Linaloo

Sugar Shack

The big trip we’d been promising all week – the visit to the cabane a sucre, a half hour drive from us. Now, let’s be clear that this place is definitely a tourist trap, but that's OK. It’s hard to find things that are authentic sometimes, and with children in tow, authenticity can be a little…well, boring. So the whole experience for them was magical. A trip to the woods is exciting enough (oh yes, this country girl is raising very suburban children). A trip to the woods in the dark with the promise of a sugar fest and some dancing to local music is just beyond my children's wildest dreams!

So let me tell you what we learned about sugaring off. First of all you have to grow the right kind of maple tree. Then the weather conditions have to be just perfect (freezing nights, warm spring days). Then you stick this simple metal bucket into the tree and wait a few hours and hey presto you have maple sap. Then you boil it and voila – maple syrup. It takes 40 litres to make 1 litre of pure sap and absolutely nothing is added.

Then you may eat it any number of ways in sausages, beans, meatballs, sugar pies, and on just about everything - most commonly, waffles and pancakes. But the most special of all is the maple taffy. Hot molten sap poured straight on the snow – insert stick and roll away!

We had a wonderful time, an extremely late night and a belly full of maple syrup.

If you like maple syrup then enter my giveaway later this week as I have a small bottle of the real deal and a little handsewn art up for grabs to celebrate the passing of my 100th post last week without me noticing.

Loafing

I'm feeling very springy, even if the weather is not. I seem to be newly energised with the arrival of daylight savings (a bit earlier here this year) and in the mood to make lots of bright cheery goodness.

There's been quite a few of Amy Butler's lounge pants around lately which I thought my recently thrifted sheets were perfectly suited for. I made these last weekend and finished them off yesterday with some bias binding. I was most grateful for Amy's fortuitous and hilarious binding tutorial which was a great help.

I made them using the medium size dimensions (I'm a UK size 10/12) but should have gone smaller because they're mahoosive. But very comfortable and I'd highly recommend them for Sunday morning loafing and pancake eating, as is the tradition in our house.

See that maple syrup? We're going sugaring off this week, a very Quebecois tradition, with my new work colleagues and all our families. I'll tell you more about it at the weekend...I'm taking a break until then as the reality of working again means that I need some time to catch up on a few other things in my life this week.

What do you think?

Doggy?

or bunny?

Ah the tail's a giveaway!

Happy Easter all!

Loved up coasters

So now I know she's received them, I can show you these:

Love coasters made for my mum for mother's day.

Wittle chickies

Easter nests for Ruby's preschool friends. Yummy. That good old favourite chocolate cornflake "cakes". I have to find somewhere locally that sells golden syrup - I never realised it was such a "British" ingredient.

About blogging

I was tagged by the lovely Anne recently about blogging. And seeing as it's been a long week with no time for any making - I thought I'd have a go at answering these questions instead:

1. Why did you start your blog?
As a stay at home mum, I often felt that the days just flew by in a murky haze and I wanted to document some of the details that are too easily forgotten. Whether it be crafting or parenting - its wonderful to have this record of our lives and how we're spending our time. It was also to help motivate me in my sewing and it's worked, I've been far more productive since I've been blogging. Now I'm back to work part time my crafting will inevitably slow down, but I still really want to carry on posting about our day to day lives.

2. How did you come up with your blog name?
Linaloo was my parents' pet name for me growing up. Although everyone knows me as Lina, it's actually not my real name, it's short for something else...

3. Do your friends and family know about your blog? What do they think of it?
My parents and sister know about it and a few friends in the UK who probably lost interest a while back. I'm pretty sure that my mum thinks this takes up too much of my time but I know she reads it!

4. How do you write posts?
Um in my head and most inconveniently at odd hours in the morning when I should be sleeping.

5. Have you ever had a troll or had to delete unkind comments?
A troll? What's one of these? I'm assuming it's something bad- I guess I haven't then! I've only ever received one spam message for a haemorrhoid cream and so far, no unkind comments. This is pretty miraculous as it's been 6 months since I started blogging.

6. Do you check your stats? Do you care how many people read your blog? If you do care, how to you increase traffic?
I didn't really know about stats at first and then when I found them I got a bit obsessed. Now I don't check very often. I am aware of how many subscribers I have through bloglines so I'd be lying if I said I wasn't interested at all. I've never actively tried to increase traffic but my stats went loopy when some of my Chrismassy things were featured on the sew mama sew blog - I had 2000 hits a day for a while...but I soon bored them all rigid. I'd hazard a guess that tutorials are a good way to increase traffic but that's far too much work for a slacker like me.

7. What kind of blogs/posts interest you?
I'm a visual kind of girl so great pictures, fabric, crafts and general eye candy all around. Although I do love a bit of good writing also.

8. What do you like and dislike about blogging?
I find it very cathartic. I also love all the crafy inspiration, the tutorials and the community feeling. I do really feel that. The obvious negative is that it can suck all your spare time and ironically eats into my craft time.

I'm far too nosey not to ask anyone else to do this so I tag: Claudia, Jo and Dawn.

I've also been given the "you make my day" award by Florence and Paige - thank you! I'm passing the buck by passing it on to everyone who wanders this way. Thanks for stopping by!

Girly time

Once a month or so we split the children up at the weekend and have some special time, one on one. Ruby and I had a girly day on Saturday. (Tommy calls his time with Daddy "boyly" time which doesn't sound so appealing does it?). We went to dance class, out for lunch and then we had a little sewing time.

She's been asking to use my machine for a while so we started with something simple. She wanted a bag for her treasures just like mummy's ipod bag (mini artsy clutch from Amy Karol's Bend the Rules).

She chose her fabric and button (why pink of course Mummy!).

She wound the bobbin on the machine, did all the pinning and unpinning and used the pedal all by herself - with a bit of "stop!" and "go!" from me. Great job Ruby!

A useful tip we picked up about the clutch here was to use a hairband for the fastening.

She didn't feed the fabric through this time, I wanted to see how she got on with the foot pedal first. I think next time she'd be fine sitting at the machine with a bit of supervision and with the help of the 1/4 inch foot she'll soon be better than me.

My neighbourhood

My new favourite sewing trick, the little ribbon "label" detail on this bag. This is a birthday gift for one of our neighbours' children.

Have I ever told you how lovely my neighbourhood is? It's a really friendly, everyone-looks-out-for-each-other, kind of neighbourhood. It makes this stinking weather so much more bearable. After being hit by another nasty snowstorm yesterday, this is what it looks like now.

The view from my kitchen (still curtainless) windows this morning. There's a deck under there somewhere.

Happy Mother's Day

I know I'm a little late Mum, but you are apparently having the time of your life in South Africa. I think this is the longest time I can recall not speaking to you on the phone, since, well forever really. Hope you are having a fabulous time. Don't worry, I didn't forget...there will be a little something waiting for you when you get home next week.

Spring is in the air...

Not really, but a girl can dream can't she? In fact there's a snow storm going on right now just in case we didn't have enough already. I've officially had enough now thank you. This year has been a record breaker. According to the local paper we've had 273cm so far this year and we're likely to pass the 3 metre mark by the end of the week. And it's not over yet, last year we had snow storms in April. So all of you posting of all things spring like, I'm very envious.

Luckily I have managed to get my hands on lots of bright, cheery goodness to get me in a spring mood, even if there is no hope of seeing my lawn until next month. I recently bought this whimsical collage from the talented Monda.

I was also fortunate enought to win her 100th post giveaway too - these adorable egg cosies which my children especially love. Thank you Monda! You can see more of her creations here!

Next up are some sheets from my local charity shop bought last week. I'm always happy with a bit of thrifted fabric, especially with this sunny pile. I have lots of ideas for these...

Still snowing. *sigh*