Well it's been a while!

I began this blog last year with every intention of writing regularly, but frankly I was baffled by 'Blogger' and got put off by loosing my blog and struggling to find it! But new year, new start!

Many things have changed since last year, for one the garden;

The Children's area is looking great, the beans grew well and created a great hiding den for the boy. He now has a play house with it's own picket fence! Here it is before we painted the outside

It is now blue (I will add a pic asap!). Here is the inside;

I painted it white with one chalkboard panel for Chicken Child to get creative!

We did quite well in the veg garden this year producing enough to keep us going through the summer and autumn.  We still have leeks on the patch, onions and garlic in storage and a few butternut squash too!

This year I hope we will be able to store potatoes, squash etc.

I set up my business Cotton Kisses making clothing and accessories for children and their mummies. Pop over to my fb page and take a look!

So this year, between my beautiful boy, the veg garden, the chickens and Cotton Kisses  things are going to be pretty busy....oh yeah, and did I mention? We will have a new addition to the family in June! Mama is pregnant!

2012 is set to be an exciting year! x

The Children's Garden

Being a mother and childminder I need to keep an area of the garden just for play! Dadar and I created a safe area within our large garden by fencing it of from the veg patch, greenhouse, chickens etc. We erected a swing (which was being thrown out by my Mum's neighbour!) but that was it for a while.

The Chicken Child has lots of outside toys including a fantastic tipi (a Christmas present from Grandma) and a Little Tykes car (a Birthday present from Grandpa).

The children's garden was alright, safe, but a bit boring. I bought a large, shallow trug and filled that with sand. Next I created a digging area by removing some turf, this was instant success with CC and all his friends love to dig and get messy when they come over. It's now baked solid thanks to all this hot weather we've been having so tomorrow I will have to address this! I Found this great example of a digging/growing area and will be taking some ideas from there.

I created a jumping mound, this was also instantly loved. The children use it exactly as I thought they would, with imagination! One moment they're climbing and jumping, the next they are sliding. Sometimes it's a horse others it's a castle, an 8yr old I care for saw it and decided it was a trench! He's been studying the World Wars and is a tad obsessed at the moment.

I would like to make the area more interesting and so over the next week I will be;

• exploring different ways of breaking up the space
• creating shelters, dens and hiding places
• developing a growing area and other points of interest.

Pictures to follow!