Bare

Is it just me or can you feel Winter in the air?

I know we are barely into December, but I tend to mark the seasons by the months so officially for me, it is now Winter.

But the only evidence of Winter for us at the moment is the bare trees and grey skies as there has been no frosts yet down in this little part of the country though a definite nip is in the air and my nose feels like it is permanently frozen.


And to add insult to injury we've had nothing but rain all week and lashing down at that, today not included - the sun has been actually shining.

There hasn't been a day when I haven't come in from the school run, shops, school run again looking like a drowned rat!! I'm amazed I haven't got flu - yet!

Though I'm not wishing for it - no sir'ee'

Anyway, what I am kind of wishing for though is to wake up to a crisp and beautiful sparkly morning where everything is glistening and I can see my breath in the air very, very soon - plleeeaasssse.


Have a lovely, lovely weekend and wrap up warm - I can smell Winter in the air. xox

Hexagon Decoration Tutorial

Good day all, I hope your all well on this fine and dandy day?? Though I do have to apologise in advance today as it's a long one - sorry.

If your interested in this little (ahem) tutorial and feel like being in for the long haul then it might me worth grabbing yourself a cuppa and a packet of biscuits 'or' just turn the printer on and whizz this fab little Christmas 'how to' off in a couple of minutes.


OK, here we go!

So as promised I've finally pulled together my 'Hexagon Christmas Decoration' tutorial for all you lovely people out there.

This is one of the first things I learnt to do when I attended a patchwork course many moons ago and is still a 'thing' I make every year to add to my ever growing pile of homemade Christmas things.


Righty'o' - lets get started. I will try to keep it simple and hopefully the pictures will do all the talking - I hope?

STAGE ONE ::

First you will need to make/trace/print off twelve hexagons - you can choose the size of hexagon depending on how large you want your decoration to be, but they all have to be the same size.


Then you need to cut out your fabric.

Like the hexagons you will need twelve pieces of fabric (your choice) and they have to be just larger than the hexagon as you will be tacking the paper pieces (hexagons) on to the fabric.


Place the paper hexagon on the wrong side of the fabric then fold over the edges of the fabric and tack it to the paper hexagon.


Keep doing this until all twelve hexagons are tacked with your chosen fabric.

STAGE TWO ::

Now you need to start joining the hexagons together - this is done in two sections of six.




Basically you will have a hexagon as your centre that will have five stitched around it so it becomes a kind of flower - see picture below.


Then stitch the sides together of these five outer hexagons to make the first half of your decoration - it will look a bit like a little hexagon bowl - see picture below.


Do this again to the remaining six hexagons so that you now have the two halves - or bowls!


Now you need to join these two halves together.

Still working inside out press the open edges of the two hexagons bowls together making sure they are aligned and start stitching.


Keep stitching all the way round until you get to the last three sides - then stop and tie off.

This is what it should look like - an almost sewn up inside out ball.

Now this is the fun part.

You need to very carefully remove 'all' the paper hexagons by ever so cautiously snipping around your tack stitches and easing the paper out of place.




I know that you will end up with six (initially) raw edges, but don't worry these should keep there hexagon shape.

STAGE THREE ::

Turn the ball the right way out.

It will look a little bit rough up until this stage, but trust me it will work out.



Now you need to stuff your ball with anything you like really - I used fibre filling.


Once that is done you can start to stitch your hexagon ball up and if you want to add a ribbon for hanging, pin this in place now. I personally think it looks far nicer with the ribbon ends sewn into the ball.



Close her up and there you have it - one 'Hexagon Christmas Decoration' - da dah!!



Now you could leave it like that if you so wish, but I like to embellish mine with sequins or you could embroider you ball, add glitter and glue or even bells - the options are up to your own personal preferences.


Another neat thing you could do is before you sew your right side turned out ball up is add some seasonal spices or herbs to give it a bit of a lovely whiff.

I haven't done this as when I first started stitching these soft Christmas balls I had a little one that liked to grab things and stuff them in his mouth - eight years on and I still have a little one who likes to put things in her mouth, so I play it safe and keep them plain'ish'. Sequins are the compromise as you've got to have a little bit of sparkle at Christmas.


I hope this tutorial has been more of a pleasure and helpful rather than a pain in the bleep??

And if you have any questions at all then please do not hesitate to drop me a line, I will try to help out where ever I can.

Have a lovely, lovely day and happy making - xox.

Child's Play

How much fun can you have with a Thomas the Tank Engine train set when your nine, four and two??

Wellllll - I know, lets put the Fat Controller in the middle of the tracks!!

And see if Thomas will run him over !!

Nope that just pushes him along - for a while!

What about standing the driver in the way??

Nope, that doesn't work either!

'Oh well' I guess we will just have to watch him whhhooooosssssssh around and around and around and think of other ways to sabotage and derail Thomas!

Kids!! Don't you just love them?

How much fun could you have with a train set??

Child's play - what a delight to sit and watch.

{Though sshhhhhhh. I was probably the same at their age - and worse!!}

Elements

It feels like ages since I last posted some pictures of the beach. A place that we seemed to spend most of our free time on in the Summer either visiting, relaxing, BBQ'ing' with friends, watching fireworks, building sandcastles and pretty much anything else we could do on it.


But to be honest this time of the year (down here) is grim - in a flipping 'eck it's brrrrrrrrrr freezing kind of way and I really do not do the cold, at all!


So prizing me out of the house and away from the open fire on a cold , grey and wet kind of day has to be for something really enticing and pretty amazing and if the sky shots in the pictures I took at the weekend are anything to go by then 'yep' I was prized away and 'yep, yep, yep' it was pretty amazing and awesome and breath taking - literally!


I'm guessing the weather was pretty much the same down here as it was across the rest of the country at the weekend.

Gales, showers the sky black and ominous no place to venture out in such maddening weather, but guess what? If you haven't already!!

That is exactly what we did!

To brave the elements!!

Anyhow, enough of the melodrama - sorry. We decided that the beach would be the perfect place to go for a pre Sunday dinner stroll to build up an appetite - and blow away the cobwebs as we hadn't been down there for absolutely ages.



But we weren't counting on having ourselves almost blown away too - by the wind that is and dramatic skies!



One minute the sun was pouring with sunshine, a beautiful autumnal day and then the next minute the sky blackened all dark and ominous with the threat of another down pour.


We did manage to dodge a shower or two as walking in the rain and the cold with the wind not exactly on your side isn't the most fun a person can have.




Though the wind kept whipping us around let alone our hair in our face making us feel all dizzy with a rush of adrenaline all at the same time.

Then it would push us along in one breath and then hold us stock still unable to move no matter how hard we tried to push against it the next - 'oh' what fun!!

{If you look closely in the above picture you can see our scavenger of a lad dragging this along the beach!!}

Don't you just love the sky on days like this and have the open space to appreciate it's beauty - well the clouds that is and for me on Sunday. It was a perfect picture taking extravaganza - I did take a few didn't I?? 'Oh well'

And 'who' is the mad bloke braving these elements you may well ask??

Well that's Mr T doing his brave man stuff 'un huh' - as they do, blokes (ahem!!)

Have a wonderful, glorious day - have you got your fingers crossed for snow??

ps. I would just like to say thank you for all your wonderful and lovely comments and sticking with me over these past few months even though I haven't been able to reciprocate most of the time.

I do try and visit when I can, but circumstances have changed (again) within our little family unit which has made things difficult, troublesome and down right pants recently, but I'm hoping we're on the up turn and there is always that silver lining and this wonderful blogging community I am so fortunate to be a part of which has (literally) been my life saver on many a day - so thank you, thank you again, I really, really appreciate you all. Nina xox

Crafting, Flowers and a Wonderful Weekend

Morning all - how's it going??

Did you have a wonderful weekend jam packed with adventures and 'non stop' stuff or did you just lock the front door Friday night, pull the phone out of it's socket and cozy up with blankets, books, wine, good food and a fire??


I know which one I'd choose, but children tend to bounce off walls if they are caged in for too long so we did get out for an adventure or two, but I'll share those experiences with you tomorrow.

Now back to the cosying part.

Us adults at Tabiboo tend to squeeze our cosying into certain sections of the day - sounds regimented I know, but it makes for an all round wonderful weekend that we all get some enjoyment out of.


So for us it's either really early in the morning (sleep deprivation not included) when the little ones are still tucked up in bed with their heads in the land of nod or when they are absolutely shattered from a good old running around on the beach and then collapse, curled up on the sofa in their own little worlds of Barbie, Peppa Pig and Star Wars. This is the time when the grown ups get to indulge in their own relaxation and interests.



Whether it be reading the weekend papers or cracking on with some Christmas crafting a little slice of cosying is achievable at some point in a weekend.



And as December is literally round the corner (just one more day to go - yippee!!) the excitement levels are going to go up a notch or two (and that's just me!) and time for relaxing and cosying will become few and far between from here on in until Christmas day when we can all breath a great big fat whopping sigh!!

... and ppssssst here's a little sneak preview of the advent calender I bought this year for the children.



One kind of traditional and one with pockets that 'yes' gets filled with a little chocolate treat for all three.

Though that one is not coming out until tomorrow, just to make sure there is 'no' temptation around - for me of course!! Mmmmmmmmm chocolate.

It all adds to the fun and festivities at Tabiboo HQ.

{The last of the hydrangeas snipped from the garden}

Have a lovely, lovely week - how did you spend your weekend??

Sunlight

Hello all on this beautiful, beautiful sunshiny Friday - it's the end of the week 'yay'

This week feels like it's been such a long one, for me anyhow. Nothing major, no details I'm just soooooo glad it's Friday!!

And the sun is shining today - finally.

I feel like I've been starved of sunlight for ages - a bit melodramatic I know and it's probably only been a couple of days, but I am so glad it's lovely and bright today down in our little part of the world that is.


Though what do I do as soon as the sun pours in through the windows??

Well apart from gasping 'oh my word, how many finger marks and smudges?' and cursing all the spiderwebs that are soooo flipping obvious (I'm not a good housewife at all!) I go and grab my camera and start running around the house like a mad women (well more than normal that is!!) and start clicking any piece of sunlight I can find in case it disappears again and then that's my lot for another week or so!


Not many pictures today then 'eh!' - Welllllll the sun moves really fast around our house first thing in the morning. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

So if you were wondering was I sprawled out this morning dipping my face into the rays and soaking them up instead of getting the Windolene and dusters out then think again - because I was!!

'Oh well' not even tinted moisturiser can give you that sun tingling glow to your cheeks at this time of the year.


Have a wonderful, wonderful day and I hope the sun is shining with you where ever you are and most importantly - have a lovely weekend. xox

Suffolk Puffs

Don't you just love that word - Suffolk Puffs??

'or' Yo Yo's to you and me.

It was only last weekend when the very lovely Jenny at JennyFlower showed me how to make one of these lovely little delicate flowery thingies that I realised what a fabric yo yo was. Up until that point I didn't have a clue, let alone how to make one .

So when she mentioned about making some to string together to make Christmas trees I thought I had completely missed heard (or lost the plot!!) because yo yo's for me are those plastic toy things that you always get in a Christmas cracker with string wrapped around their middles that you spin up and down, up and down - well try to anyhow. Mine aways got tangled up within minutes and were promptly thrown in the bin!

But the penny did drop, eventually (ahem) and she put us to work making some of these little beauties and now - I'm addicted!!

Have you seen what beautiful things she makes with hers?? (check out her Folksy shop)

{I secretly think they look like little mini shower caps!!}

I only actually sat down for about an hour last night and lookie what I made.

Now I haven't gone completely bonkers - not yet anyhow in case you were wondering.

I know it was only yesterday I was harping on about making 'Crazy Patchwork Christmas Stars' from the gorgeous crafty book 'Home Sweet Sewn' but even I don't get bored that quickly when making something - fickle I may be and have an attention span of a three year old, but my staying power is a little bit stronger than that.


Anyhow, I was just kind of experimenting last night - as you do and completely overwhelmed myself (it doesn't take much, really) by making more than just a couple.

So I'm thinking, stocking fillers for the girls - hair slides maybe.

Unusual, unique and really rather pretty if I do say so myself - 'Oh' I do, I do.

Now I really should stop dallying around with yo yo's and get back to my 'crazy stars' as Christmas is just around the corner and I must 'oh yes' have some more - just another ten odd or so to make!!

ps. here is a 'How to Make a Yo Yo' from Heather Bailey if you too like me like the look of these little beauties!