A fairly typical bank holiday monday!

Living as we do, on the coast, we tend not to travel any further than is absolutely necessary on bank holidays - the traffic is usually dreadful and it really isn't my idea of fun to spend a large part of the day sitting in fume-filled traffic queues! So, instead, we spent the day catching up on bits and pieces around the house and garden. This is really the first spell of decent weather we've had this year, so it was wonderful to be able to get out into the fresh air and sort out the garden.

Our front garden is sloping, and quite high off the ground, it's also very exposed to sea air and salt breezes, so we're fairly restricted as to what we can grow. Added to that, we have a fair amount of nocturnal visitors who delight in uprooting any new planting. Today, we contented ourselves with moving the remains of our winter wood supply from the front to the back garden, uprooting a veritable forest of dandelions and other weeds and generally tidying up - sounds simple, doesn't it, but believe me, it took hours, and left us exhausted. It was great though, cos both of the younger children helped - Loaghan got the job of smashing up stone for the path that my OH is trying to build. Maddi, my 6 year old daughter, was using a shovel to move dirt and debris - that child has definitely tomboyish tendencies! Not for her the gentle pleasures of watercolour painting etc, oh no! she would far rather be wielding a large shovel/pickaxe/hoe etc!!

OH also managed to repair our swinging seat which had suffered somewhat from the ravages of a West Walian winter, a particularly wet one, at that! However, a few bits of chain and hey presto! good as new! I tried it out this afternoon when I sat out with Maddi and read her a story, very pleasant indeed.

Then I had one of those maternal brainstorms - you know the ones, you suddenly hear your voice offering to do some cooking with the kids! I was sitting there, reading to Maddi, then all of a sudden I heard this familiar voice saying 'How about making some scones for tea?' Unfortunately, it was my voice, and the kids loved the idea. So, next problem - no flour. I have a wheat allergy so we can't use ordinary flour if I'm going to eat, so usually use a gluten free flour. Only problem with that? We didn't have any, so decided to improvise and use rye flour and baking powder and just hope that the result was somewhere near edible. Maddi made fruit scones, Loaghan made cheese ones, and actually, they were delicious! They didn't rise terribly well, and took much longer to cook than scones normally do, but they were fine. We also discovered today that Maddi has expensive tastes, rather like her darling Mama, she likes smoked salmon!

We played a few games of dominoes, each of which Maddi won hands down! We then played pick-up sticks, which she also won...

Art wise, I've done very little in the last couple of days, but I have started a new ATC this evening, using black leather which came from a leather jacket belonging to a friend in one of the groups! I've been looking for a way to use it for a while. I found a gorgeous Erte image, very Art Deco, so I'm planning to use that, I've done some beading around the edge of the leather, and am going to paint my own version of the Erte image - possibly in gold ink, onto the leather. If it works, it should be fab, if not, you'll never hear about it again!

The younger kids are back to school tomorrow, so we'll be back to some kind of routine, which will be very nice after the past couple of weeks of near anarchy...