SJs freehand Hama beads- we tend to have little fussys with these- but this was quite a step on for him- moving on from filling in a shaped peg board to free hand pictures on a large plain board. He seems to be have a developing stage on a concentration front- all of a sudden finding him sitting doing a 'map' of the house or an activity book- however this has been long overdue as he regularly drives us to distraction by bouncing around the house- especially at tender moments!

Well half of the country has been snowed in and EVEN Nottingham gets an inch or so- the kids made a real fussy out of it on days 1 & 2 but by day 3 even they had realised that snow makes you cold-especially when you persistently pull off you carefully and lovingly applied mittens.

We have been doing quite a lot of baking recently and Felicity was particularly proud of her spider buns! We are trying to be good and cook more at the weekend- particularly bread.

We have done an advent activity calendar this year and have a number of baking acitivities on it. SJ has some Christmas cross stitch kits- he has been begging for more 'sewing' for a while- so we have one or two things on the go.

This year we have decided to celebrate the advent season more- I have felt for a few years that we have this big 'build up' for the stated day and so we have decided to celebrate the whole month in stead. This is probably a good habit to get the children into- especially as the shift work means that 'christmas' may be a mobile day for us anyway. Sooo we have factored in some family activities- pantomime, a couple of HE parties, Christmas walks etc as well as the flip side- making Christmas boxes for local homeless. It has been nice to do local this year as we did the overseas shoe boxes last year- so it has been good to think of a diffrent target audience- may even get me to hit the crochet a little harder for hats and scarfs next year!