Garden Camping

This weekend we decided to camp in our garden. My eldest has been desperate to camp since last summer and I've always sort of discouraged him. I'm not a big camping fan to be honest but my husband is and our eldest is dying to so we decided we would give it a try. We thought camping in the garden would be a good place to start, all the conveniences of home but the fun of sleep outside. Also Angus is only 4 so we weren't sure he'd want to stay in the tent all night.

We already have a tent, it's just a 2 man tent but it was perfect for what we needed this weekend. My husband has a roll mat and his own sleeping bag but we needed to get one for Angus. We went to the Mountain Warehouse which is just round the corner from us. Angus got a very nice sleeping bag, roll may and a mini torch. What was even better was all of our items were reduced! Yay!

We then spent the afternoon setting up the tent and getting things ready. Honestly I think Angus had as much fun putting up the tent as he did actually camping! After we had gotten the tent all cosy we started to think about dinner. As we were camping, we had in a bag tacos, I'd seen this idea on another blog, This Big Adventure and thought it was awesome! We were not disappointed, everyone loved it, even my fussy 2year old!

Once dinner was done and tidied up, it was on to the next authentic camping experience - toasting marshmallows! Both the 4 year old and the 2 year old loved this and who am I kidding me and the husband liked it too!

Then it was bedtime, Brodie and I were sleeping in the house so that was pretty uneventful but husband and Angus were in the tent and that was much more fun! They got into their pjs and read stories by torchlight, talked, listened for owls and other animals and eventually Angus went to sleep. Once he was sleeping husband came into the house for a little bit and we had a glass of wine and chatted while keeping an eye on the tent!

And I am pleased to say that Angus slept all night and thoroughly loved it, in fact he wanted to sleep in it again tonight! So a massive success really, I think we will be investing in a bigger tent and some more equipment and going on lots of camping adventures! And we will definitely be garden camping again!

Here are a couple of tips that we found useful:
1. Put a duvet on the ground under your mat or blow up mattress, it really helps keep you warm through the night.
2. Get little torches for your kids. Angus loved his and it came in handy for trips to the toilet
3. Lots of blankets and pillows to make the tent cosy and comfy!

Have you camped in the garden? What are your tips, favourite camping food, favourite places to go?

Yarning along - clouds

Hello

Well it's been a while, but I am really looking forward to joining in this week with Yarning along.

Currently I am knitting this beautiful fluffy cloud blanket. It is designed by my friend and very talented children's knitwear designer Vikki Bird, who is offering 20% off all her designs over the summer holidays! I am making this blanket for my friends baby, unfortunately baby Harris is already 4 months old, so I have decided I will finish it in time for his half birthday, in a couple of months. It should be achievable, it's a lovely pattern to follow and with the summer nights I'll soon have it finished. I'm just over a third of the way at the moment, but my youngest has chicken pox this week, so we have been confined to the sofa so I should get lots of time for knitting. I am using stylecraft special Aran for this blanket and it is very soft and squidgy, it's going to be a lovely warm blanket, which is great because baby Harris lives in the Highlands of Scotland and it can be a bit nippy up there! 

Book wise I have just finished the Unmumsy Mum by Sarah Turner, which I have thoroughly enjoyed. It was full of laughs and truths and in a lot of way summed up how I have felt and sometimes do feel about being a mum. I will start a new book so tonight but I'm not sure what that will be yet, I have a couple to choose from so I will see how I feel when I get to bed.

I'm not sure when I will blog again, maybe at the weekend, we are trying backgarden camping so I am hoping to do a post about that but if not probably next week for yarning along.

Wip Wednesday - Don't Panic

So here's the situation, I have nothing on the needles, nothing! I have projects I want to start and I have yarn but I have quite a severe case of startitis! 

I finished the owl hat (which will be featured soon) and since then, nothing. We've been quite busy over the weekend with getting things ready for when this baby makes an appearance, painting, cleaning, getting things out of the loft etc, so that hasn't left a lot of time or energy for knitting.

Also I wasn't at my knitting group this week as I was at a Foo Fighters gig (which was awesome) and had I been at the group I would have cast on something, not to worry though I'm sure there will be something cast on soon! 

In the meantime I'm off to check out what everyone else is knitting! 

The guy next door cowl

Or otherwise known as a cowl for Stu! Ive been meaning to blog about this cowl for ages. Stu asked me to knit him something a while ago, but he is really fussy and I didn't want to put in lots of time and effort if he wasn't go to wear/use the finished product! We did finially find something he would wear though, Stu drives a motorbike and wears buffs and cowls to keep his neck warm. I found this pattern and thought it would be perfect. Thankfully Stu agreed and I even let him choose the yarn.

 I really enjoyed knitting this once I got the pattern repeat memorised. It wasn't a very complicated pattern repeat but my poor pregnancy (yes I am using baby brain as an excuse!) brain did struggle at the beginning. Thankfully the pattern and the colour Stu chose were both rather forgiving! Once I got going though it didn't take very long to knit up and was off the needles before I knew it! 

Stu was really pleased with it and couldn't wait for it to be blocked so he could wear it! I also have enough yarn left over that I am going to make a matching one for Angus! 

Stu got a bit carried away with posing in the next photo, apparently this is his mysterious look! I think it's safe to say he like the cowl.

Who Wednesday - Owl hat

Oops it Thursday, never mind...

So I cast on this hat last week when I was off work, unfortunately all my plans to be productive with knitting and my blog all disappeared. I didn't do any knitting other than casting on and as you will have noticed no blogging. I don't know really what happened, Angus and I spent a lot of time together and that was really important. 

But here I am and with a new wip, a baby owl hat, the pattern can be found here. I am kind of winging it a bit as I've used different weight yarn and different size needles so we'll see what size it comes out as. I have plenty yarn so I might have to make another. That wouldn't be the end of the world as it been a really enjoyable knit so far. 

Hoping to get it finished soon, I'm off work today and Angus is at nursery so as long as I don't have too many naps, who knows...

Puerperium cardigan

This was actually finished last week but it's taken me a week to get round to seeing the buttons on! 

But how cute are those penguin buttons?! I love them!  I actually really love the whole cardigan, love the colour and loved knitting it. This will definitely be on my list to do again! I opted for short sleeves as baby is due end of June so hopefully it will be warm enough for short sleeves.

There will of course be another photo with baby in the cardigan and I may have to make the bigger version too!

Well that's it for me, I'm on holiday this week, so hoping to get lots of knitting done and I have a few blog posts I've been working on that I hope to get posted.

Have a great weekend!

A button buy

The puerperium cardigan is all finished apart from the buttons. I went to see them on last night and can you believe it I'm one button short! Gutted! 

Not to worry though Angus and I decided we would go button shopping today! I don't really need an excuse! Other than the penguin buttons for the puerperium cardigan I didn't really have anything specific I needed but I did tell Angus he could also pick some! 

Here's what we got 

Can you guess what Angus picked? Yellow is his favourite colour and when he saw a little bag of yellow buttons he couldn't resist! I love the ladybird ones and the blue ones are for a secret project! 

Buy the time we got home it was trying to rain so we spent some time playing with our new buttons!

Happy weekend!