Seasonal celebrations with friends

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Best Day Ever

Well, according to Princess.

It started badly for her, with some sneaky nuts and the corresponding illness that goes with her having antihistamines. So, a bit of vomit and a few hours on the sofa watching ' A 4x4 is Born' DVD ( her choice, honest!) and she was on the mend.

Whilst she was in need of a lie down and company, I had the need to rearrange the furniture. DH just sighs and keeps out of the way, so my day involved a fair amount of emptying and filling bookcases.

Yesterday evening we went to Bideford Carnival. There were floats, but the best bit for the children (and me) was the pipe and marching bands. We couldn't quite last to the end of the music, but it was amazing to hear approx 200 pipers and drummers heading back across the bridge in the dark, just as we were heading home. The marching band from Barnstaple was a revelation to us all and Princess and Flower now have a favourite type of band .

DH and a neighbour finished off a coat of undercoat on the woodwork, which meant all the kids found their comfortable height up the ladder, some being higher than others.

And even small people were keeping busy while there were people on the roof.

Princess said it was a day of firsts, with climbing on the roof, seeing the bands, and she also received a parcel of returned bits she had left with  friend- so she decided to write a reply immediately and got on with it, refusing any outside interference ( aka help). She got it posted whilst waiting for the parade, all by herself. She has some regular postal correspondence, but  isn't usually inclined to reply. I guess the novelty worked for her today.

Princess says the other memorable day in her life was the last time her birthday coincided with her Aunty's Bonfire Party, so this was a pretty special day.

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Princess wanted to make a new dress for Big Dolly.
We had a sketch to start with. Then we had to make a pattern, then find some fabric ( not a favourite as we expect to learn on a few!), then mark out. Our pattern didn't have seam allowances on, as big dolly kindly fits A4 paper.
Its a bit of a long project for one day though, but now we have a working pattern I think we could make a few more.
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Birthday

Today Rainbow turned two. Yesterday we were sharing a meal with neighbours/ friends anyway, so had some desserts with candles.
Today our little community grew, with 20 shared hens for 3 households arrived. One egg within a couple of hours. They are ex- barn hens, so looking pretty good but still a bit shocked with fresh air and greenery. Perfect birthday present for the boy.
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Homemade mozzarella

Today, after a couple of years anticipation, I finally had the time, energy, inclination AND enough milk to have a go at making cheese . not the simplest of recipes, but it suits what we have to hand.
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There's something funny going on....

I’m not sure if its just me, or the laptop I’m trying to use struggling to run internet explorer, but every time I try to get to my blog it crashes. So I might be talking to noone here! It could be our mobile internet, it could be many things. However, it won’t let me use it on my phone either.At work the one pc I have access to ( only 1, for us all to share!) is struggling to load most webpages, so I can’t know for sure if its struggling any worse for blogger. Anyway, I do have more to say, I just might have to set up another blog to say it....so that would take a while.

Happy Easter

Its been cold and wet and even a thunder storm, and still a very enjoyable day.
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Extended Family

Apologies for the pics, our newest family members haven't posed well.
We have a short term home for them, water and food containers ( and food), so looking forward to settling them in when we return to Devon. these ladies are point of lay hens, and one is already laying- very happy us.
Our friend Matt of Lower Shaw Farm has been advising us, and has given the children their first hens, which the girls were able to choose. We are all very excited about it all.
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Move House, Go On Holiday.

To our favourite farm. We have very happy big and small people.
There are eggs about to hatch, baby lambs to bottle feed, and big sheep and pigs to feed and help move.
The children and I were WWOOFing at the weekend, while dh ran a weekend course spoon carving, and we are all WWOOFing this week. Though there seems to be quite a bit of playing happening as well. We all helped by joining in the health walk, and I had the huge pleasure of joining in a Pilate's class in the Hayloft.

We are learning as much as possible about chickens from the resident expert- we hope to get started with our own ASAP!

but its time to move the sheep before breakfast.....

Saying Goodbye

I suspect quite a few of our friends and family are feeling a bit unloved at the moment. We said we were moving, disappeared in a whirl of packing and unpacking and decorating and working, and never got around to saying goodbye.
We don't mean it that way at all. The very few goodbyes we have said have been horribly hard. We have rather selfishly been grateful of the distraction of all the work we had to do (and completely underestimating the time required when a toddler is around) so we haven't had time to think about what and who we are leaving behind. We are sad we can't ship all the nice folk with us. But we noticed how much warmer the wind was this morning.
We would like to remind you lot that we are in a lovely place for holidays :-)
and we hope you can drop by sometime.

a walk

Rainbow and I went for a little walk, off the farm for once. we just walked on the lane a hit, and its amazing that this is our home.

Today has had an inpromptu funeral for a decomposing fox ( complete with an entire ecosystem to see) and finding the sea.

Tomorrow has my induction day for my new job, and NOT getting a lift to work. Exciting stuff!

Devon is....

Heaven? Home?
Definitely brilliant.
We are steadily unpacking boxes. Well, ok, had a mad few days of unpacking and its now at a much slower rate.
Books- I think they may almost all be out of boxes. We have bought an extra bookcase and I think I have a bit of a thing about books. So I have a tiny box of books I might be able to part with. Maybe they could be at home in the Farmhouse....not too far away.
The children are all settling in, and its lovely to meet new friends. The weather has been fairly kind to us, with glorious sunshine and only a tiny bit of rain so far, so lots of playing out and simply stepping outside the door to see the stars at night.
But, as ever, we have much to do and must get on. And the old house to decorate next week. Ah well.

 I will try to send some photos to the blog, but limited internet and technology is rather frustrating. I think that is the downside to living here. Oh well, more time to read those books!

Packing

I've been quiet here, trying to decide what to say. I enjoy blogging, but not everyone wishes us well in our endeavours, so I've been a bit quiet trying to decide what to share, and when.
Back in November we suddenly had a great opportunity pointed out to us, so we spent some time in December seeing if we really wanted it, and since then there's been paperwork and emails back and forth trying to make it a reality.
It looks like its worked, so we are really excited to be moving soon. And frantically packing. Despite the travelling a couple years ago, we seem to have done very well in accumulating more stuff!
The move means more space for playing out ( as in acres rather than square feet), neighbours with children who we are looking forward to getting to know, a huge kitchen (!). Space for carving outside, hopefully raised beds and polytunnels for more growing, chickens and maybe more.
For work it seems a lovely department, pleasant people,nice machines (which always helps), and training opportunities I hadn't realised I wanted, and now I'm really looking forward to. The commute and the hours are longer than I'm used to, so I'm really hoping I'm up to it, but the only real stress I have about once we are there is parking the van. I can see us becoming a 2 vehicle family again.
So, big changes underway. Very exciting, and very scary to move far away from friends and family.
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a blanket

One blanket made, sewn up and posted to Canada- it got there safely, just a week later than Royal Mail said.My sister reckons Royal Mail just don't understand Canada Post.

I had lots of help getting the blanket to lie straight for photographing- can you tell?!

A quick sew

Princess kept Rainbow busy for a spell this afternoon, so I dusted off my machine and took in the side seams and darts on some of my new work uniforms.
I struggle with getting tops to fit me- if it fits my chest its big everywhere else. Thankfully many normal clothes are stretchy, but my uniform isn't, and this size was best fit for chest and being able to lift my arms up comfortably.
The darts are in the wrong place, but my expertise ( and time) didn't allow for taking out the originals and putting them in the right place to fit me.
It is a little less sack like though.

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Christmas starting

Mince pies!
I normally take some to work, we are sharing with friends tomorrow and, despite the flour and sugar involved, we might have a couple as well.
Having one gluten free child and grandma means we will experiment with pastry, but the nicest gf pastry has nuts in, which rules out another child. Plus, Flower has been absolutely thriving on sugar/sweetener free, grain free- basically meat and veg and homemade soups, casseroles and stirfrys.
Being away this last week was tough, and it was very noticable that we weren't sticking to the diet. Flower gets really emotional and struggles with transitions, noise, tiredness, you name it. We started off doing the GAPS intro diet, but we are definately more GAPS inspired than actually strictly sticking to it.

I'm not quite ready to share our plans for the future out here. We have a definate idea of moving, and where exactly we want to be ( lovely neighbours and a house and garden so utterly exceeding my wish list I think I must be dreaming) but I'm waiting to hear about the work side of things. None of it can happen without the job, and the waiting to hear will be a long slow process, especially with Christmas and New Year.so I'm trying very hard to put it out of my head. While also wondering about getting moving quotes.Sigh.

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