the moment are fabulous. 

The week before last, I had a call from my daughter in Devon, her and the children were all unwell so I jumped on the train and went down to stay for a few days to help out. The beautiful view is from their sitting room window and looks across Dartmoor. Thankfully they all recovered and Gilby managed to set up a little library game :)

Friday was my birthday, I had a great day. We walked the dog and had coffee out in the morning. Then got the train into London, met up with our eldest son for lunch and a walk around Islington, I came across two great shops, Ray Stitch and Loop London, for sewing and knitting. We then went to visit Eugene and his mummy and daddy, it was also our daughter in laws birthday so we shared gifts and cake :) and had lots of cuddles with Eugen before we travelled to Leicester Square to see the Carole King Musical which was probably the best show we have seen. I've been catching up with all your lovely blogs and will try to keep mine a little more up to date! 

Mothers Day UK

Mothers Day is  a time of mixed feelings for me, I miss my mother and MIL so much and am so thankful for all that they were to us and our family. I also miss seeing my daughters but know that they are celebrating their own mothers day with their children, those in SA celebrate the day on the same date as those in USA. On Saturday we took a trip into London to meet up with our sons and DIL and enjoyed a lovely brunch together. 

1976

I was sent this photo for Mothers Day all the way from SA (thank goodness for 'whatsapp')

Joe and Jesse are i the centre, our adopted grandsons, baby Hudson has been with our daughter and SIL for over twelve months now, we are praying that there will be an adoption in the near future. The two girls are living in a children's home at the moment and sped time with our daughters family, they would love to adopt them too at some time.

I received beautiful hand drawn cards from the munchkins below :)

Gilby Skipp

Primrose & Maggie

They look different in this photo but they really arent!

Grandchildren makes

I love making items for my grandchildren and other babies, before Gilby's birthday, my daughter sent me the top left picture of a little leather waistcoat with a pocket on the back for arrows :)

The little boy does look a little like Gilby from the back. 

I couldn't find any leather so chose faux leather fabric which had faux sheepskin on the reverse, I decided to use the sheepskin as the outer side of the waistcoat and the 'leather' side for the pocket on the back. I used some embroidery stitches on my machine to stitch a pattern around the edge of the waistcoat. Finishing the waistcoat off with an old wooden toggle from my button tin :)

The photo I have of Gilby wearing the waistcoat was a little too dark to use

With a new grandson due at the beginning of May I have been busy knitting and sewing for him too

This little jacket is from a pattern book I bought when my children were young and the jacket is a favourite of mine, knitted in one piece and can be worn with the button at the front or back. It's a French pattern  book by Pingouin.

Visit from the Grandchildren

We have just had three of our grandchildren visit for a few days, without their parents! This was the first time Gilby had been to our house without them but he did great, he wanted to sleep in with the girls so all three had their beds in our smallest bedroom because the room the girls love to use :)

It's been over a year since they have been to visit, since the girls started full time schools they don't really have the time to come up for weekends now and  as we visit Devon regularly we get to visit them at their house 

 So it was so lovely to have them visit and we managed to cram lots into the days. They had just spent the weekend with their parents at our son and daughter in laws in London so we didn't need to take them into the city, we had lots of fun in the country and also took them to the Roald Dahl museum which was a great hit and to the Tring Natural History museum which they loved, spending their time drawing pictures of all the stuffed animals.

They always love to visit the windmill where they ran and ran and played 'it' with Grandpa. And of course Molly joined in with all the fun!

We have many photos of all our grandchildren standing on this gate starting when they were quite little

                                 

                                  

                                  

                                   

They are like a little gang, three children and a dog :)

Playing 'it' with Grandpa

The weather was perfect and our visit to the windmill ended with a beautiful sunset

Grandchildren

The twins and their brother are on holiday in Berlin at the moment so I have taken the top three photos from my daughters IG account. The girls are wearing the skirts I blogged about in my previous post and the bottom photo is taken from my other daughters IG account of Lilhle wearing the outfit I made for him and lying on his quilt that I made a while back. 

There is still no news on his future, my daughter and her husband would love to adopt him and are praying for a way forward with this. I'm just hanging in there thinking I would love for him to be my grandson but at the same time praying for Gods will to be done.

If you have a minute check out my daughter new blog where she writes about her shelter work 

www.sheltermeblog.wordpress.com 

                      

                       

       

                                 

I've spent a lot of this week making clothes for etsy, for my grandchildren and for my new great nephew.  I do enjoy making small clothes :)

But I really need to get back to my quilts, my Liberty quilt needs handquilting and my eldest son has asked for a  new quilt and so I plan on getting it done by his birthday at the end of August...that's the plan!

                         

                         

The twins love to wear skirts but can be fussy with their fabric choice. The right hand skirt below is made of vintage Laura Ashley fabric, it looks red in the photo but is actually deep pink. My daughter reminded me that I made her a skirt with wide elastic at the waist from the same fabric (I've had it years) and would I make the same for the girls. I only had enough for one skirt and so used a Liberty fabric for the other one. I had some denim and made the bottom two skirts from that...let's see if they are happy with them ;)

My daughter in SA still has baby Lilhe living with them...they are really hoping to adopt him. She asked if I would make some trousers for him, I lined these with some lovely soft vintage winsiette that I had in my stash. The weather is chilly over there at the moment. I also knitted hi. His little jacket and hat and can't wait to see him wearing them all :)