:: ONE ::

I had already written this post and was about a sentence and a click away from posting. Then my bubba boy disconected me from the mains.... lovely boy with some seriously male traits way too early


I'll start this time with the WIPS... yarn will make me feel good

it's mostly utility makes at this time of year... apart from my shonky stitchery.

Do  you have something you're bad at but love doing anyway?
I couldn't handsew a straight, even stitch to save my life, but it calms my jagged nerves. 

 

I don't mind that its not the tidiest stiching in the world. It's therapeutic. I need it!

 

The poncho is for DD7. An unheated schoolroom is a grim place to be, and as the children have to wear pink aprons over their everyday clothes for school, our personal compromise is to throw on a poncho.

I'm considering ripping this back and doing a partial restart. I have a pattern forming in my head... and you know what? I think a seven year old has the right to feel special in what they're wearing, and it's just too plain as it is. It's slightly too pink for my liking too but there's nothing I can do about that. 

 

The blanket belongs too DD13. He's a chelsea supporter and I'm a weak willed mother eager to please.

Works for him, doesn't always work for me.

And my happy blanket, which only grows as fast as scrap accmulation allows. I love scrap blankets. they remind me of my mother who always had one growing in her crochet bag. We had them draped over all our beds and furniture to hide the wear and tear long before the days when shabby became chic.

We had a gentle start to the day this morning. Chocolate, tea, the decision to read Jane Austen together and not alot else. I'm declaring December a "be good to ME" month. I'm going to nuture my needs this month, which means nourishing my mind, body and soul insha'allah. It's long overdue.
I'm going to be gentle on myself (and hopefully others) and do things that either uplift my soul, bring me closer to Allah, educate my mind, or nourish my body. It felt good to say those things to myself this morning and I think we need to give ourselves permission to honour our ourselves and our wellbeing.


On the housekeeping front, well... it's day one of a new budget. I've already mentioned in another post that I used to menu plan a week or sometimes a month ahead but found it didn't really suit either the needs of my family or the frequent culinary curve balls my dh likes to throw my way. These days I tend to do a stock up of basic staples and work with whatever I have to hand or with whats leftover. 


I did a big veggie shop yesterday. I already have rice stored and some pulses leftover from a big batch buy I did the month before last. I stocked up on 2ltr of oil and a tray of 30 eggs and I have cheese dh brough back from the UK stored in the freezer. We're meat feee till Saturday, and I'll be using what I have to hand or leftover, menu planning daily (we're in Algeria, which means two cooked meals and an afternoon tea!).


I normally take time over breakfast to prepare my meal plan. Having a quiet think at the start of the day about what I want to make. It works for me like this in a way that advance menu planning never did.

I'll share my menu's and recipes from tomorrow insha'allah.

And my gift to myself today? I'm going to have some quiet time. A space in the day to reflect, and believe me...in a house this big and chaotic it will be no easy thing to achieve.

Eid and beyond...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Food, dressmaking and cakes seem to have been at the forefront of everything we've done or thought about doing for the past month and a bit.

I don't usually enjoy sewing these days, most of my sewing is functional and not too inspiring, but I enjoyed making these masha'allah and the girls love wearing them too which always helps to boost the seamstresses ego.

We're concentrating now on getting the children ready for the start of a new school semester on Sunday. And praying that dh's long journey to the UK is a safe and fruitful one insha'allah. Our pace of life (and eating habits) change when he's not here and we consoled ourselves with his going away with some good old fashioned bangers and mash!

Tomorrow we're off on an early morning jaunt to the market to stock up on school supplies, and then home to bake for some guests we're hopefully having in the evening. We have days to fill.

xxx

Week one...

of Ramadhan has already passed and we're finally falling into some sort of rhythm in my house.
it's exhausting and doesn't include alot of sleep at the right time, but this of course is small fry when you consider the reward insha'allah.

We had a pretty tough first week emotionally and it was tough keeping on track, but this is real life and stuff happens... the trick is to roll with the punches and to keep moving forward.

Week one for us tends to be pretty low key, as we try to concentrate on adjusting to fasting long hours, so other than keeping up with our Qur'an and (for some of us) attending Taraweeh there hasn't been much else going on.
We try to remain aware of  our reason for fasting and we've pretty much cut out all other distractions such as TV, non-islamic reading and non-essential internet usage.

For the small people there has been baking, and as we move into week two we'll include some crafts to keep their fasting minds occupied although all in all they seem to have coped amazingly well.

 

although judging by the way my sweetie looks here, the wait for cake can sometimes be just

too long!!

You can find our biscuit recipe and the tutorial for our advent calender here insha'allah

When I lived in the UK I was fortunate enough to have a kitchen I could keep a table in, and I did for many years...until the size of my family outgrew it.

I no longer  boast a kitchen large enough for my table..but I do have a table now that the whole family can sit around.

And it sees alot of activity masha'allah.

I have a typical old Algerian kitchen that boasts no cupboards or workspace, so the table that lives at one end of my sitting room has become my work station and food prep area.

My 19 year old most often prepares afternoon treats for us all here, and it's wonderfully heartwarming to see her gather her younger brothers and sisters around her to let them help, it's also the place she's most likely to give them an impromptu science lesson.

It would seem that once homeschooling is in the system it's there for life!

It's where I sit to work out my monthly housekeeping, write up my monthly menu plans and generally find a way of budgeting the unbudgetable.

I'm never alone though masha'allah..I budget at one end... dd19 bakes at the other, and everyone else comes and goes and interrupts for one thing or another.

More often than not we clear a space somwehere in the middle for afternoon tea.

  

Some days of course there's no room for anything other than crafting... and then the whole space lies victim to whatever we're all working on. From sewing to crochet to knitting, sometimes our whole table looks like the debris from an explosion in a haberdashery store!

 

 and even though we may no longer be able to build the hub of our home around our kitchen, we've managed to create  space we can all gather around and enjoy each others company and share snippets of our day

Life or something like it...

Keeps getting in my way,

So we'll blithely ignore the fact that I haven't been here since declaring I'd be back after a cuppa and chores, we can even pretend it has everything to do with my diligence in housekeeping and attention to domestic detail and nothing at all to do with the shonky nature of Algerian Internet if you like... would certainly make me feel a whole heap better! Especially as my sitting room at the moment has been well and truly ransacked by my mini-man who has developed an obsession with my yarn basket... picture if you will what you think an explosion in a yarn store might look like and then you might be somewhere close to what my sitting room looks like several times each day. It's too easy of course to remove it... he loves tipping out the contents, rolling around with it all and then giggling as we rush to pick it all up faster than he can lob it all over the show.
Anyhow.....
I promised you pics didn't I?
Documented evidence of things done....
There has been homemade pitta bread and falafel.... does that count?

Along with lovely cotton doilies, fresh thyme, and an attempt to use up all my bits of stray yarn by making a blanket.... yes I know it's spring here in North Africa, but the rate it takes me to finish a project these days I'll be lucky if it's ready by winter!

We're nearly at the end of the spring holiday, a two week break that was much needed and not nearly as well appreciated as it could have been, but we'll blame that on the children shall we?
Tomorrow the children will be packed off to school bright and early, and after catching up on chores and cooking I intend to get down to some serious sewing...the backlog of things to be done is horrible.
I'm a slacker pure and simple on the making clothes front... I stopped and started with two tunics and still have at least two others cut and ready to be put together insha'allah.
If I can keep my eyes open after a late night and an early start though it will be a miracle...

it has been a long couple of weeks without internet....
my connection is a bit unstable most of the time because we dont have a land line and rely on our incredibly shonky USB which has almost no connection speed and won't load pictures on ANYTHING...

we usually buy our internet on a month by month basis, which requires someone to go into town and renew the contract... and if you know North African men you will know that they travel at a speed all of their own..and waiting for most things becomes a test to even the most patient of people...
at the same time our satellite dish decided to die, so I have missed everything from facebook updates to crochet goodness, tsunami's and revoloutions... I have a whole lot of catching up to do it seems, which is of course why I haven't been able to peel my bottom off the sofa so far today....

the good part of the story is that I spent a whole lot more of my time with a hook in my hand and even managed to accomplish a couple of tunic tops for the 11 year old girl in my life, one of them just needs a bit of crochet embellishment  on it and it will be ready to be blogged about.

we're waiting for some more news on my mother, niece and great nephews coming over for a much longed for visit in April... it only takes two hours to get to Algiers by plane from the UK, which should make it easy..but the visa and ticket costs have been ridiculously high for them and we have to send a letter of invitation the the consulate in London for them to take along with their visa applications... if it's one thing we do well here it's high prices and red tape!

anyway...in the hope that they will indeed be here in a few weeks we're starting to get the house ready, spring cleaning, moving things around, anticipating days out and sharing the past two years of happenings with each other.

I've even got a do-able (in the time that I have) project in mind for my mother..who is having a hard time health wise lately. Something to cheer her up and put a smile on her face...

and there are photo's to share, but not yet...
dd19 has been dispatched on a a photographic mission so that I can show you the bits of flim-flam I've got my hook into at the moment...

so hopefully, after my cuppa, a few household chores to make me feel less like the slob I have become since the internet came back into my life, and poking about in the kitchen to make some dinner.. I will be back to show you goodies in the making.....

today my brother-in-law returned to me my new and improved laptop...complete with entirely new system, without the excess baggage of ALL my files AND photos, and ENTIRELY in FRENCH...but I'm assured the fan is now clean enough to ensure it will no longer overheat, and so far so good. It's just a shame my schoolgirl French is having such a hard time trying to decipher it all...but heck if it means blogging in bed and browsing in peace while the family are sleeping then I guess I can't complain.

for me internet use doesn't happen past dinner time..I have a wee fella who insists on having his mummy close by while he's sleeping....and short of dragging the desktop into bed with me there wasn't much of a soloution.

insha'allah I'll be able to share some of the creatvity going on around here at the moment... including our once weekly crafting session for some of the local girls. We're attempting a project per month..and this month it was cross stitching their initials onto Aida fabric (which they had never seen before and were instantly obsessed with). I have to say  wasn't prepared for so much difficulty in putting crosses onto fabric, but the girls are happily enthusiastic, so we persevere ....

and now I'm off to get my fix of ravelry before I finally hit the pit insha'allah...normally I'd be alseep by now (having to be awake by 5.30am sees to that normally..) but clearly the laptop has made me naughty...we'll blame the bil shall we?

2.15am

It's been a long day, full of cooking, guests... expected and unexpected.

Stressing over dresses that need to be made within the next couple of days

Making plans to create eid day goodies with friends...

and just the general flurry of activity that always seems to be part of our ramadhan days lately.

This ramadhan hasn't been the spiritual boost that I had planned for, but it's been a blessing in other ways alhamdulillah.

I come towards the end of ramadhan with a clearer vision of who I am and what I want my goals to be for the coming months ahead insha'allah.

Our sheikh said during one of his recent khutbahs that anyone going into ramadhan and coming out of it with the same (bad) character traits had wasted their month of fasting.

And thats a good lesson learned for me this year masha'allah.

Today {cos lets NOT kid ourselves that it's NOT morning already!} is sidelined for sewing...

two eid dresses for two young ladies in my life.

I have to be kind of desperate to get my sewing machine these days, and have put off this particular task for as long as I can, unfortunately there's no more time for procrastination...

a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do..and the machine is coming out!

To be honest I have to keep reminding myself what day it is... we've been pulling all nighters since the last ten nights of ramadhan kicked in,

to get those in our household who choose to pray qiyyam in the masjid out of the house on time,

, and the strain is beginning to tell somewhat...

So I'm off to my pit, to grab a bit of shut eye before they all come traipsing back in with the sound of the first adhan to eat suhoor before shuffling back out again to the sound of muaddhin calling the second insha'allah.

That is, if I can lure myself away from ravelry for five minutes, and the yummy new craft blogs I just found.....