Makings - Scheepjes 2016 CAL blanket progress

I've been managing to keep up with the Scheepjes 2016 CAL - Last Dance in the Sea - remarkably well.
Up until week 7, that is, when I realised that the deadline for gifting another crochet project I am working on was looming ever closer, and so I decided to put this CAL to one side until I made better progress on my other work in progress!
Here are the Scheepjes CAL squares I have made so far, in the order that the patterns were released.
Week One. The pattern for this one was inspired by seaweed.

Week Two.

Week Three. 

This was a time consuming square, and took around an hour and a half to make each square!

Week Four. 

This pattern is very obviously inspired by waves in the sea.

Week Five.

This one is meant to look like seagull footprints.

Week Six.

Week Seven. 

This bobble heart square pattern was one of the reasons I decided to make this blanket. I love how it looks.

And here are the week 1 - 6 squares all together so you can see how lovely the colours are together. This won't be the final arrangement for them, it was just my non random way of seeing how they looked laid out together. 

Aren't the colours lovely together? 

My other WIP, and the reason for pausing work on this CAL for a couple of weeks, is going to be a gift and so I don't want to share it here until it has been gifted. I can, however, give you all a peek at the colours I have chosen for it, which are equally as gorgeous as the ones above, but in a much more subtle way.

They are Stylecraft Special DK in (clockwise from top left) Storm Blue, Duck Egg, Silver, Sherbet and Cloud Blue. 
Stylecraft Special DK and the Scheepjes Colour Crafter that I am using for the CAL are both similar weight yarns, and while I have seen people in the CAL group online saying how much they prefer the Scheepjes to the Stylecraft, I have to disagree with them and say that Stylecraft Special DK is still my favourite of the two. The Scheepjes is indeed softer to touch, but the stitch definition is not as good and I do find it much more 'splitty' than the Stylecraft.
Hopefully it won't be too long before I can share the other project with you all too, and then get back to finishing off Dancing in the Sea, maybe even taking a square or two with me to the sea if we get beach weather in the summer holidays!

Indoor Adventure Golf - and an unlikely winner

A couple of months ago I was asked if the boys and I would like to visit Paradise Island Adventure Golf in Livingston, in return for a review about what we thought about it.

As soon as I mentioned it to the boys they jumped at the chance, as it's somewhere we have enjoyed visiting several times in the past. David (10) was first to visit it, at a friend's birthday party. As he enjoyed it so much he wanted us all to go another time, and then a third time the boys thought it would be fun to take my dad along with us as he is a keen golfer!

This time it was the four younger boys - aged 2, 6, 10 & 13 -  and me who went along.

That's Ally's monkey face above. I asked Fraser to make an elephant face and that's what he came up with. All elephants have raised eyebrows of course.

Paradise Island, if you have never heard of it, is like a crazy golf course, only indoor, bigger, and themed. The one in Livingston is located across from the cinema in the Designer Outlet, and has two 18 hole courses. One of the courses, Barnacle Bay, is themed like a ship wreck. The other, Lost Lagoon, is more jungle themed, with tombs and monkey temples. The Lost Lagoon course reminds the boys of something from an Indiana Jones movie!

Each hole has a fun obstacle to get around or through, and some of them even have added extras. Like these chickens below...

...they come to life and sing to you if you manage to get the ball up the ramp!

The obstacles are challenging and varied enough not to be boring, but not so challenging that it becomes frustrating! It kept all ages entertained. The time we took my dad along I think he expected it to be quite easy, but it wasn't as straightforward as he thought! He was pretty good at it though, especially when it came to working out angles of shots, and so on that visit I decided to take my shots after he had taken his so that I could copy which way he was hitting his shots!

This time around I didn't have a proper golfer to copy and instead relied on pure fluke and luck to pot not one, but two hole in ones! 

The day we visited was quite quiet, despite being a school holiday, which was good as it didn't mean that we felt we had to rush our shots because another group were following along behind us. Although if there had been, it's simple enough to just let another group go ahead if you want to take your time. 

With a 6 and 2 year old determined to take all their own shots, and the other two boys both being so competitive against each other that they didn't want to rush any shots in case it meant they made a costly error and the other boy got ahead, we certainly didn't rush our way round!

Fraser (2) really got the hang of things, as you can see from this wee clip below...

It really is a fun way to pass an hour or so, especially when the weather is bad, as it undoubtedly will be at times throughout the summer holidays. The price isn't too bad compared with other similar sorts of places, and you do often get discount vouchers on the back of tickets from the cinema across the mall. 
 It's also in a convenient location, in the heart of the busy Livingston shopping centre. In fact, I would even suggest that if you were heading out to Livingston to hit the shops you could pack your other half and kiddies along to the golf and give yourself an hour of peace to look around the designer outlet! Although then you would miss out on the satisfaction of beating them all at golf.
Did I forget to mention that? That's right, those two hole in ones helped me to victory over Mr Competitive and Mr Competitive 2.
Which means that they are still angling for a rematch at some point.
I see another visit in our summer holidays!

Sunny Days

We've had such an amazing run of weather here the last couple of weeks.
Two weeks of the sun shining every day, with the temperature even reaching the heights of 26C sometimes, which I admit is just a little too hot for me!
Just before the good run of weather started, the boys were given a new paddling pool, which I thought we might have out on a couple of days in the summer. I didn't imagine that we would have it out so soon or that they would want in it every day for two full weeks on the trot!

Some days we've built a shady den to keep cool.

And we've eaten lots of ice lollies and ice poles.

On Saturday morning dad was volunteering at a charity cycle - he was manning one of the refreshment stops - and so we arranged to meet him across in Aberdour when he was finished. The boys and I took the train there, which means crossing the Forth Rail Bridge - always exciting for the train fans in the family!

We had arranged to meet some friends there too, and enjoyed a picnic in the sunshine, as well as plenty of shinty playing for the boys.

Fraser enjoyed running around with his little friend, and showing her his new trick of rolly-pollies. Or 'bowly-bowly' as he calls them.

Those who were interested spent some time watching the official shinty match, Aberdour v Taynuilt.

Then once the match was finished they took advantage of the empty pitch.

Sunday saw more sporting fun. Well, kind of.

We had lunch at Auntie Anna's house, which always involves a walk with her dog to the school playing fields near her house. And the walk always involves an extended stop at the long jump sand pit there!

We even took our church toddler group outside this week, as we didn't want to spend such a beautiful day inside.

The novelty of jumping into a cold paddling pool after school still hasn't worn off for the boys, and so once again yesterday Fraser and I filled it up with some nice fresh water ready for them coming home.

And this time, while we waited for the bigger boys, I couldn't resist joining Fraser in it!

I know the sunshine has to stop soon, and there is rain forecast to come in tomorrow evening, but it's been amazing being able to enjoy such a lovely spell of weather at last. For once we are actually needing a bit of rain in the garden. 
Just as long as it remembers to stop again!

Ally turns 7

 This weekend we celebrated our Alasdair turning 7.

His big thing just now is Lego Nexo Knights and he was delighted to receive the Castle for his main present, as well as a few of the other sets from other family members.

Every year since he was born, the sun has shone on his birthday, and this year was no exception.

He knew his Lego sets were going to be a little too hard for him to build on his own, but thankfully his biggest brothers were only too happy to have an excuse to build some Lego. Purely to help him out of course.

We found some free printable Nexo Knight printables on the Lego website here, and made up some name cards, straws, popcorn boxes and bunting to have with our birthday tea.

Ally had asked if he could have a cake with the Nexo Knights on top. Which makes a big change for him as the last three years he has asked for a Captain America cake! I thought it was a bit challenging to make little icing Nexo Knights, even for my chief cake decorating assistants James and Calum, so asked if he would like us to try and get a Nexo Knights picture on icing and put that on instead. He thought that was a great idea and so I searched online for a company that would do this.

I came across Eat my Face, who print edible images on both rice paper and icing sheets. Ally chose the picture that he would like on the cake, I emailed it to them, and then a couple of days later the A4 icing sheet arrived. It was so straightforward and reasonably priced that I will definitely order from them again. They also do cupcake toppers and I've been thinking about what sort of things I could get printed out to put on cupcakes! The edible images are also gluten, dairy and egg free.

The cake was just a double batch of my trusty old gluten and dairy free Victoria Sandwich Cake, recipe here, baked in a large rectangular tin, sliced through the midde and filled with jam and buttercream, covered with fondant icing and then with the image stuck on top.

Had it not been such a hot day, and had I not wanted to spend as little time as possible indoors, then I probably would have added a bit of piped icing, or rolled fondant, around the edge of the image to finish it off properly, but as it was Ally just loved it anyway. 

And that's all that matters!

For his birthday treat he asked for his cousin Matthew to come round for the afternoon and to stay over for a sleepover.

After spending some time in the paddling pool and getting thoroughly soaked, the birthday boy, his brothers and cousin were kept busy with Nexo Knight battles.

Then, in the evening they settled down with some popcorn and watched the latest Star Wars movie.

I'm a great believer that birthdays don't need to be fancy, expensive affairs.
And I think Ally agrees with me. He said it was his best birthday ever!