Boys on parade.

I'm bias I know but I'm so proud of my boys and I couldn't imagine what it must feel like to lose your child in the name of conflict or war.
We honour those who have.

Better late than never!!

This week has been manic, hence it taking me a week to post pictures of the Halloween party.
It went really well, I only took a couple of pictures of the fancy dress costumes as when people starting arriving I just didn't stop!

Bats

A huge spider

Loits of blood!

On Thursday morning we went to the annual handover of one of the knitting groups that we knit for.
Everything that's been knitted in the last twelve months is put on tables for everyone to look around and see, the representatives from each charity then gives a little thank you speech and we have tea and cakes, it really is a lovely way to spend a morning.

Blankets for Syria

Barbie and Ken dolls for shoeboxes

Jumpers, mitten and socks for Uganda

 Scarves and hats

More hats, some are for the Fishermen's Mercy Mission and some for shoeboxes.

The lady that gave the speech for the shoeboxes said that they try to include a hat in every shoebox as whoever receives a box always puts the hat straight on.
Going to this handover always gives me more inspiration to knit more than the last year for the next years meeting.

Caravanning, dog walks and Halloween baking

We had a lovely weekend away in our caravan.
Some pictures of the dogs and boys settling down for the evening.
Soloman playing on his tablet.

Whilst eating bread sticks!

Later on he and Cody were snuggled up in their bunk beds

Chumleigh "resting" on Malc

Nieve watching the world go by!

We also visited Bradbury Rings I use to go here all the time when I was a child with my siblings and parents. Back in the old days you could park your car anywhere and go rambling over the hills, we often took a big old fashioned tray and sledged down the hills. Nowadays since it was taken over by the National Trust you can only park in the car park and dogs have to be on leads as they now graze sheep there.
I know the reasons why it's changed but it was so much nicer in the old days!!

We only took three dogs away with us so here they are with the four boys on top of one of the hills. Rubbish photo! Taken on my phone which has a rubbish zoom on it!

We don't take a TV or radio with us so we were out walking the dogs an awful lot and the boys made new friends at the campsite and were out playing in the park and the woods in daylight hours. When we were at the caravan we hardly saw them so I have now knitted both the sleeves on Clark's cardigan, I also had to unpick the back and knit it up again as I'd knitted the wrong size! Schoolboy error there!
Eden painted all the lounge whilst we were gone, it looks lovely.
Pictures to follow when I've hung the new curtains.
Clark went to fracture clinic today for another xray, it's all good, he has to go back in January to have another xray and discuss having the plate and screws taken out.
We have a Halloween party tomorrow with quite a few of Edens friends coming, so we thought you can't have a party without a cake so Clark made this Spiders Web cake

Callum made this Halloween one.

A lot of Edens friends are wearing  Halloween costumes so I'm hoping to take some pictures of them to post next time.
By the sounds of it some of them should be quite interesting!!

Cast off and newly cast on

The throw for my Mum as I was crocheting it together and sewing in the ends.

Forgive the wall behind it, it's been stripped ready for Eden to paint whilst we're away
A picture of it in situ on my Mums sofa with Cody and Topsy, one of Mums dogs.

Clark's cardigan, this was a couple of nights ago, the back and one sleeve has been knitted so far.

I don't think I'll be doing much of it tonight as I have a stiff neck probably through sleeping with my head at a bad angle or something along those lines.
So I'm off to have a hot bath, rub some gel on it and hopefully it will be gone by the morning!

October is for......

Visiting garden centers with all their Christmas decorations up!

All the beautiful twinkling lights

The fun of the singing/moving penguins, snowmen and Santa's

Clark bought this pack and made them yesterday afternoon.

He's put festive coloured tissue paper inside and he's going to use them to put presents inside.
He's actually put me to shame as he's made a load of Christmas cards already.

It's also time to burn some festive smelling candles, these really are gorgeous but as I've said many a time before, anything's better than the smell of damp dogs!

In other news, Eden and her band did their gig on Saturday night and they went down well.
I have finished the throw I was crocheting (Hurrah!) I have started on Clark's cardigan, pictures tomorrow hopefully!
We're hoping to go away in our caravan for a few days again soon and I've been told that my lounge will be painted by the time I get back! Something to look forward to!
Other than that a rather dull and dreary day in Dorset but as usual a hive of activity in my house!

Physio and weekly bake up

Clark had his physio yesterday and the lady was really pleased with him. The only thing he can't do is put his wrist back up to a ninety degree position, it goes to  about 75 degrees at the moment. She's signed him off on the understanding that we ring if it doesn't improve in the next few weeks but it's getting more and more flexible the more he uses it.
I figured baking was a good physio exercise so he helped me make these this afternoon,
We made two quiches, one for us and one for Mum

Two chicken pies, again one for us and one for Mum

Two pizzas, again one each

Lastly we made fifteen of these, six for Mum and the rest for us.
They are now history as we had them for tea!

Other than that was cleaning, sorting out doctors appointments and extra carer time for the neighbours which took ages and eight different phone calls to sort out.
We've just had our friend the youth worker visit and I'm now going to pick up my crochet for an hour, wind down and hopefully get an early night!

Wallpaper and stencils

When I was a child my Mum quite often got out an old roll of leftover wallpaper and cut a long strip off for us to draw on.
We'd get some large stones and put one on each corner to hold it down, two of us on one side of the table and two on the other.
So whilst I was ironing Malc was doing some odd jobs and Callum and Clark cleaned out the rabbits Soloman and Cody sat at the table and used some stencils. They were occupied for well over an hour.
I did suggest an Autumn picture and they came up with this which includes a flying plane on fire and a gravestone for a dead dog. Apparently it walked backwards onto a sharp pole and bled to death!
I must stop them watching "casualty"
When I mentioned that I thought it was autumn themed they told me that they had included trees!
Their masterpiece!