Us Two Plus You: December 2015

Saturday, 19 December 2015

Our Adventure's This Week

Well this week has been all sorts of crazy! On Sunday I woke up and I felt terrible, I had caught the bug D had last week and I don't know how he wasn't crying constantly. It was bad, I ended up sleeping 90% of Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. Which really means that we did nothing of excitement ( I actually did nothing!) to sharer over most of this week but I was starting to feel better by Tuesday night and we ventured out to see the local Christmas Lights being turned on and listen to the choir sing some songs. D was more than happy about being there even if it was raining lightly the entire time.

We spent Wednesday getting everything back in order at home as I am sure many of you can relate to being sick and suddenly the whole house looks as if a bomb went off in each room? Maybe that's just me. We got to making my birthday cake after dinner and just before bed.

Thursday came and it was my birthday (YAY!) it was also the day to give out all of our Christmas presents as well as our last family visits before Christmas. It was one very long day! We first visited Granda and D's aunt who we gave the presents to for one side of the family before we set off for nannies where we had to distribute the rest of the families presents and I got a few beautiful birthday gifts too. We spent the rest of the evening in nannies before we came home quite late and all went to bed early.

Yesterday we kind of just lazed around together getting into the festive spirit with lots of Christmas themed family movies followed by reading together and playing games with D to get rid of some of that extra energy.

I completely forgot last week to share with you our reply from Santa which if you remember we sent back in November. This is a service from Royal Mail in the UK and can be used every Christmas. D received this lovely card in the post and still loves rereading what Santa wrote.

Labels:Christmas,family,Our Adventures This Week

Sunday, 13 December 2015

#My Sunday Photo -Waiting For Santa

This week we visited Santa and as many of you know it can be a long wait to actually get to see the big man himself. It is a long line of eager children and parents waiting for the same reason. Usually you just have to wait your turn. Well when you have a toddler that doesn't like to wait you are going to have a bit of a struggle on your hands! This year we visited our favourite Santa who is rather realistic looking. While waiting in line we found a little wooden sleigh for children to play in. There where already children playing in the sleigh but D was more than happy to get up and join in with them. Before long D was the only one left in the sleigh and I got this lovely photo that shows the excitement he was feeling. He kept looking towards a snowman decoration where the snowman had fallen over in the snow while skiing. D thought this was hilarious!

Labels:#MySundayPhoto,Christmas

Saturday, 12 December 2015

Our Adventure's This Week

I have been scheduling posts to upload and writing every few days. Once I started this on Sunday night everything was fine. I went on again on Wednesday discover that not only had my posts not went public but they where gone. This has happened before but it quickly rectified itself and I had to write everything again. I sat on Wednesday and wrote the days post. I decided to try again and started writing the posts from Monday and Tuesday Then I was locked out of wordpress for 2 days. I only got back on there now to check if I could get in. I am hoping to get some posts written up tomorrow and I will post these daily myself without using the schedule option' I just now have to hope this work. I am writing all our posts on my phone and tablet as the laptop broke the other week. I do think this is the root of my problem and I will try to fix it as soon as I can. Please do bear with me though as with Christmas coming up it is becoming harder to sit down and just write!

The week started off with D getting sick./ He slept through most of Monday and Tuesday. By Wednesday D was feeling better and we spent the day playing games and having family time. I loved the time we spent together this week.

Thursday was a very busy day. We visited granda before we did a small amount of shopping before we headed to a Christmas party which D loved! There where a few children for D to play with and the lady D spent most of the day playing with his cars with was the same one as last year. He had a lovely time and was more than ready to relax by the time we got to nannies. We didn't stay long this week as we had one more very important visit to make before we got home. It was time to visit Santa!

D was fantastic this year and was more than ready to sit with Santa and say CHEESE! We got a lovely photo which you can see below.

Finally yesterday we got to making some cookies! They didn't quite go right and tasted more like cake with salt added! (YUK!) so I am trying again today.

How has your week been?

Labels:Our Adventures This Week

Wednesday, 9 December 2015

Handmade with Love - Photo Frames

I have been waiting a good few weeks to put this post up. As many of you may have noticed I love to get busy with my hands and make things myself. This year I decided that since I didn't really know what anyone wanted for Christmas I was going to make something that they would either need or something that they like. In this handmade with love post I am talking about personalised photo frames! I actually started this with the idea of making some plain white photo frames into something a bit more colourful for our hall once we finish decorating it. Once I started though I just couldn't stop and I loved how pretty they looked and suddenly every time we went to a shop I was saying 'that will look lovely on a frame!'. I then decided my mum and sisters and brothers would all love them and so came the Christmas gifts of photo frames.

A few people already know which ones they are getting and my mum knows almost all of them but nobody has actually seen them yet so I do hope everyone loves them as much as I have loved making them! Fingers crossed.

If you would like to make these you can follow along with each frames journey to completion. First up we have the frame which took the longest to finish and was defiantly the most difficult. 'The blinged out frame' to make this one I used a black and a white 5" x 7 " frame which I got in a pack of 3 in B and M bargains for £2.99. I also used super glue ( PVA would be fine I think. Mine need to last through a Royal Mail posting!) and finally 2 packs of gem stones which I got in Poundland.

First I needed to remove each gem stone from the glue backing it was attached to. You can get them already undone online but I just wanted to be awkward. (Not really!) I was not aware of this when I started. You can however just add the gem stones with the glue strips they are attached to if you like. Once I had separated all of the gem stones into colours I got to work on deciding in what order the colours would go and how many colours I would actually use from the pack.

Next I got to work using the super glue to stick down each gem stone individually onto the frame in as straight a line as I possibly could. Once you have the first line down your pretty much good to go! Just keep going and going and going. Yes I am being serious. One of these frames probably took me around 17-20 hours altogether if not more. I did say it was time consuming. The finished results are below and I must say I do love these!

All the other frames are much easier and faster to make.The next frame up is the flowers and butterfly frame. I loved this frame so much that I made myself one when I had finished. This actually took about 25 minutes to make from start to finish. If you would like to make this frame you need some Jute Shapes which I got in Poundland again, superglue and another white frame in 5" x 7". This is super simple! To complete the frame arrange the jute shapes in the way you like. Don't stick anything down before you are happy with the position of them all. Once you are happy use a generous amount of glue and stick each shape to the frame and finish off any flower with a gem stone. Voila you are finished!

After those I got to making the worded frames with bunting. For these I used a pack of lettered beads, a pack of mirrored bunting shapes which are acrylic, superglue and another 2 black 5" x 7" frames.

These where even easier than the last ones and after I had decided what to do I think these took me around 15 minutes to do both. I first added some glue to the acrylic pieces before sticking them on the top of the frames in a sort of bunting line. Finally I added the lettered beads onto the frame to make words. I wrote 'Love and Laughter' and 'Memories' on mine. Here they are!

As a little quick project I made this lovely purple glitter frame using some washi tape I found on eBay for around 60p. This was so simple to make I simply added the washi tape around the front edges in strips of tape and then the same in one long strip around the outer edge of the whole frame. I completed the tape ends with a bit of extra PVA glue and was finished. I like how this one sparkles in the light and has a great professional finish.

Last but certainly not least is the Harry Potter frame and the golden moment frame. The Harry Potter one was made using a book I picked up in the charity shop. It wasn't in great shape in general however I only needed a few pages to make this beautiful frame so I set to work. Firstly I started with the book, a paintbrush, PVA glue and a white 5" x 7" frame. After I had everything I needed I selected a few quotes or obvious parts of the book to use on the frame. I cut them all up into smaller pieces so I could stick them where ever I liked. I also used chapter titles on the frame for the big print and recognisable words/ phrases from the book. Once I had all my quotes I took the PVA glue and used the paintbrush to apply the glue to the books page pieces and started to stick all the bits down where I wanted them to be. It didn't take long to fully cover the frame. I then allowed this to dry before adding another layer of PVA glue to the frame to help stick down the paper which was quite thick. This one can be messy!

I used the same technique to do the 'Golden Moments' frame which in actual fact is a frame covered in Ferraro Rocher Golden wrappers from a box I got as a gift. I love those little wrappers as they are so small and quaint. I thought they would look nice and shiny. I added the glue to the wrapper and stuck to the frame for this lovely look. once both frames had dried I cut off any excess paper that had was just hanging down. . Now you have it. Lots of handmade Christmas gifts of personalised items from me.

Here they are together after I added pictures to most of the frames.

Labels:Christmas,Handmade with Love,Ideas,Photo

Sunday, 6 December 2015

#My Sunday Photo

Well it is officially the first Sunday of December and I thought this week's Sunday photo was very appropriate. Here it is our Nativity scene!

If you do or don't believe in God you cannot deny how much this story plays a role in Christmas traditions for many people. I do love the story even if we are not Christians. We tell kids fairytale so what is the difference between those and the nativity?

Labels:#MySundayPhoto

Saturday, 5 December 2015

D at 33 Months

I can't believe how fast those three months went by! I don't quite know what is happening with all the time in the days. There is so much to tell you about with D and his development so I will start with his speech

These last 3 months D has learnt alot of new words and he can now count in actual woreds up to 11. He doesn't seem to like th number 7 though as I know he can say 7 and he knows where it goes but he doesn't like to say it. He has also decided that he wants to be a little smarty pants and is teaching himself spanish by insisting on watch Dora The Explorer daily and then copying all of the spanish words then telling me them in english! I must admit I couldn't tell you if he is getting them right or not as I can't speak spanish!

D has developed a love of imaginary play the last 3 months he has loved hiding out under the table creating wonderful worlds with all of his toys and playing out books or TV shows that he remembers. He is getting a great imagination and I think he loves monsters! He is always telling about his monsters.

D is starting to show a great interest in learning to read. He will sit down and try to read a book to himself by sounding out some of

Labels:children,Dylan,Dylan at..,Growing,Learning,Reading

Our Adventures This Week

It has been a long busy week and although I haven't achieved everything I would like to I am starting to get there and to get on top of things again. With dark and dreary days being the theme of December so far I do think that we are all starting to feel the effects of it all.

We spent the Sunday doing lots of crafty bits and pieces together, even Daddy joined in and get busy with helping to make lots of Christmas Crafts. We all really enjoyed getting busy and adding more things to our christmas decorations. We did spend ost of the day doing different crafty Christmas items as I wanted to make sure that we are spending quality time together as a family this Decemeber. It is such a busy month and we all seem to just keep going.

Monday we had a good bit of sorting to still do and I spent most of the day sorting through various rooms to see what we still didn't need. There wasn't all that much but once I start I an't seem to stop until the whole house has been organised properly. OCD much? Once I had got through the whole house it was starting to get towards diner time.So it was time for everyone to sit at the table and make dinner together. Before we watched a film and went to bed.

By Tuesday we had the whole house sorted out and D had lots of activities that where going to keep him happy. Myself and Simon where trying to get other things done throughout the

Labels:Everything Else,family,Our Adventures This Week

Thursday, 3 December 2015

November 2015 Competition wins

So last month was a bit of a bust in the competition department. There was so much going on that I just didn't know where to find the time which meant that I didn't. I am surprised I won anything to be honest. However I did still win two competitions neither have arrived yet so I cannot show you a picture.

First up I won a selfie stick and an advent calendar from Total Merchandise on Facebook

And I won a pair of scissors from Sew! Magazine which I am really excited about!

I can't tell you any more about the products until they actually arrive but I will share pictures in next month post for you to see.

It is now December and that means it is time for the advents! The advents are daily competitions run throughout December in the run up to Christmas. This is the busiest time of year for competitions and so I have my fingers crossed for lots of wins this month! Wishing you all lots of luck.

Labels:Competition,Competition Wins