Our time

Hope you and your family/friend gatherings have been merry and memorable. Our's has been a simple but beautiful time. 


Lots of excitement, giggles, over-indulging, chilly walks, cuddles under blankets, festive movies, sipping on mulled wine, reading, thinking, singing carols, being grumpy when we haven't had enough sleep, debating, crafting, having hot deep baths, making new year plans, blowing bubbles, reflecting, tickling, drinking tea, DIY and decorating our room, knitting, sticking, drawing, wearing new clothes, baking, playing games and of course making. Oh and a little visit to the big smoke (aka London). 

WARNING: loads of photo's for my own reference to follow 

We are off for a few days till Sunday to see the new year in with friends and hopefully lots of good cheer.

Hope your new year brings you boxes and bag full's 

of new joy, curiosities and craftiness  xox

Blessings to you all

"It's two more sleeps time Christmas mummy" says Alice.

Wow, it is and it's my time to wish you all a very blessed and happy Christmas, May it be fill with beautiful memories and happy family times and special moments to remember forever.

Thank you so much to you all for your lovely words of encouragement, inspiration and warmth you have shown me over the last year.

Pictured here are the photo's of my last Christmas make for my Sister-in-law who is expecting her first baby in April 2012 and I wanted to make a "gender neutral" buggy blanket to get her and her hubby even more excited about their bump coming into the world xox

I'm quite pleased with how it's turned out and love all the colours from the yarn making them suitable for a wee boy or girl.

So that's me for this year I think, I might pop in before new year but might only be back in 2012.

Whatever happens here's to you and your's for a happy and healthy 2012 xox

Joy for life

Oh sweet sweet joy for this coming together this afternoon inspired by this beautiful yarn wrapped wreath. 

I hooked up the holly leaves and added some frosted berries found in a charity shop.

Cost: 95p for the polystyrene circle from haberdashery shop 

10p for the berries from charity shop

1.5 hours to wrap all left over bits & bobs of yarn in my stash
pipe cleaner from crafty stash

10 minutes to crochet the holly leaves

PVA glue in my sticky stash

and of course some J*O*Y

While I was busy making joy little miss was busy making a rather sparkly sequined bauble 

Cost: a whole lot more than mama's !

{eg. brass craft pins = £2.60} 

Kept little miss Alice busy for at least 2 hours and is surprisingly quite heavy with all that brass :0)

Hope you can find a little time for creating some joy too!

Pegs and Angels

Do you remember when I crocheted these angel wings here, I found the ideal home for them inspired by Penny's pretty dolly peg dolls and Christmas angels found here. Penny used fabric for her sweet peg dolls but I was thinking what can I do with one of the many charity shop doilies I have collected over the years? I know... make a crochet dress angel for the Christmas tree.

So Mrs. Dolly peg was born with a bit of silver bling,

Red ric-rac and cotton plaits. She was then joined by a dolly peg angel of the choral kind

Alice decided my dolly peg needed a friend

and my angel needed to get dressed... I had to snip through the centre of the doily to pop her head in and then threaded a silver thread around the centre circle and pulled on it like a draw string and fastened at the back to keep it secure.

  
Wings were blocked and PVA glued to make them stiff and have a starched effect.


And voila a little fun dolly peg angel was born!

and her singing mate!

Do pop over to Planet Penny and follow her easy tutorial on how to make a dolly peg doll of your own on the link mentioned at the beginning of this post. If you don't have any time before Christmas and have a little extra cash, she sells her beautiful dolly peg creations on Folksy here. 

Hope you are all enjoying your weekend so far, we are off to friends down the road for a tipple and mince pie (my first for this festive season!)

See you all soon xox 

This week I have been mostly...

Gosh, it feels like ages since I last posted. This past week has been a very busy one to say the least and although there was much merriment and festivities to be had I am just so pleased it's Friday and I can completely relax. I haven't stopped this week and have had parties and carol concerts to go to and the odd tear shed with our girl narrating at her school concert and secret Santa wrapping and internet ordering to be done.


I've just got into my pj's and it's not even 5 o'clock yet...but it's dark and cold outside and it's Friday...justification enough no?


Here are some of the bit's I've been up to this week (in amongst working of course)

Putting up our Christmas tree and reminiscing about all the sentimental ornaments handmade and collected from different countries we have visited. Alice, as all children do, loves this special event and we have decorations she has made at different stages of her sweet life.

Christmas Concert and carol singing to attend, we can't believe this was Alice's last junior school Christmas concert. It was very special and the children were all rather angelic and sang so beautifully.

Bucks fizz and Cava has been drunk on Tuesday and Thursday evening.

Hanging up and sorting out the plethora of school made decorations brought home this week.

And last but not least a little time of making was squished in. We painted the lids of some jam jars in acrylic paint and popped a snowflake sticker on each from a sheet of stickers bought in the pound shop in our town.

This was done early on Sunday morning, in our pj's of course. We used a couple of sample pots of paint too from our local DIY shop.

Stuck some of the snowflake stickers on the glass jam jars

Thought they might look pretty with a tea light candle in them

Or they could be used for giving some Christmas candy canes or chocolates / sweeties in or what ever you fancy really. A little Christmas / Baker's twine and a stick of cinnamon or piece of holly tied around the bottles would be festive and make a lovely creative, cheap and cheerful pressie for under the tree xox

Unfortunately we haven't got to the sweetie and twine stage yet but we have time this weekend :0)

One of my colleagues asked me what I was doing this weekend and I gleefully replied NOTHING! What sheer B*L*I*S*S not having any plans. Maybe I can get back to hook / needle and yarn again, oh I have missed you these past 6 days!

I'm off to put my pot of homemade soup on and curl up on the couch with Alice and her choice of a festive movie. Cheerio all you lovelies and thanks for visiting. I hope I can visit your lovely blogs soon and comment on all the gorgeous stuff going on in the land of blog xox