50

Back in September DH was 50.  DS and I organised a “birthday weekend” for him which included a birthday party.

This is one of the invites – a 50 made from parchment with a cute baby pic.

      

I made him a 50 that lit up!

A 50 from wooden numbers – covered in pics of DH from the 50 years. . . . . . .

. . . . . and we decorated the front window with a big poster of DH as a baby, for all the world to see.

I also made him a scrapbook of his 50 years, with pictures and anecdotes.

Needless to say – he had a wonderful birthday.

Birthday & anniversary cards

 

A birthday card designed and made by me.

Two more birthday cards, with an Oriental theme

An anniversary card

Finally

A friend of mine from my school days (we started infant school together) recently got in touch.

It was great to hear from her after many years.  We had an awful lot to catch up on and then came her surprising news – she was getting married!!  My first words were “congratulations!!” and then she surprised me again by saying that I knew her husband to be.  It turns out that he was one of boys we went to school with, way back when, and it truly is the stuff that fairy tales are made of.  They should have got together when we were at senior school but both were to shy to do anything about it.  Years later, they met again, discovered they felt the same way about each other and finally got married in July – great eh?

A good excuse to try my newly learnt Pergamno skills on a wedding card!!

Best of times and worst of times

As I mentioned yesterday, my absence from the blogging world has been the best of times and the worst of times.

Best:

DS passed his final exams – yipee!!

DH & I passed our silver star dancing exam (with quite good marks, I’m pleased to add)

DS got accepted at the uni he wanted to go to.

Worst:

My dear friend & neighbour (the lady in the previous post) died suddenly at the end of June.  She was only 57!  She has left a gap in our lives, which will take some time to learn to live with.  I have some good memories of our friendship and I am lucky to have known her.

It’s been a while

My poor, neglected blog readers – it’s been too long and not through choice but I am back and over the next few weeks I shall post pics of all the recent (and not so recent) makes.

Where to begin.  It has been the best of times and also the worst of times.  My recovery from having pneumonia took longer than expected and proved to be quite a frustrating time.  To ease my frustration I decided to have another go at Parchment craft, with the idea of making an anniversary card for my dear friend (& neighbour).

I was quite pleased with the result and even more pleased that my friend liked it.

A few days later, we were talking over the fence (as you do) and my friend produced a bag full of Pergamano tools & papers and asked if I would like them.  Apparently, she had tried her hand at Pergamano and found that she didn’t like it.  I was thrilled to bits and have spent the summer teaching myself the different techniques involved in this beautiful craft – have I been successful, well you can judge for yourselves as I blog my attempts.

and yet more . . . . .

I haven’t been well for the last few weeks and have been on light duties – this soon leads to mischief as I run out of “light”things to do!

I am a collector of “blue & white” Dutch china (along with a lot of other things) and in my kitchen I have a huge “dresser”, designed by me using units from a certain Swedish flat pack furniture store and built by DH.

I loved the result that we had achieved but hated the supplied handles.  I recently had a brain wave – s0 noteworthy that I thought I should blog it (especially as they don’t happen very often!!).

I found some blue & white clog keyrings in a local store and bought enough so that I could use them as handles.  DH patiently drilled holes in them and I fitted them.

Before

After

Sweet huh?

Another project

I like to visit the second hand shops here – as they say “one man’s rubbish is another man’s treasure”.

On a recent trip to the kringloop (community second hand shop) I found two coal scuttles. Both were covered in grime but I liked their shapes and the fact that they had blue & white china handles (although one was missing off the bigger scuttle).  I also had the sneaking suspicion that underneath all the dirt that they were made from copper.  So I took a chance and bought them and a “believed to be” copper kettle (just for the handle) and got my self some copper polish and set to.

   

Crafting for the garden

DH came across this beauty (on that well known auction site).  It is a “Paper Pot Maker”.  He decided to get it for me as he thought I would find it useful for all my seedlings in the new greenhouse.

    

                  

Such a simple idea and the results are fantastic! You wrap newspaper around the body (height according to the line), tuck the ends under then you put it on the base and twist a couple of times and voilà, you have a paper pot!!

Mother’s Day

Made especially for my MIL – I had to use the boy with the tulips stamp (‘cos we live in the land of tulips!).  The daffodils are made using my new flower punch and the centres are made from paper rolled around a cocktail stick. MIL loved it (phew!)

Football Fan

A friend of ours recently celebrated his birthday. I decided on a football themed card as he is a keen football fan! 

Dream catcher

I have always wanted to have a go a making a dream catcher.  As I hadn’t a clue as to how to begin, I found a (cheap) kit and tried my hand.

Where to begin?

Well, here we are in April and I haven’t blogged since January – naughty, naughty!

There is no excuse for my lack of blog posts (a big sorry to all my readers) but I have been busy with major re-design work in our garden and a number of other projects along the way.

I am a keen gardener and like nothing more than sitting in my garden, with a glass of wine and a good book (weather permitting, of course!), but I can only do this if the garden is in good order.

For many years, I have grown all my plants from seed in a tiny walk-in, plastic greenhouse.  Over time, I have had to patch & repair the cover and this year I discovered it could be repaired no more.

After much searching of the shops, we found the perfect greenhouse for me, a polycarbonate, sturdy one.  DH was kind enough to take me to collect it and left the rest to me.

Just as I had planned to start work on the foundations for the greenhouse, the snow arrived.  I could be seen, daily, attempting to dig the frozen clay soil.

After 3 weeks of hard digging, much cussing and questioning my own sanity my beautiful greenhouse was completed!

It is now full of lovely seedlings . . . . . .

First Birthday of 2012

It is my MIL’s birthday today – Happy Birthday Mum!

As usual I have made her cards:

   

Something a little different

I wanted to make some place name settings for our Boxing Day Christmas table.  As I mentioned yesterday, friends were joining us to experience a typical English Christmas and I wanted to make it as special as possible for them.

I began with a basic Christmas tree and added the names inside:

These were designed and cut using my Craft Robo.

Once I had cut two frames for each name I glued them onto white tissue paper and then trimmed them.

The frames were then stuck onto a battery operated tea light using double sided tape.



End result:

Crackers

As you know, every year I make my own Christmas Crackers and this year was no exception. This year I had to make a few more as friends of ours were joining us for Boxing Day, to experience a typical English Christmas.

Catch up time

It was a busy time on the lead up to Christmas and I ended up making more than I usually do:

I made an oversized gift tag for a gift for my friend’s dog – I’ve not gone mad, it’s just easier to buy for his dog than him!



For my friend I made some Asian Chilli Jam from a Lorraine Pascale recipe

Happy New Year – not a good start

Hope you all had a lovely New Year.  We had a great time New Year’s Eve – nice family dinner; silly games; Jools Holland on the TV and celebrating New Year twice.  We can’t help ourselves – we have to watch Big Ben and the London celebrations as well.  We had a lazy New Year’s day – so, all in all, a good time.



Sadly, the good start did not continue.  In the early hours of Tuesday morning I woke to the sound of the smoke alarm going off. We all charged out of bed, down the stairs and I discovered smoke pouring from the hob. Somehow, it had developed a fault and turned itself on. As it had heated up, it had heated the protective glass plates that we keep on it (to stop the cats turning it on by accident!). DH phoned the fire brigade and turned off the electric for the hob , DS grabbed the girls and we all got out safely. We must have looked a sorry sight standing on the street in our jim jams! The police and the firemen arrived very quickly and did a superb job in making the house safe. The smoke was very bad and although nothing is damaged, other than the hob, both DH and I have been suffering a bit from smoke inhalation.


We spent the day getting things sorted, from cleaning up the shattered glass, to visiting the insurance people, arranging an electrician and finally a trip to Ikea to get a new hob. The electrician came to make sure that the electric was safe and came on Wednesday to fit the new hob.   Everything is now sorted (thank goodness).







Despite being very frightening, we all got out quickly & safely – this might not have been the case if we hadn’t had working smoke alarms.  So, whilst wishing you all a happy, healthy & safe New Year, if you haven’t got a WORKING smoke alarm (or 2) please, please, go out and get yourselves one or put batteries in the ones you’ve got.



Stay safe,
Lesley x x

Happy 2012!!

       Happy New Year!!

Message from me: I am not sitting at my 'puter 1 minute into the New Year - this is a scheduled post and as this is posting I will be seeing in the New Year with a drink in hand!!