GIVING IT AWAY

So Pete was ill at the end of last week and over the weekend and being a true gent he has now passed it on to me so I'm currently feeling Bleurghh!

It was my step Mum's birthday at the weekend and I took the opportunity to experiment with my brown paper and do something fancy with the wrapping.  I'm really pleased with how it turned out.  All I used was some brown paper from Wilkinsons, some gardeners twine from Wilkinsons and an old paperback book which I used Tim Holts tattered floral die with to make the flowers and a little hint of pink ink added to the edges.

ANYONE FOR SCRABBLE?

Over on PInterest a while ago I saw a link for a picture that I thought was rather cute.  I had a broken game of upwords ready to be sold for spares, binned or crafted with so I got to work and made myself a picture for my living room.

I like it even if I do say so myself but there is no surprise that Kyle thinks it's "gay". 

This afternoon I have caught up on "Downton Abbey" from last night.  I don't get to watch it on a Sunday evening as the male members of the household would not been seen dead watching it.  So on a Monday afternoon I get to curl up on the sofa and play catchup and I Love it!

GRANNY SQUARE MADNESS

I'm feeling pretty smug at the moment as I have learnt how to make granny squares with some patient guidance from Anita via Skype and a HUGE crochet hook.  I started trying to learn about 2 years ago and all my crochet bits and bobs have sat in a sad, abandoned Asda carrier bag, next to the sofa, ever since.  But no more!

Now I am a master of crochet and have 2 nearly finished granny squares under my belt.  Yesterday, I could wait no longer and had to go and buy these bad boys to attempt a poof blankie with.  At a rough guess the after shots will be sometime in the long and distant future as I am still painfully slow and have a tendency to get rather tangled in the yarn.

To finish with I will share a wonderfully grimacy shot of myself showing off my new short, but not as short as I want it, haircut.

SPENDING SPREE & TREES

A couple of weeks ago I saw a lovely tree on pinterest.  Pinterest is my new found love and if you look right you can click and follow me there.  We are lucky enough to be getting free wood for our log burner from a log cabin making company so when we picked some up last weekend I put some of it aside to make a similar tree.  After a bit of prating about we eventually came up with this.  I was going to paint and distress it but I love it so much Au Natural that it is staying as it is.

Yesterday I went to spend some money on useless items that I don't actually need.  Pete even insisted I bought this advent calender ready to decorate

We went for a look see around some antique units and I spotted this piece which will make 7 snowflakes for my Christmas Tree.  Hopefully by next Christmas I will be able to make my own.

The sewing shop was amazing and had the most beautiful fat quarters but I resisted and came away with some embroidery bits and bobs and some beads to use on things I make in my newly decorated fire room.

A visit to the scrapbooking shop completed my spending spree with these gorgeous papers which will match my new room beautifully and a template for making felt Christmas decorations.

IT'S BEEN A WHILE

In fact it's been a lot longer than a while!  I've got a pretty good excuse though as we have been doing major decorating over the summer.  We started in the hall which looked like this

and then after lots of hard work, sweat and tears it now looks like this.

The hard work was worth it as we both love it now even though it still needs those fancy finishing touches doing to it.

After we finished working on the hall we started on the back living room and installing a log burner ready for the winter.

So not quite a before picture as by this stage we had already started but it's the best I can do

It then progressed to this

and Pete found this old back boiler full of smelly water in the depths

More plaster than we expected had to come off

 

After a good friend plastered for us it started to get put back together again

Eventually it was finished and we LOVE it and are now looking forward to winter.

Hopefully it won't be too long before I blog again.