I need far more than 24 hours in a day!

Where does the time go? Our days at the moment are spent with working together in the morning, quick lunch, quick walk or active half hour or similar, more work or crafts before 3 o'clock when I sit down and do my own crafts in preparation for a Christmas craft fayre on 15th December! Making small, hand crafted Christmas gifts and the like has taken its toll on my poor fingers as I'm experiencing weird cramps and pains, often finding my hand fixed in a position similar to that of holding a small item that I'm sewing! Never mind, I enjoy making my mini santas and angels (using dollypegs) and hope very much that people will enjoy buying them on the 15th (you can see a small selection of them here). I've taken half a stall, sharing with another local HE lady and there's a couple of other HE folk taking stalls at the fayre too - all at Peterborough Museum if any local readers would like to come along and take a peek. Not just a day of crafts, but the museum will open at 10 a.m. and there will be a Christmas exhibition, hands-on activities, Father Christmas and some beautiful reindeer to see too, all finishing at 4 p.m.

On the work front, Katie and Ben have been busy trying to finish their projects ready to start a Christmas wind-down. Unfortunately the projects are just too interesting to bring to an abrupt holt. Katie's Italian project and Ben's solar one have lots of potential. HE people will understand how you look into something and it takes you somewhere else so projects like this can take far longer to complete! Anyway, Katie has successfully made pasta and wants to make pizza and ice cream too. Ben's been using this site and this site for his solar project but has lots of ideas to extend it.

On the Christmas "wind-down" we thought we'd make a large Father Christmas for the wall with lots of interesting Christmas facts to put around him. We'll probably use Woodlands interactive advent calendar again for the 3rd year running - it's brilliant if you haven't come across it yet. Also picked up "The Christmas Almanac" which looks fascinating, just need some time to read it!

Met a couple of new families at the last HE group session - one of the busiest sessions this term - all about Egyptians and very well put together. Katie and Ben enjoyed some of the activities, but as always they saw the get together more as a social event and spent most of the time playing with friends outside.

These mini dolls "rooms" were made by Katie and Ben last week although I had to help Ben with cutting (must get him some left-handed scissors), Katie's is on the top - both very well thought out and great for playing with.

Also, as promised, a piccie of the goodies from Hong Kong.


Went along to a Christmas event at a local farm which got us very much into the Christmassy mood. Couldn't believe the mud we had to drive and walk through to get to the barn - great fun slipping and sliding in the car and on foot - we came back with some lovely local goodies. Driving home this evening we enjoyed seeing so any homes with their outdoor Christmas decorations - have never seen so many in one area - I guess it's different out of town.