Holidays are Here

School finished here on Friday, over a week before Christmas. I do think it's a bit early, I'd rather have the holiday start a little later then return back to school a little later too. I can imagine having little ones to entertain this coming week before Father Christmas visits, could make it a long week. Imogen is 14 so I'm not needed much now days when it comes to entertaining! I'm hoping we'll be doing some baking together during the week, maybe watch a couple of films together and I think we may treat ourselves to lunch out one afternoon as well.

When we drop Imogen off at her drama group this afternoon, it's going to be a trip to the supermarket to pick up a turkey, gammon joint and some other bits and pieces. Hmmm, I usually try to avoid Saturday afternoons at the supermarket, but it needs to be done.

I have been doing some more felting. I made another couple of trees to stand with the one I made last week.

I made a wreath, not a Christmas one. I'd made a hedgehog and needed somewhere for him to sit.

I covered a polystyrene wreath with roving then played about making little flowers.

It took a few evenings and I'm not sure if I'll still add some more flowers to it.

I don't think I'll be doing much more crafting between now and Christmas. I do miss having a bigger project on the go like a blanket, it's nice in the evening to have a bit of crochet or knitting to pick up, but I'll have to wait until after next week to sort something out.

Right then, off to face the hoards at the shops...

Take care
xxx

Oh Christmas Tree

I'm starting to get a bit excited now, only one week left at school then the Christmas holidays will be upon us. All the decorations are up, the tree lights are twinkling, I've posted all my Christmas cards (I may sound a little smug here as I'm usually a bit of a last minute person) and wrapped quite a few presents. We've also started watching Christmas films, so far have watched Scrooge (the musical one with Albert Finney), The Grinch, Deck the Halls and The Santa Clause. I'm sure we'll watch another one over the weekend.

I took part in a Christmas card swap organised by Amy at Love Made my Home. I was paired with the lovely Jules from A Hidden Jem and she sent me this beautiful card

I love the holly and berries in the corner

With all this Christmas wonderfulness happening, I thought it only right that as I seem to be spending a lot of time felting, I should make something Christmassy. I had this wool roving in gorgeous shades of green.

I started with a polystyrene cone

and gave it a covering with the dark green.

Just with one of my coarser needles, I pricked and stabbed until the cone was covered.

Once covered, I started to build up with shades of green

When I was happy with the coverage and colour, I used thin strands of red and gold to make the tinsel and small baubles on the tree and a piece of gold to make a star for the top.

I hope you like it, I'm hoping to make some more with some different sized cones that I have so they can all sit together on the mantlepiece.

How are everyone else's preparations coming along?

Take care
xxx

Ouch!

I've been doing quite a bit of felting recently, so it had to happen... a big ouch, well to be fair, it was more of an almost ouch!

After my first experience with felting and those very sharp and barbed needles, tissues and plasters, I learnt my lesson fast. I bought myself some leather finger protectors, one goes on my thumb and the other on my index finger. I've had them a while now so the leather is nice and comfortable. Anyway, they saved my poor finger last night

If that was in my finger, I don't think I would have let Andy take a picture!

As you can see, I've been doing a bit of felting. I wanted to use a pretty gravy jug I'd found in a charity shop. It doesn't have it's saucer anymore and needed a bit of love

A little farmhouse with the washing blowing in the wind.

 A little bush with pink flowers next to the house.

A hedge with a garden gate and a path leading to the house.

That was my bit of fun for the day (and watching Strictly of course), now back to the boxes and putting up the decorations for Christmas. It's looking a bit too chaotic for my liking at the moment, I think we may have collected too many decorations over the years, never thought I'd say that! I just want it up now so the boxes can be put away again and there are lots of twinkling lights and pretty things to look at.

Have you put up your tree and decorations yet?

Take care
xxx

2 Little Lost Girls

We are almost in December, everybody seems to be getting busier and the traffic on the roads is definitely getting heavier. I'm trying to be organised, have written a Christmas card list, as good as finished our present shopping and have dispatched hubby to the post office to send my 12 days of Christmas Swap parcel (it's on it's way Jo, should be with you soon).

Last week wasn't a good week, we had some bad news on Tuesday regarding our son, but he turned what could have been an awful situation right around. It turned from a bad week to celebrating at the weekend, life really can change so much in 24 hours!

The Christmas lights were turned on in the city centre on Thursday evening and the shops stayed open for the first evening of late night shopping. The atmosphere was lovely, Christmas was definitely in the air and children were excited to see their first sighting of the year of Father Christmas when he arrived on his sleigh (I do miss have little ones around). We took Imogen to choose a couple of charms for her Pandora bracelet, one from us and one from her grandparents. Andrew also bought me an early Christmas present, a Queen Bee with flowers. I'm very lucky, it's a beautiful Christmas present and I love bees.

Earlier this week I also found these 2 little girls in a charity shop, don't you think they have the prettiest little faces.

 As some of you may know, I have a weakness for dolls. I have some Blythe dolls and some other collectible ball jointed dolls. I picked these 2 up and ummed and arrrred over them for a while. They are apparently Dutch, I don't know anything else about them, just that they are quite old. At first I was just going to get the darker haired one as I liked her face best, and the blonde one is missing a boot, but how could I separate them?

They are so wide eyed and innocent, they looked like 2 little lost girls sitting on the shelf, I had to give them a good home to go to!

I also found a couple of jumpers. It's so hard to find jumpers or cardigans that have a high wool content, so many things nowadays are made with acrylic. I can spend ages going through the charity shops looking at all the tags in the clothes to establish the wool content, I'm sure the people there must wonder what on earth I'm doing!

I'm so pleased with the colours of these 2, dark green and 'sand' for my beach! I also slipped some marzipan in for Andrew, really don't like it myself, but he loves it.

That's about it for me, not much happening here, Imogen is late at school every night madly rehearsing for a play. I thought I'd end with a couple of pictures of our beautiful babies.

This is Sassy

Cheeky Alfie

Bit timid, but heart of a wolf, Gary

My beautiful girl, Honey

I think she knows how gorgeous she is

Take care
xxx

A Little House in a Log

I have had such a lovely time, I've been playing with my wool and those sharp, little, barbed needles that turn it into felt. Imogen goes to a drama club on a Saturday afternoon, so after the usual Saturday chores were out the way (washing, shopping etc), I settled down to finish my felting project that I started yesterday.

Remember my little piece of fauna, the little posy vase, little log with the lamb and rabbit...

 ... I decided to start playing with it yesterday. I started with a little house with a red door. My house had a path that leads down to a small pond...

...the pond has 2 little ducks paddling on it

Sheep grazing, flowers, bushes, hedges and a tree with red apples on it.

When we travel across the M62, over the Pennines, we go past a farmhouse between the 2 halves of the motorway. I can't imagine what it's like to live there, even though it's surrounded by motorway traffic I think it's very isolated. Anyway, I sort of had the idea of that house in my mind when I made this one.

I'm very pleased with how it's turned out and have plans to make more. I hope you like my little cottage too.

I've never watched it before, but this year I have been completely pulled into watched Strictly Come Dancing. I've loved it, so I'm popping off to watch tonight's episode, to watch those marvellous dancers glide all over the floor... and the not so marvellous... but I envy them all floating and gliding in their beautiful outfits.

Take care
xxx

Bit of Shopping and Lovely Dogs

Thank you for your lovely comments and ideas. After the excitement from making up my tapestry cushions, I felt spurred on to finish a small rug making cushion kit that had been around of a while. I'm not a big fan of rug making, I find it a little monotonous, but it was something to have on my lap while watching TV. I haven't made it into a cushion yet, but will get it sorted soon (I also have another rug cushion kit somewhere that Imogen started and decided she wasn't fussed about).

We've been out and about today, having a little wander around the charity shops. I do feel we can look for ages and never find anything, other days it's like there are things sitting there waiting for us.

I've been looking for some cute eggcups with the intention of making some pincushions. Look what I found...

2 sweet little cats

and this very cute Hello Kitty eggcup. I really wasn't looking for cats, they just found me.

My other find was this lovely piece of Fauna. I have a few pieces of Fauna already, I wrote about a few of them here

I have plans for this piece, which I'll hopefully get round to sooner rather than later (so many ideas and things to do).

Just before I go, here are Alfie and Gary cuddled next to me, I spend my evenings with a little dog pyramid squished next to me most nights.

Alfie popping up to say hello, how cute is this...

... and for all the dog lovers out there (did you know here in the UK we have more dog owners as a percentage than anywhere else), this is just for the smiles (and a few ouches).

Take care
xxx

Craft Room

I'm very lucky to have a little space in our house that has been labelled my craft room. When our son grew up and left home, our daughter moved from her tiny bedroom to his old room and I staked my claim on the box room. It's a very tiny room, more like a large cupboard than a bedroom! I used to do a lot of paper crafting, making cards and spent many a happy hour scrapbooking, being in the craft room kept the mess/creative process in one place making it a bit easier.

We had our own business, a shop until a few years ago. When we decided to close the shop it meant there was a lot of old stock to house... yes, you know where I'm going with this, my poor little room became a dumping ground for all sorts, it became a junk room.

I have reclaimed my room, we've been emptying it gradually over time, selling things, donating lots to charity and throwing things away.There's still stuff in the loft that needs to be dealt with, but I think we're on the winning side at last.

I've been spending time over the last few months, sorting out drawers and making the room more useable.

The drawers are full of card, stamps, embellishments and other paraphernalia.

So many papers for scrapbooking.

My wonderful husband made me a workspace from a piece of conti board. It goes from wall to wall so make good use of the available space. Here's picture of the desk looking a bit messy (though far better than it has), in front of the window so I have lots of light. In the middle is my little oven that I use for baking fimo/modelling clay.

I haven't really done any paper crafting for a long time, preferring to crochet the last few years as well as using fabric and felt. I made a couple of cards towards my Christmas stash so I could feel I'd been a little creative as well as all the tidying.

To end with, here's a quote from a man who must be one of the greatest children storytellers of all time, Roald Dahl. How very true I find this...

Take care
xxx