Honest..this is November in England!!!

The weather here continues to be outstanding for this time of year, after all the rain and flood's in the summer the Autumn is just stunning. So I took a little blog break and ran away to a little hide away cottage by the sea with my kids. Lots of little crafty things came with us, the craft box was overflowing with stuff for the children...lots of coloured pencils and papers and lolly sticks to glue together etc...as for me, well I decided to not take my sewing machine and concentrate on my knitting for the week, I took a little embroidery with me just in case I got a little twitchy. No sooner had we arrived we settled straight into our holiday groove, being with the kids was amazing, school has changed my youngest, instead of being sweet he is now quite the cheeky monkey!!! The days started off leisurely with playing and reading, cleaning out and making the evening fire, a run around the garden, then pack up a picnic and we would hit the beach...Day after day of glorious sunshine, the children even went for a dip or two in the sea, believe me that sea is cold at this time of year!!!
We did not get to do much sight seeing as we did spend most of the time on the beach, it never stops amazing me how children can just play for hours in the sea and sand...we did lots of walks along the beach a little beach combing and even stayed on the beach one evening when it went dark just so the kids could experience the sunset and the bats flying around...it was all very exciting for them (yer and Mom too)!!! We did get to visit one seaside town (Scarborough) and on the first day we ventured into York. I have mentioned before I am not a city girl at all, so it was a treat to go in on a bright crisp Autumnal day. I spent a long time in a camera shop playing with a Nikon camera...Mmm Mr Santa have I been a good girl? We also spent a lot of time in book shops and I came out with an alarming selection of books and as a real treat I ventured into Borders, I always find this shop a little impersonal but, you can not fault it for the amount of stock...I treated myself to an armful of American magazine, I did not even know you could get some of them over here, guess that's what happens when you don't go to a city much...
So armed with my many magazine, some celebrating the Autumn and others looking forward to Thanks giving and Christmas I found it really hard to get into the seasonal spirit when I was just sitting on a beautiful beach in jeans and a tee...plus it felt like the beach was just for us no one else around. Lots of Hot chocolate was consumed and to many packets of crisps (a holiday treat). I decided not to do a holiday educational theme (remember the summer theme was cotton, the production of and use of...the boys still love their tied dies clothes they made). I did however get some inspiration from The Creative Mom podcast, in the summer she carried around blank index cards and pencils and when she was out in a restaurant with her children she would get them out and do some restaurant art...I loved this idea, so I bought a pack of cards and some small pencils kept them in a little case and between the three of us we drew pictures on the beach, in restaurants and in front on the fire at night when we warmed up our toes and I had my first glass of Mulled wine for the season...
The plan is to continue the project and make a ring book, a cover needs to be designed so this hopefully will come together over the next few days.
My older son carried his camera around with him everywhere we went and he took some pretty good pictures, funny how he leaned to the more woodland scenery whilst I shot the beach scape's. Yes we did spend some time away from the beach, being surrounded by fantastic woodland we would have been mad not to...so I am sure I will be posting up some pictures of our nature walks...if I can only get my little one to keep a steady hand whilst taking pictures, he gets so excited and rushes off to take the next picture when his rather slow camera has not had a chance to get the last shot...lots of lensebaby type pictures without the cost of the lense!!! All in all it was the holiday I had hoped for, and once again I face the empty feeling of a quite house...

Craft projects for the holiday...a rather plain but adorable Debbie Bliss sweater for my youngest which got just about half finished, a single granny square, lots of drawing....endless reading of craft books to keep the ideas flowing as we venture into the grey cold wet days and the dark nights...