Chicken has new skin

Poor chicken looked like this up until a few days ago.

His trousers had all but fallen off, his holes were getting worse and worse and even though he kind of needed a wash, i was terrified he'd completely fall apart...




so we asked the fairies to come and collect him so that he could go and visit the toy hospital where he would be fixed and come back all shiny and new and not smelly anymore.
We put him in a big padded envelope and we propped the envelope up next to the front door and the fairies did their work, and the next morning, Daisy went down to see if he'd been mended and as you can see he had.

Here you can compare the old version without his beak or feet and the new version before he had his eyes stitched on.





And here is a shot of Daisy with new chicken and Iris with a not so old lady chicken. Lady chicken was bought to replace the original Mr Olli Chicken when we realised Daisy was very attached to him, unfortunately she was rejected.

Iris quite likes her however, although nothing is better than Iris' No-Face.

Stuff you find on Hackney Streets - a boot

This pink boot was actually right in front of next doors house, and it was in very good condition so some lady will be cursing as she hobbles to the shops today on one boot.
by the way, she dressed herself today.


Other "Stuff you find on Hackney streets" photographs.

Daisy's last day at nursery today

Today is Daisy's last day at nursery.
I have baked a cake and decorated it with pink icing and sweets and i'm taking it in early so that me and Iris can join in with snack time at 3pm where we will all eat cake.
Horay.

Christmas Scrum at the Sally Army Christmas Party.

These photographs were actually taken on Sat, but i forgot to put them up then, and if i put them up with their correct date, you will probably miss them because they will be hidden too far down the page.

Here is Daisy lining up patiently at the back for her christmas present from father chrismtas, whilst lots of other children push and shove in front of her.


and here she is receiving her present from the man himself.


It was chaos i tell you at the Sally Army Christmas Party.

Stuff you find on Hackney Streets - assorted

This is more just a funny photo of the girls with their umbrellas rather than it being about stuff we find on the streets of Hackney.

They look a bit like two old ladies don't they, the little old lady is admiring the bigger old ladies dolly, which is actually called a 'not so scary monster'.

The girls are actually next to a bed base and in front of a load of other quite interesting colourful junk being chucked out, i think these people were moving out.


This photo was taken yesterday, today whilst Daisy was at nursery Iris decided she wanted to play with Daisy's 'not so scary monster' but then she pulled out one of it's antenna's, so i had to very quickly sew it back on, and it was a bit tricky, it has wire in it, but i bodged it.
Don't tell Daisy, cos she is none the wiser.


Other "Stuff you find on Hackney streets" photographs.

Sophie had a baby in it's bag

My friend Sophie who is out in New Zealand, had her fourth baby (third girl) on the 6th December and this one was born in it's bag! The midwife had to pop it after birth.

She said it was a reasonably quick home birth with the two other girls watching most of it.
I think the eldest boy was at school, perhaps that was for the best.


Well done Sophie.


(oops, baby was actually born on the 9th)

Iris' new favourite dress

Much to the distress of Daisy (who still loves this dress) Iris now loves this dress.

I love it too, i think because it looks quite 60's though i'm sure it's more modern than that, but it is lovely.

Good second hand shop purchase Vicky.

Mum, i've lost that pattern you gave me for similar dresses, i wish i could find it, hopefully when we start packing (or unpacking) it will materialise, and i'll attempt to actually follow a pattern instead of freestyling.


And look you can see our funky pink landing, I wonder if our buyers will keep it or paint over it straight away.

Daisy met her new teachers today

I took Daisy into the school she will start at in January to meet her new teachers (two very nice ladies); some of the 30 children who will join her; and to check out the new classroom and toys.

I can't quite believe that they will get 30 children in there, although i did count 22 children and adults in there this morning and it wasnt too squashed so i guess it will be fine.

They had fab toys, a wonderful home corner with cooker, sink, food, cups, plates, etc...
Baby dolls, a cot, buggies and dolls clothes.
Barbies, Action men and dresses (no Bratz, thank goodness)
Loads of toy animals for zoo and farm.
Painting area
Drawing area
Lots of books

So it all looks like a lot of fun for Daisy, even if it is only for a few months.

I also met some very nice mums and dads with nice children, which makes me feel a bit sad at the thought of moving away, but hey hopefully there will be lovely people in our little village in Somerset.

And we won't be far from family.

x

Favourite toys

I'm sorry for not posting more recently, i've just been a bit pre-occupied with stuff.

I've been thinking about our up and coming 'fingers crossed' house move.
It very nearly all went very wrong when we very nearly didn't have a mortgage, but hopefully this is all sorted and back on track now.
(though i will never count my chickens before they have hatched etc...)

I've also been thinking and planning and scheming and snipping and sewing and knitting christmas presents.
It is still going on.

I've also been taking photographs, and playing in photoshop.

And obviously also been looking after these girls, somehow in amongst all these things.

Which brings me round nicely to talk about toys.
These girls change their favourite toys daily.
This photograph was taken a couple of days ago, and on this occasion Iris' favourite toy was this kookaburra and Daisy's favourite toy was Iris' little baby (called Baby).
I can't remember who bought this kookaburra as a present, i suspect it might have been Auntie Anne, this particular kookaburra has a rather scary laugh when you squeeze his tummy, but the girls love it.

Lisa & Run had their baby this morning.

AT 9.30 this morning a baby boy was born to them.
He was due on the 3rd of Dec, so he arrived just a smidge early.
Baby boy joins their little girl Florence who is soon to be 3.

Tis the season to be merry and have runny noses.

Grandparents, you will be glad that you live miles away from us at the moment cos we all have colds and coughs.
French Granddad, you do realise you probably gave it to us don't you?
You are forgiven though.

I'm not that bad really, not that bad at all if i'm honest, but i'm bored of wiping noses and feeding cough medicine into Daisy.

Iris is also very keen in sitting on her potty, i am wondering if she has a tummy upset cos she just wants to sit on it all the time at the minute and she doesn't seem to do that much in it, but i guess we have to let her, you know encourage her as much as we can.
Blimey we will be out of nappies soon.

Here is a random pic of the girls.

The crappy Play-Doh penguin

Here is a photograph of my crappy Play-Doh penguin, and Daisy was right Uncle Paul's were much better.
However i don't think Uncle Paul made his penguin a dirty green toilet just in case the penguin needed to do it's business.

Harriet's baby

My friend Harriet had her baby.
The tiny baby is called Oriana, she weighed just under 6lb and here she is modelling her hat that i made for her.
She is so very very dinky.

Here is a photograph of Oriana with Giddy (her big brother) in the background.

Here is a photograph of Iris with Giddy, i think she is giving him words of encouragement in putting his sock back on.
Iris and Giddy are almost the same age, i think Iris is just a smidge older.

It is my birthday.

Yes it's the big one and it's ok so far.

I got a new sewing machine for my birthday and it's really rather fab, i've had a little go but i need about 3 weeks really to fully understand all the things it can do.

I also got
* some lovely fabric to make things with, cotton corduroy.
* some beautiful roses and chocolates and an unpicker (which i asked for)
* a photo album and some Devon Clotted Cream Fudge which Daisy says tastes like PlayDoh.
* a cheque
* an electronic whisk type of thing so i don't have to beat cream and the like by hand anymore.
* a camera, Marc tricked me by saying he needed one and getting me to help him choose and then he went and wrapped it up and gave it to me. Horay.
* a big tube of smarties

and i baked myself some fairy cakes, yum yum yum.

and i'm going out for dinner tonight, horay.

The Richards' for lunch *updated*

We visited the Richards' today out in Berkhamstead.
The Richards are made up of James & Sally and their two children Thomas and Rowan.
Iris took to Rowan instantly and thankfully Rowan quite liked Iris too. Rowan even picked Iris up with her broken arm, which she got falling out of her bunk bed! note to self - don't get a bunk bed for the girls yet.
The Richards' have a cat called Oscar, and Iris really liked Oscar too, so much so that she started to call Rowan, Oscar for some strange reason.

Twitter

I set up a twitter account. (it's there on the left)
I only did this because we (Marc and me) were talking about trying to keep up with the wonderful world of technology, specially seeing as 'fingers crossed' we're moving out of London into the country soon.
The internet is now a very different industry, from the industry i left about 6 years ago.

Anyway though, twitter is largely pointless, but fun.
I can text a message to my twitter account and it will show up on the blog instantly, isn't that smart.
So i can now annoy my family even more by sending useless pieces of information to my blog from anywhere.

I predict i'll get bored and remove it after a short while though.
Or maybe not.

Evercreech here we come.

Yes in this current climate of financial turmoil, credit crunch, recession and all the other terms which are being chucked about at the moment, we have finally after 12 months on the market, managed to secure a buyer for our house.
Ho-bloody-ray.
We have also managed to have our offer accepted on the house we want to buy.
So if all the solicitors involved can pull their finger out (i'm guessing they're not that busy at the moment), we could be out of London within three months.
Now that is exciting.
Bloody exciting.
Bloody bloody exciting.


Here is a photograph of the girls at the top of a slide in our local park, wearing their home made pixie hats, i think they might need more of these pixie hats for all the potential cold winters ahead in the country.
Maybe i'll knit them in very very very thick chunky wool to keep their little heads even warmer.
I might even knit myself one.

Run's Christmas Cards

Our good friend Run Wrake (out of Run and Lisa and Floss) has for sale in his shop some rather lovely hand printed Christmas Cards.
http://www.runwrake.com/shop/xmascards/



Run's main website

Rachel and Josh have a baby boy!

Yes a baby boy was born to them this morning at about 6am.
He joins Freya (4) and Pippa (2)

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE HAMILTONS.

x

Tiger children

Both girls had their faces painted at Daisy's nursery fund raising day on Sat.
Here they are looking like cute little pussy cats.

Our Landline is working again.

Horay, thanks to BT, yes BT, not Talk Talk, we now have a landline that rings more than once.
Talk Talk apparently did some investigations but actually deemed the problem fixed via a text message on my mobile, about a month ago. If they had bothered to actually call the landline they would have realised the problem wasn't fixed.

Anyway though eventually i built up the courage to go through the long system of phoning them up again, and after waiting on the line for about 30 mins i was eventually put through to a very nice helpful person called Gabriel who actually did something about our problem.

He took my mobile number and then told me to hang up and not anwer the landline so he could test it (have you ever tried to not answer the phone when your sitting right next to it? I can tell you it's tricky) so he called me back, and i didn't answer and he realised that the phone only rang once and then went to white noise, and then he called back on my mobile.

This particular problem was called a 'Ring Trip' which was caused by faulty wiring somewhere along the thousands of wires it takes to bring a phone line to our house.

Then this morning i got a call from a BT guy called Garfield who said he was five minutes away could he come round, so we had to say yes, and he fixed it.

The problem was kind of to do with additional non BT phone plugs that somebody (pre-us) fitted, i think it was to do with running an old security system that was still plugged in when we got here.
Anyway though he fixed it and it didn't cost anything.

So feel free to call us on the landline or even leave a message.

Auntie Polly's hat

This is a truly awful photograph of me wearing Auntie Polly's birthday hat and scarf.
I knitted it and posted it to her and i can confirm she officially likes it.

Sister Polly please send me a photograph of you wearing your hat and scarf, i'm sure it will be much better than this god awful one.

Christmas Ideas for the girls 2008

Oh my it's that time of year again, so i thought i'd just jot down a few suggestions for those family members who need a little help buying a little something for the girls.

What the girls really want for Christmas is:
That fantastic house we've been drooling over in Evercreech.


But seriously...

Both girls are quite into Playmobil so if you fancy buying any of that then go ahead.
Playmobil official website.
If you click into products on the left hand side, then there is every type of playmobil there you could possibly think of, it is lots of fun to look at.
You can buy direct from this website, and also from these websites http://www.amazon.co.uk or http://www.toysrus.co.uk
As a general guide within Playmobil, both girls like mummies and babies, Iris especially likes little tiny pushchairs and prams to put the babies in.
They also love animals / zoos.
There is a lovely playground set with swings and a roundabout and i think mummies and babies and buggies come with this set, but it's probably a bit expensive.
Feel free to join forces and buy something together.


If that doesn't take your fancy...

How about DVD's
They still really like Charlie & Lola, we currently have 1, 2 & 5
You can buy these all over, in shops like Woolworths, WHSmith etc... but if like my family, they've shut your local Woolworths down to build yet another supermarket then you can also buy them online at the BBC Online Shop.
This link might take you straight to Charlie & Lola DVD's or it might not.

or
* Charlie and the chocolate factory (the original with Gene Wilder in it)
* Mary Poppins
* Sleeping Beauty
* Chitty chitty bang bang

Feel free to suggest one, if it's going cheap in your local supermarket, we might have it but then again, we might not.


You can of course buy (or even make) something entirely different, but i would ask that you keep it small until somebody buys that house in Evercreech for us, where we would have all the room in the world.



For anyone out there looking for inspiration for christmas presents for their children, here are some websites with nice toys.
Great Little Trading
Letterbox
Early Learning Centre



For your reference here is a link to 2007's christmas list

Stuff you find on Hackney Streets - a toy car

This looked like it had probably been quite a nice little toy car at some point, and probably wouldn't really take that much fixing, but we don't have the space for it yet.
Not yet anyway.
So it can stay on that pavement until the council come and tow it away.




Other "Stuff you find on Hackney streets" photographs.

Happy Halloween

I went to the park today and met up with Rita and Leo(3.5y) and Harriet and Gideon(2.2y)
Rita took some lovely photographs of Daisy and Leo with really scary monster masks on, at one point Gideon was actually scared enough to run away.

Rita took all these photographs by the way, and they're absolutely brilliant.

I don't blame Gideon for running away they look like scary teenagers about to do over a post office, maybe one of them is hiding a sawn off shotgun behind their back.

How can a 4 and a 3 year old look quite so menacing? I think Daisy's big eyes in the shot below are extra specially scary cos they are so big and round, they seem to have morphed into the mask.

This shot is brilliant, i bet Pete from Boogie Beebies never realised he had such adoring fans.
I think that's Leo on the right with the heavy metal satan fingers, i can tell what type of music he'll be into a bit later on.




Oh and after the park we came home and made pizza's and ate sweets (lot of sweets) and didn't go out trick or treating, instead we had a few trick or treaters come to our door.

By the way Daisy decided to dress as a Elf all afternoon for some reason and not as a Witch, or a Cat or a Pumpkin or a Spider or any number of other outfits that we have in our collection.
Here she is dressed up as an Elf a while ago, cos i forgot to take any pics.

Surprise Parcel through the post

The girls ripped open a surprise parcel this lunchtime from Auntie Vicky and found Halloween things.
A garland of tiny paper pumpkins which has been left rolled up and used as a crown, a Happy Halloween banner which is up in the living room and a little black cat outfit with little ears, a little tail that clips onto your clothes and a little cat wand.

This is Daisy wearing the pumpkin garland crown and holding the cat wand.

She wasn't best pleased at this point cos i was making her stand in the hallway so i could take a photograph and Iris really wanted the wand back.


We will be attempting to go 'trick or treating' on Friday.

Thanks Vicks for the pressie.

Daisy with her teddy

This is of course Daisy with her teddy who if you look carefully is actually wearing a hand knitted dress from Nana and a scarf.


Have you noticed my new black backdrop?
It's utterly fantastic, i bought 6 meters of a black fabric from Walthamstow market at a price of £1 per meter, the shop assistant lady was brilliant, she totally helped me work out how much i needed.
I then brought it home, cut it into two strips of 3 meters by 1.5 meters, i then hemmed it and made big loops, and Marc has put some hooks in the wall for me to hang it from.

Don't you touch my teddy

Iris isn't particularly attached to this teddy (though it is a very nice teddy) but the trouble was that Felix was around and Felix liked this particular teddy at this particular moment, so therefore the teddy became the most important thing in Iris' short life for about five minutes.

Iris can be very determined, and she was determined to keep hold of this teddy bear for the full five minutes whilst Felix was interested in it.

Then Felix tricked her, he pretended he didn't care about the bear, so Iris dropped it, which allowed Felix to then pick it up and cuddle it for about five minutes until he became bored of it.

Poor teddy bear, he deserves better.

Lee Valley - mini earth

This is a panoramic of our little Lee Valley in Hackney.
This is very near to where the 2012 Olympics will be held, or at least very near to where all the important people who attend the 2012 Olympcs will park their cars.
Also the local riding stables which is just a stones throw from here is apparently going to be made much bigger and this is where all the horses attending the 2012 Olympics will enjoy a little vacation.

Within the panoramic below (you may need to click it in order to see it more clearly) you can see a white shed, this white shed is actually a huge ice skating ring.


I made this panoramic into a mini earth for no reason at all except that i just learnt how to do it using Filter / Distort / Polar Coordinates.


I actually took this series of photographs back on this day

The Fox is still alive

Yes it is, it was on our shed roof again yesterday morning so he is alive and well, unfortunately for us cos he has poo'd in our garden a few times, yuk.
So that dead little fella was some other Fox.
Previous Fox Post

The stone cold crazies

These two definitely have the stone cold crazies in this shot, crazy but happy so i guess i should count my lucky stars.

Auntie Vicky just sent this up to me, it was one that she took when we all met up on Tuesday in London Town.

X Factor - i'm hooked

I let Daisy watch an episode of the X Factor a couple of weeks ago, it was whilst they were all out in the exotic locations and the judges were narrowing it down to their final 3.
The contestants just kept crying, they cried if they got good feedback, they cried if they got bad feedback, they just cried and cried, especially that Austin fella.
Daisy didn't understand it at all, she just kept asking why this one was crying or why that one was crying, in the end she asked if she could go to bed, and did.

But i'm hooked now, i don't mind the crying, i want them to cry and cry and cry until they start to cry real milk tears, yes i do.
They need to suffer, ha ha ha.

I can't believe that Daniel is still in!
Bless him and all that cos 'Brave Daniel' has suffered, he's almost as brave as "Brave Kylie".

I quite like "Cooky Vickers", but Marc thinks somewhat differently.

Who will be out tonight, Girl Band or Spanish Ruth, i think the misfit of ladies will leave, cos Simon fancies Spanish Ruth.

Iris' first review

Here is Iris' first review of her visit with Mr Bump and Little Miss Sunshine (with a little help from Daddy)
http://www.anorak-magazine.co.uk/yourgoodstuff_display.asp?id=143

Poor simple fisher folk do London

Here is evidence of the poor simple fisher folk coming to London.
We met up with them at Buckingham Palace to watch the 'Changing of the Guards', i didn't realise there would be so many other people there, but there were hundreds.
Then we continued to be tourists for the rest of the day by having fish and chips in a pub, and then going on a boat ride up and down the Thames.  The boat people annoyingly refused to give us any of that inaccurate history that we were expecting over the tannoy because there were too few people on the boat! Bah humbug.

Here is Grandad-by-the-sea with Daisy on his shoulders

Random soldiers marching with flags.

Vicks with Iris.

Guards not moving an inch.

Daisy doing her best impression of a monkey.

Nana with the girls.

On a boat trip up the Thames.